Presidential Agent (The Lanny Budd Novels)

by Upton Sinclair

  The old face lighted up with a smile. ‘Herr Budd! Of course I remember you. Come in’.

  Lanny was pleased, because he hadn’t been sure of a welcome. His name had become known to the Germans when he had testified at the Nürnberg trial against Hermann Göring, helping to bring about the conviction of the fat Reichsmarschall as a war criminal. He said, ‘I happened to be in the neighbourhood, and I thought you might be lonely’.

  ‘Have a seat’, said the old man and signed to the one comfortable chair, which was in front of a cast-iron, wood-burning stove. Lanny said, ‘Oh no’, and took a smaller chair and placed it facing his host. In the course of the visit he found a chance to glance about the room and saw that one corner was curtained off, evidently for a bed. There was a small centre table, where, no doubt, the old man had his meals served.

  There was a reading table with several books on it, and one of them was open. The Graf himself mentioned that it was Carlyle’s Life of Frederick the Great—Lanny had not read that huge work, but he knew about it and could imagine the old soldier reliving the days of his country’s glory. A work of five large volumes, it contains elaborate accounts of each of the battles fought by the Prussian king, with diagrams showing the position of the troops at every stage of the conflict. Military strategy is the art of so manipulating masses of men as to overcome and destroy other masses who happen to belong to some other government and are manipulated by some other general. The General Graf Stubendorf had been doing this up to fifteen months previously, and now that he could no longer do it in reality he would sit and do it in imagination, following the victorious events of the eighteenth century.

  Lanny had first come to Stubendorf as a boy, thirty-three years ago. There he had met the ‘Old Graf’, the present one’s father. Lanny had met him only formally, on Christmas morning, when he had greeted all his servants and retainers and made them a speech. Der Alter had died, and his eldest son had taken his place, and Lanny had met this one in Berlin, Lanny being then the husband of Irma Barnes, daughter of the Chicago traction magnate. No doubt this Prussian aristocrat had been more impressed by the rumour of Irma’s wealth than by Lanny’s social charms. Anyhow, he had invited the young couple to be guests at the Schloss and had given them an elegant if somewhat dull time. This had marked, of course, a change in Lanny’s social position in Stubendorf, for on his previous visits he had been the guest of the Graf’s business manager, Herr Meissner.

  Now it was a pleasure to recall those old happy days—the pleasure mixed with pain, for the magnificent five-storey castle had been shot to ruins by Russian artillery. Many of the children whom the old Graf had welcomed at the Christmas morning celebration were now dead and ploughed under Polish or Russian soil. The Graf said that he had no personal hard feelings; German leadership at the top had been tragically incompetent, and Germany had been defeated in a war which it had foolishly started. ‘As you know, Herr Budd, I was never a Nazi’.

  It was a formula you heard all over Germany now. You heard it from the great industrialist who was trying to get back control of his plant. You heard it from the proprietor of the café and the waiter, and from the bootblack who sought your patronage outside. You might travel all over Germany and have difficulty in finding a single ex-Nazi. What few there were had gone into retirement; they met in obscure beer cellars and sang the ‘Horst Wessel’ song in whispers and plotted what they were going to do when the ‘Amis’ got out.

  But so far as Lanny knew, the statement of the General Graf was the truth. He had never been a political figure. He had been an officer of the old German Armee. He had studied his profession and had risen in due course. He had been put in command of a division, and had taken that division where it was ordered and fought to the best of his ability. He had survived two serious wounds, and the rest was the fortune of war—misfortune, because his estates had been in the path of the Russian armies. Now he had retired to the American zone and was spending a peaceful old age, studying the five-volume life of Prussia’s greatest king, written in the English language by a Scot.

  VI

  Lanny brought up the subject of Kurt Meissner. The Graf had recognised his genius and had given him a cottage in the forest on the estate. When his family had grown, the Nazi party had supplied the funds to build him a studio nearby. Kurt had fought in the army and had lost the use of his left arm, which was sad indeed for a piano virtuoso. His large family had fled before the Russians, and Kurt had become a prisoner of the American army.

