XI
Would the foe press on toward the southeast, to get the oil of the Caucasus, or would he turn northward and take Moscow? This was one of the questions of the hour, and another had to do with the undersea war in the Atlantic. In the spring the British losses had been a hundred thousand tons a week. Now all ships traveled in convoys, and Churchill claimed that the losses had been greatly reduced; but was he telling the truth? It was a secret widely whispered that American naval vessels were escorting the convoys far out from American shores; the isolationists clamored, charging one more crime against That Man in the White House. How long would it be before the U-boats sank an American warship, and the fat would be blazing in the fire?
Professor Einstein would come over about once a week, always in the evening, and hear his pupil recite. He would lecture and answer questions for a while, always lucidly, and exactly at the level of the pupil’s understanding. Then he would say: “Enough for tonight!”—and suddenly the roles would be reversed and Lanny would be the teacher. Einstein knew that Lanny’s father made warplanes, and he knew that Lanny had been in Europe recently and had many connections there. He never asked a question about these, but he would ask Lanny’s opinion about the prospects, political as well as’ military, in the different lands.
The P.A. was delighted to discover that they were completely at one in their ideals and hopes, for this great scientist had not been content to limit himself to his specialty, he was a humanist as well as a physicist. He loathed war, as every truly intelligent man must do, but he saw that this war had to be won and Nazi-Fascism uprooted from the earth. He agreed that nothing would come from the victory unless an international government was formed; unless the nations would surrender some of their sovereignty, as the states had done when the American union was formed. He was a believer in the people, a fundamental democrat who knew that democracy in politics was good, but that it was not enough; before there could be any real freedom there must be democracy in industry, the worker must be the master of his job. In short, the greatest thinker of modern times was a Socialist; and when he admitted it to Lanny he didn’t say: “Don’t mention it!”
XII
Once they had an adventure. Lanny had been working especially hard, and had triumphantly recited several formulas without an error. Suddenly the master of all formulas grinned and said: “Let’s play hookey!” When Lanny asked: “What shall we do?” he replied: “Alston tells me you play the piano. I play the fiddle; let us have some duets. You come to my place—it is late and nobody will notice us. I’ll lock up the house and we won’t answer the bell.”
So they went, by unfrequented streets, as though they were two burglars. The great scientist lived in an elderly undistinguished house which had doubtless been the first he looked at, and which he would probably occupy for the rest of his days. “One room is as good as another to think in,” he said, “provided that nobody disturbs you.” As he led the guest into the old-fashioned parlor he added: “But some music is better to play than others. What do you like?”
“Anything that pleases you,” replied Lanny, “provided it is not too difficult.”
“What do you say to Mozart’s sonatas?”
“Fine! I have played them with Hansi Robin.”
“Oh! You know him?”
“He is married to my half-sister.”
“Oh. then you are one of us! Why didn’t you tell me?” He put his arm impulsively about his pupil’s shoulders and led him to the piano. “You must be a real Musiker. We shall have an Abend!”
He got out the music and spread the piano volume on the rack. “Where shall we’ begin? With the Number I? They are all delightful. They take me back to my happy youth.” As if eager to get there quickly he took out his fiddle, tuned it, and set the music on the stand. “I almost know the first one by heart, but not quite.” He tucked the instrument under his chin with a silk handkerchief; then: “Are you ready? One, two, three”—and they were off.
There is no adventure more delightful in all the world; you skip and you dance and you sing in your heart; and always there is another voice answering your singing, another pair of feet skipping and dancing in time. You race through the meadows, and the flowers nod and bow to you, the wind sweeps over the fields of waving grain, you hear it soughing in the pine trees, or maybe roaring on the mountain-tops; you hear the birds singing, you see little waves dancing, and the sunlight strewing showers of golden fire upon the water. Then suddenly you realize that all this is going to die, and you grow very sorrowful, and walk mournfully for a while; but even your sorrow is made beautiful, deprived of all disharmony. Then the sun comes out again, and it is springtime, and you realize that life renews itself; you skip and dance faster than ever, and it becomes a race, most exhilarating; you rejoice in your powers, the fact that you are equal to all emergencies, even to allegro assai.
When they had finished Sonata Number I the entranced fiddler asked: “Shall we have another?” (Just like many a toper whom you have known!) Lanny said: “If you will,” so they played another set of movements, repeating the same emotions, but with endless variety, like life itself. Nearly two centuries ago there had lived in old Vienna a child prodigy who had played the clavichord, and had been taken by his money-hungry parents to exhibit his skill in most of the courts of Europe. Melodies of unimaginable loveliness had been born in his soul, and he had labored incessantly, composing more than six hundred works of every classification. He had died young and poor, after the manner of genius in a heedless world; but his printed notes lived on for the delight of gentle and harmless souls through all the ages.
