The raft is poled out into the stream and away it goes, under bridges lined with cheering crowds—no trouble getting people to cheer in Germany in October of 1938! You see a lot of fine scenery, and you have exciting times sliding down sluices past the various dams in the river. You stop at a monastery for a fry of river fish, and finally you arrive at Munich’s favorite bathing place. There you go ashore, while the raft continues on its way to the beautiful blue Danube, perhaps to become part of a house in Vienna or Budapest.
VI
Feldmarschall Göring had built himself a châlet on the Obersalzberg, having had the bad taste to build it high and looking down upon his Führer’s. To this place he had retired with his bronchitis and swollen legs, and now he had recovered and was sticking pigs in his forest. He invited Lanny for a visit, and Lanny was pleased to go, but preferred to watch the pig-sticking from a distance. He didn’t lose caste by that, for the operation was admitted to be dangerous, and Der Dicke was satisfied to display his prowess and be admired by weaker men. The job was done on horseback, and two keepers with rifles rode close behind, to be ready in case of accident; but none happened, and three great shaggy boars were pierced through the heart by the fat man’s well-aimed lance.
After supper they sat before a blazing fire, with a backlog so huge that it had to be brought on a little rubber-tired “dolly.” They talked about the state of the world, and the marshal was as proud of his Führer’s stroke of statecraft as he was of his own stabs at the pigs. “Was there ever such a man since the world began?” he inquired, and Lanny didn’t try to think of another. He lent éclat to the occasion by telling what he knew of its risks; it had been touch and go, for the British statesmen had been almost broken by the pressure of public opposition.
It was all right for Lanny to say: “I had a few minutes with Ceddy Wickthorpe in the Regina Palast, just before he went in to the conference. He was a badly worried Englishman, glauben Sie mir.” That was slang in American, but oddly enough wasn’t in German.
“I don’t mind telling you that I had very little sleep for several nights,” admitted Der Dicke. “The Führer is hard to deal with at such times; he has a way of calling you on the telephone when he can’t sleep.”
“What is he going to do next?” inquired the visitor.
“Weiss Gott! I doubt if he knows himself.”
After such a question and such a reply, a skillful spy would pass on quickly, so as to seem casual. Said he: “The newspapermen pestered me so that I shut myself up in my hotel room all the time of the conference. I read a book about hunting in the American southwest, and one story seemed to have some bearing on what was happening at the moment. It was in the Rio Nueces country of Texas; a man had located a place where wild turkeys roosted at night, and he went just at sundown to get them. He tied his horse to a tree some distance away and crept to the spot and waited, and when the moon came up he shot six turkeys with his shotgun. He tied the turkeys together and hoisted them onto his back and started to carry them through the brush; but before he got very far he discovered that he was being followed by a mountain lion.”
“They have lions in Texas?” inquired Göring.
“It is the panther, or cougar; it has a number of names—in South America the puma.”
“I see.”
“This mountain lion has a most terrifying scream, and the man realized that he was in grave danger; his shotgun would be of no use against a sudden charge in the dark. The creature had smelled the blood of those turkeys, and didn’t mean to let them get away from him. So the man stopped and cut off one turkey and left it lying in the trail. That sufficed for a while; but then the man discovered that the lion was stalking him again, so he dropped another turkey. That went on, and every time the man dropped a turkey, he was safe for the time, but then to save his life he had to drop one more. Finally he used up his last turkey; then, by good fortune, he reached his horse, and leaped on, and, as they say in that country, ‘tore a hole through the brush.’ The story goes on that when he got home he told his wife of the adventure and she saw that he suddenly began to tremble; she asked: ‘Why do you tremble now that you are safe?’ He replied: ‘It just occurred to me, suppose I had shot only five turkeys, what would have happened?’”
Der Dicke had got the point of this story before it was half told; at the end he burst into laughter, the loudest the visitor had ever heard from that capacious throat. “Wunderbar!” he exclaimed. “Herrlich!” Then he added: “The woman should have made an answer.”
Of course it was up to Lanny to ask: “What would the answer be?”
