But Lanny had good luck and presently was seated in the office in the War Crimes Branch, listening to the voice he had heard over the phone. It belonged to a slender young Jewish officer of the intellectual type, wearing those little rainbow cross-sections indicating that he had seen service in the ETO. It was a safe guess that he had not suffered over an assignment to collect evidence against the inventors of the crime called “genocide.”
“It was good of you to come, Mr. Budd,” he said; and then, with no more preliminaries, “As you doubtless know, the prosecution is closing its case against the Nürnberg war criminals, and it will then be the turn of the defense. The accused have the right to summon witnesses, and it appeals that Göring has the idea that you will be in a position to testify as to his opposition to the war. Is there any truth in that?”
“There is some truth in it,” replied the ex-P.A. after he had got over his surprise. “I know that Göring thought the invasion of Poland a mistake. But he refused to do anything about it; he told me that he had stuck his neck out once before, in the seizure of Prague, and had been proved wrong, so he wouldn’t jeopardize his position a second time.”
“It is rather difficult to see how that could help him, wouldn’t you say?”
“Quite so. I am guessing that what he has in mind is a later stage, his efforts to dissuade Hitler from attacking Russia, and again his pleading for a settlement with the Allies when he saw that the war had reached a stalemate.”
“You know that he did that?”
“He talked to me at length about it, and later Hitler himself confirmed it. Göring had gradually fallen out of favor with the Führer, largely because of this attitude, but also, of course, because of his failure to prevent the bombing of German cities.”
“May I say, Mr. Budd, it is a little hard for us to understand how you could have been conversing with Göring and Hitler at those stages of the war?”
“Certainly, Colonel. I will tell you in confidence that in the summer of 1937 Roosevelt appointed me a presidential agent. I had for some time been posing as a Nazi sympathizer, getting information for two journalist friends, one in England and one in France. For eight years I served Roosevelt in the strictest secrecy, up to the day of his death.”
“That explains the mystery. I have your record in the Army before me, but I forgot to inquire at the White House.”
“I doubt if they could have told you anything, except that I had once had dinner there. At all other times I was taken into the White House by what is called the social door, and always at night. The President’s man Baker attended to it.”
“I see. Do you think that your testimony concerning Göring would be of any help to him?”
“I don’t see how it could be. His judgment was better than Hitler’s because he had a better brain, but his advice was on a purely military basis. He saw that Germany had lost the war, and he wanted to get out on the best terms possible. He wasn’t thinking about justice or mercy or the saving of human lives, for such considerations did not enter into his mental make-up.”
“You understand, Mr. Budd, he has no power to subpoena you. If you gave testimony, it would be because you wished to; presumably because you felt that he was entitled to have the benefit of your knowledge.”
“I don’t feel that way about him, Colonel Josephus. All I could testify about him is that he was a good companion and host. He has a first-rate mind and wide information. He would be pleased to hear me say all that on the witness stand, but I don’t see that I owe it to him, and neither do I see how it could help to save his life.”
IV
So much for that. The young officer thought it over and then started on a different line. “We have a mass of documents concerning Göring, but we haven’t many eyewitnesses against him. Let me ask whether you have any knowledge that might be of use to the prosecution.”
“I have been thinking about that on the way down here. I made a total of eleven trips into Germany as a presidential agent, and I met Göring on practically every trip. He seemed to enjoy my company and in some ways I enjoyed his. I have spent as much as a week at a time at Karinhall. So you see I would have a lot to recall. He is a free-spoken person and reveals himself with pride. He has a great respect for wealth and power, of the sort my father possesses; so I stood high with him from the beginning. When the Nazis took power, one of their shining marks was the Jewish financier, Johannes Robin, who had been my father’s associate from the end of World War I. The Nazi who grabbed him was the Minister of Labor, Ley—as you know, he committed suicide in the Nürnberg jail just after the indictment had been read to him.”
“I had accumulated a large dossier on Ley, but I didn’t know about the Robin matter.”
“The reason was, no doubt, that Göring got wind of it and grabbed Johannes. I went to see him and negotiated the deal whereby Johannes got out of the old prison on the Alexanderplatz by turning his entire fortune in Germany over to Göring. On the night of the Blood Purge—that was a year or so later—I was driving my car in Munich and met an SA man whom I knew. I stopped to speak to him, and at that moment three SS men leaped out of a car and shot him in the face. They took me to Stadelheim prison, where they were shooting men wholesale in the courtyard; I was sure my time had come. But apparently I must have made some impression by my insistence that I was a friend of Göring and the Führer; they kept me three days and four nights in solitary, and then took me to the city jail and kept me there for ten more. I was able to pick up news about what was going on outside—those days and nights when the Hitler gang shot some twelve hundred of their party dissidents.”
“That is one crime for which we have not indicted them,” remarked the official with the trace of a smile.
