Presidential Mission

by Sinclair, Upton;

  Raoul described the wild scenes when the German advance began. “It was at four o’clock in the morning, nineteen days after your D-day. They came in by the Castigneau gate, and their planes dropped flares to illuminate the warships, and magnetic mines to block the entrance to the roadstead. We learned afterward that there were German and Italian subs outside, ready to torpedo any vessels that got out. The enemy headed for the arsenal, where the headquarters were; others had pontoons to take them out to the ships. But a signal gun was fired and it brought the whole Fleet into action.”

  A strange story this observer narrated about the order to sink the Fleet. It had been given more than two years ago, and all plans had been made. Now, when the Germans were ready to move, Hitler sent a letter to Pétain, demanding that the Fleet be surrendered, and threatening dire penalties if it resisted. The poor old Maréchal gave way and countermanded the order; but the stupid Germans had cut all the telephone and telegraph lines into the city, and there was no way for the countermand to reach the Fleet in time.

  Said the Spanish eyewitness: “It was a scene like nothing this side of hell. All the magazines on seventy war vessels began to explode. I was on top of the Grand Hotel, with Catroux and Mlle. Bléret, and we though we were going to be knocked off by the concussion. The first to go was the battleship Strasbourg, and after that there was a roar every minute or so. The sky was like the inside of a steel furnace. Many of the sailors stayed with the Fleet, to make sure the Germans didn’t get aboard to stop the sinking. Some turned machine guns on the German planes, and others fired big guns at the arsenal, to wreck that for the enemy. We succeeded in setting off its huge store of explosives, and the wreckage rained all over the city. There were ammunition dumps burning and exploding all the way around the port, at Cépet, at Sicié, over the Saron, at Cap Brun, Carqueiranne—everywhere you looked; all the big guns and mortars were destroyed, and their ammunition, too. When the Fleet officers had once made up their minds they did their duty, and stayed on the bridges of their ships until they rolled over or went down; some fought off the Germans while the job was being done. By ten o’clock in the morning all the big ships were sunk and only half a dozen small ones afloat. The whole harbor was a mass of black smoke, and you could hardly find your way about in town. Burning oil almost suffocated people.”

  “Well, we could have used those ships,” Lanny said; “but so long as we know the Germans won’t get them, we can rest.” He asked about their friends, and Raoul said they were hiding in the city. He himself had made his way down the coast at night and found a sailor-comrade who helped him to stow away and get to Algiers.

  “I wanted to see you,” he explained, “and to make contact with the O.S.S. again. I didn’t know where you were, but I thought a letter in care of Mr. Murphy would reach you. Before I had a chance to write it I was picked up by the flics, and of course my papers were wrong. I suppose they had a complete set of fingerprints from France.”

  “Your letter came just in time,” Lanny told him. “Mr. Murphy will introduce you to the O.S.S. men here. What do you have in mind for the future?”

  “What I want is to get back into France and rejoin our friends, but of course with the backing of the Americans, so that we can get weapons and supplies. I suppose your armies will be coming very soon now, won’t they, Lanny?”

  The P.A. had to reply: “I don’t know, Raoul, and I couldn’t tell you if I did. The military will keep that a secret until D-day, just as they did here.”

  IV

  All the spare time that Lanny had in Algiers, he thought about Stalin. He remembered everything the Red Marshal had said to him in a two-hour conference, and he tried to imagine everything the Red Marshal might say now, after nearly a year. Still more important, he imagined what a presidential agent might, could, and should say to a Red Marshal—a vast anthology of military and political facts and philosophy. He weighed each item, and compared it with others; he selected the best, and then polished it diligently upon his mental emery wheel. Whenever the machinery threatened to slow down, he lubricated it with the thought that the future of the world might depend upon what an American Democrat said to a Russian Leninist. Peace, understanding; friendship—these were the key words his Big Boss had given him.

