Presidential Agent (The Lanny Budd Novels)

by Upton Sinclair

  “Tell me about them.”

  “Well, at the outset he told me that I was an American, but had been born near Munich. It does not happen that many Americans are born in Switzerland, and I am sure I do not carry on my person any signs that I did not enter the world at my mother’s home on the Riviera or my father’s in Connecticut.”

  Lanny went on to tell the wonder story which he had partly made up about Hongkong; and it was to be expected that the Führer should display curiosity concerning so capable an astrologer: his name, his age, his personal appearance, his character, so far as Lanny had formed an opinion. “Some of my friends are interested in this subject, and might wish to consult him,” explained the great man; and Lanny accepted this tactfully. He wondered: Was Reminescu being considered for a court position? And if that fate fell on him, would he be invited or commanded?

  But no, it wasn’t that! The Führer of all the Germans had had a horoscope cast, and was trying to make up his mind to what extent he could trust it. In this most dangerous crisis, before which his innermost soul quailed, he needed the help of supernormal powers; but it was so hard to know when you were getting such help, and when you were being victimized by some shrewd self-seeker!

  “My own attitude toward these so-called occult matters is very much like your own, Herr Budd. I have seen things which I cannot explain; but I dare not trust the practitioners, because there is so much deliberate trickery, and because even the honest ones might avoid telling me the truth, for fear of displeasing me.”

  “So!” thought Lanny. “Reminescu has given you a favorable horoscope and you want to believe it!”

  Adi was going on: “In matters such as these I have had to learn to trust my own inner voices—intuitions, I suppose is the word to call them. I wait, I listen to all advice, I consider all the factors involved—and then suddenly it is as if an inner light were switched on, and everything becomes clear before my eyes. That is the moment to act, and I never permit myself to hesitate.”

  “That, Exzellenz, is what the world has agreed to call genius.”

  It was like touching the button which caused the elevator to rise through the heart of the Kehlstein. Adolf Hitler began to talk about genius. He discussed Richard Wagner, the greatest musician who had ever lived. He discussed Karl Haushofer, the greatest scientist, fortunately still living. He named Napoleon as a military and Bismarck as a political genius. Before long he was explaining the difficulty of combining these various kinds into one. That was something that happened only once in a thousand years or so, and when it did it meant a new epoch in human history. Such an epoch was now in process of being made by himself, the creator of the NSDAP.

  The son of Alois Schicklgruber didn’t apologize for saying this; he stated it in a matter-of-fact way, because it was the truth, and he always spoke the truth—excepting of course in political matters, where it was necessary to rear elaborate structures of pretense. But here, in the presence of a trusted friend, the former inmate of the home for the shelter-less of Vienna told what had been revealed to him by that energizing spirit which dwelt in the deeps of his personality. Outwardly a soft-fleshed, rather flabby man with a bulbous nose and futile small mustache, he saw himself in his soul’s mirror as a heroic figure in shining armor, and was carried away by this sublime vision. Standing bareheaded beneath the first pale stars of a twilight sky, he pointed to them and exclaimed: “You, heavenly bodies, once controlled the destinies of men! But now a man has come who will determine his own course, and—who can say?—perhaps, before he has finished, he may determine your courses as well!”

  XI

  Hess had invited Lanny to be his guest at the Parteitag, the tremendous week-long orgy of racialism and reaction which the Nazi chieftains prepared for their subordinates early in September of each year. It was held in the ancient city of Nuremberg, a hundred or more miles north of Munich. It offered no joys to a secret agent, but many opportunities to meet the Party leaders and hear their purposes revealed; so he accepted gladly.

  Since many persons were going from the Berghof, he volunteered to take some members of the household in his car. Thus he enjoyed for several hours the society of three young SS patriots who had never known any other creed or code save that which the Party had taught them. They held rather fantastic ideas about the world outside, and became confidential and revealed to their host the opinion of the Berghof concerning himself—that he must be the person whom the Führer had picked out to become the Gauleiter of the North American continent. Manifestly, he had all the qualifications, and what else could be the reason for the favors showered upon an Ausländer?

