Presidential Mission

by Upton Sinclair

  She had produced another quantity of manuscript, and Lanny read it, absorbed; here was the same sly satire and shrewd characterization which he had been admiring for years. Laurel told that she had put off the tragic concluding chapters until after her confinement. She would soon be ready to tackle them; she went over the story with her husband and he answered her questions about Nazi psychology, doctrines, practices, and vocabulary. What a busy brain there was inside that small head! They even took time off to try a few experiments in mediumship, but not much came of them. “I am too contented,” she said. “Cows do not develop psychic phenomena.”

  II

  The routine for Baby Lanny had been laid out on scientific principles and was supposed to be like the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not. But, alas, it is one thing to make laws, and another to enforce them. There came that medieval institution known as Christmas, and there were two grandparents and a host of greatuncles and greataunts clamoring against what they called modern innovations. It was just impossible that Lanny shouldn’t see his relatives at Christmas time, and everybody’s feelings would be hurt if his wife didn’t come along. Esther telephoned and proposed a compromise; she would provide a room for the baby, where everything might be exactly as in the baby’s home. Esther would personally see that nobody who had a cold entered the room, and that nobody touched the baby except Laurel and the well-trained nurse whom Esther would provide.

  So the car was brought to the door, and Lanny carried the precious bundle down and laid it in the mother’s arms; she held it while he drove—carefully, because there was snow and sleet on the highway. The infant was established in another upstairs room, and had no idea of the difference; the mother appeared at the proper times, and her soft warm breasts were made available. No one was allowed into the room who had not passed a hygienic inspection; Laurel herself held the little one, and there was no fondling or dandling or kissing. The female cousins and the aunts and greataunts were allowed to witness the suckling, a procedure which had become practically obsolete among fashionable folk; the elders watched it with approbation and the youngers with awe.

  Exactly a quarter century had passed since Lanny had first spent a Christmas in the home of his father and stepmother. That had been time enough for the two sons of this marriage to grow up and produce children of their own. The house had had wings added on both sides, so it was now a mansion, with room enough for all of the clan that chose to come. It was a bigger party than Lanny remembered from his youth, but otherwise it was exactly the same. Everybody was kind, everybody was cheerful, but it seemed to the man from overseas that there was an undercurrent of boredom which even the children shared. Nobody believed in Santa Claus any more, and nobody had made the effort or done the work which are necessary to real enjoyment of play.

  There was an immense tree standing by the circular staircase which went up to the third story of the house. Under it was a great pile of packages, all wrapped in fancy paper and tied with bright red ribbons. There were presents to everybody and from everybody, including the servants. The country was at war, the whole world was at war, just as it had been at Lanny’s first visit. Goods were supposed to be scarce; yet somehow it seemed always possible for the rich to get what they wanted.

  The problem was to find presents which might give pleasure to people who already had everything they needed and a lot more. When the packages were opened, a boy just home from boarding school might find himself with three sweaters, and he had several perfectly good sweaters from last Christmas. The same applied to dressing gowns, to bedroom slippers for the old, and to neckties for all ages; indeed, neckties seemed to be the bane of life at Christmas parties. The colors didn’t please people, and Lanny guessed that most of the Budds were secretly busy with the question of to whom they would give this superfluous merchandise.

  Lanny’s memory went back to his childhood on the Cap d’Antibes, when he had taken a present to the child of one of the poor fisher families. The present was a cheap valentine, saved over from that season; but it was covered with paper lace, tinsel, and gold, and had a brightly colored picture in the center. The rapture which had come upon the face of the child who received this gift was something Lanny had never seen upon the face of any grandchild of Robbie Budd, president of Budd-Erling Aircraft.

  Still, nobody could deny that it was a proper family party in the dignified New England way. Nobody drank too much punch, and nobody was rude to any of his in-laws. They all talked about family affairs, and took Laurel into their secrets. Upstairs in their own room Lanny told her with a grin that she was a novelist, and some day might be moved to write a story about the American rich. “They are the ones who buy the novels,” he said, “and novels about them are the ones that sell.”

  There was talk about the war, too. These Budds knew that Lanny had just come back from Europe, and they asked questions about how things were going; he noticed that no one asked him what he personally had been doing, or even where he had been. He wondered: Had the rumor spread among the tribe that he was doing work of a confidential nature? Or was it just that reticence which was a part of their good breeding? In any case it was convenient, and he had to admit that there was something to be said for that stiffness and personal pride which was the mark of caste in this region, called “New” England even after it was three centuries old.

  III

  The celebration was brought to an end for Lanny by an item of news which came over the radio on Christmas eve. Startling news, wholly unforeseen and preceded by no omens: Admiral Darlan had been shot by an assassin in Algiers! A couple of hours later it was reported that he was dead. The P.A. said: “Darling, I’m afraid that ends my furlough. It will change everything over there and will certainly mean that I have to go and report.”

  He had been able to tell his wife much more about his work, for now the great secret of Operation Torch was known to all the world, and to the world’s wives. Thus Laurel could understand why the head of the French government in North Africa was such an important factor in her husband’s life. “Who do you think has done it?” she asked.