  He reported to Murphy that he was ready, and was told to be at the Maison Blanche airport at eight the next morning. Transportation to the airport, twenty miles from the city, was difficult to obtain, so the Minister offered the use of his car; Lanny would have to go early so that Murphy would have the car in time to get from his villa to his office. So it came about that at dawn Lanny was sitting on a bench at the completely blacked-out air base which the Americans had been running for nearly three months—it was now the beginning of February. He had twenty ten-thousand-franc banknotes sewed up in the lining of his coat, and some of smaller denominations in his billfold. He could not know how long his journey might be, or what part of it he might have to pay for.

  When daylight came the passenger saw that the field was so crowded with planes of every sort that they were parked wing to wing: British Spitfires and Warhawks, Blenheims and Wellingtons, American Lightnings and Mitchells, Bostons and Flying Fortresses; also Douglas and other kinds of transport planes, affectionately dubbed “flying boxcars.” A new one was coming or going every minute or two, and the speed and precision with which the jobs were handled were heartening to a man who had been watching more than three years of world-wide defeat.

  This was “American efficiency”—thousands of men, all young, and all on their toes. Apparently they knew everything there was to know about airplanes, and they signaled them in, ran them to one side, serviced them, repaired them if need be, and waved them on their way again, all with the speed and snap of football squads practicing. Jeeps and trucks were rolling here and there, distributing supplies. Negro labor groups were digging slit trenches, placing anti-aircraft guns on the heights near by, building new hangars and storerooms. Bulldozers and cement mixers were making the field bigger and widening the roads. “This is the Army”—so ran the words of a song, and it was much pleasanter watching it than listening to the wrangling of politicians.

  The morning was bitterly cold, and in spite of having his winter overcoat, Lanny had to get up and move about now and then. The circumstances reminded him inevitably of a previous time when he had sat at a military airport awaiting transportation. That had been seventeen months before, and the place had been a long way off, the Gander airport in Newfoundland. The Army had undertaken to deliver him to Scotland by way of Iceland or Greenland, depending upon the weather. Their calculations had failed, and they had plunged him into the Atlantic Ocean. A most unpleasant experience, and Lanny couldn’t help recalling it every time he stepped into a plane.

  While grounded in Newfoundland he had chatted with a pilot who had told him about the art of navigating in fogs and storms, and then with a fellow passenger who had had a premonitory dream and had been so frightened that he ran away and didn’t continue on the trip. Lanny hadn’t had any dream, but Laurel had had a warning in one of her trances; Lanny wondered if she had had anything of the sort now, and if there might by any chance be a cablegram awaiting him at Murphy’s office. He tried to comfort himself with the old adage that lightning never strikes twice in the same place; but he knew that wasn’t so—there were exposed points such as trees and crags and steeples that were struck by lightning over and over again. His thoughts moved on to an item he had read in Le Soir of Algiers, that one of the planes carrying the military conferees from Casablanca had crashed at Gibraltar, and Brigadier Dykes, a British officer, had been killed.

  V

  The son of Budd-Erling knew a lot about planes, and he watched them and was pleased to see Budd-Erling pursuits of the newest type. He would have liked to ask how they were doing, but he didn’t want to attract attention to himself, and anyhow, nobody here had time for chatting. He observed American bombers going out, and British bombers coming in—the Americans took
the day missions and left the night missions to their allies. There were fighters “revved up” and ready at all hours; but the Army’s warning system was well established now, and the Germans did not venture into this territory so freely as they had done at the outset. “We are pushing them back,” remarked the young officer who had charge of Lanny’s departure.

  The passenger had observed a light two-seater plane being made ready. It was a British reconnaissance plane, what they called a “recce.” Lanny was led to it, and introduced to Flight Lieutenant Weybridge—leftenant, he called it himself, but he had become used to Americanisms. He was a short, bright-eyed lad, a blond who evidently didn’t take to hot climates, for the end of his nose was red and peeling. He was a Londoner, and his accent betrayed the fact that he did not wear the old-school tie. The caste system in the Royal Air Force was gone—forever, Lanny hoped. His first question was whether the young man knew either of the Pomeroy-Nielsons. The reply was: “No, there are too many of us these days.” Lanny said: “The more the merrier.”

