“I would prefer that you made it, because I would want it to be strictly between us. You would go for me and report to me and say nothing about it to anyone else unless I authorized you to.”
“That part is all right; I dealt with the Governor for eight years on that basis. You would give me a letter to Stalin?”
“Surely. I would say that you are my friend and ask him to receive you as his friend. I could give you no definite proposal; I would just want you to talk to him as you have talked to me. Tell him my difficulties, as I have explained them; explain America to him—perhaps he doesn’t always get the truth.”
“That, I have no doubt, is the case.”
“Very well then; talk to him heart to heart, if he will let you, and see if you cannot work out some suggestions as to how to arrest the growing hostility between our two countries.”
“All I can answer,” said Lanny, “is that if you ask me to carry out such a mission, I will do my best.”
The President, having said that he could make no definite proposal, proceeded to suggest possible proposals and invited the son of Budd-Erling to do the same. Might it not somehow be possible that Stalin would content himself with developing the Communist society in those vast parts of the world which he now controlled, and leave the peoples of the rest of the world free to choose what form of government and economic system they wished to live under?
Lanny replied, “Shall I tell you what Stalin will answer to that proposal? He will say that capitalism does not leave the people free to make such a choice. He will point out that the reactionary Greek government is killing Communists rather freely. That is true; and what shall I answer?”
“Tell him that we might work out joint plans for a plebiscite in each country, and both sides agree to submit to a democratic decision.”
Lanny couldn’t help smiling. “You might have a hard time persuading the Greek government to accept that program.”
“They want money from us,” said Truman; “and it is for us to state the terms on which we are willing to put it up.”
Still more complex was the problem of the atomic bomb that was hanging over Tovarish Molotov’s head. The American government had proposed the so-called Baruch Plan, whereby all governments agreed to submit to international inspection as preliminary to the destruction of the American store of atomic bombs. Manifestly, that would be bad for any country which cherished ideas of ever again taking up arms; but what harm could it do to a country that had genuinely and sincerely given up the thought of resorting to military force?
Harry Truman asked that, and Lanny Budd answered, “You are dealing with the most suspicious and distrustful group of men in the world. All I can say is, I’ll discuss it with their leader and bring you back an exact report of what he says. Shall I call on the Russian Ambassador and arrange for my application to Stalin?”
Said the President, “That might well cause a leak here in Washington. Why not make a try at sending a cablegram direct to Stalin himself? Remind him of his previous invitation and tell him you are ready to come now if he will receive you. Ask him to reply in care of Western Union and wait and see what happens.”
“All right,” said the P.A., no longer “ex.”
IX
Lanny spent the night in solitary grandeur in one of the spacious bedrooms of the White House. He was free to imagine how many kings and princes, statesmen and other great, had preceded him; but no ghosts haunted him, and he lay for an hour or two fixing in his mind the instructions he had received. When he was awake and dressed, he went downstairs, and breakfast was served him alone; the President, he had read, kept a farm boy’s hours and had been in his office long since. Lanny had the name of a secretary with whom he was to keep in touch, and now he asked for a taxi and had himself driven to the nearest telegraph office.
He wrote a message to Marshal Joseph Stalin, Kremlin, Moscow, reminding him of their previous meetings and saying that he had a communication of interest and would be glad to come if the invitation still stood. The girl who took this message gazed at the handsome gentleman with curiosity unconcealed; he wondered if she would consider it her duty to report him to the F.B.I., or possibly to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He paid for the message, walked to the hotel where his wife was staying, and registered himself and reregistered her, “Mr. and Mrs.” He told her that he had again been placed in the position of not talking about what he was doing.
X
The visiting couple entertained themselves in Washington. They called on Mrs. Perle Mesta and listened to that well-informed lady’s opinion on the Democratic party’s prospects in the coming congressional elections—not so good. Laurel called on the senator’s wife whom she had met, and heard more of the same news. It appeared that after a war the people didn’t find things as they wanted them and always insisted upon a change. The President’s supporters were all making apologies for his boners.
Every day the Peace promoters called Edgemere, N. J., heard the news, and gave instructions. The second day was Thursday, and as they now had a Washington station on their chain the New York station arranged for Lanny to broadcast from where he was. He told about the secrets he had been digging out of the Gestapo files, and it made as good a story as anybody could want. Afterward the pair listened while John Haynes Holmes, in New York, gave an eloquent and moving statement of his belief that no political or economic movement, however soundly based, could bring permanent good to mankind unless it recognized the spiritual and moral nature of man and appealed to those forces in his heart. He talked about Gandhi and what this frail saint had to teach self-confident Americans.
Next morning came a telephone call from the Russian Embassy; the Ambassador, Mr. Novikov, desired to know if Mr. Budd would do him the honor to call. Mr. Budd would do so, and was informed that the Ambassador had received instructions from his government to provide Mr. Budd with a visa to enter the Soviet Union, and to advise them by what route he preferred to travel. Mr. Budd replied that he would fly by way of England and Sweden. He was told that if he would inform the Russian Embassy in Stockholm when he expected to reach that city, arrangements would be made there to fly him to Moscow. He could guess that the polite Mr. Novikov might have some curiosity concerning this trip, but if his own government hadn’t seen fit to inform him, it wasn’t Lanny’s business to do so.
