Presidential Agent (The Lanny Budd Novels)

by Upton Sinclair

  At a small brick dwelling he rang the bell, and the door was opened by a vigorous youngish man with a businesslike manner. “Baker,” he said, and Lanny replied: “Zaharoff.” Invited in, the visitor said: “I only just learned of Gus’s death.”

  “What is it you wish?”

  “To see the Chief.”

  “You understand that you have to identify yourself to me.”

  “I am under orders not to give my name.”

  “I know that. You can tell me about Gus, and the procedure you followed with him.”

  Lanny recited all the details that came to his mind. “Gus Gennerich was a big blond fellow, quiet and decided in manner; he used to be a New York policeman, so the Governor told me. Gus never talked about himself, in fact he didn’t talk to me at all. I met him on the street at night, by appointment; he picked me up in his car and took me into the White House by the ‘social door.’ We went up by the stairway to the second floor; always at night, and the Chief was in bed, propped up reading. He wears pongee pajamas, blue-striped or plain blue, and a blue coat sweater, but the last time he had a blue cape. He always has a stack of papers, and a mystery or a sea story. There is a typewriter in the corner at the right, beyond the foot of the bed. A colored valet sits outside the door. Is that enough?”

  “You must understand, I wouldn’t take any stranger into that room without searching him. After the Chief has O.K.’d you, it will be different.”

  “Certainly,” answered Lanny. “Do you mean now?”

  “I mean before we go in. I have made an appointment for you at ten tonight.”

  “That’s all right. Shall I come here?”

  “I’ll pick you up as Gus did.” The man named a corner, and Lanny jotted it down for safety. His mind was greatly relieved, for he had feared that he might not be able to get to the President without betraying his identity.

  IX

  The traveler got his bags and put up at the Mayflower. Then he went for a walk, to see the new sights of his country’s capital, which had been nearly a century and a half a-building, and had grown more in half a dozen years than in its first century. White marble appeared to be de rigueur, and Adi’s House of German Art in Munich was being put in the shade by a National Gallery of Art which was to cost fifteen million dollars and to house many great collections, beginning with the banker Mellon’s. In the bad old Coolidge days this two-hundred-times millionaire had been called “the greatest Secretary of the Treasury since Hamilton,” and it had been his sad fate to lead his country’s finances into collapse, and then be forced to admit that he had no idea how to put Humpty-Dumpty together again.

  Lanny dined alone, read the evening paper, and took another walk, to get clear in his mind what he wanted to report to his boss. He had made up his mind to ask for a release from further duties; he wasn’t going to criticize what the boss was doing or failing to do, but merely to say that he didn’t feel that he, the secret agent, was accomplishing very much. He wanted to throw off his camouflage, tell the world what he really thought about Nazi-Fascism, and do what one American could to arouse the democratic peoples to the peril into which they were drifting. If it wrecked the art-experting business, all right; the son of Budd-Erling had enough to live on. He might even go into the business of making fighter planes—upon which the future of the world appeared to depend.

  Promptly on the minute he stepped into Baker’s car. There was another man driving, and while the car rolled on, the new arrival was subjected to a going-over by swift and well-trained hands; not merely all his pockets, but under his armpits and in his trouser legs, where a small weapon might be concealed. Even the inside of his hat was not overlooked. “O.K.,” said the searcher, at last, and apologized: “We don’t take any chances these days.”

  “I hope not,” replied Lanny, with feeling.

  X

  Once more he retraced the familiar journey and found himself in the presence of that big man with the powerful shoulders and the exuberant smile. His greeting left no doubt in the guard’s mind that this was the real and right “Zaharoff.” The man took his departure, closing the door behind him, and the visitor seated himself by the bedside and underwent the scrutiny of F.D.R.’s bright and lively blue eyes. “Well, Lanny!” said the warm voice with deep overtones. “You have waited a long time between calls.”

  “A lot of things were happening, and I kept on the trail of them. Have you received my reports?”

  “Every single one, in order as numbered. I have them in a special file. Incidentally, I have them in my head. Tell me what is coming next.”

  “Hitler is going to take Prague and what is left of Czechoslovakia. You can place your bets on that.”

  “And how soon?”

  “By the end of the winter, I should guess. That will be six months after his Sudeten move. It appears to take him about that long to consolidate an acquisition, and to carry on his softening process for the next one. According to that he should be ready for Danzig and the Polish Corridor by next autumn.”

  Lanny went on to give his reasons for these beliefs: what Hitler had said, what Göring had said, what Hess had said. In the middle of it the President broke in: “Hell’s bells! Will you be telling me they have put you in charge of their military operations?”

  Lanny laughed. “It is due in great part to my father’s prestige; he has what they need and understand. That got me next to Göring, and when Hitler saw me solid with Göring, he thought I must be all right—and so it has gone. I lay myself out to entertain them, and I tell them things about France and England which they need to know. Also, I put in a touch of sauciness, of a sort they consider American; they have a peculiar attitude toward us—they envy us and imitate us, even though they wouldn’t acknowledge it, even to themselves. Hitler, Göring, Hess, any one of them would smack down a German who dared say to them what I say. My turkey story, for example.”

