Presidential Mission

by Sinclair, Upton;

  The last one was passing, and Lanny had covered less than half the distance to their trail. Again he shouted—but how feebly against the racket of a dozen bells! In desperation he stopped, picked up a stone, and threw it with all the strength he could muster. It went no more than half the distance, but it hit the ground and kicked up the dust, and perhaps caused the camel to start, and so caused the driver to sit up and look. He saw a man, not white, but wearing white man’s clothes, staggering toward him waving a yellowish flag. The driver shouted, the caravan came to a halt, and all the others turned to look. The once-white man staggered and fell forward with his face upon the hot ground.

  XIII

  Desert men didn’t have to be told what was the matter, or what this stranger wanted. They lifted him to a sitting position and put a bottle of blessed water to his lips. Then they picked him up and set him on one of the camels, in front of the driver, so that the driver could hold him in place. The caravan set forward again, and to the jangling of bells and a rocking motion like that of a small boat on the ocean, Lanny Budd came back to consciousness and life. He needed only one thing, water and more water, not merely to keep his blood normal, but to make perspiration to cool his body. The Arab apparently didn’t know a word of either French or English, but he understood pointing to the mouth and lent his bottle again and again.

  When they halted for a midday rest, one of the camels was milked, and a cup of the warm milk was passed to the white man—they would call him that even though he had a four-day growth of beard on his face and a four-day increment of dust all over him. The odor and taste of camel’s milk is strong, but Lanny sipped it as nectar from Olympus. When they gave him a handful of sticky fresh dates he did not worry because neither their hands nor his own had been washed; he ate the sweet fruit, and thought of Jerusalem the golden, with milk and honey blest.

  He had noted the route of this caravan, which was northwest, and he tried to guess what this would mean. He knew there were caravan routes cutting the Sahara in all directions; Bedouin traders brought in the products of the oases, and ivory and other valuable products from the lands to the south. Those who came from the French part of the desert preferred to deal with the French; others had found that they could get high prices from the Germans in Tunisia, and no doubt there were some who were spies in German pay and others ready to sell to whoever was in power. What were the white men’s wars to brown men who came out of the wilds, stayed just long enough to trade their loads for almost unobtainable cotton cloth, for scissors, knives, needles, drugs, and other products of the machines?

  Soon after regaining his wits Lanny had taken one precaution: removing from his finger the gold ring which Rudolf Hess had given him, and slipping it into his mouth. To get it down his half-dry throat was no easy task, but he had gulped and gulped, and now it was safe for a while. He didn’t worry about his money—he would give his rescuers all of that, if necessary—but the ring was irreplaceable, and he might need it badly. When he regained it he might swallow it again, depending upon where he was. For the present he was only concerned that when he stretched out his hand for food, these desert men should not see a valuable gold ring on his finger.

  The leader of the expedition, a middle-aged, black-bearded man who rode in front and carried a hunting rifle, knew only enough French for trading purposes. When Lanny was helped down from the camel, he took out the precious Arabic leaflet and handed it to this man who examined it carefully, but in such a way as to reveal that he didn’t know how to read. Lanny explained to him, in careful child’s primer French, what the leaflet asked and promised. “Je suis américain” he said, pointing to himself. “Menez-moi aux français,” again with pointting, to where Lanny imagined the français to be.

  Most of Lanny’s money was sewed up in the lining of his coat and he hoped they wouldn’t search him. He took out his billfold, and let them see what he had in it—a couple of thousand-franc notes and a number of hundred-franc notes. With this most amiable smile he presented the two large notes to the leader, and a couple of the smaller notes to each of the men. That left him only two of the smaller notes, and he kept these, to make it seem plausible; he pointed to himself, saying: “Pour moi,” and their grins showed that they appreciated the humor if they did not understand the words.

  “The Americans will pay more,” Lanny assured the leader; and the Arab, a glum-appearing and not talkative person, accepted the gift, saying only: “Oui, oui.” Lanny did not press for assurance, for he knew that the man would do what he wanted to do, regardless of arguments or pleas. He had been well paid, but it might be that the Italians or the Germans, or both, were outbidding the Allies in everything.

  XIV

  The journey was resumed, on the same trail. Lanny could be sure that these nomads knew the route, and their camels also. The passenger would meet whatever happened to be at the end of the journey, and match it with the best wits he could summon. Using his wits now, he began to work with his fingernails at the inside lining of his coat where he had two precious pieces of paper carefully sewed: one, the visiting card of Franklin D. Roosevelt, certifying that Lanny Budd was his friend and worthy of trust; the other, the scrap of paper on which Rudi Hess had scribbled “Lieber Führer: Ich bin es.” Lanny might need either of those scraps, but under no circumstances would he need both, and it might be that to have both would be fatal. He must be able to get at either one quickly and repeat his swallowing act. He worked at the fine threads until he had them loose. If the man riding behind him became aware of the motion he would assume that the fellow traveler was scratching himself, an action familiar among all nomadic peoples.

