Presidential Mission

by Sinclair, Upton;

  However, this state of affairs was convenient for a secret agent, who had no trouble in getting the information he had come for. He heard from the lips of Fernand de Brinon himself the story of how that worthy had brought about the restoration of Pierre Laval. The Nazi governor of Paris was Otto Abetz, red-headed German intellectual who had a French wife as well as a French mistress, and who made a specialty of posing as a friend of Latin culture. Lanny had known him well in the old days when Abetz had lectured in Paris to the elegant, fashionable ladies on how France and Germany must unite to save Europe from Bolshevism. “Le Couple France-Allemand.” was the slogan. Now this dear friend of Marianne had fallen into disfavor with the Gestapo and the Schutzstaffel, because France wasn’t contributing her fair share to the defense of Germany. Herr Hitler was demanding more food, more manufactured goods, more French workers for the factories of Germany, more fighters for his Anti-Bolshevik Legion. The good and kind Herr Abetz was about to be replaced by some such man as Jacques Doriot, one-time Communist agitator who had turned against his gang and was now the most ruthless of Fascist bullies. And instead of the noble-minded old Maréchal, Vichy would have a Gauleiter such as now was ruling Poland.

  It had been M. de Brinon’s duty to bring this information to the old Maréchal and to persuade him to restore Laval to power. It had taken much running back and forth of collaborators between Paris and Vichy, but at last the victory had been won, and the patriotic gentlemen who had saved la patrie for a second time were now reaping their rewards.

  They were going to make a thorough job of the “coupling” this time. There would be no more nonsense of trying to serve two masters, no more provocation to those upon whom the future of France depended. The French workers who were so desperately needed in the German factories would be forced there by shutting down great numbers of factories at home; and to keep them in order meantime, there would be a new police force, special troops trained by the Germans, who had learned the job with their own SA and SS.

  All this Lanny learned from Benoist-Méchin, another Secretary of State to the Premier, whom he invited to lunch and provided with a bottle of the best wine to be found in the town. This high cabinet member revealed that he was going to be entrusted with the presidency of a committee to organize the “Tricolor Legion” and put down once for all the traitorous movements which the puppet De Gaulle was seeking to spread throughout France. The nucleus of the new body was to be the already-existing “Anti-Bolshevik Legion” organized by Jacques Doriot and Eugène Deloncle. “Believe me,” said Benoist-Méchin, “these are fighting men, and they mean business.”

  “I know, I met Deloncle years ago,” replied Lanny, “at the home of my old friend Denis de Bruyne.”

  “Oh, you know De Bruyne?” inquired the cabinet minister. And when Lanny replied that the family were among his oldest friends, the other said: “Then you know Charlot, too.”

  “He is practically my godson. I have lost track of him since the armistice.”

  “He is in Vichy now; a capitaine, and one of my helpers in the organizing of the new Legion.”

  “That is indeed pleasant news for me, M. Benoist-Méchin. The last I had heard of Charlot, he was reported captured by the Germans.”

  “They released him, as they have done many others for whom we were able to vouch.”

  “I have known him since he was a little chap,” Lanny explained. “His mother was one of my dearest friends. It is hard for me to realize that four or five years have passed since I was trying to save him from the French police, when he and his father and brother were charged with taking part in the activities of the Cagoule.”

  “Thank God those dreadful days have passed!” exclaimed the new minister. “France has found her soul again!”

  VI

  Lanny lost no time in getting into touch with Charlot. They embraced, and kissed each other in French fashion, and it wasn’t altogether hypocrisy on the secret agent’s part. A strange duality and duel in the human heart; Lanny loathed everything that Charlot believed; he wanted to see it exterminated from the earth; he wanted to see the advocates of it killed, so long as they were bearing arms in its defense, and here was Charlot, wearing one of its uniforms! Yet, he was Marie de Bruyne’s son, and Marie had been the first woman Lanny had loved with all his soul. On her deathbed she had committed her two boys to the joint care of Lanny and her husband—a curious scene, possible only in predominantly Catholic countries.