  Lanny told the story, and his auditor threw back his head and laughed, almost as heartily as Göring had done. “That tells a lot,” he commented. “Göring doesn’t resent seeing his Führer as a beast of prey!”

  “Göring always has a lion cub as a pet, and Hitler until recently carried a riding whip everywhere he went. They have a Death’s Head brigade of the SS, and many such symbols of cruelty and terror. They have committed themselves to that course, and cannot turn back if they would.”

  Lanny went on with his recital. He told how he had watched the Munich crisis develop, and what the British and the French had said and done in the face of it. He described Chamberlain, Runciman, Halifax, Londonderry, Wickthorpe—appeasers all, and the part they played in the ignominy. As Lanny had foreseen, F.D. wanted to know all about Lindbergh and Lady Nancy, and just what had really happened; he was pleased by Rick’s epigram that there might not be a “Cliveden set” but surely was a “Cliveden sort.” He wanted to hear about Adi Schicklgruber’s secret interest in the occult arts; the idea of locking an outlawed astrologer up in a Gestapo hotel and compelling him to cast a dozen horoscopes he called a story out of the Arabian Nights—but Lanny assured him it had really happened, and it really had.

  This busy great man, with the cares of a hundred and thirty million people on his shoulders, took hours off from sleep to ply Lanny Budd with questions concerning events and personalities of Western Europe: what Schacht had said about German finances; what Thyssen had said about how industry was controlled; what Schneider had revealed concerning his Skoda arrangements; what the de Bruynes had told about Laval and Bonnet and their intrigues with Kurt Meissner and Otto Abetz; about Daladier’s noble amie, the Marquise de Crussol, and her intrigues; about Ceddy and Gerald and their hope that the Nazis would keep agreements as to arms limitation; about “Old Portland” and “Young Bedford,” and Mosley and his Blackshirts, and even about Unity Mitford and what she was doing at the Berghof. In the course of this unrelenting quiz Lanny could make sure once for all that not merely had his reports been read and digested, but that his ideas had bec
ome a part of the mental make-up of his country’s Chief Executive.

  XI

  So the secret agent never got a chance to offer his resignation; or, at any rate, he never took the chance. The idea just quietly melted away in the warmth of this great man’s sympathy and gratitude. The nearest Lanny came to a complaint was to say that he found it damned discouraging, wandering about Nazi-Fascist Europe and never meeting a person to whom he could speak an honest word. The President’s answer was: “Consider yourself a soldier under orders. The scout who goes into the enemy’s camp at night feels the same way, but he goes.”

  “If you put it that way,” Lanny replied, “of course I have to stick it out. But sometimes I wonder if I am really doing any good.”

  Said the President, looking suddenly grave: “Do you imagine I never wonder about my job, Lanny?”

  “At least you can do something now and then.”

  “Not as often as I want to, believe me! If you think otherwise, it is because you haven’t given much study to the American Constitution, and to our political system. I am not only well checked and balanced, I am under orders, as much so as any private in the army. The American people are my boss, and I have the job of finding out what they want, and doing it. I might bull something through, but what good would it do if the people repudiated it at the next election?”

  “I suppose that is true,” admitted the visitor.

  “I know just how you feel in Europe, Lanny. You see the horrors piling up, and you send in your reports—and nothing happens! But you must understand, I am no Hitler or Mussolini whose will is law. I have my private opinions, of course, but I have to remember that I speak as the voice of the nation. Incidentally, I am the leader of a party. I have only two years more as President, and I cannot take an action without thinking what will be its effect upon the party’s future; otherwise I might throw away my six years’ work, and have the humiliation of seeing a successor undo the entire New Deal. If you saw the election returns early this month, you know that the Republicans made gains; so I have to stop and ask myself, what have I done to cause it, and what can I do to check the trend and keep it from becoming a landslide?”

  “I must admit all that makes a difference,” said the agent, greatly chastened.

  “It is my duty to lead the people, but I can only lead them as fast as they will follow. As I think I explained to you before, if I go faster, I lose contact, and somebody else becomes the leader. Never forget that it takes time to change the thinking of a hundred million people, or even of the educated part of them. You go to Europe and see the events with your own eyes; but the people do not go, and the tragedy seems far-off and unreal to them. If I had denounced the rape of Czechoslovakia, and given any hint of aid to England and France, do you imagine for one moment that the American people would have got behind me?”

  “Only a few, it may be.”

  “I should simply have been handing the government over to the appeasers and the reactionaries. When there comes some ghastly thing like this pogrom, I can voice my abhorrence; I have recalled our ambassador from Berlin, and shall probably not send him back—a gesture which your high-up Nazi friends will not fail to understand. Also, I can tell the Congress that these are perilous times, and that it is necessary for us to increase our means of national defense. That we are doing, I assure you. But for the rest, I have to await events, and the education which they will give to the people. Facts are the only teachers who will be heeded.”

  “What keeps me unhappy, Governor, is the fear that the lesson will be learned too slowly.”