“I knew it was a civil war,” Lanny continued, “but I had no way to know which side was coming out ahead. After the ten days they put me in a car and drove me to Berlin and put me in a prison there—I never found out the name of it. They took me down into a dungeon where they were beating and torturing people, and once more I thought my hour had struck. With an SS man on each side of me I stood and watched while they brought in an elderly fat Jew who looked like Napoleon the Third, and whom I had met socially—it was Solomon Hellstein, the Berlin representative of the great banking family. He was begging and pleading, but they stripped him naked and flung him onto a bench, and then four Nazi torturers whipped him with thin steel rods until his back was a bloody mess. I lost my head and shrieked at them that they were a disgrace to the human race. Then I was sure I had cooked my goose and would be next; but to my surprise they took me away back to my cell and left me there. Not long afterward there came Oberleutnant Furtwängler of Göring’s staff—a man who rose to become general-major and was captured by our Seventh Army last year. I was surely glad to see him; he pretended to have come as a rescuer, it was all a mistake, and so on, but when he took me to Göring, that fat monster roared with laughter, and presently I realized that he had ordered me to be taken to see the beating. At first I took it for his idea of a joke, but then I decided that he had a purpose and had ordered the beating to be done so that I might witness it.”
“What could that purpose have been, Mr. Budd?”
“It had to do with the younger son of Johannes Robin, whom the Nazis had grabbed and shut up in Dachau. I was trying to get him free and had appealed to Göring. Now I learned that Freddi was to be a pawn in the fat Nazi’s game. Göring would free him, on condition that I would return to Paris and tell the members of the Hellstein family in that city what I had seen with my own eyes.”
“Tell them! For what reason?”
“Göring believed that “the Itzig,” as he called Solomon, had smuggled a great quantity of gold out of Germany, and he wanted to make the family return it. He knew that if I told them what I had seen they would believe me and would put up the ransom—and they did. I got Freddi back according to promise, but they had tortured him so that he died not long afterward.”
V
“As much as you wish, Colonel.”
“You can state that Göring told you he personally ordered this torturing?”
“No, I wouldn’t quite say that; his phrase, as I recollect it, was that I had had an opportunity to study their penal institutions at first hand.”
“But he admitted that he knew about the torturing?”
“Oh, certainly. He said I had seen their methods of dealing with a Jew Schieber; also he said, ‘You can testify that they are effective.’”
“That, I should think, would rather bar him from any complaint if you should tell the story now?”
“I would so consider. He commented that when I told the Hellsteins in Paris, the story would be all over the city in a few hours, and his agents in Paris would know it.”
“He told you that his purpose was to get the gold from the Paris family?”
“He said that explicitly—that he intended to get every mark of Solomon’s money even if he had to flay him alive.”
“And you told that to the Hellsteins in Paris?”
“As soon as I got there. It happened that I knew Olivie Hellstein, Madame de Brousailles, rather well; I believe she is still living in Paris, and I am sure she will confirm the story. Present, also, were her father and mother; I am not sure if they are still living. It was a painful scene. I don’t know what they paid Göring, but Olivie will know. I read that poor old Solomon died in Paris not long afterward.”
“Here is the situation, Mr. Budd. As a lawyer, I would call this a crime against humanity—several crimes, in fact: kidnaping, assault with deadly weapons, and extortion. It was also a conspiracy to commit those crimes. The question is, would you be willing to tell that story before the court?”
“I have been thinking about it ever since you phoned. As a result of so many years of secret work I have developed a sort of pathological attitude to publicity. It would mean unveiling my role to the public and I shrink from that.”
“Do you expect to do any more such work?”
“I hope very much that I never have to. Suppose I put it this way, Colonel: I don’t want to tell the story, but if I am told that it is my duty to tell it, I will do so. I too have been in the Army, even though it was only with an assimilated rank.”
“My own judgment is that the story should be told, and I think when I report to my superiors they will say the same.”
“All right; then I will tell it.”
“It would be my idea that you should accept Göring’s invitation to appear as a witness for him. Tell frankly what you know about his attitude; tell anything in his favor that you wish—it can’t do any harm. Then let the story of Solomon Hellstein be brought out under cross-examination. Its impact will be greatly increased that way, and since you are their witness, Göring’s lawyers will not be permitted to try to impeach your testimony.”
“I would much rather they were permitted, Colonel. The story is true, and I have nothing to fear from cross-examination. How soon would I be called?”
“The prosecution is closing, and Göring will be the first of the defendants to present his case. We should have to fly you to Nürnberg.”
“How soon would I know your decision?”
“I am quite sure I can give it to you in the next day or two. Can you remain in Washington?” Lanny said that he could and would.
VI
The ex-P.A. reported to his wife, who had been out for a stroll, to renew her impressions of the capital of her native land: buildings with rows of white marble columns, parks with trees waiting for spring, shop windows as full of luxury goods as Fifth Avenue or the Rue de Rivoli, traffic as crowded as anywhere in the world—and behind the façade of splendor, in the center of city blocks, ramshackle, rat-infested slums set apart for Negro workers. Washington was unchanged, except for the number of men and women wearing uniforms and the number of foreign voices you heard.