  The nine-century-old city has narrow and crooked streets and seems like a Grimm’s fairy-story town of houses with high-pitched roofs, peaked gables, and chimney pots; churches with tall spires and every sort of Gothic exuberance; a five-cornered tower with the “iron maiden” and other instruments of torture on exhibition. Now its population of four hundred thousand was multiplied several fold by the swarms of Party leaders of every rank who arrived by train and bus and automobile. Whole tent cities had been erected on the outskirts of the town and army cooking outfits served millions of hot meals each day. Everything had been attended to with German thoroughness; the flags in the streets were like the leaves of a forest, and everywhere were bands of music and uniformed marching men with standards and banners.

  Outside the city, on the immense Zeppelin field, had been prepared a breathtaking spectacle. Adolf Hitler, one of the world’s greatest showmen, had been working on this for a decade and a half, rehearsing it each year and making improvements. Decorations and scenery like a Wagnerian opera, solemnity and holiness like a Catholic high mass; an appeal to every primitive sentiment, every memory dear to the hearts of the Germans in those dark forests where they had lived through the centuries while preparing for the conquest of the ancient Roman empire. It was Hitler who had devised the ceremony of calling the roll of martyrs, which Rudolf Hess performed early at each Party assembly. It was Hitler who had devised the mystical rite of the dedication of the flags, and he himself performed it, walking down the rows of flags and solemnly touching each with the sacred Blutfahne, the flag which had been carried in the Beerhall Putsch of fifteen years ago and was stained with the blood shed in that fight.

  Blood was a sacred thing in the German mythology. It was the noblest and best blood in the world, and Germans shed it in battle, not merely for the protection of the Fatherland, but for the extension of its borders, so that there might be more Germans with more of the sacred blood in hearts, arteries, and veins. Blut und Boden—blood and soil—was the slogan. The ancient German warrier who died in battle was carried off to Valhalla, and that was a glorious death, whereas to die in bed was ignoble and disgraceful. The Führer was reviving all these ancient barbaric emotions, and his marching legions chanted incessantly about blood and iron and war. “Rise up in arms to battle, for to battle we are born!” The old German God was a God of war, who could never get enough of blood. And now was the time of times, as His favorite new song, Deutschland, Erwache, proclaimed. “Storm, storm, storm, storm! From the tower peal bells of alarm!”

  XII

  Lanny walked about the streets of this romantic old city, home of the Meistersinger, of Dürer and other great artists, now swarming with hordes of red-faced and sweating male creatures with fanaticism in their faces and rage in their hearts, the furor Teutonicus which the ancient Romans had dreaded. It made the American rather sick at heart, for he hated war and cruelty, he hated hatred—and these men had been brought up on it, they had been taught it systematically, with all the skill which modern science had put at the service of the teachers. All the arts of the psychologist and the advertising expert had been applied to the inculcation of fanaticism—one of Hitler’s favorite words, rarely missing from any speech however brief.

  Physically Lanny was made as comfortable as a man could expect to be on such an abnormal occasion. He was put up at the Deutscher Hof, the rende
zvous of the Party great ones. At the meetings he had a reserved seat among the distinguished guests, which included the diplomats from all countries of the earth. For eight days he was deluged with Nazi oratory, conveyed to his ears by means of bellowing loudspeakers. The keynote was set in the opening proclamation, read for the Führer: “Party comrades! More threatening than ever, Bolshevist danger of the destruction of nations rises above the world. A thousand-fold, we see the activities of the Jewish virus in this world pest!”