  ‘After his release’, said the Graf, ‘he wrote me that he wanted to go back to Stubendorf, even though it was again a part of Poland. Permission to reside there had been granted to Gerhart Hauptmann, the poet, and Kurt was hoping for the same favour. Apparently these Reds hope to be taken as civilised; they profess to have respect for artists of all sorts’.

  Lanny suggested that perhaps they had not heard about Kurt’s friendship with Hitler; or perhaps consented to overlook the ‘Führermarsch’ and remember only the symphonies and concertos. ‘Do you know how he is getting along?’ he asked.

  ‘I haven’t heard from him for some time’, replied the other. ‘I fear he must be having a difficult time financially. I wish I could help him, but I am no longer in a position to do so’.

  ‘I mean to ask him’, Lanny stated.

  This son of good fortune was naturally of a genial disposition and had been trained in what was called social charm since he was a tiny child. He had been raised among older persons, mostly lovely ladies, and when he had said something bright he had observed their pleasure. So now, when he wanted to please people, he knew how to do it. Of this old man who was both a military hero and a count, he enquired concerning various guests and retainers who had been at Stubendorf in the old days, thus giving him the pleasure of talking about his past power and glory. Some of the persons had died, and others had fled and been lost track of. Lanny made mental notes of the few who might still be in the old places.

  Also he asked if the Graf knew any Germans who might have paintings they would care to sell to Americans. The old man answered no; his aunt who had sold a painting through Herr Budd was long since dead, and the Graf did not know what had become of her art treasures. People in East Germany had had to flee for their lives and had seldom been able to carry such heavy objects with them. Lanny pointed out that old masters had frequently been cut out of their frames and rolled up and smuggled away. One of the Russian grand dukes had lived the rest of his life on the proceeds of his Rembrandts.

  By then it was fitting for the visitor to bring up the subject which was most prominent in his mind. He told once more the story of the English pound note; and the Graf said yes, there was a tremendous lot of that going on. The Nazis had forged the money of all the countries they invaded and those they expected to invade. They had forged passports and other documents, reports and letters. ‘I don’t believe in that sort of warfare myself’, said the host.

  Lanny waited to see if he would go on, but he didn’t. So Lanny tried again. ‘That could be very destructive; it is a way of robbing the public and of bringing on a slow inflation’.

  ‘Exactly. And I am afraid your government will have a hard time rooting it out’.

  ‘Do you suppose the Communists will take it up?’

  ‘I can’t imagine that they wouldn’t. I have been told that in East Germany they have been printing our own money secretly and are putting it into circulation’.

  Lanny had been told that by Morrison. He would have been interested to know how the Graf knew it. He said, ‘I have been told there’s a regular black market in Berlin, and you can buy many kinds of irregular money at a part of its face value’.

  ‘I don’t doubt it’, was the Graf’s reply. ‘Your government will have to put its best intelligence people to work on the problem’. And that was all. Lanny could not afford to push the subject. The old nobleman would be suspicious of all Americans.

  VII

  When the ‘primitive Junker’ resumed i
t was to express his concern over the way the Americans were disbanding their armies and sending them home. ‘Stalin is not disbanding his’, he said, ‘and presently you will be at his mercy’.

  ‘I suppose it’s the way of democracies’, Lanny replied. ‘Our people don’t like war; they want to get rid of the very thought of it. The mothers are clamouring for their boys, and the boys are clamouring for their mothers or their girls’

  ‘What will you do if Stalin should suddenly decide to take the rest of Germany?’

  ‘I really don’t know. I suppose we’d get ready again, the way we did for Hitler and Hirohito. Meantime, no doubt, we are counting upon the atomic bomb’.

  ‘You mustn’t count upon it too long, for Stalin will surely get it in the end. He has some of our best scientists, as you doubtless know’.

  ‘It is a disturbing problem, lieber Graf—especially for a man who is conducting a radio programme on behalf of world peace. I grow less sure of my ground every day’.