  This plane had no armament and no photographic apparatus. Lanny observed several small bags, of the size and shape of mailbags, stowed here and there in the cockpit, and others were brought and piled around him after he had climbed in. Evidently it was a mail and dispatch plane; but Lanny made no comment and asked no questions—it is not good form in wartime. He himself was one more piece of baggage, a hundred-and-sixty-pound package, to be delivered at Cairo. They put a flying suit on him, and a parachute on top of that, and they strapped him with a heavy leather belt. The American officer who had him in charge remarked: “This belt is not to be unstrapped while you are in the air, unless you are bailing out. Are you familiar with the use of a parachute?”

  “I have been told that you must count ten before you pull the ripcord.”

  “Do not fail to count, and don’t count too fast. As you leave the plane, throw yourself as far from it as possible. In landing, try to land feet first and backward, and roll with the chute. In the left breast pocket of the flying suit is a leaflet in the Arabic language. It asks the natives to take care of you and promises them a liberal reward if they deliver you to an American or British military post.”

  “I have seen one of these circulars,” Lanny said, and added with a grin, “but I have not read it.”

  “I hope you won’t need to,” replied the other. “Happy landing, sir.”

  “Thank you, sir,” replied the passenger. The blocks were drawn from under the wheels of the plane, the engine began to roar, and the plane rolled down the field, faster and faster, then lifted itself into the air and swung away into the newly risen sun.

  VI

  Two men sitting side by side didn’t have to turn and shout into each other’s ears; they had an “intercom,” with earphones, and while the engine roared they chatted as comfortably as if they had been drinking tea in a London drawing-room. They were climbing high, swinging toward the south, over the mountains. The young R.A.F. lieutenant explained: “We give a wide berth to Tunisia, to keep out of Jerry’s way.”

  “Jerry doesn’t patrol to the south?” inquired the passenger.

  “We are keeping him busy trying to protect his airfields and munitions dumps. The only time he goes afield is when the Long Range Desert Group drive him crazy and he takes out after them.”

  Lanny had heard talk about this new kind of warfare which had been invented by the Eighth Army, and in which both British and Americans had been taking part. Land commandos, they might be called; they operated with jeeps and trucks, carrying their own water, petrol, and food. They would travel through the wastes of the interior, hiding in the wadis, and come out to the coast at night to surprise the Italian and German airfields, military posts, and truck convoys. They would kill everybody in sight, wreck planes, set fire to stores and ammunition dumps, and then disappear into the recesses of the Sahara. “Plenty of room there,” commented the flight officer.

  “About three and a half million square miles, I have read,” responded Lanny. “It extends farther than most people realize, from the Atlantic Ocean all the way to Mesopotamia.”

  “I have flown over pretty nearly all of it. They sent me to Bagdad once with some emergency stuff.”

  This young flyer had seen only about four months of service, but what months they had been! He had been flown in an American transport plane from England to Cairo by way of the Cape Verde Islands, the Gold Coast, and the heart of Africa. He had been one of that freshly trained R.A.F. group which had made possible the victory at El Alamein by knocking out the Luftwaffe and keeping it out; a desperate battle, like that over Britain, lasting for several weeks. When the advance of the Eighth Army had begun, it had been his job to fly ahead and wreck enemy transport and airfields. He had hoped to keep this up for the whole fifteen-hundred-mile anabasis across the top of Africa; but a bullet had gone through his shoulder, and after he had been patched up he had been used as a sort of office boy of the air. He didn’t say any more than that about his duties.

  Lanny listened to stories of the fighting, and in fair exchange told the flight officer about his friend Rick, who had had one knee damaged in a crash during World War I, and about the two sons who had become flyers in the present war, and what had happened to them. Lanny didn’t say anything about having been in Germany and seen the Nazi Air Marshal decorating German flyers; for that might have taken a lot of explaining, and he was traveling as an art expert, and no questions asked. The battle with the Luftwaffe over three continents provided subjects enough for friendly intercourse.

