Presidential Agent (The Lanny Budd Novels)

by Upton Sinclair

“Some of my best friends are Jews,” he replied. After he had said it, he remembered that in New York the Jews had taken that up as a sort of shibboleth, by which you could recognize the anti-Semite who didn’t wish to admit his prejudices. But after all, what else could anybody say? And what more?”

  “You know how it is in the stage and screen worlds. The Jews seem to love art; at any rate they know how to run it, and how to make money out of it. So I made friends among them; some of them I became really fond of, and now they get into trouble, terrible trouble, and they write or send somebody to me, begging for help; and what can I do? I try to help one, and before I succeed there are several more. They think I am all-powerful, but I am not, I assure you.”

  “I can believe you, Frau Göring.”

  “Tell me honestly, what do you think of our policy toward the Jews?”

  This indeed was a poser for the son of Budd-Erling, here on Budd-Erling business, or supposed to be! Was he going to forget that this lady’s husband was the founder and still the nominal head of the Gestapo? He believed that she meant what she said, and was not just trying to probe his mind and get something out of him that might be of use to her husband. But he surely mustn’t go too far on that belief!

  “Meine liebe Frau Göring,” he said, “I have suffered over this problem just as you have. I have conceived the most intense admiration for your Führer, and confidence in his program as the salvation of German culture and a means of preserving order all over Europe. But I don’t regard the Jews as anything like the menace that many people do, and I think the Nazis have harmed their cause with the rest of the world by what they have done.”

  “Hermann feels the same way,” replied Hermann’s wife. “If he had the power, he would put extremists like Streicher out of office. He tells me that you have Jewish relatives, and made some effort to help them get abroad several years ago.”

  “That is true,” Lanny admitted. “Hermann was very kind to me indeed.” Long practice had taught this presidential agent to keep a straight face while listening to statements which tempted him to irony. Hermann der Dicke, like many another man in a high position or a low, was telling his wife the truth but not the whole truth; he surely wouldn’t want her to know that this magnificent Karinhall was full of art treasures which he had wrung out of Johannes Robin by torture in the cells of the old red brick police prison on the Alexanderplatz.

  Said the first lady of the Fatherland. “I go to my husband and ask him for exit permits for this Jewish artist and that, and he gets them for me. But he has so many problems and works so hard, and I hate to burden him with more cares. A man has a right to be happy when he comes to his wife, don’t you think?”

  Yes, Lanny thought so; also, he thought the former star was being extraordinarily indiscreet, and that he was on a spot and must be extraordinarily cautious. He replied: “I am hoping that now, when the Party is so securely in power, these unfortunate incidents will diminish.”

  “I fear it will be exactly the opposite, Lanny. The Party is in power, but our problems are by no means solved. The lower elements take pogroms as a sort of sport; and some of them make money out of it, too, I have been told.”

  XII

  This conversation was interrupted by Robbie, who came strolling into the room. He was invited to take the place next to Emmy, and he started asking about motion-picture salaries in Berlin as compared with those in Hollywood, a subject of which no one in the profession ever wearies. Lanny sat quietly, supposed to be listening, but his thoughts were far away; he was having one of his internal discussions with Trudi.

  Some part of his mind was always on her, and especially so in Berlin, the city of her birth and of his meetings with her over a period of years. He could never approach the Adlon without seeing his car parked on a certain spot in front of the hotel, on that night when the Gestapo had been hunting her, and he had parked her there while he went inside to fix matters up with Irma. He and Robbie now had a different suite, but all rooms in a great hotel look more or less alike, and the Trudi-ghost—as well as that of his love for Irma—haunted the bed in which he slept. It is not a good thing to have two wives in the same bed—so any Turk could have told this grandson of the Puritans.

  Lanny was thinking: “Emmy is sorry for the Jews and helps them to get passports. Mightn’t she become sorry for Trudi, a blond Aryan like herself? A woman artist of extraordinary talent, who has fallen under the suspicion of the police because of the activities of her late husband!”