“Shall we have another?” asked the toper; and so they played the Number III. When they finished he sighed, as one coming down from heaven to a distracted earth. His usually pale cheeks were flushed and his eyes were shining. Said he: “That is enough. We are a pair of bad boys. Nobody has a right to be so happy until this war is over.”
Lanny went back to his cottage, thinking that this elderly Jewish cherub was one of the most delightful human beings he had yet had the fortune to meet.
XIII
In mid-August President Roosevelt went on what appeared to be one of his customary vacation cruises off the New England coast. Swimming was the only form of exercise he could take; and also he liked to catch fish, or to try. This time he was after unusually big ones; he boarded a Navy cruiser at sea and was carried to Newfoundland, where he met a British battleship with Winston Churchill on board; also Harry Hopkins, who had been flown to Russia for a series of conferences with Stalin. Various other Americans, including Charlie Alston, had managed to disappear front Washington and to show up in what Churchill called “this Newfoundland bight.”
Discussions went on for several days, and when all those concerned were safely back home the news was given out. They had adopted for the future world a series of eight principles which came to be known as “the Atlantic Charter.” Lanny listened to them over the radio and wished that he could have known about the matter in advance; he would have tried to persuade the Chief to include a forthright statement in favor of an international government, the measure upon which Einstein was so insistent. But Lanny couldn’t be everywhere and couldn’t do everything; just then he was studying processes and formulas having to do with the production of uranium isotopes.
New documents were brought to him almost every night; he kept them locked in a suitcase out of sight. Early in September there came from New York a messenger with a brief case chained to his left wrist and fastened with a padlock. The messenger had the key, but was pledged not to use it until he was in Lanny Budd’s presence; the padlock was to make sure that he didn’t forget the brief case in a train or restaurant. Inside were carbon copies of material, and a memorandum of instructions, telling Lanny that he was to make no notes, but to learn the material by heart and then never mention it except as per orders.
While he studied, the messenger went into town and saw a motion picture; when he returned and
found that Lanny was not yet through, he went to another theater and saw another program, a total of eight hours spent, including time for a meal. At the end of that time Lanny knew the formulas and processes for the large-scale production of plutonium, and the results of various experiments in use of graphite and of paraffin as “moderators” of the too-great ardor of neutrons. The unsigned memo from Alston read: “This is for England, not elsewhere. Will explain later.”
That sounded immediate; so Lanny was not surprised when Professor Einstein came in next evening, and remarked, quite casually: “Mr. Budd, I think you now know everything about the subject of physics.” He said it with a twinkle in his eyes, of course, and Lanny received it with a grin. The great thinker was as full of fun as F.D. himself.
“You mean that I know enough for this job?” asked the pupil, and the reply was: “I award you a diploma, summa cum laude.”
Lanny responded, without smiling: “This has been the most interesting thing that ever happened to me, Professor; and when this war is over, maybe you will let me come back and really learn something.”
“I’ll let you come and play duets with me every night,” replied the author of The Special and the General Theory of Relativity.
19
Even to the Edge of Doom
I
Charles Alston had come to New York again, so Lanny met him there and took him for another ride, this time in Central Park at twilight. The car rolled in a stream of fast traffic, along a winding drive with vistas of trees on the one side and tall buildings making a background of lights on the other. Lanny listened, first to thanks for his diligence as a student, and then to an outline of his future tasks.
“The man you are to interview is Professor Heinrich Thomas Schilling. He is, as you may know, a Nobel prize winner in physics and one of the greatest authorities in the world. When last heard from he was at the University of Berlin. Now we have reason to believe that he is in a laboratory near Oranienburg. It is your problem to find him and devise some inconspicuous way of interviewing him. To this end you will go first to London and consult with the English physicist, Professor Oswald Hardin, who has been in contact with Schilling and knows more about the situation than anyone else. Hardin was in Berlin for several years and is Schilling’s friend. By the way, the details I sent you the other day may be given to Hardin; but you are not to give any information to Schilling, only to get it from him.”
“Suppose he questions me?”
“You will pretend that you are ignorant. We are told that Schilling is completely anti-Nazi, but there is no use trusting any German more than we have to. If Schilling is on the level he should not ask questions. Your impression of his character and attitude is one of the things which will be of importance to us when you come out.”
“If he is double-crossing us, there wouldn’t be much chance of my coming out, I should think.”
“That does not necessarily follow. He might be told to give you misinformation, with the idea of causing us to waste time and money on false leads. This much is certain—he will know that you are not coming into Germany out of unselfish love of scientific truth.”
“How will he know who or what I am?”
“Professor Hardin will give you a password.”
“And how will Hardin know me?”
“He will be expecting you.”
“Let me point out. Professor: so far nobody has been allowed to know that I am a P.A. except the Governor himself. I wasn’t even sure that you knew it. And I know from all three of the top Nazis that they have agents in England and are sending instructions and getting information all the time.”