  The distance they had to fly was about two thousand miles, and they were going straight through, the young pilot said. After they were in Tripolitania they would veer northeastward toward the coast, where they would have fields to land in should need arise. At this time the British had driven Rommel clean into Tunisia, where he was now digging in for his last stand. They talked about this for a while, and how long it might be before the Allies would have forces enough to break in from the west. Sooner or later there would be a grand assault all along the line, and the Desert Fox and his once-proud army would be bottled up and forced to surrender. “This spring, for sure,” ventured the passenger.

  VII

  They were over the Sahara, about due south of Bizerte, the pilot said. A completely uninhabited country, except that here and there a shepherd kept his flock by some ancient well, no longer dependable. There were none of the “lone and level sands” of Shelley’s sonnet; in fact, you rarely find these in the Sahara, because there are terrific windstorms which pile the sands into dunes and high ridges. In many parts there are only wastes of rock, with the remains of old watercourses. So it was beneath them now, said the pilot; but from the height of a mile only deep depressions showed. No longer were there oases, spots of bright green; from here eastward everything was brown or gray. It was an unmapped region, given up to the jackal and the wild camel. Weybridge remarked that if you flew low you might see a few stones, one on top of another, revealing the fact that people had once lived here. “Maybe hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago,” said he, and added: “Hot as all hell, it is.”

  It was cold up in the air, and Lanny was glad of his cumbersome flying suit. Both heat and cold are inimical to man, and he exists precariously balanced between then Lanny reflected upon those forces of nature, which are crude, but cannot be called cruel, because they do not know man and have no interest in him. It is up to man to master them if he can. Here, in freezing air, looking down upon a furnace of blazing sunshine unprotected by any trace of cloud, Lanny contemplated one of his familiar ideas, the feebleness of man confronting these natural forces, and the tragedy of the fact that he cannot concentrate upon overcoming them, but has to devote the greater part of his attention to conflicts with his fellow men.

  Lanny Budd was the son and grandson and great-grandson of merchants of death; he had been born and reared and educated on money made by the manufacture and sale of instruments of death; he was flying now i
n a warplane, upon an errand of war, even though he persuaded himself, as men do, that it was one of peace. He asked himself whether man was doomed because he could not deliver himself from the curse of war. Lanny’s was a mind that was not content to contemplate landscapes in desert sunshine, to converse about airplanes and their speeds and ranges and various gadgets, about military events and their prospects; it was a mind that kept asking itself fundamental questions: What am I here for? What am I doing? Why can it not be brought about that men will live in peace and safety, with dignity and mutual consideration, instead of turning every new discovery to the art of destruction, and raising one generation after another to commit mass suicide?

  VIII

  While the philosopher reflected, the engine of the military plane roared on, the propeller whirled, and the war vehicle was drawn through the air at a speed of a mile every twelve or fifteen seconds. Until suddenly—military events were becoming more and more sudden—there was a series of tearing, splintering sounds. Lanny looked at the young Londoner, intending to ask what it was, and was horrified to observe that the man had fallen forward upon the steering wheel, and that his gray brains and bright red blood were pouring out of a gaping hole in the back of his head. The windshield in front of him was shattered, and the instrument board wrecked. Lanny looked out in front and saw an enemy fighter plane, a little above and streaking ahead; he knew that this plane had dived upon them and machine-gunned them without the sounds being heard above the roar of their own propeller.

  And there in a fast-speeding plane was the son of Budd-Erling, who had never flown a plane or tried to fly one, and knew only what he had learned from the conversation of his father and friends. In front of him was a second steering wheel, a stick, an instrument board, intended for the use of a co-pilot, but surely not of an art expert. He knew that the stabilizer was set, the automatic device which the Americans called the “iron Mike” and the British called “George”; the plane would go on flying, level and straight ahead. But how would he divert it to Tripoli or one of those other airfields which lined the coast? And how would he land it?