  Lanny went through an imaginary scene in which he told the first lady of Naziland this plausible and most touching story. He had every right to have been on friendly terms with art circles in Berlin prior to the coming of the Nazis; just as much as Emmy had to have known the stage and screen personalities. And to have met some Socialists, just as Emmy had met some Jews! And to have taken up a young woman artist of talent, and made her work known in Paris, and helped her to earn small sums! Later he had heard a rumor that Ludi, her husband, had been arrested and interned. Trudi, he was sure, had never been politically active, her one preoccupation being to sketch correctly the lineaments of every unusual-looking person she met. “Would you not be willing to make inquiries about her, Frau Göring, and perhaps go and see her, and help her to get away to America, where she could not possibly do any harm to the Nazi regime?”

  Thus Lanny’s imagination, lively as usual. No doubt he could persuade Emmy to cause the ordering of a report on the case of Trudi Schultz. A dossier would be laid on the desk of the Reichsminister General, who, among his manifold duties, had charge of the government of Berlin. That dossier would be labeled: “Trudi Schultz, alias Mueller, alias Kornmahler, alias Corning, alias Weill—and perhaps other names that she had never told to her second husband. Not exactly consistent with the ivory-tower attitude! The dossier would reveal that she had been one of the most active workers of the Social-Democratic Party’s underground; that she had distributed literature from a secret press, whose operators had been caught; that she had procured the purloining of confidential documents from the General’s own office and had smuggled them out of Germany by some method unknown; that after her flight to Paris she had been the source of large funds for the underground, and the best efforts of the police had failed to discover where she had obtained these funds.

  That last was the fact which would stick out like a sore thumb from any report the General might get: really tremendous sums of money, tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of marks, from an unknown source; and would the stupidest General in the Nazi army fail to exclaim: “Ach, so! She is friend and probably mistress of this glib-tongued and plausible American playboy!”

  That was where all Lanny’s flights of imagination ended. He had given Trudi his pledge that he would go on giving money to the underground, and risk nothing that might direct the attention of the Nazis to himself. He had certainly broken that pledge in Paris; and how many more times would his pitcher go to the well before it got broken?

  XIII

  Upstairs in their adjoining bedrooms, Robbie Budd and his son might have talked over the events of the day, as guests all over the world are accustomed to do when they retire for the night. But Lanny had warned his father “Remember, there is nothing more likely than that rooms in Karinhall are wired for dictaphones.” It sounded like melodrama, but Robbie well knew that such things were done, and not only by Nazis. There were sound-detecting devices which could be hidden under a bed or behind a dressing table, and would magnify and record in another room the faintest whispers. Father and son had agreed that their conversation must be of a neutral character, and that if ever they said a word about anyone in Naziland it would be complimentary.

  Now Robbie went to his suitcase and got a sheet of writing paper. Using the back of his suitcase and not the desk which was provided in the room, he wrote a few words, and then beckoned to Lanny, who came and read: “Don’t talk so much to the woman.”

  “Gosh!” whispered the younger man. He wanted to say, o
r to write: “She pinned me down,” or something like that; but obviously, this was no time for argument.

  The father wrote: “Remember Donnerstein’s story?”

  Lanny nodded. He wasn’t ever going to forget that very lively woman friend of Irma, who lived all over Germany, picked up delightful gossip, and retailed it with eagerness which would have landed her in a concentration camp if she had not belonged to the highest social circles.

  Robbie wrote again: “The Heilbronn dentist,” and showed the words.

  “O.K.,” said Lanny—this being something it was safe to say out loud.