  “I can’t guess,” he told her. “There are so many factions, pulling and hauling.”

  “Do you suppose it’s the Leftists?” That seemed probable to her because most of the criticism of the Darlan deal which she had been reading in New York emanated from that side of the political house.

  “I don’t know,” he answered; “but if it is, it will be terrible, because the Jews will be blamed.”

  He shut himself in his father’s study and put in a call for Baker. It wasn’t easy to find him—no doubt the President’s man also was having his family celebration. Lanny waited up late Christmas eve, but no call came. He stayed near the house on Christmas morning, helping the children celebrate and playing the piano for them to dance; but still no call. Dinner was in midafternoon: turkey with chestnut dressing, cranberry sauce, roast sweet potatoes, asparagus, mince pie and plum pudding, every sort of goodies, and a California wine which they were learning to appreciate in wartime. And just as they had all started to sing carols and songs, there was a call for Lanny, and he went into the study. Baker said: “The Boss would like to see you tomorrow evening. Can you meet me at the usual place at nine?” Lanny said: “Make me a reservation on a plane from New York tomorrow noon, and phone me at my apartment tomorrow morning.”

  The family begged Laurel to stay, but she said that if Lanny was going she would rather be settled in her small nest; so Lanny drove her and the baby home on Christmas night, keeping a careful lookout for the drunks. In the morning Baker called about the reservation. Lanny bought the newspapers and read all there was about Darlan. The Admiral had been shot several times by a seventeen-year-old youth who had waited for him at his office. Bonnier de la Chapelle was his name, and there was much speculation but no information as to his motive. It was obviously a political crime, and there was believed to be a group behind the youth, but no one could be sure which of the many
political factions he represented.

  In the morning Lanny drove with his wife to the airport, and in the back seat was Robbie’s office girl, who had come down on a morning train for the purpose of taking the car back. Lanny expected to be ordered to fly from Washington to Algiers and had his bags packed for that trip. This time he had told Laurel what he was doing, for there no longer seemed any sense in trying to keep the secret. She would not talk about it, not even to her friend Agnes, who had turned herself into an infant’s nurse and “mother’s helper” for the duration. Lanny had said, in the munificent way which he had learned from his father long ago: “Pay her what she can earn anywhere else and then double it.” He had put ten thousand dollars in Laurel’s bank account, for he could never be sure what might happen to her husband; he didn’t say this, but told her that money was flowing like water in New York and that Zoltan Kertezsi was selling Detaze paintings at fancy prices. Of course Laurel knew what was really in his mind, and she could never keep the tears out of her eyes when they parted.

  IV

  It was Saturday night, and a movie was being run in the projection room upstairs in the White House. Lanny sat in a small reception room and waited; he didn’t mind, because he had time to think about what he wanted to say and what not. If there was anything made in Hollywood that would divert that overburdened mind, the adoring P.A. was glad.

  When the visitor was brought into the bedroom, the President had already retired, wearing his pongee pajamas and his sweater. Nobody but the attendants ever saw him transferred to the bed. A strange thing to realize, that this man with the large head and the torso of a shotputter or a weightlifter had legs of no more thickness than an ordinary man’s wrists. That handicap he had carried for some twenty years, and all the processes of his physical handling had been studied like a military campaign: this not merely to save his own time and comfort, but in order to keep his public appearances from being painful to the spectators. Press photographers were permitted to take him in his wheel chair, but always under the rule that the pictures must be cut off at his waistline before they were used.

  Now this lover of life was in a relaxed mood, for he had seen a film which had amused him, and he took several minutes to tell Lanny about it. His eyes sparkled with fun, and his laugh was that of a schoolboy. But then, as quickly as you could wink your eye, his mood changed, and he was the grave, even worried, statesman. “Lanny, can you tell me what this murder means?”

  “I was hoping that you might tell me, Governor. It is evident that the press correspondents don’t know, or haven’t been allowed to tell.”

  “The State Department doesn’t know. Either the French authorities don’t know, or they are keeping the secret.”

  “More likely the latter, I should guess. There are many factions, each enraged against all the others. Darlan was hated because he was a Vichyite, and because he was an enemy of the Reds, and of De Gaulle, and of the Comte de Paris, and again just because he was in power. Any of those might have been the reason. If the assassin had been a Red or a Jew, the world would surely have been informed at once.”

  “I am told that he was a member of the Chantiers de la Jeunesse.”

  “Well, that tells a lot. That is a French organization, Fascist but anti-German, if you can imagine that combination. You see, the French reactionaries preferred Hitler to Blum, but they didn’t want either then, and they don’t want either now. Two brothers whom I have known since their boyhood, Denis and Charlot de Bruyne, are at daggers’ points because one wants to collaborate with the Germans, à la Vichy, and one wants to fight Germans, à la De Gaulle. There is another reactionary faction which wishes to fight Germans, but which hates both the others; they are the backers of the Royalist pretender, the Comte de Paris.”