  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday—five days of incessant hate oratory, with the crashing of bands, the mass singing of songs, the parading of flags and banners. On Friday night, amid the glare of klieg lights in one of the enormous halls which had been constructed for these meetings, Lanny heard the Führer address a hundred and eighty thousand of his Party leaders of all ranks, and tell them: “At a time when there are clouds on the horizon, I see about me those millions of unflinching, nay fanatical, National Socialists, whose leadership you constitute and for whose leadership you are responsible. Just as I could rely blindly upon you in the days of our struggle, so today Germany and I can depend upon you.”

  And next day Feldmarschall Göring addressed the leaders of the Arbeitsfront, the Nazi labor battalions. To Lanny Budd, at the hotel where they stayed, he had expressed the same desire for caution and legality as in Karinhall, but under the influence of the crowd and the bright lights he lost his head and raved and bellowed for an hour and a half. He told them how he had saved up food for war and had conscripted labor to complete the Westwall; they might have to work ten hours a day for the glory of the Reich. “Our arms industries are going at high pressure in every branch.” Referring to his Czechish neighbors he said: “This miserable pigmy race without culture—no one knows where it came from—is oppressing a cultured people and behind it is Moscow and the eternal mask of the Jew Devil.” Lanny did not have a chance to ask Der Dicke about this sudden change of mood, for when he inquired at the hotel afterwards he learned that the old-style robber baron had been overcome by the violence of his efforts, and had been carried off to the country to recuperate from bronchitis and inflamed legs.

  XIII

  But the secret agent had plenty of chances to confer with other leaders and listen to their conversation among themselves; he made sure that one and all they were expecting to take over not merely the Sudeten districts but the whole of the Czechoslovak Republic. He heard Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop make statements on this subject which seemed to him so important that he was tempted to bolt to the French border and send off a report to Washington and The Reaches without delay. But such a move might excite suspicion—it would be inconceivable to Hess, to say nothing of the Führer himself, that anybody could leave Nuremberg just before the Führer’s closing speech for which all Europe was waiting as for a blast from Gabriel’s trumpet.

  So Lanny stayed and heard that speech, delivered before what was said to be the largest number of human beings ever assembled in one place—well over a million, and claimed to be more. From the outskirts of the crowd on the Zeppelin field the Führer of the Germans must have seemed a tiny pin-point figure; but by the magic of modern electro-acoustics he had a voice like thunder in the mountains. Over the ether waves it was carried to the whole earth, and few indeed must have been the places where civilized men did not hearken. At the end of every two or three sentences the auditors would hear the wild-beast roar of that mighty assemblage: “Sieg heil! Sieg heil! Sieg heil!”

  As usual when Adi had a great occasion, he talked at great length. As always, he recited the grievances of the German people; as always, he denounced the Bolsheviks and the Jews; as always, he stormed and threatened at all his foes. It was his purpose to terrify Europe, and especially the statesmen of Czechoslovakia and its allies, Britain and France. Of the Sudeten people he said: “These Germans, too, are creatures of God. The Almighty did not create them that they should be surrendered by a State construction made at Versailles to a foreign power that is hateful to them.… They are being oppressed in an inhuman and intolerable manner … brutally struck … terrorized or maltreated … pursued like wild beasts for every expression of their national life.” Count Ciano, if he was listening, must have thrown up his hands again.

  Adi went on to tell the world what he was doing to protect these Germans; building along the Rhine “the most gigantic fortifications that ever existed.” He continued: “On the construction of the defenses there are now 278,000 workmen in Dr. Todt’s army. In addition, there are, further, 84,000 workmen and 100,000 men of the labor service as well as numerous engineer and infantry battalions.… These most gigantic efforts of all times have been made at my request in the interest of peace.… The Germans of Czechoslovakia are neither deserted nor defenseless.… We all have a duty never again to bow to a foreign will. May this be our pledge, so help us God!”

