The soldiers on duty at the gate were ill pleased by the idea of letting in a strange man on the mere say-so of Baker. Lanny was willing to be searched for arms, but he refused to have his papers examined, not only because of his name, but because of that Hess document sewed up in his coat lining. They flashed a torch in his face, and sent for a higher officer, who in turn sent for a Secret Service man. Lanny had to stand there and wait on a freezing cold night until this man had phoned up to the apartment and received the President’s personal order that Baker was to bring in any man he pleased, and the man’s name was not to be asked nor was his face to be studied. Very bewildering indeed, and it was almost, but not quite, one of those rare cases when the Secret Service insisted upon giving orders to the President. Something like a doctor!
II
Here was a modern “palace” hotel, in the standard European style, extremely ornate and florid; you paid for the thrill of being able to imagine that you were Louis Quinze or Seize. What the Army had paid for the place Lanny never heard, but doubtless it was enough to keep everybody happy. The Chief was in Villa Number 2, known as “Dar es Saadia,” and he had an air-raid shelter in a swimming pool only ten feet from the house. He was settled in bed, with his Negro attendant Prettyman at the door as always. He had a cheerful grin for the caller, and a “Welcome to our city!”—a sort of double entendre which would not have pleased the French. Lanny knew that Roosevelt enjoyed travel, and no doubt had got a kick out of coming down into a harbor full of ships which had carefully cleared a way for him.
“Well, Lanny, what do you hear?” and the secret agent started on a thousand-and-second Arabian Nights’ tale. It had to do with a tobacco smuggler who was reputed to be the richest man in Europe—unless Göring had surpassed him. Anyhow, he had been rich enough to destroy the People’s Republic of Spain, and to put his little private murderer in its place. Now he was in league with the chiefs of the steel and munitions cartels of France and Germany and was all ready to put through a peace offensive; he was waiting only for the son of Budd-Erling to convert the two stubborns, Churchill and Roosevelt, to the program.
“Good for you!” chuckled the object of this conspiracy. “And are you going to do it?”
“I decided I’d better ask your consent,” said Lanny, who also enjoyed “kidding.” “What do you think my chances of success are?”
“I’ll tell you, provided you’ll keep it under your hat.”
“Always, Governor.”
“Well, do you know what General Grant said at Fort Donelson?”
“I’m sorry, Governor. I know Europe better than I do my own country.”
“He was asked for an armistice, and be replied: ‘No terms except unconditional surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works.’”
“Is that the answer this time?”
“It’s what I plan to announce as the outcome of this Conference, and I don’t think Winston will have any objection. But it’s confidential for the present.”
III
Lanny mentioned what Juan March had said about Peyrouton, and learned that it was true—this eminent Pétainist was on his way from the Argentine to run Algiers for the Allies. F.D.R. said he wondered how March had learned about it; the P.A. reminded him that the Argentine was the Nazi propaganda center for all South America and that Peyrouton had been sent from Vichy to do his share. “It’s as bad as that?” asked the President, and the other replied: “Listen, Governor. I don’t want to be in the position of nagging you. The bearer of bad news is never popular.”
“Go ahead and shoot the works, Lanny. I have to hear the worst, but you mustn’t be disappointed if I can’t always see my way to do what you want. Sometimes I have to use indirect ways, sometimes I have to wait for a situation to come to a head, or for public opinion to change.”
“Unless I am mistaken, Governor, you won’t have to wait long to hear from public opinion on Peyrouton. He is the perfect type of political servant for those greedy and cynical old families who have ruled France for a century and brought her to her present plight.” Lanny went on to describe this former Minister of the Interior, urbane and agreeable, round-faced, comfortable, and completely anti-democratic; as head of the Vichy police he had been responsible for carrying out the orders of the Nazis.
“They tell me he is a good administrator, Lanny.”
“I don’t doubt that. He is a good judge of his kind of men, but he wouldn’t have any understanding of your kind.”
“Here is the problem: we have to find a man whom the French officers will accept in the place of Darlan. Giraud is no administrator, he is a soldier and he wants to fight the war. Murphy is our man there, and I either have to give him support or replace him, and who else knows that field? Murphy has confidence in Lemaigre, and Lemaigre says that Peyrouton is the best man available.”
“That I can understand readily. Politically speaking, those two are twins.”
“This will sound cynical to our liberal friends; but I am in the midst of a war, and I can’t run everything personally. Here is a Frenchman who sees that we are going to come out on top and he deserts the sinking ship. He is ready to sell us his services, his knowledge of all the other rats who are coming over in swarms. He has the prestige, and can make all the others obey us and do our work. Am I not to use him?”
“Yes, Governor; but the question is, will he do your work, or will he work against you secretly, and how will you watch him and make sure?”
“That’s easy, Lanny. It happens that I have a friend whom I trust and who knows the French. He’s going into the rat cage and watch what goes on and tell me about it. He’s going to be patient with me and not expect me to change everything at once. He’s going to be sure that in the end I’ll bring it about that the people of France have a government which they themselves have chosen in a free and fair election. From that time on it will be up to them, and we can bow ourselves gracefully out.”