  He had passed on to his father one of the Fürstin Donnerstein’s choice tidbits, having to do with a dentist who had known Emmy Sonnemann in the small town of Heilbronn where she had been born, and had written her a letter congratulating her upon her splendid marriage. In the course of the letter he had named a total of eighteen different persons in the town, telling the news about them. All these persons, plus the loquacious dentist, had been arrested by the Gestapo and brought to Berlin, where they had been held and cross-examined for weeks. Not one of them had any idea what it was all about; and when the ordeal was over, they each received a hundred marks and carfare to their homes, with the injunction to say nothing about what had happened to them.

  “Jealousy is madness,” wrote the father; and the son nodded several times more, saying: “O.K., O.K.” No matter what advances the lovely Emmy might make, she wouldn’t get another tête-à-tête with the son of Budd-Erling. Not only is jealousy madness, but Hermann might become a madman on slight provocation. He had been a dope fiend after the death of his first wife and had been confined in an asylum in Sweden. Under the strain of the gamble for world power which he was taking, he might well have fallen victim to the habit again. In any case it certainly wouldn’t help Robbie Budd in getting airplane contracts to have this world gambler pick up the notion that Lanny was making himself too agreeable to the first lady of Naziland.

  The son took the paper and wrote: “You are right. Sorry.” Then Robbie carried the paper into the bathroom, set fire to it with a match, and held it carefully until it had burned down to the last square inch. He pulled the lever and sent the ashes down to a region where it might reasonably be assumed the Secret State Police would not follow; and along with the ashes went the last trace of Lanny’s notion that he might get Emmy Sonnemann to help him get Trudi Schultz out of a Nazi prison!

  16

  Fuming Vanities

  I

  Back in Berlin, Lanny found messages awaiting him. One was from Heinrich Jung, and Lanny had several reasons for wanting to see this ardent young Party official. He called him up, saying: “Come to lunch,” and Heinrich replied, in English: “Delighted.” He was proud of his English, proud of his rich American friend, and proud of an invitation which took him among international smart society.

  Sixteen years had passed since Lanny had first met a humble student of forestry, son of the Oberförster of the Schloss Stubendorf estate. Heinrich was rounder now, and even rosier in the cheeks, but otherwise not greatly changed; blue eyes, close-cut blond hair, a brisk manner. He lived on hope and enthusiasm, and kept a bland smile as a permanent feature of his landscape. He had just been promoted to a post of greater responsibility in the Hitlerjugend, and had a new uniform with new insignia. He was happy in it, but at the same time modest, attributing his rise not to his own merits but to the discernment of the great organization of which he was a part. He had hitched his wagon to a star and that star had turned into a nova, brightest of shining suns.

  Heinrich didn’t have any important secrets that Lanny could extract from him, but he was interesting as the perfect type of the Nazi zealot, the finished product of the Hitler educational machine. Lanny watched him with the attention he would have devoted to an ant under a magnifying glass: a bundle of energy and zeal, laboring with blind fury all day and most of the night, responding precisely and automatically to various stimuli, and never stopping for an instant to question the ends he was serving. Heinrich had that peculiar Jekyll-and-Hyde quality of the Germans, which made it possible for him to be a warmhearted and amiable friend, and at the same time capable of most shocking cruelty. Heinrich himself had never committed any murders, but he justified them all as serving the great German purpose, and Lanny could never doubt that if the Führer should give the order, Heinrich would draw a gun in the Hotel Adlon dining room and shoot off the top of Lanny’s head. He wouldn’t enjoy doing such a deed, but he would know that it was necessary; otherwise the greatest man in the world wouldn’t have commanded it to be done.

  The Herrenvolk were fulfilling their destiny, and Lanny was one of the comparatively few Americans who understood and honored what they were doing. Heinrich Jung was completely naïve about this; the idea never crossed his mind that a member of the American privileged classes might believe that it was his race rather than the German which was destined to come out on top in the great world dog-fight. No, because the Americans had their own job to do, and a full-sized one; the greater part of their continent was still in the hands of others, and the Nazis granted them full rights to it. There were some who were even willing to concede South America, also; Heinrich avoided that question, because the Germans were strong there, and what the Germans had got they had to keep. The greater part of American culture, all that was best in it, had been contributed by the Germans, and that was one reason why Heinrich could feel so cordial to Lanny Budd; Lanny was part German, and the Herrenvolk could take him in, and his countrymen could become equal members of the future ruling group—that is, of course, after the Jews and the poisonous Jewish influences had been eliminated from their country.