  XIV

  Lanny would have liked to leave right after that meeting and drive all night to the border; but even that might have been dangerous. He had to sit up for hours and discuss the speech with a crowd of excited henchmen; drink beer with them, apologize for his lack of capacity, and endeavor in other ways to justify their idea of him as the future Gauleiter of the North American continent. In the morning he had to thank his host and request him to convey to a busy Führer the guest’s compliments upon a magnificent and clear oration. Lanny explained briefly that he was off on a picture deal, and would return to Munich in short order to consult the astrologer and see what further light the stars might throw upon the future of the National-Socialist movement.

  At last Lanny was free—as a bird on the wing, or as a motorcar on one of the Autobahnen constructed by Dr. Todt’s army. Straight to the border at Kehl, where recently the Führer had viewed the most gigantic fortifications that ever existed. The son of Budd-Erling was not invited to view them, but no tourist passing through could fail to see the labors in process on the near-by heights, to hear the rumble of machinery and note the heavy traffic through the town. A hundred and sixty-eight years earlier it had been a tiny village, and in early spring a great cavalcade had arrived there, having traveled all the way from Vienna to bring the fifteen-year-old princess, Marie Antoinette, to marry the future king of France. There had been no bridge then, and several hundred heavy vehicles had had to be ferried across the river Rhine to the old cathedral city of Strasbourg.

  Once again the secret agent presented himself at the barrier of the bridge. His papers were in order and he drove onto French soil. He did not go to the Ville de Paris hotel, because he was afraid somebody might remember his stay with Freddi Robin. He put up at the Maison Rouge, locked himself in a room, set up his little typewriter, and went to work to do what one man could to help Britain and America to realize their peril. Adolf Hitler, guided by his own mad daimon and egged on by the wounded vanity of Joachim von Ribbentrop, did not mean to rest until he had abolished democratic institutions from the soil of Europe. Said Lanny Budd, in his closing words: “He has the definite purpose not to leave, anywhere in the world, one single person free to criticize his party or his program.”

  29

  The Hurt That Honor Feels

  I

  Lanny was sick of the Nazis; of the sight of them marching in uniform, the sound of them yelling and singing, the smell of them in closely packed mobs. He wanted nothing so much as to get into his car and drive to Bienvenu, to a studio in a quiet garden facing the sunsets. There was a piano, there were paintings on the walls and a couple of thousand well-selected books on shelves. The water would still be warm for swimming; he could go fishing with Jerry Pendleton, play tennis, and perhaps persuade Nina and Rick to come for a visit, take them sailing, and talk over old times.

  But the Trudi-ghost said No. He had promised to help in keeping the underground alive, and in keeping the people of France and Britain from falling under the spell of the bad witch Berchta and her flock of sheep in human form. Regardless of his own happiness, he had to go on ea
rning money and distributing it where it would count, and supplying Rick with information instead of tempting him to holidays. Also, that job he had undertaken at Hyde Park, a little more than a year ago. What excuse could he give F.D.R. for not watching the events that were shaking the world?

  He got the London and Paris and Berlin newspapers. Two hundred thousand troops of the Wehrmacht had been moved to the Austrian frontier, facing Czechoslovakia; that country was shaped like a badly stuffed sausage, and the heavily motorized army, facing the middle of it, could cut it in half in a single day. They had done it to Austria, and all Adi had to do was to say the word and they would do it again.

  All over the Sudetenland Nazis were attacking Czech public buildings and stoning Czech policemen; and this could only be under orders, its purpose being to work up feeling in Germany and justify the Führer in his next move. The French were mobilizing—could that be the rumble of camions and tanks which Lanny heard in the night under the windows of the Hotel Maison Rouge? If the war started, Strasbourg would be one of the first points at which the Germans would strike, repeating the air smash they had rehearsed so thoroughly at Guernica and Barcelona and Valencia and Madrid. They might do it without any warning, a new technique called Blitzkrieg which Göring and his staff talked about freely. Make up your mind, Lanny! East or west doesn’t matter—any place but No Man’s Land between the two marshaling hosts!