The President began this speech with the familiar little grin. But halfway through he became serious. “Listen, man,” he said; “this is a subject so delicate that I have to walk on eggs when I approach it. These wealthy Frenchmen are all Catholics. I don’t see how they can do the dirty work they do and still think they have any religion, but they do, and they are very determined and bitter about it. I explained to you a long time ago how it is in the Democratic Party at home: Irish, Italians, Poles, French, Germans, Mexicans—there is simply no carrying an election in any of our big cities if you antagonize the Catholic vote. Here in France—of course I know of the long fight against clericalism, a century at least, isn’t it?”
“Three centuries, I’d say. It goes back to Molière’s Tartuffe, and perhaps to the Gallican movement of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.”
“Well, it may have succeeded among the, workers, but so far as concerns the governing and big business class, you simply have to make terms with the Catholic system if you want to get anywhere. Murphy is a Catholic and he understands how to deal with them. I am a Protestant, and so, as I say, I have to walk on eggs. We in America have educated a generation of Catholics to the idea of free democratic elections. Whatever the hierarchy may wish, the Catholic masses accept that principle at home; and it seems to me that our technique is to bring American Catholics over here and let them teach it to European Catholics. It can’t be done all at once, but only with patience and tact, and if we stand by and don’t seem to be dictating or interfering. Believe me, if I could have my way I would sweep the whole Vichy gang out of the way overnight; but then I would find myself having to govern a Catholic country, and maybe to conquer it first. Surely it is better to let the politicians alone and have their help in knocking out the Nazis.”
Lanny had heard this before, and had wrestled over it in his own mind. Now he knew that he was taking up the time of a fearfully busy man. He said: “Just one thing, Governor. You know the old doctrine that the end justifies the means. I was reading some modern philosop
her the other day and noted the statement that it is the means that determine the end.”
The busy man sat in silence, pondering that one. At last he said: “I don’t think that Vichy is going to determine our ends in this war, Lanny. If ever you think you see it happening, come and tell me.”
IV
The P.A. offered to leave, as he made a point of doing now and then. But Roosevelt said: “Wait a moment.” This, too, happened frequently. Perhaps he wasn’t satisfied with the argument he had made; he wanted the faith and friendship of the liberals, and even of the Pinks. “There is something you ought to know,” he said. “I have brought about the setting up of a Joint Commission to deal with the question of political prisoners here, and I am assured that virtually all of them have now been released.”
Lanny replied: “Oh, gosh! I hate to be a wet blanket, Governor. You are an old hand at politics and you know the tricks in America; but here they have new ones. Has anybody pointed out to you that the Vichyites have their definition of ‘political prisoners’? They mean only those who have been charged as such, and that is less than a thousand out of the ten thousand they have in jail. The other nine thousand are ‘criminals’ of one sort or another, or else they are in jail without any charges whatever, and of course that keeps them from being ‘political prisoners.’ Do you realize that it’s a crime to be a Freemason here?”
The President sat with knitted brows. “Oh, what a mess!” he exclaimed.
“Indeed yes! Just the other day General Giraud announced at a press conference that some decrees against the Jews would be rescinded. For example, he said that Jewish children would be allowed to go to school again; but then he added, it would have to be done ‘gradually,’ which of course means that he takes it all back.”
“Lanny, the State Department people swear to me that Giraud is not anti-Semitic.”
“Maybe he isn’t, personally, or consciously. He is a man who has been trained from boyhood to fight Germans, and his whole being is centered on that. His dream is of the day when he will march into the fortress of Metz under a French flag. For the rest, he lets the politicians run things, and fusses because he has to be bothered with their problems.”
“We have got to get this government on a firm basis, Lanny. We have invited De Gaulle here to work out some kind of compromise with Giraud. We simply must get the French together, so that we can all keep our minds on the war.”
“I wish you luck, Governor. It was the inability of the French to get together that caused their collapse.”
“I mean to pound that fact into their leaders’ heads. I am thinking about the masses of the French people, who want freedom and then peace. I refuse to believe that they are as stubborn and bigoted and vain as their head men have shown themselves in this crisis.”
Lanny said amen to that, and wished that he could help in some more effective way than he was doing. But Roosevelt said that his P.A. was doing what nobody else could do, and that he was to go on doing it. “Come to me whenever you have news,” he said. “I’ll find time to squeeze you in.”
Lanny went away with an aching heart. He did not see how a human body and mind could survive under the burdens which this man was carrying, certainly the heaviest that any public man had borne in his country’s history. Washington had had to deal with thirteen little colonies; Lincoln had had to deal for the most part with domestic problems; but Franklin Roosevelt had to deal with pretty nearly the whole world, and with a war that included all the continents and the seas.