“We have to take chances in this case, Lanny; you cannot just go into Germany and look up this Schilling and say: ‘I am an agent of President Roosevelt; tell me about the uranium project.’”
“I grant you that; but certainly I ought to do everything I can to keep my tracks covered.”
“You can take precautions to meet Hardin secretly, as you have done with me. He will certainly understand that.”
“How am I to get into England this time?”
“F.D. told me he would arrange it personally with Churchill.”
“Understand, Professor, I’m not trying to welsh on this job; but I want to succeed and not fall into some Nazi trap. I don’t like the idea of having my name discussed over the transatlantic telephone.”
“You may count upon it that the Governor has made sure his conversations with Churchill are not being listened in on.”
“I don’t doubt for a moment that he thinks he has made sure. But I know something about the tricks of our foes, and the years they have been getting ready for what is happening now. They have planted their agents all over the world, and have tapped a lot of wires and broken a lot of codes.”
“Well, take that up personally with the Governor and if you have precautions to suggest, do so. He may have information that he wishes to entrust to you and you alone. He is going to be at Hyde Park this week-end, and you are to get in touch with Baker in Poughkeepsie.”
Lanny was required to repeat the names of the two scientists, and the details about them. He added: “I will look them up in the library and learn everything that is available. When I get to Berlin, I’ll use the library there to the same end.”
Said Alston: “It may be that you will get enough from Hardin. What you need especially is a pretext for meeting Schilling. It may be that he has some interest in art; he might own a painting worth viewing, or some relative might have one. It might be that you have a suggestion about having his portrait painted. Do you know anybody in Germany who might perhaps care to paint a Nobel prize winner?”
“I might think of somebody,” replied the P.A. “I have met all sorts of art people in Berlin.”
“All right; and now, one final word, Lanny. You must remember that you may be carrying the fate of the democratic world in your keeping. If your mission should fail, if you should discover that you have walked into a trap, you must deny that you have any knowledge of what we are doing with the nucleus of the atom. You must stick to that story through every cross-examination, and even through torture. You must remain the art expert and nothing else. You have been in Princeton making a catalog of the Curtice art collection, and your only dealings with Albert Einstein were Mozart duets.”
“All that goes without saying, Professor.”
“You must realize that you will face frightful tortures. The Nazis will use every device in their catalog to break your spirit. I want you to carry with you this tiny glass capsule. It contains cyanide, and if you bite it and swallow it quickly, you will be out of their reach in a minute or so. That will save you a lot of misery, and save the rest of us the possibility that in some moment of delirium you might blurt out a word or a phrase—say ‘graphite, moderator,’ or something like that.”
II
Lanny had two days’ vacation before his appointment at Hyde Park, and he planned that to the best advantage. He drove to Newcastle to say good-by to the family. They found nothing strange about his having, been cataloging an art collection, and were interested in what he had to tell about life in the Curtice family. They found it less easy to understand why and how an art expert should be returning to Europe in wartime; but they had long since learned not to ask about this. Robbie revealed that he had a business appointment with Reverdy Holdenhurst in New York for the following day, and the son accepted an invitation to join them at lunch.
On his way back to the city he paid a visit to the Hansibesses. Very touching to see what had happened to them; it was as if a wet sponge had been passed over their recent unhappiness and wiped out everything at a single stroke. Bess’s beloved Soviet Union was in peril of its life, and nobody with any trace of social feeling could doubt which side he was on. Hansi was completely at one with his wife, and both of them ashamed that they had quarreled. Lanny said nothing about the part he had played in this domestic dénouement.
Bess fold important news; they
were going to Moscow. She had made the offer to Oumansky, the Ambassador in Washington, and he had cabled, suggesting the invitation. “We are to be honored guests of the Soviet Union, and will play for the people in all the cities. That may not do much to win the war, but it will at least tell them where our sympathies are.”
They turned on the radio and listened to the news. The Germans were within a couple of hundred miles of Moscow, and had got east of Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine; things looked black indeed. With all three of them it was as Bess had said about herself—everything within the limits of that vast land was their personal property and its destruction their personal grief.
III
Back in the city, Lanny dined with Zoltan Kertezsi, and told of his picture deals; Zoltan reported on the job of getting the Detazes out of the vault in Baltimore and having them packed and shipped to Reubens, Indiana. Later in the evening, the P.A. dropped in on Forrest Quadratt. Things were getting hot for a registered Nazi agent; the F.B.I. was hounding him, he reported, and he might soon be needing help from his friends. This clearsighted man wasn’t fooling himself; he said the situation was bad in the United States, and he wasn’t altogether happy about the Russian campaign either. “Our friends count the number of miles we advanced and the number of prisoners we take; they fail to realize the number of miles that barbarous country has, and the endless masses of human cattle. Also, the dreadful winter is coming on.”
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