“She should have told him: ‘If you had not shot any turkeys at all, the lion would never have troubled you.’” So then it was Lanny’s turn to chuckle, and the pair of them had a gay time over the plight of a British Prime Minister whose shotgun was a black umbrella and whose turkeys were called Abyssinia and Spain and Austria and Czechoslovakia and Poland and—who could say about Number Six?
“Perhaps it will be called Turkey,” suggested the son of Budd-Erling.
VII
Lanny thought that he knew the Nazis by now, and didn’t expect any more surprises; but Göring provided one. Lifting his considerable bulk from an overstuffed chair, he went to a near-by cabinet and took out a phonograph record. “Here is something that will answer questions in your mind,” he said, and put it on the machine and pressed the lever. Then he resumed his seat, and Lanny listened to a voice discussing the attitude of the British government toward the Reds and “their so-called Socialist Soviet Republic.” It was an English voice, cultivated, deliberate, with a touch of Oxford. It would say two or three sentences and then stop, and another voice would translate the sentences into German. The English voice would resume, declaring that the British government would raise no objections to moves which the German government might make toward the east, provided that they would make a satisfactory arrangement with the Poles; that the British government were firmly convinced that Communism was a great menace, and would be disposed to look upon the spread of its power as highly deleterious to European civilization.
There was nothing new in this point of view; Lanny had heard it expressed many scores of times by Ceddy and Gerald and their guests, and by other highly placed ladies and gentlemen at Bluegrass and at Cliveden. The voice to which he was now listening was speaking with slow precision, evidently on some formal occasion; it was a vaguely familiar voice, suggestive of Parliament, and Lanny thought: “It couldn’t be Londonderry. It couldn’t be Runciman. Could it be Nevile Henderson?” Not until a third voice broke in, asking a question in German, did it suddenly dawn upon a “P.A.’s” mind what he was listening to. The English voice was that of the Prime Minister, and the occasion was the first of his conferences with Hitler, in which he had settled, or thought he had settled, the destinies of Europe for the next generation.
The twelve-inch record was completed, and Lanny, younger and more movable, got up and stopped the machine. He stood by it, staring at the fat Marshal. “By God, you’ve got him over a barrel!” he exclaimed.
Der Dicke chuckled until he shook all over. “Can you imagine such a fool?”
“Does he know you have this recording?”
“Herrgott, nein! We have a new and marvelous invention, that catches the faintest whisper.”
Lanny shivered inwardly, recalling the scene in Karinhall when his father had written little notes to caution him about being too cordial to Hermann’s wife; also the occasions when he had gossiped with Hilde, and when he had been tempted to gossip with Ceddy in the Munich hotel. Had there been any place where he had yielded to the temptation?
“This is just a few extracts which we have put together on one record,” added the Marshal, still grinning. “I would play you the whole thing, only it would take several hours, and would be very boring.”
Lanny said: “I tried to keep myself busy looking at paintings while that conference was going on, but I found it difficult to keep my mind on them.�
�� Then, after a pause: “Tell me, Hermann, am I at liberty to tell my father about this?”
“I haven’t asked you to keep it confidential, have I?”
“No, but there are some things that are understood among gentlemen.”
“Put your mind on this situation. The British have been doing everything in their power to block our moves in eastern Europe. Everywhere we turn we hit our shins against obstacles they have set in our path. Some day in an emergency I may invite some of our Russian friends who understand English to listen to this recording; and it is barely possible that if Mr. Neville Chamberlain knew that we had it, he might be tempted to reduce the ardor of his diplomatic agents. You know, we don’t want any unpleasantness that we can avoid.”
“You have provided me with a delightful item of conversation at my next visit to Wickthorpe Castle,” replied the son of Budd-Erling.
“You don’t have to say where you heard the recording; just say what you heard, and the man with the umbrella will remember what he said.”