  ‘If you will take your Bible, Herr Budd, and read old Jeremiah, you will find that he talks about “saying, Peace, peace, when there is no peace”.’ Perhaps the day will come when you will repeat the experience of the old prophet. “Then said I, Ah, Lord God! surely thou hast greatly deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying, Ye shall have peace; whereas the sword reacheth unto the soul”.’

  When Lanny thought it over afterwards it seemed to him rather quaint to have heard a commander of Hitler’s Armed Forces quoting the ancient scriptures of the Jews. But he didn’t say that; instead he remarked, ‘I had the privilege of making purchases at one of our government stores. I know that a country diet grows monotonous, and I tried to think of something that might be especially good for your health. I brought along a sack of oranges’.

  ‘Oh, I cannot let you do that!’ exclaimed the proud old count. ‘Really—’

  ‘Just think, lieber Graf, how much of your hospitality I accepted in the happy old days. Think of the things you fed to me, the venison and pheasants, the hares and trout. Surely I have the right to make a return’.

  ‘Well, since you put it that way, Herr Budd—’

  ‘Let me help you on with your overcoat and come out and see what else I have in my rolling grocery’.

  The old Junker stalked out; Lanny followed and opened the locked trunk of his little car. He held up a sack of oranges in one hand, and in the other the spectacle that had so thrilled the Fürstin Donnerstein. The count spoke the same words. ‘Ach, du lieber Gott! Ein Schinken!’ He started to protest again, but Lanny silenced him as before. The Graf let his visitor carry the ham into the house, while he carried the oranges. They shook hands, and Lanny promised to send the little Peace paper every week. The engine of the ‘coop’ started, and the little black box rolled down the slope and away.

  VIII

  The roads to Nürnberg were good, and after Lanny got out of the foothills he drove fast. He had not seen Emil Meissner since that fateful week two years ago when he had persuaded a high Wehrmacht officer to abandon the Hitler cause and give General Patton’s army help in the taking of the Metz fortress. Lanny could understand that Emil must have had a hard time since then, for he was a traitor, and such a man is loved neither by those he has deserted nor by those he has aided. Emil might have asked for a position with the AMG, and his offer could hardly have been declined. But he had gone off quietly and got himself a civilian job and was living like a hermit—a hermit in a boarding house, keeping his thoughts to himself.

  Lanny had first met Emil Meissner when the latter had come home to Stubendorf for Christmas, a tall, magnificent young cadet. Emil had made his career by hard work and faithfulness. He had fought, first against the Russians and then against the Americans, and had been captured in one of Patton’s slashing advances. Lanny Budd, knowing him thoroughly, had been sent to work on him. Lanny hadn’t had to convince him that his Führer was at once a scoundrel and a madman, for he had already come to that conclusion. What Lanny did was to persuade him that the war could end only one way, and the quicker it was over the more lives, both American and German, would be saved. So Emil had consented to sit in at a session of American staff officers and tell them all he knew about the fortifications of Germany’s greatest stronghold. Later on Emil had been released on parole, and that was all Lanny knew.

  Soon he found out the rest. Emil was living in an upstairs bedroom without any heat; he went to school in the morning and taught his classes, and then he walked home and spent the evenings correcting his students’ work. He was alone, his wife having died during the war, and his sons had no understanding of their father’s action. He discussed the subject with no one and kept himself aloof and serene. There came to Lanny’s mind an ode of the poet Horace, which he had learned as a student in Newcastle, Connecticut, telling of the man who is just and firm in his opinion, and whom neither the cruel tyrant nor the shouting mob can awe; if the whole earth should be shattered in fragments about him they would leave him undismayed. Impavidum ferient ruinae!