  “Don’t think that you are the only one who has that fear. It has kept me awake many a night, and tempted me to what are considered indiscretions. You saw what happened when I let you persuade me to make that ‘quarantine speech.’ I haven’t been forgiven for it yet.”

  “I hope you have forgiven me,” said the visitor, troubled in conscience.

  XII

  Lanny had been over this interview many times in his mind, and had stowed there a number of items that he wanted to “get across.” Most important of all was this question of the time limit within which his Chief had to work; a schedule not of Roosevelt’s making, but of Hitler’s. Now, speaking earnestly, Lanny said: “Governor, I want to put a question which you may not care to answer. You don’t have to, but you ought to have it in your mind.”

  “All right—shoot!” said this informal great man.

  “The question is this: What, exactly, would you do if you should be waked up in the middle of the night and told that London has just been bombed to dust and rubble?”

  There was a silence; then: “I don’t think I could answer that question, Lanny—not without a lot of reflection.”

  “It would be wise to think it over. And this, also: Suppose the British Prime Minister should call you on the telephone and tell you that you have twenty-four hours in which to decide whether to send Britain aid, or else the fleet will have to be surrendered.”

  “Good God, Lanny! You mean that seriously?”

  “I am quite sure it is one of the possibilities.”

  “And how soon?”

  “I don’t think war can be more than a year or two away. I can tell you for certain that that is what the Nazi leaders believe. Göring is the most conservative, and two years is what he is asking for. Of course I can’t tell whether his Air Force can do what he thinks it can; but undoubtedly he means to try. The British leaders all know it, and that is why their bones have turned to putty. If he were able to wipe London out, I don’t see how the British government could continue, except by taking the fleet to Canada. But what good would that do, unless we promised them support?”

  There was a pause, while a Chief Executive who had learned caution weighed his off-the-record words. “I don’t think the American people would ever let the Germans come to Canada,” he remarked, at last. “Also, I admit the fact that our country has lived in safety for more than a century behind the shelter of the British fleet. We haven’t realized it, but in such a crisis it might be possible to make the American people realize it. You understand, all this is for you alone.”

  “Rest assured, Governor, I have never quoted a word that you have said to me, or even mentioned that I have met you—not even to my mother or father.”

  The face which was usually so genial and smiling had become somber, and the man who was stealing time from his sleep sat staring before him, frowning. “Do you know the Bible?” he asked, suddenly. “There are some words—I think St. Paul’s: ‘God is not mocked.’”

  “‘Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’”

  “I think that applies to nations as to individuals, Lanny. I don’t attempt to guess how it is coming, but I refuse to believe that men can commit such crimes as the Nazis have committed, and not raise up some agency of justice against them. If it should appear that the American people have to shoulder that burden, I trust they will not shrink from it.”

  Again a pause. Then the President, watching his agent’s face, inquired: “Do you know much about Lincoln?”

  “I am ashamed not to know my own country as well as I do Europe.”

  “Take my advice then, and read a good life of Lincoln. He was a man of peace who was compelled to fight a long war. Observe his wise patience, his shrewdness in reading the public mind, his skill in leading the people, one step at a time. If ever you are tempted to wonder about what I am doing in a crisis, you can guide yourself by the certainty that I am asking what Lincoln would have done. He saved the Union, he saved what he called ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’; and be sure he didn’t do it solely for one people, but as an example to which all mankind would turn. Recall that to your mind when you are tempted to be lonely and discouraged, over there among the Nazi lions and the Fascist jackals.”

  XIII

  So Lanny went out from the presence. Because he had a lesson to ponder, he did not go to his hotel
at once, but took a long walk at random, lost in thought. When he came to, he observed in the distance a great marble structure which he knew to be the Lincoln Memorial; it stood, shining in a bright electric glow the whole night through. Lanny decided to begin his study of Abraham Lincoln without delay, and went to the building, entered, and stood looking at the nine-foot marble statue of the Great Emancipator sitting in the seat of judgment. At that late hour, there was no one in the building but the sentries, so his thoughts were undisturbed. He turned to the walls, where the Gettysburg Address is inscribed, and read the immortal closing words:

  “It is rather for us here to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

  The son of Robbie Budd turned again to the great statue. There was exaltation in his heart; he was glad now that he was an American; he renewed his faith in democracy and resolved never again to waver. Once more his native land faced a crisis, and once more the people, with their deep understanding, had found a leader worthy of their trust.

  Lanny’s mind leaped back across the sea to that other man of great power whom he had come to know so well. Three times in the past year and a half he had traveled back and forth between Franklin Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler, and he knew that he had not made the last of these journeys. Suddenly the events of the time took shape in his imagination as a duel of wills between these two: one the champion of democracy, of government by popular consent, of the rights of the individual to think his own thoughts, to speak his own mind, to live his own life so long as he did not interfere with the equal rights of his fellows; the other the champion of those ancient dark forces of tyranny and oppression which had ruled the world before the concept of freedom had been born. It took no prophet to foresee that this struggle was not over; it was going on until it would involve the whole world and the whole future of mankind.