The P.A. phoned the White House secretary and was told to go to the State Department, now settled in its fancy new home in what is known as Washington’s “Foggy Bottom.” His passport was prepared in record time, and he took it to the Russian Embassy and had the visa stamped on it. He was to be flown next morning from La Guardia Field in an American commercial plane, his passage paid by the White House. From England he would be flown in a British commercial plane. From there on he would be the guest of the onetime secretary of the Bolsheviki. (“Majority” the word meant, but not a majority of the Russian people, only of the delegates to a revolutionary party conference, held near the beginning of the century.)
He went back to the hotel and packed his belongings and his wife’s. A messenger came from the White House, bringing the letter to Stalin which President Truman had promised to write. So everything was ready, and when Laurel came in from a walk they had lunch and then stepped into their car. Secret diplomacy and matrimony do not go well together, for he couldn’t discuss his plans and it left a gap in their conversation.
He was free to tell her about the plowboy who had risen so high; others had done so in the past. He was honest, and had come honestly by the many enemies he had made in the course of more than a year. That he was ignorant about many things was unfortunate, but what really mattered was that he said he was ignorant, and was determined not to remain so. He was a democrat both in the small-letter sense of that word and in the capital-letter sense; he believed in the plain people, liked them, trusted them, and meant to serve them. He had been a soldier and hated war—and that too was in the American tradition. There had been many soldier
-Presidents, and one and all they had craved peace.
33
Peace in Thy Right Hand
I
Home at Edgemere, Lanny reported to his friends. Gerald de Groot would continue the radio announcing. The revived P.A. spent a good part of the night reading and answering his mail, and early in the morning drove his wife across New York City to the airfield—she would drive the car back. The weather reports were favorable, and so was the season; he promised to cable her from London, and pretended not to notice when she wiped away tears. It would be that cold northern route on which he had so nearly lost his life.
The great silver bird rose into the sky, and he settled down to read a load of newspapers and magazines. Flying had become commonplace; one patch of sea and cloud looked exactly like the next, and what a civilized man wanted to know was what had been said in Congress and in Parliament, and what Jimmy Byrnes had been able to accomplish at the meeting of the Big Four foreign ministers in Paris. At the scheduled time they settled down on the immense airport in Newfoundland, which Lanny had seen at various stages of its growth throughout the war. Thousands upon thousands of great planes had been flying eastward—and fewer coming back!
They flew again. This time the sun was shining and the wind was light; they were flying straight to Scotland, not stopping at either Iceland or Greenland, as they did in bad weather. At the seaside town of Prestwick another of these great airports had been constructed; unlike most of the products of war, these could be used in peacetime. Since his plane for Stockholm did not fly until the next day, he phoned Wickthorpe and asked that Frances be sent in to his hotel. Irma was in a state of excitement because he had cabled that he wanted to take the child back to the States with him.
He was flown to London, and there he got in touch with Scrubbie, who had just got his discharge from the RAF. They would have another party, and it would be a case where three wouldn’t be a crowd. He found that the friendship had been progressing normally, and of course both the young people were enraptured by the idea of flying back to America. When Frances was alone with her father she asked, “Don’t you think he’s a lovely person?” He told her that he didn’t know anyone more so, and then added, “Don’t fall in love too hard.” She promised not to, but told him, “I think it’s rather nice to have the idea.”
The three went for a stroll in Hyde Park, to look at the tulips and other pleasant sights. “Oh, to be in England now that April’s there!” So a homesick poet had written from Italy, and went on to say, “And after April, when May follows, and the white-throat builds, and all the swallows!” Many kinds of birds were here, enjoying the sunshine along with the elegant ladies and gentlemen, walking or riding. The war had been over nearly a year, and not a bomb had fallen in that time; all the creatures were glad to be alive, and Scrubbie, watching the swallows, said he was well satisfied to leave the air to them. No more darting and swooping—but walking on a smooth graveled path with the girl of his choice.
II
Again the much-traveled courier took off, northeastward across the North Sea and the tiny flat farms of Denmark. The last time he had made this trip the route had been indirect and top secret, but now it was one more milk run. They came to a beautiful clean city of small islands and large bridges and glided down to a rest. The last time, Lanny had been on his way to see Hitler, and this time it was another and different dictator. With all his heart he hoped that the differences were greater than the resemblances.
All he had to do now was to go to the Grand Hotel and from there telephone the Russian Embassy and announce his arrival. Not more than half an hour passed before an attaché brought the necessary papers and the information that his plane would fly next morning. From the extreme deference with which he was treated he could guess that this Embassy had information as to the reason for his trip. There was an evening for Lanny to spend with Eric Erickson, Swedish-American oil man who had been a secret agent of the OSS.