  Heinrich talked, as he always did, about the wonderful organization he was helping to build all over the world, and its achievements in making over the youth of Germany, and those of German race outside. There had never been anything like it in history; it was modern science applied to mass psychology, under the guidance of a supreme genius in that field. Heinrich had attended the Parteitag at Nuremberg in September, a five-day jamboree which was for every Nazi what the pilgrimage to Mecca is to the devout Moslem. Heinrich described all the ceremonies, and repeated the gist of the speeches. Everything in the world was going to be made over, and the Nazis had begun with history. Heinrich had learned at Nuremberg an entirely new history of Germany, and of the rest of the world in relation to Germany; he didn’t know any other history, and he never read any book, magazine, or newspaper except Party publications. Lanny had to exercise the utmost care never to say anything that would clash with this friend’s firmly rooted ideas.

  II

  There was a peculiar way in which Heinrich Jung was connected in Lanny’s mind with Trudi Schultz. Once on the official’s desk Lanny had observed a copy of one of the underground pamphlets which Trudi had written and caused to be printed in Paris and shipped into Germany. Some loyal member of the Hitlerjugend had turned this wicked thing over to his superior, and Heinrich had communicated with the Gestapo about it. Now Lanny said: “Do you ever see any more of that anti-Nazi stuff of which you showed me a sample?”

  “No,” replied the other; “not for some time. I think that sort of criminal activity has come entirely to an end.”

  “You have a marvelously efficient police force, I know.”

  “It’s not only that, Lanny; it’s the Zeitgeist, it’s something that you will feel if you stay for a while. The very soul of the people is changed; they have been made over in the Führer’s image, and it is impossible for any German to stand out against this influence. They all see that he has solved their problems for them; everybody has work, everybody has security, everybody has a sense of pride in belonging to the Führer’s great organization and sharing his wonderful dream.”

  “I feel it, believe me, Heinrich. I make it my business to talk with the plain people wherever I go.”

  “You should come to Stubendorf this Christmas and meet the people there. It would giv
e you an insight into what is coming soon in European affairs.”

  “You know I have never wavered for a moment, Heinrich, in my attitude to the question of the return of Stubendorf to Germany. I resigned my humble post on the staff of the Peace Commission because I didn’t approve the decisions on that and other border districts. And don’t think it was easy to do; I made a lot of enemies, and put an end to what might have been a chance for a diplomatic career.”

  “I have never forgotten it, Lanny, and never shall. The issue is coming rapidly to a head now, and not because of our propaganda in the border states, as you will read in the lying foreign press. It is simply because our Germans in exile also see the Führer’s success, and want to be a part of this new order he is building. Stubendorf is like a boiler under which you build the fire hotter and tie down the safety-valve. Our people simply will not endure to be governed any longer by incompetent and corrupt Polish officials. You will not find a single person who will say anything but this.”

  In the old days, Lanny would have got off some wisecracks; for example: “It might be different if I could understand Polish.” But now he was playing a game, and he asked: “Is it the same all along the border?”

  “Absolut! From Gdynia and the Corridor, all the way to the south of Austria, and even into parts of Hungary and Yugoslavia.”

  “I suppose the first move will come in Austria. At least, that is what people seem to expect in England and France.”

  “What is coming is in the Führer’s mind alone,” replied the loyal servant. “He does not tell me state secrets.”

  “Have you seen him recently?”

  “I don’t trouble him unless there is some important reason. Many people who had the good fortune to know him in the old days presume upon that circumstance, but I have always been careful not to.”