  At sundown the caravan halted, and the men with one accord went through the Moslem prayer ritual: they stood upright, then bowed, then knelt, then touched their foreheads to the ground, and repeated their Arabic prayers. Lanny felt embarrassed to stand indifferent to this custom, so he, too, followed the ritual, to let them know that he worshiped the same God. He knew that they called him a Nasrany, that is, a Nazarene, or Christian; the fanatics among them would hate him and perhaps wish to plunder and kill him.

  The men arose, and gave their camels a scanty allowance of fodder. Evidently the journey had been long, for the ribs of these ungainly beasts stood out. They must be the most unhappy creatures on earth, Lanny thought, for all their doings were accompanied by rumbles and groans of protest. The driver made a sort of hissing sound, which was a signal for the beast to totter forward upon his knees, then to sink back upon his hind legs, and finally to come to rest with all his four legs under him. In that seemingly miserable position he would spend the entire night, noisily chewing his cud, apparently while asleep.

  The passenger lay down and slept the sleep of exhaustion; but later, when the cold awakened him, he lay and thought about his strange plight. He had seen mountains ahead on the trail, and this puzzled him greatly, because, according to his idea of the map, the Mediterranean should have been where the mountains were. Apparently his plane must have been veering more to the south than he had realized, and had fallen on the Tunisian side of the border. He decided that on his walk he must have been on the way to the Mareth line, which Rommel was supposed to be fortifying against the British Eighth Army; that now he was heading into southwestern Tunisia, a no-man’s-land at the moment, where one might meet Americans, Germans, or Italians, according to the fortunes of war. Very probably these Bedouin would know nothing about military events; they wouldn’t be concerned, for both sides in the war were eager to get goods and to promote trade with them.

  Lanny’s position reminded him of a story which his father had told him as a boy. It had to do with a stretch of land, perhaps only an inch or two wide and a thousand miles long, known to Americans as “the Great Divide.” Robbie had stood upon it once, when he had been hunting Rocky Mountain sheep in Montana. He and his guide were out upon a ridge of rocks, looking over forest-clad valleys both behind and before. Rain had begun to fall, and the guide had taken him to a certa
in spot and told him to watch. Striking the rocks, the raindrops splashed, part in one direction and part in the opposite. Said the man: “That which splashes this way runs to the west, and finds its way into the Columbia River, and so into the Pacific Ocean. The part which splashes the other way runs to the east, and will find its way into the Missouri River, then into the Missisippi, and from there into the Gulf of Mexico. You are on the continental divide.”

  Just so Lanny thought: “I will go into a village and there will be French and Americans, or maybe Italians and Germans. If it is the former, I go to Cairo and Moscow; if it is the latter, I go to Berlin, or perhaps first to Rome!”

  XV

  The caravan plodded on, to the jangling of bells and the shuffling of broad, padded feet in sand. There were more shotts, and the trail wound between them, marked here and there by heaps of stones. More hills, also, and it seemed to Lanny not quite so hot, though perhaps it was just that he had more water in his system. His strength came back; a diet of camel’s milk and dates, upon which the Bedouin Arabs have existed for thousands of years, proved an ideal restorative. His mind became more active, and he tried, as was his fashion, to imagine every possible development, and plan how to meet it. With the Germans he had no cause to worry, for he possessed the Ring and Tarnhelm of the Nibelungen; but with the Italians it would not be so easy, for he had a black mark against his name in their books. Nineteen years had passed, but fingerprints do not change and police records are not destroyed, at least not among the Fascisti.

  The driver who rode behind Lanny grunted a word or two now and then, and so the traveler learned some Arabic. He learned that a camel driver is a jemmal, and that dates are taun; they were no less sweet by that name. He learned that the favorite exclamation of the Bedouin is “Wellah!” but he never found out exactly what it means. Now the jemmal spoke excited words and pointed ahead; the passenger looked, and on the dim horizon saw what appeared to be a bluish-green rim. He could guess that it was an oasis and the goal of this expedition. The man was perhaps giving it a name, but Lanny had never heard it before. Rocking backward and forward was a kind of motion to which he was not accustomed, and it seemed to him that whatever might be ahead, he would welcome it.

  You do not come gradually out of this desert; at one moment you are amid rose-brown rocks and yellow sand, and at the next you are in an oasis, the village and farms grouped about it. Clear cold water comes up out of the hot sands and is led in trenches. Here were many kinds of fruit trees, and what seemed to the traveler the most beautiful green patches of vegetables he had ever beheld. Most common of all were groves of date palms, each tree a giant centerpiece with graceful curving branches marking a perfect circle. From such trees the natives took beams to support their huts, branches for walls and roofs, shade for their heads, and food for their stomachs. And still another use: they had pegged the branches to the ground to make barriers, holding the shifting desert sand back from their crops.

  Startling to a wanderer, a paved road ran northward from this oasis. Lanny looked for road signs but found none, and could guess that they had been taken down as a war measure. He liked the appearance of this spot, and especially the fact that there were no soldiers in sight. It might be a good place to rest for a while and ask questions. When he saw that the caravan was going through without stopping, except to let the thirsty animals drink, he decided to part with his rescuers. He said: “Pardonnez-moi”—it seemed more polite to say something, even though it was not understood. He started to slip from the camel’s back; but at once he felt a strong grip upon his arm and heard an outburst of angry protest; so he gave up. He could understand that these men wanted their promised reward; more important yet, he knew that the leader had a rifle and doubtless would use it.