  Lanny still thought of Charlot as the boy he had first met in the lovely garden of the Château de Bruyne; a boy well brought up, so polite that it would have seemed odd to an American, but not to Lanny; a boy studious yet full of fun, gentle, affectionate, and adoring Lanny Budd as a model of what a gentleman ought to be. Charlot had been taught all those things which a member of the “two hundred families” should believe, and if Lanny had tried to teach him otherwise he might have broken up the home, which he had no right to do. He had felt obliged to let those boys work out their own destiny, and the result had been that Charlot, ardent and impetuous, had become one of the young French aristocrats who were determined to overthrow la salope. His father had helped to finance the organizing of the reactionary secret society called the Cagoule, and in the fighting which had taken place in the streets of Paris some years ago Charlot had got a slash across the cheek and still bore the honorable scar.

  It was hard to realize that he was thirty-five years of age. He still looked young, and his step was springy, his expression intense. He hadn’t had to fight the Germans, having been stationed in Alsace, where the armies had been surrounded and immobilized until the armistice. “They treated us officers reasonably well,” he said. “And of course it didn’t take le père very long to make them realize that I had been working for Franco-German understanding from a long way back.”

  “How is your father?” Lanny asked. The answer was: “Physically as well as you could expect for a man over eighty; but he is in a situation that is painful to talk about—” Charlot stopped and hesitated; he saw a look of concern on his old friend’s face and added: “You have a better right to know than anybody else, Lanny. He has fallen into the hands of an unscrupulous woman who is plundering him unmercifully.”

  “That is truly sad, Charlot. He has had a weakness that way most of his life. It caused your mother great unhappiness.”

  “I have known about that for a long time. It seems to grow on some men with age. I suppose it is nature’s way of punishing them. Anyhow, there is nothing I can do, for he will not let me talk to him about it. Perhaps if you could go to Paris you might have better success.”

  That led to the subject of Lanny’s attitude to the unhappy world situation. “A dreadful thing, Lanny, that your country should have got into the war on the side of Bolshevism. Do tell me that you have not gone over to that greatest of enemies.”

  “You know my attitude, Charlot, and I cannot change. I am a man of peace and do not take part in any wars. I am here looking for paintings worthy to go into a great American collection.”

  “I am so glad to hear that, Lanny. I could not bear to think of you as an enemy. But if your country helps the Bolsheviks to take all Europe, what will become of the art of painting?”

  “I hope that we shall have enough specimens safe in America, where the Bolsheviks cannot get at them. So the art can be revived.”

  VII

  The capitaine talked for a while about his important assignment, the Tricolor Legion. Lanny perceived that Pierre Laval was planning the same thing in Vichy France that Hitler had done in Germany, the organizing of a private army, a military force of his Party, to replace the army of his country and make permanent his personal grip on power. It was to be a complete outfit, including a youth movement, with banners and slogans and songs. The grown men would have machine guns and hand grenades and rubber truncheons with which to beat their prisoners in the barracks and jails. Charlot’s eyes lighted up with fanatical fervor as he told about it; at last they were going to
put down the labor unions and their revolutionary propaganda, and make sure that the traditional France would survive and dominate Western Europe. Lanny found the German Nazis strange and terrible people, but he found even more fantastic these Fascists of the Spanish and French Catholic pattern, who were building this machinery of repression in the name of Jesus Christ.

  Of course he wouldn’t give a hint of all that. He would be warmhearted and sympathetic, as he had always been with the De Bruyne family. He asked about Charlot’s older brother, Denis, fils, and here was another family tragedy difficult for the younger to talk about. Lanny had known for some time that Denis did not put the same trust in the Germans as his brother did; Denis had thought it his duty to defend his country against the invader. He had fought and been wounded, and had escaped to the south, hoping that France would go on fighting in North Africa. Said Charlot with grief in his voice: “Lanny, I am afraid he has fallen under the spell of the Gaullists. The last I heard of him, he was in Algiers. I wrote, pleading with him, but have not had any reply.”