Lanny told his story, including his prison misadventure. He expected Laurel to be shocked, and she was; but there was the other half of her, for which he had not made allowance—she too took a professional attitude. “Lanny, if you come out of hiding, you can tell your whole story! You can tell it over the radio!”
“Oh, good Lord!” he exclaimed.
“I have been thinking about it for some time. You have wonderful stories, and it’s a shame not to make use of them. We could expand our program to a half hour and let you tell a presidential-agent story in the first part, as bait for the serious matters in the second half.”
“So that’s what you’ve been cooking up!”
“The whole bunch has talked about it, but nobody said anything because they knew you wouldn’t do it. But if you once are out into the open, there’d be no reason for not doing it.”
He didn’t know what to say. He had been a publicity man of a sort for the past year, and he couldn’t help realizing that people would like to hear behind-the-scenes accounts of F.D.R. and Harry the Hop and the rest of them; and about a P.A. who had made eleven trips into Naziland at the risk of his life; about the Berghof, and Karinhall, and the New Chancellery, Hitler and Göring and the little lame Doktor, and Hess who had flown to Scotland, and Strasser who had been shot in the Blood Purge, and Kurt Meissner who had been caught as a spy, and all the others who had risen to heaven and then sunk to hell.
“Think what it would mean to Robbie!” exclaimed the woman writer, hot on the scent of an “exclusive.” When he asked what she meant she explained, “Don’t you know that deep in his heart Robbie must be troubled about the reports that his son was a Nazi sympathizer and perhaps a paid agent of the enemy? Such whispers must be all over Newcastle.”
“They saw me come home in uniform, didn’t they?”
“Yes, but how can they know you didn’t fool the Army? Rumors like that are hard to kill. If it definitely comes out that you were Roosevelt’s agent, everything will be cleared up and Robbie will just about burst with pride.”
“Robbie hated Roosevelt—I think as much as he did Hitler.”
“Almost as much; and for you to be a New Dealer wouldn’t please him at all. But this is a foreign matter and entirely different. You have been on the inside helping to win the war—he’d never get through bragging about it. If you don’t believe it, call him up and ask.”
VII
Lanny couldn’t bring himself to talk about such a subject over the telephone. Instead, he took his wife to look at old masters in the National Gallery; and after that he had a bright idea—he called up the Shoreham and asked for Jim Stotzlmann.
Sure enough, Jim was in town. It was a matter of luck where you found him, for he spent his time between Washington and New York and Reno and Hollywood and Mexico City and Paris and the next place that happened to come into his head. He would cross the continent, dragging a fancy custom-built trailer behind him and taking little more than four days for the trip—seven or eight hundred miles a day was his stint. He had friends in every city, and made more at filling stations and “eats” joints on the way; everybody would open up to him because they liked the idea of being written about in his column that was published in several hundred newspapers. The poet Wordsworth had written that his heart leaped up when he beheld a rainbow in the sky, and here in this land of the free, people’s hearts leaped up when they beheld a celebrity in a drawing-room, or driving a long aluminum house-on-wheels across the prairies and over the Rockies at a mile a minute.
The last time Lanny a
nd Laurel had run into this scion of the great Chicago family in Washington he had said, “Oh, good!” and had taken them to Mrs. McLean’s weekly shindig. That lady whose father had struck it rich was still in the ring, but on her way to death by an overdose of sleeping pills. Now Jim said, “Oh, good! You must come to Mrs. Mesta’s party!” There was a new social queen, it appeared, and a much better one from Jim’s point of view, for Eyalyn Walsh McLean was a near-Fascist, whereas Perle Mesta came from Oklahoma City and had been converted to the Democratic party. Her money came from oil, and it came in gushes; she was the supreme provider of what Jim called “the hot-diggity hoopla.”
Taught by previous experience, Lanny and Laurel had brought along their party clothes. Laurel would wear the same costume she had bought for Evalyn’s party three years ago—one good thing you could say about the war, it had stopped the changes of fashion for a while. Jim came for them in his Cadillac, his secretary acting as chauffeur; when they got near the mansion—a rented one, said Jim—they found such a jam of cars that they had to get out and walk several blocks, fortunately on a mild spring night.
On the way their sponsor talked about Washington society, how it had been changing since the war, surely not for the better. New mobs were pouring in, seeking their fortunes—muleskinners from Missouri and carpetbaggers from the South, as Jim described them. “Not that I’m being snobbish,” he added; “my great-grandfather was a canal boatman, and I guess as tough as they came. But this crowd is frantic to break in anywhere, anyhow. Gate-crashing has become such a nuisance that people issue cards and won’t let even their best friends in without them; the cards specify the number to be admitted.” He added that he had sent his secretary to have his card fixed up for three.
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