Once more into the air, this time in a Russian government plane—there was no other sort. The passengers, of whom there were a dozen, must have known that he was an American by his clothing and his bags; they bowed politely, but no one offered to chat. He read the latest issue of Dr. Rhine’s Journal of Parapsychology—of which he could be sure they would not be permitted to approve.
Apparently the officers of the plane did not care how much of the city of Stockholm people saw or how much of the Baltic Sea; but when they neared the Russian coast, covers made of some composition board were put over all the windows, and there they stayed. Winston Churchill had talked about the iron curtain, and now Lanny discovered that there were plywood curtains also.
When the plane came down a couple of hours later and half the passengers got off, he was free to guess that it was Leningrad, but nobody told him and he did not ask. Other passengers came aboard, looked at him curiously and bowed, but left the seat beside him vacant. The plane rose again, and he was free to guess that Moscow would be next. He read awhile, then thought awhile, going over in his mind the things he wished to say to the Boss of the Soviet Union—an opportunity that few foreigners had and fewer had twice.
Was Stalin really the Boss? He denied it vigorously, but few paid attention to that denial. You could read that his power was still as great as ever; in other places you could read that he was old and tired and left decisions to the Politburo. Lanny couldn’t expect to talk to the Politburo and had to assume that what he said to Stalin would count.
He could imagine the vast treeless spaces of this part of Russia, a year after the end of the most dreadful of wars. They were due to be green with grain—if the peasants had been able to get them plowed. All that the traveler saw was the long compartment of a plane, full of officers and civilians, some of them chatting, some dozing, some just sitting and staring ahead, as if they found life in the new world no different from the old.
III
The plane came down after another couple of hours, and there was Lanny’s escort, a young Army officer, speaking precise copybook English. There were no customs formalities or other delays; the visitor was driven in a Lincoln car to the Metropole Hotel and told that his engagement with the Marshal would be at nine that evening. They served him one of those enormous Russian meals, several times as much as he could eat; he could only hope that the rest would not be wasted.
Captain Briansky offered to drive him to any of the sights he might like to see, but he chose to walk and stretch his legs. Since he knew few Russian words, the officer offered to act as his interpreter, and Lanny expressed himself as grateful. He was left to guess whether this was a courtesy or a precaution. He knew that the Russians were suspicious of foreigners, and naturally this made him suspicious of Russians.
Four years had passed since Lanny had strolled on the streets of Moscow. That had been the time of its greatest peril, with the German armies almost within artillery range and a spring offensive certain. There had been great bomb damage, and now it had mostly been repaired. Everybody was working—how efficiently was a matter of controversy, depending upon whether you read Russian or English. The people appeared tired and wore old clothing. This latter seemed more important to an American visitor than it did to the Russians, who for more than a generation had been living under war conditions, or war-preparation conditions, not so different.
It was a great and ancient city, with monuments and historical landmarks, most of which Lanny had seen. It was overcrowded, like all modern cities; people persist in moving into them in spite of discomforts. To a man fresh from Washington, with its shiny new marble buildings, and New York, with its Fifth-Avenue luxury shops and Park-Avenue elegance, Moscow seemed an enormous slum; but the people were working, and all were moving steadily. What was in their minds was something he had no chance to find out. He was trying to spare them the possibility of someday having an atomic bomb go off over their heads, and he could guess that if they had known about his effort they would have wished him luck.
IV
At a quarter to nine the car came to the hotel, and Lanny and his escort were driven to the near-by Kremlin, that ancient, high-walled fortress behind which the Tsars of old had kept themselves hidden from danger. In front of it is the immense Red Square, with the tomb of Lenin close against the wall. Lenin had won, and so he was a hero, a seer, a lay saint. Inside the walled enclosure were many buildings, and in one of them—only a chosen few knew which—Lenin’s successor had his modest apartment.
Inside the gate the car halted and was searched by soldiers with flashlights. Then it went on, winding here and there, and stopped in front of one of the old buildings in semi-darkness. Two soldiers stood on duty, and the captain spoke a few words and then led his visitor inside. There was an anteroom, and through an open door he entered the strange oval-shaped room in which four years ago he had had his conference. The ceiling was vaulted, and the walls paneled with white oak, alternating with surfaces of plaster. At one end was a flat-topped desk, with a chair in front of it and an armchair beside it. At the other side was a smaller chair in which sat a young man, slender and dark, the same who had served as interpreter on Lanny’s previous visit. He rose but was not introduced.
Everything in that room was the same; Lanny could even imagine that the books on the desk were the same. There were several telephones, each of a different color to distinguish them. In the bookcase against the wall were the works of Lenin, and two encyclopedias, the Soviet one and the German Brockhaus. Near the entrance door was a glass case with a death mask of Lenin, and a grandfather’s clock made of ebony. On the walls were portraits of Marx and Engels, with the heavy whiskers of our great-grandfathers’ day. Nothing had changed in four years. Through an open door Lanny looked into a room containing a long table and maps on the walls; he could guess that it was the council room in which the defense of the Soviet Fatherland had been planned.
O Shepherd, Speak! Page 69