  “It is something that happens in civil wars, Charlot.” Lanny knew that, as a traditionalist, the capitaine would be impressed by precedents. “I know how in the American Civil War brothers argued with each other; some went north and some went south, and more than once it happened that they met on the battlefield.”

  “I know, Lanny, but think of the disgrace of this! After the wanton attack which the British made upon our unprepared and unresisting Fleet! Now they have set up this wretched puppet, a man who was a mere major general, and yet presumes to constitute himself the government of France!”

  “I understand how you feel, Charlot. Let me tell you that I am hoping to go to North Africa. I have an assignment from a client who is collecting Moorish art. If I do, I will make an effort to find Denis and see if I can do anything to influence him.”

  “Oh, please do!” exclaimed the younger brother. “I cannot talk to him, but he has such respect for your judgment! It is not too late. He might come back here and see what we are doing. I can arrange for him to meet the Maréchal and hear from his Commander-in-Chief personally where his duty lies.”

  “I’ll let you hear from me without fail,” Lanny promised.

  VIII

  The visitor didn’t make an attempt to see the old marshal himself. He knew that pathetic figure only too well, and everything that he could and would say. Nothing useful, nothing new, for at the age of eighty-five he did nothing but repeat what he had been saying all his life. If you disagreed with him he would become greatly excited and his attendants would interrupt to protect him; if you just listened, he would pause, and his head would begin to nod and he would fall into a doze. Now he had surrendered all real power to the evil Laval, and would serve as a figurehead to make the masses of the French people, who adored him as the hero of Verdun, believe that la patrie was in the hands of an all-wise and all-benevolent father, a deputy of God.

  What Lanny wanted to do was to make his report and move on from this health resort before it became unhealthy for him; before his visits attracted too much attention from the Gestapo and caused them to look up his recent doings. But just as he was making inquiries about travel accommodations to the south, he ran into Count René de Chambrun, descendant of the Marquis de Lafayette and husband of Pierre Laval’s only daughter. He was sitting in one of those iron chairs in front of a café, an agile little man who always made Lanny think of a jockey. He was a lawyer and a tireless errand boy for his great beau-père.

  Now he said: “By the way, M. Budd, I mentioned your presence in town to the Premier, and he expressed the hope that he might see you before you depart.”

  That, of course, was an honor, and Lanny responded: “I know how busy he must be, and feared that I might be breaking in on important matters of state.”

  “He always finds time for his old friends, M. Budd, and especially those who bring news from abroad.”

  Next morning Lanny received a telegram requesting him to call the Premier’s secretary, and when he did so he was invited to be on hand at the end of the working day, to be taken out to Chateldon for the night. He accepted with pleasure. Sitting in the well-cushioned seat of a custom-built Daimler and speeding over the Allier plain toward the mountains, he listened while Pierre Laval poured out his indignation against Franklin D. Roosevelt, Cordell Hull, and Sumner Welles, because of the extreme discourtesy with which these gentlemen had received the news of the change in the Vichy government. Really, it was as if Laval thought his visitor had had something to do with it, or could do something about it. Lanny broke in, laughing: “Écoutez, cher Maître, you must understand that these statesmen are at the opposite pole of thinking from myself. If I could have my way, they would be bounced out on their behinds. Since I cannot do that, I have come back to live in my fosterland, my godmotherland, if you like, the place where I used to be happy and hope some day to be again.”

  “Yes, yes, I understand, M. Budd. I just need somebody to tell my troubles to. It is incomprehensible to me why those Americans should feel such bitterness toward myself, and should persist in a policy which can help nobody but the Red dictator.”