  “I am thinking of having that fellow shipped back to Spanish Morocco.”

  “Perhaps somebody heard of it, and blamed Darlan. The leader of the Chantiers is a fanatical person named D’Astier de la Vigerie, and his aide is a Jesuit priest, Abbé Cordier. They are Royalists, and many of this group are capable of any violence, for they have been raised in the school of Charles Maurras, the editor of L’Action Française.”

  “I know about him, from of old.”

  “It is hard to know about him unless you have actually read the paper. The ferocity of Maurras’ writing really seems insane. There is no crime he does not advocate. He is a madman out of the sixteenth century, the days of the St. Bartholomew massacre. My guess is that some of that crowd put this schoolboy up to shooting Darlan, and that the government is hushing it up because some of its members are compromised, or because the instigators are too rich and too important to be punished.”

  V

  This was what it meant to be President of the United States, in charge of a world war, and obliged to carry in your head the political movements and factions in a score of countries, and the greedy and vain and jealous personalities whom these movements had thrown up to the surface of history. A few heroes, very few statesmen, and no saints, but hundreds of persons who wished to be taken for one of these and perhaps all three! The squire of Krum Elbow had to remember them and sort them out and decide about them, sometimes at very short notice. He might be awakened from his sleep and asked to give a decision over the telephone.

  “We have to put somebody in Darlan’s place,” he remarked. “Giraud looks like the man. What do you think?”

  “I suppose that’s all you can do—if you can do it! Six weeks ago I would have said, ‘Impossible.’ But he’s been head of the Army that long and the fact may give him legitimacy. Does Murphy think he can get away with it?”

  “He thinks, as all the others do, that there’s no one else. De Gaulle, I take it, is out of the question.”

  “The people might accept him, but the Army and the ruling group—never!”

  “Well, I want you to go over there right away. Listen to what people say, but don’t tell them you are reporting to me, and don’t show your reports to anyone. I want to hear from you as soon as possible as to what is being done and what you think I can do. Remember, we don’t want to favor any group in French politics; we want to get our armies into Tunis before Rommel gets there in his grand backtrack.”

  “Governor, I know how tired you must be of hearing it, but I have to say it again: the French politicians won’t be satisfied to be put in storage until the war is won. They have their careers to think about; they know that the war is going to leave some group in control of the police and the machinery of government. They all want to be that group.”

  “We’ll still have an Army there, Lanny, and we can supervise an honest election, if they won’t. Surely the French people have enough political intelligence to want that, and to know if they are getting it.”

  “I must repeat, Governor—the people won’t have much political intelligence if most of those who have political intelligence are shut up in concentration camps and starved into impotence.”

  The weary great man forced a smile. “I get you, Lanny, and I’ll do the best I can for your political prisoners. But we must get Tunis and Bizerte.”

  That wasn’t quite the same as Lanny had been told some two weeks earlier; so he had to assume that the Boss had been hearing from the brass hats or the striped-pants boys on the subject. He gave up, and the President turned quickly to a different matter. “I have definitely decided to meet Churchill in Morocco. I am going to fly there, and it will be two or three weeks from now. I want you to meet me when I arrive; you may have something important to report, and I may have some instructions to give.”

  “I’ll sure be on hand, Governor. How shall I get to you?”

  “Baker will be with me. I am not certain yet whether it will be Casablanca or Marrakech. Which would you recommend?”

  “The climate of Marrakech is better; also, you will be a little farther from German planes.”

  “We have thought of both; but the Army seems to think they can protect us better at Casablanca. You under
stand, the whole thing is secret to the uttermost degree. Not a line will be published until I am back in the United States.”

  “I understand, sir. Am I to assume that Murphy will know about it?”

  “He will know, and you can get the date from him, and Baker’s address. Baker doesn’t know he is going yet; nobody will know an hour sooner than necessary.”

  “O.K., Governor. My lips are sealed.”

  “Baker tells me he’s made a plane reservation for you early tomorrow morning. I hope that is not too sudden.”

  “Not at all. I guessed the situation as soon as I heard about Darlan. I’ll collect what facts I can and send them to you as quickly as possible. I’ll get the date of your departure from Murphy, and hold everything that wouldn’t get here before you leave. Good-by, sir.”

  “Good luck to you, Lanny!” A firm handclasp, and they parted.

  VI

  The P.A. traveled on a Clipper this time, by way of Bermuda and the Azores. He came ashore at Casablanca and sent a cablegram to Robbie—it was agreed that he should always cable Robbie and not Laurel, because the name of Budd-Erling Aircraft would have magic with the censors. He wrote a postcard to his mother, and then spent the evening hearing the latest news that Jerry Pendleton had collected. In the morning he was flown to Algiers, that, too, having been arranged by the all-powerful Baker. He reported to Murphy, as a matter of courtesy, and heard what the Counselor had been able to learn about the Darlan killing. Then he had a session with Denis de Bruyne, who really knew the inside story and would tell Lanny what he wouldn’t tell any other American.