Lanny went to his room convinced that he had indeed got a delightful item, but by the time he was ready for bed he had begun to wonder whether he had got anything at all. That was the way with the Nazi code of lying—they made it impossible to believe anything they said. What would be easier than for Göring to have had such a record faked? Some blackguard Englishman with a cultivated accent could be hired for a few pounds and be set to studying real records of Chamberlain’s mannerisms. As for Hitler—well, if he didn’t want to take the trouble to “frame” a record, Adolf Wagner could do it for him, and no Russian could tell the difference. Lanny decided that he would do some investigating before he helped to spread that delightful item.
VIII
Back in Munich, Lanny paid a visit to that crippled lady in the Nymphenburgerstrasse who enjoyed such a high reputation among the Nazi élite. Evidently the profession of “graphologist” was well rewarded, for the lady had a fashionable apartment and a maid in cap and uniform; Lanny was seated in a luxurious drawing-room, dimly lighted so that the waiting customers might avoid being stared at. When his turn came, the maid asked for his ten marks in advance, he being a stranger.
He was escorted to a table in a little cubicle, with some light on him and none on the lady; he could see that she was stooped, and wore a dark blue robe, hiding a crippled figure. “Be so good as to write a few words on the pad,” she murmured, and he took a fountain pen which lay before him and wrote the German equivalent of: “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.” That had its meaning in Germany as in America.
The little old woman took the pad in her gnarled fingers and for a long time sat studying the script. Part of the time Lanny guessed that she was studying him. Finally she exclaimed, in a cracked voice: “What a strange man! What is the matter with you?”
The visitor guessed that was a rhetorical question, and did not answer. “You are an unhappy man,” she went on; and then: “I do not like you!”
“I am sorry,” he replied, humbly.
“You are two men, and they are at war. Presently you will not know which you really are. Make up your mind, or it will go badly with you. I see a tragic fate in store for you.”
There was a pause; then Lanny asked: “Can you tell me where that fate is to be?”
He wondered if she was going to say “Hongkong.” Even if she had, he wouldn’t have been satisfied, of course; he would have called it “telepathy”—“that old telepathy!” in Tecumseh’s phrase.
The woman said: “I am disturbed by your presence. I cannot do any more for you. I am sorry.”
The rejected client did not ask for his ten marks back. He went out thinking hard about this strange world of the subconscious, so greatly neglected by orthodox science. Somehow he had taken it for granted that any power of mind-reading which a medium possessed would deal with aspects of his life such as a munitions-making grandfather or a Transcendentalist great-uncle. But suppose—just supposing!—that some old witch-woman should call up Gestapo headquarters in the Wittelsbacher Palace and report: “I have just been reading the mind of an American Kunstsachverständiger, and he is here for the purpose of spying on Number One, Number Two, and Number Three.”
Lanny decided that for the present he would discontinue psychical researching inside the Third Reich!
IX
Rudolf Hess was back in Munich. He had his home here, with a family which he did not publicize as did others of the Nazi leaders. He was personally the most decent of those whom Lanny had met, the most agreeable because of his international upbringing and outlook. He was fanatically loyal to his leader, but where Party matters were not concerned he had a sense of humor, and with persons whom he trusted he put off his grim exterior.
Lanny paid him a call at the Braune Haus, the Party building which the Führer had purchased and made over according to his taste. It was on the Briennerstrasse, a fashionable neighborhood, with the papal nuncio right across the street. It was a four-story building, set well back and protected by high fences. Outside were SS guards, and inside was a riot of swastikas of all sizes, on grillwork, lamp brackets, windows, doorknobs, ceilings. Hess’s office was simple and unostentatious; its windows looked out upon the Führerhaus, one of the magnificent structures which Adi had built since taking power, and in which the recent world-shaking conference had been held.
Naturally they talked about that event and its consequences. The Deputy Führer explained that for him it meant a great increase in duties and responsibilities; he had a new Party province to govern, and since the Party administration was everywhere more important than the political government, Hess had his hands full right now. He explained that the type of men suited to agitation and guerrilla warfare was not the same as that needed for administration after a victory, so he had a lot of demoting and promoting to do, and many heads to knock together. Lanny listened sympathetically, and was glad in his heart that he didn’t have either to administrate or be administrated.