V
“Stick around,” the Boss had said, so Lanny stuck. He paid another visit to Señor Juan, and told that gentleman that he had sent the valuable peace proposal to his father by a secret route, and was hoping for results. He met several of the friends of this Xueta, all of them men without a country, unless you counted big business as international. One and all, they were certain that there was a conference of military leaders going on at the Hotel Anfa, and scouted the idea of the natives that other potentates were present. Wealthy refugees who had had the forethought to get their money and themselves to a safe retreat, they were now “on the hills like gods together, careless of mankind.”
But they still listened to the radio and discussed what they heard, thinking of the new chances of profit in the confusion of the war’s end. From their conversation a P.A. could pick up many tidbits, and among other things he verified a fact which he had reported to Roosevelt, that Göring had been all set to take Gibraltar in the spring of the previous year. Lanny hadn’t realized how close to action Der Dicke had come; he had had his three hundred giant cannon all uncovered and aimed, and four divisions of paratroopers all set to fly. With Der Tag only one week ahead, Hitler had sent for him and informed him that he had decided to take Russia instead. The fat Reichsmarschall had been almost beside himself with vexation, and had spoken so plainly that his Führer had never forgiven him, and since then they communicated only in writing.
The Number One Nazi had set one month, or two at the outset, for the taking of Russia; nineteen months had passed, and those four divisions of magnificent paratroopers were dead in the snows of Russia or prisoners in Russian labor camps. Their Führer had just proclaimed three days of mourning for the three hundred thousand heroes who had been cut to pieces in front of Stalingrad—after he had forbidden them to surrender. Also, Rommel had had to abandon Tripoli without attempting to defend it. Señor Juan took his American guest aside and confided that he thought things looked very black indeed for the Axis, and that he had sent word to El Caudillo that he must abandon any thought of a surprise attack upon the American armies.
This was an important item of information, and a P.A. did not fail to make note of it. He had taken for granted that Franco had such a thought, and so had the American military leaders. If now he had given the thought up, that would enable the Americans to reduce the number of troops they would keep along the border of Spanish Morocco, guarding the railroad and the highway which ran past that territory. So, after the dinner party, Lanny went straight to Baker, and was taken to the President’s room.
When F.D.R. heard the news he chuckled delightedly and exclaimed; “Wise guy!” He told Lanny that the Army had received the same information from its agents in Madrid, but they couldn’t be sure whether it was planted by the Spaniards. “Obviously,” said the President, “if Franco had an attack in mind, he would do everything possible to make us feel secure.”
“One other matter,” Lanny continued. “There’s an old fellow named Salzgutrer whom I met at March’s. He’s one of those Sudeten Germans, but he rates as a Czech citizen, so I suppose that technically he’s a neutral. He was one of the owners of the Skoda munitions plant, and I don’t know whether Göring has expropriated him or bought him out or what. He has manifested a liking for me, and I’m not sure whether he’s trying to pump me, or whether he’s just an old boy who is bored and likes to chat. From one or two of his remarks I got the impression that he knows something about the subject of jet propulsion, and I’m wondering if he’ll talk about it. You remember, you put that on my list.”
“Yes indeed. Does he want money?”
“I can’t say. Here is the point: I find that the way to get men to talk is to tell them things. Then they feel that you are friends with them, and not just trying to use them. I have picked up a few notions about jet propulsion, but I’m afraid to talk because I don’t know what is secret and what is already known to the Germans. I need some information, not a great deal, say, half a dozen technicalities that will sound right. They might even be things that we have tried and dropped; that would mislead the Germans into thinking we are on the wrong track.”
“That ought to be easy to arrange. We have a man here, Major Dowie, who is reporting on the subject. Tell Baker to go to him and get you what you want. Baker should not give your name, of course, but just say that an agent needs this information in his work. Let Dowie write out half a dozen statements, and then you can learn them and destroy the paper
.”
“Thanks as ever,” said the P.A.
VI
It was after midnight, and Lanny felt that he ought to be going. But the Boss began to chuckle, and the visitor knew that he had something else on his mind. “The funniest adventure we’ve been having! I suppose you know that De Gaulle is here?”
“I’ve heard it.”
“Winston and I have been devoting a lot of time, together and separately, to trying to make friends with him; but I’m afraid we lost out by failing to let him know in advance that we were proposing to invade the sacred soil of France. We just couldn’t tell him, because we had learned that there are leaks in his London headquarters. There are honorable Frenchmen among them, but there are also spies.”
“I don’t have any trouble believing that, Governor.”
“Well, here we are, on the sacred soil, and we want to get on with the war. But the first question is, who owns the villa in which the General is to reside? If it belongs to a Frenchman, he won’t enter it, because he doesn’t admit the right of our Army to commandeer a French home, even though we pay ample rental for it. Fortunately it turns out that the home belongs to a Swiss, so that issue does not have to be fought out.”
“I’ve heard that Giraud is rather touchy, too, Governor.”
“Oh, my! We brought that old gentleman to Gibraltar in a British sub because it was all we had; but there had to be an American officer in command before he would step on board. When he arrived, his first demand was that he should be in full command of all troops which invaded French North Africa. Imagine Old Blood and Guts taking his orders from an elderly Frenchman whom he had never seen before and whose language he is supposed to know but doesn’t!”
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