  XVI

  Soon came another oasis, and then another, but still no road signs. The caravan plodded by the side of the road, and suddenly there was a honking behind them and a motor-car sped by. In it were four men in uniform, and so at last Lanny’s great question was answered. There was a swastika on the car, and the helmets of the men were of the German pattern. Lanny could know that he was going to Berlin!

  It was what he had been secretly desiring ever since the previous summer. Roosevelt’s veto had compelled him to give up the project, but it hadn’t kept him from wishing and imagining. And now not even Roosevelt could stop him; he couldn’t even stop himself! He had no anxiety about his position, for he had joined the Wehrmacht once before, at Dunkerque, and had “got away with it”—that is, he had been taken to Hitler and received as a friend and guest. And this time he had the magic Tarnhelm and Ring.

  Also, he had a little visiting card from the President of the United States, something he surely wasn’t going to need! He slid his fingers into the recess in his coat lining, took out that once-precious card, and moving his two hands close against his body he tore it into tiny bits. He was afraid to drop even one piece at a time, so he got the whole lump between his fingertips and pushed them into his mouth. He didn’t know what ink was made of, but hoped there wasn’t enough on that card to do him harm. While the camels plodded and the bells jangled and the riders rocked like so many Chinese mandarins made of porcelain, Lanny chewed and chewed, and little by little the pulpy mass went down to a place beyond the reach of the Gestapo.

  Again date orchards and farms, this time extensive, surrounding a mud and tile village. The Arab driver said “Nefta,” and this was a name Lanny had heard; it was a small town near the southwestern border of Tunisia. He learned later that if he had arrived two weeks earlier he would have fallen into the hands of the Italians. If he had come only a week earlier it would have been the Americans. If he had come a week later it would have been Americans again, so sudden were the shifts of war in this no-man’s-land. At the moment the Nazis were holding it with a handful of men, and a dozen or so had set up a roadblock at the southern entrance to the town.

  Lanny knew by the darker shade of green uniform and the black collars that they were a Waffen SS division, and he knew how to handle them. The moment the caravan halted, he slid down off the camel’s back—he was no longer afraid of Arab weapons. He advanced toward the Feldwebel in command of the roadblock, shot out his right hand, straight before him and upward, and cried: “Heil Hitler!” The salute was obligatory, and all the Germans leaped to attention and returned it.

  Then this stranger with a five-day growth of brown beard and a five-day layer of gray dust slapped his hand to his side and introduced himself: “Lanning Prescott Budd, amerikanischer Kunstsachverständiger, persönlicher Freund und geheimer Agent des Führers! Wo ist Ihr Kommandant?”

  If an art expert had descended from heaven in a golden chariot with fire-breathing steeds, a humble Feldwebel couldn’t have been more awestricken. He clicked his heels, saluted all over again, and exclaimed: “Ja, ja, mein Herr. Bitte, kommen Sie mit mir.” He had a motorcycle with a sidecar, and Lanny stepped into it, and into the town of Nefta they went in a cloud of desert dust.

  BOOK SEVEN

  More Deadly Than a Mad Dog’s Tooth

  21

  ’Tis Time to Fear

  I

  “Aber, Herr Budd,” said the young officer, “you must admit that this is a very unusual story you are telling me.”

  “Gewiss, Herr Leutnant,” replied the traveler, “you must be aware that many unusual things have been happening in the last few years. It is possible that you yourself did not expect to be spending a winter on the edge of the Sahara Desert.”

  “Allerdings,” admitted the Nazi. He was a Waffen SS lieutenant, wearing on his sleeve the silver initials made in imitation of lightning, with the idea of intimidating the beholder. It had taken him only a few minutes to realize that this American who had appeared so suddenly out of the wilderness was not to be intimidated. “Could you supply me with some verification of your story?”

  “I could supply it, mein Herr, but it is of a highly confidential nature. I trust you will not take it as a disc
ourtesy if I say that I should reveal it only to the person who has the authority to send me to the Führer.”

  “Unglücklicherweise, Herr Budd, I doubt if there is any such person to be found in Nefta.”

  “Then, shall I say, to a person who would have the authority to notify the Führer that his confidential agent is awaiting his summons.”

  “That may be done, I suppose. Let me be sure that I have the facts correct.” He took pencil and paper and wrote: “Lanning Prescott Budd, son of Robert Budd of Budd-Erling Aircraft Corporation, Newcastle, Connecticut, U.S.A.; profession Kunstsachverständiger, left Algiers by plane five days ago intending to join General Rommel’s army, shot down over desert, brought in by camel caravan, is personal friend and secret agent of Führer, has important information, requests that Führer or Reichsmarschall Göring be notified at once of his presence.” Having read this aloud to check it, the officer turned to a telephone—Lanny could guess that it was a field instrument, because the cord ran out at the window of this small hotel which the Army had commandeered. The speaker asked for “Oberst Vogel,” and presently began dictating the information. Then he reported to Lanny: “The Oberst will receive the information.”