  “I can only guess at the minds of the commercial gentlemen who control America’s policy. My father is one of them, and even him I cannot understand. It appears that they fear the rivalry of Germany, and the system of government control of foreign trade.”

  “But it was the Russians who devised that system and taught it to the Germans. And surely the trade rivalry of Britain is a greater menace than that of Germany!”

  “Big businessmen do not see very far ahead as a rule. Their motto is, one at a time. I suppose that Russia will be next, and then Britain—who can guess?”

  So a smooth-talking agent soothed his victim, and presently the new Premier was telling the wonderful plans he had for the restoration of all France—of course in loyal collaboration with the Germans, for that was the cornerstone of policy. “I desire a German victory,” declared Pierre Laval. “Indeed, I consider that a German victory has been achieved, and that to reverse it would involve the total destruction of Europe.”

  Accordingly, he went on to declare, the government of French North Africa was furnishing food to the army of General Rommel in Italian North Africa and intended to go on doing so regardless of anything that America might say or do. Accordingly, the government had worked out elaborate plans for making the French workers want to go to Germany, and for sending them whether they wanted to or not. Pierre Laval clenched his hairy fists and used the language of a butcher’s son in expressing his hatred of the men who were secretly trying to thwart this policy and his determination to stamp their faces into their own excrement.

  IX

  Just as Lanny addressed Roosevelt as “Governor” because he had once been Governor of New York State, so he addressed Laval as “cher Maître” because Laval once had been a practicing lawyer in Paris and liked to look back upon those days when success had somehow been more successful than now. The son of the village butcher and tavernkeeper had found out how to make money by showing the rich how to evade their income taxes, and by getting a “cut” in many great enterprises which wanted to break the laws of the Republic safely. He had come back to the place of his birth and had had the satisfaction of buying the ancient Château de Chateldon which dominated the scene. The estate included a comfortable manor house in which Pierre lived with his long-suffering wife, their adored daughter, and the daughter’s noble husband, who had been purchased at a price which some placed at seven figures and some at eight.

  Here they were, and they were glad to see the agreeable art expert after the lapse of a year. He had an interesting story to tell about his plane wreck and his yachting trip through the South Seas. He said that he had come out by way of China and didn’t mention the Soviet Union, nor did he take too long with his tale, for he wanted Laval to do the talking, and he knew that this family didn’t really care very much about anything in the world except the
intrigues by which they had got power and the menaces and bribes by which they were keeping it. The greedy and vulgar man with the dark complexion and the slanting eyes, which had caused his enemies to call him “the Mongolian rascal,” had not one word of reprobation concerning the wholesale murders of French men and women which the Nazis were carrying on all over the occupied portions of the country. He justified their scheme of compelling the French to print and give to them three hundred million paper francs every day, including Sundays and holidays. This was supposed to be for the upkeep of the German army of occupation, but the Nazi economic commissions were using it to buy up the most important industrial properties of the captive land. Laval was following his old practice of getting a rake-off on many of these—for his services in browbeating the owners into giving way.

  The tactful Lanny didn’t mention any such aspects of the “collaboration” program. What he said was: “They tell me you gave your enemies a drubbing at Riom while I was making my way through China.” That was enough to start the ex-butcher boy off and keep him going all through a dinner en famille. Laval didn’t say so, but he knew perfectly well that the world considered him to have got much the worst of the proceedings. He had put Daladier and Reynaud and Blum, and the rest of his opponents in the prewar government of France, on trial for their lives. He had done it against his own judgment, for he knew how much he had to hide. Hitler and Abetz and others of his new masters had demanded it, hoping to prove these men guilty of causing the war. Instead, the trial had turned into an effort to prove the defendants guilty of losing the war, a different matter and no crime in Nazi eyes. They had put up such a vigorous defense of their public course that the trial had dominated the news of the world. The Nazis had ordered it stopped, and those too eloquent public men were shut up in fortresses—whether guilty or innocent.