This was the period during which Hitler was increasing his demands on the Czech carcass day by day. The “international commission” which was supposed to decide disputes consisted of one Nazi official, one Czech, and the British, French, and Italian ambassadors to Berlin. These last were busy gentlemen, and didn’t want to be bothered by complaints or talk about fair play. When the Nazis set up a claim that a certain section of the Bohemian plain had more than fifty per cent of German population, the ambassadors didn’t go to make a count, nor did they pay heed to the fact that the territory contained some mineral resource or industrial enterprise which the Führer needed for his war preparations. They just voted the Czech delegate down and the German troops in.
Of course it meant friction, and lamentations from the Czechs, some of which got into the foreign press and annoyed the Nazis. Herr Goebbels had dropped his press campaign against this fragment of a state, but now he was taking it up again. Lanny said: “You can’t get along with those people; they are too different from Germans.”
“I am afraid you may be right, Herr Budd,” conceded the Deputy.
“The Führer said: ‘We want no Czechs’; but my guess is, he’ll be able to find work for them if he has to take them over.” The secret agent said this with a grin, and the dour Deputy grinned in return. No more words were needed between friends.
Lanny added: “I am wondering why the Führer had to go so far as to give a guarantee to Czechoslovakia. The British wanted it, of course; but did he have to give way?”
“He always knows what he is doing,” replied Hess. (Hitler hat immer Recht!) “What he gave is a guarantee against unprovoked aggression, and you may be sure that if there is any, the Czechs will do the provoking.” The smile had gone from the Deputy’s face, and he meant this statement without any trace of irony. Anyone who heard him would have been glad not to be a Czech.
X
Adolf Hitler did not like the cold and formal city of Berlin, and stayed there only when ceremonies and
diplomatic etiquette required it. Munich was his playground and the birthplace of his party; his own kind of people were here, and he would dump responsibilities into the laps of his subordinates and fly to his mountain castle. From there Munich was only a couple of hours away, and he would step into his black bullet-proof Mercédès, followed by three cars full of SS men, and speed away to his peculiar pleasures.
He liked to visit the Schwabing district, which was Munich’s Quartier Latin, and dine in the Osteria Bavaria restaurant, where his vegetable plate was prepared by a chef who knew his tastes. He liked to put on black chamois shorts and a green Loden Frey hunting jacket and visit the October Festival, mingling with the people and being photographed with children around him—his plain-clothes guards keeping carefully out of the camera’s eye. He liked to dress in black trousers and immaculate white jacket and visit the Theater am Gärtnerplatz—now giving Strauss’s Fledermaus—and see his personally selected “Beauty Dancer” giving her performance in the second act. Adi would arrive during the intermission, and his Führer Standard would be hung from the railing of his box; before the performance was resumed, the plain-clothes men scattered through the audience would give the Hitler salute, and the entire audience would rise and make their thrilling response. Then, in the interest of a healthy eroticism, the Führer would sit with a pair of high-powered glasses fixed upon the young, supple, and entirely nude Dorothy van Bruck displaying her many charms.
Or perhaps he would visit the Künstlerhaus on the Lenbachplatz, which he had just rebuilt. This had been in the old days a clubhouse for world-famous artists, and Adi, who was pleased to be hailed by his adorers as the “Greatest Artist in the World,” had made it over on a scale of magnificence suited to his New Order. A suite had been set apart for him, and when he discovered that a large Jewish synagogue interfered with his view, he ordered the building torn down and the site used for the parking of Nazi cars. All self-respecting artists stayed away from the place and it had become in effect a night club for the Party bosses. Beautiful girls with theatrical ambitions were always on call, and companies gave private performances at command. Such shows as the American Acrobats and the Can Can Ballet, with French dancers giving the Hitler salute with one leg instead of one arm—these helped to divert the mind of a world conqueror from his cares. The Number One would go home at three or four in the morning, and then the real fun would begin for his champagne-soaked subordinates.
Presidential Agent (The Lanny Budd Novels) Page 81