  IX

  Lanny picked the old man up and drove him into the city, that place of ruins and melancholy, full of memories for the secret agent of a democratic President. Here Lanny had attended what the Nazis called a Parteitag, or party day, though it lasted a week, in which something like a million howling fanatics poured into the town. They lived in tents on the outskirts and marched about, singing and yelling, and gathered in an immense open field to listen to their party orators through a hundred microphones. It had been the old city, the city of Hans Sachs and of Wagner’s Meistersinger. When Lanny had come back the last time all that ancient part had been blasted to dust and rubble, and it had become the city of the great international trial of the war criminals. To the outside world Nürnberg would always be that.

  There was a café unblasted, and Lanny stood his old friend to a good meal. Meanwhile he explained that he was here looking for art treasures and was going to take the chance to motor to Stubendorf and perhaps see Kurt and find out if it was not possible to patch up the differences between them. They had been the closest of friends, and now Kurt’s bitterness of spirit troubled Lanny. What did Kurt’s brother think about the prospect?

  Emil replied that he really couldn’t guess; he had had no communication from Kurt for two years. He didn’t know when Kurt had been freed from the prisoner-of-war camp, and he had only learned by accident that Kurt was seeking to return to Stubendorf. As to the matter of Kurt’s bitterness against Lanny, it might be possible that time had done something toward the healing of the wound. Emil said that Kurt had staked his whole being upon the Hitler adventure; he had poured out the fervour of his genius in its service, and he had failed. Lanny Budd had helped to cause his failure, and Kurt could probably not forgive that.

  ‘What I am thinking’, said Lanny, ‘is that he doesn’t like the Poles, and by now he must have realised that something worse than Poles has got possession of Stubendorf. How is he going to bring up his children in a Communist land? He may try to make good Germans of them, but the Communists will teach them to spy upon their father and report him. How is he going to meet that?’

  ‘I don’t know’, Emil admitted. ‘It won’t be easy for him, whatever he does and whatever he believes. I happen to know that his oldest boy, Fritz, has reacted strongly against the Nazis. He is in an Oberschule in East Berlin, where a friend of mine teaches. Kurt may try ever so hard to control his children’s minds, but the environment may be too strong for him. For all I know, he may even have decided to turn Red himself—if only with the idea of punishing the Americans. Thousands of the Nazis have done that’.

  ‘Gott bewahre!’ exclaimed Lanny. ‘That would be a hard thing for me to imagine about Kurt’.

  ‘Many things have happened in this old Europe that we could not have imagined, and I am afraid there will be many more’. Thus spoke Emil Meissner, in a slow, sad voice. He was saying that he had given this old Europe up. He was only a little over fifty, but his face was carew
orn and his expression grim. His hair had been straw-coloured when he was young, but now it was grey; it was cut short in Prussian fashion, and Lanny might guess that he had done the job himself. He was wearing a black suit which might have been bought for his father’s funeral more than twenty years ago. It had been carefully brushed but was worn green at the elbows and in the trouser seat. Few indeed were the Germans who wore good clothes in this year of 1946.

  X

  Lanny brought up the subject of the Himmler money. ‘Why certainly’, said Emil, ‘there is a black market in that stuff here in Nürnberg. My pupils have told me about it. They have been approached and invited to help in passing such money. It is a temptation to German youths seeking education and finding it difficult to get enough to eat in the meantime’.

  Lanny ventured to say that he had a friend in the American government who was interested in tracing down these tempters of youth. Could Emil think of any young person who had sufficient strength of character to be trusted in identifying such evil ones and bringing them to punishment? That might be an honourable way for students to earn their food. The retired general thought for a while and decided to give Lanny the names of a couple of his students. It wasn’t the purpose for which Lanny had come, but there was no harm in picking up what small change might be offered. The Christmas holidays were not far off, and it might be possible for such a youth to make a trip to Stubendorf. It might even happen that the ‘pushers’ he met would send him to Stubendorf.

  Lanny was interested in Emil’s observations of the new generation of Germans. What was their attitude toward the present abnormal situation? Every one of them, of course, would be determined upon the reuniting of the severed Fatherland. Which way would they have it—for the East to join the West or the West to join the East? The general-become-teacher reported that they were confused and divided in their opinion; the Reds had behaved like Huns, but their propaganda was tireless and very clever.