They had two chairs, and the guests sat on them; they talked and the others listened. There were no longer any secrets, for everybody had undergone a magical sea change, and there were no longer any Nazis. To have been a genuine anti-Nazi was an honor and source of preferment; to have been an anti-Nazi posing as a Nazi, as Johann Seidl had done, was to be in a trying situation; but Monck had known the truth and had testified, and now came the son of Budd-Erling to confirm it in a most dramatic way. Johann would almost certainly get a job now.
The visitor didn’t ask these people about their lives, for what could they tell save of a dreadful winter, and hunger and cold, sickness and death? They wanted to hear about America and what the land of unlimited possibilities was going to do with them and their lives. Lanny told only the hopeful things—he couldn’t bear to voice a fear or even a doubt. To him these people were the comrades of his youth, and there were millions of them, all over Europe, still clinging pathetically to the dream of a world of peace and order in which men built houses and inhabited them, planted vineyards and reaped the fruit of them; they did not build and another inhabit, they did not sow and another reap! That was the Socialist world—but, oh, what a long time it took coming!
XIV
Lanny bade farewell to his proletarian friends and climbed from the bottom to the top of the social ladder. Ambassador Robert Murphy, career man of the State Department, had become political adviser to AMG in Berlin, and he and the son of Budd-Erling had become good friends while working together to win the French in North Africa from the Vichy side to the American. That had been only four years ago, but what an age it seemed, and what a cycle of history had happened since! The men in the prisoners’ dock at Nürnberg had then been at the apex of their glory, and the American diplomatic representative, officially known as “Counselor to the Embassy at Vichy stationed in Algiers,” had been a pygmy among many giants; a worried and unhappy pygmy, fearing not for himself but for his country and the free world.
Now he was in a new position of danger but wasn’t supposed to think about it or to be afraid of the new set of giants he confronted. General Clay, the American commander, had only a few thousand troops in Berlin, while the Russians had an army just across the street from him. Moreover, the Russians had all the territory surrounding Berlin, and the Americans had only a narrow corridor through which to come and go. What would happen if the Russians should ever decide to close that corridor was something that nobody liked to think about. What you did was to be as friendly with them as they would let you; always smile, be patient, and try in every way to abate their suspicions.
That came naturally to Robert Murphy, for he was a genial person. His voice showed his pleasure when he heard Lanny’s over the telephone. “Oh, good! Won’t you come to lunch? Or to dinner? How long are you going to be here?” And so on, the way one talks to a man with whom one has been through dangers and with whom one has shared precious secrets.
The Ambassador’s car came and brought the visitor to his residence. They had a quiet dinner and a long talk. So many things that Lanny could tell about: Roosevelt and his death, Los Alamos and Alamogordo, and the work of the Alsos mission. “You do get around, don’t you!” said Murphy. He wanted to know for whom Lanny was working now, and why he was in Berlin. Being a diplomat, he avoided a direct inquiry; but Lanny, understanding diplomacy, hastened to give assurance that he was on his own and not reporting on anybody. He didn’t mention the Peace Program because that might have made his friend more cautious in his talk.
The impression Lanny got was that this blond, handsome gentleman was so much concerned with the trees that he overlooked the forest. He was trying to get things done in Germany, and sometimes it was the British or the French who wouldn’t let him, but most of the time it was the Russians. The Russians objected to the forming of baseball clubs for German boys and pointed to the agreement of the Big Four that no political organizations were to be permitted. Under the Nazis all sport clubs had been political, and the same was true in other countries, including the Soviet Union. There were endless problems connected with the schools—getting teachers who weren’t Nazis and books written and printed that contained no open or secret propaganda for Nazism, Pan-Germanism, or other poisonous theories.
And so it went. There were six and a half million displaced persons in Germany, and most of them couldn’t be sent back to their homes because their political coloration was wrong and they would be thrown into jail or shipped to a slave-labor camp. That applied all the way from the Baltic states to the Balkans, and to tens of thousands of Russians. There was nothing to do with them but keep them in refugee camps, which could be nothing but the former German Lagern. They were horribly crowded and miserably unhappy; they all wanted to go to America, or, barring that, to the Argentine, or Palestine, or Australia, or wherever. Impossible to persuade them that there weren’t ships enough in the world to take them. The GIs were still being shipped home, and surely they had precedence.
A sensitive-minded official was on the defensive about these conditions. He worried about opinion at home, where nobody could form any notion of the problems of a four-power government whose members were often occupied in keeping one another from doing anything. He pointed out that America had got much the worst of the Germany partition; we had got the scenery, and there was no tourist trade. Lanny pointed out what Monck had mentioned, that in our sector a great part of the land belonged to feudal aristocrats, absentee noblemen who did little or nothing with their estates. Why not put the DPs to producing on them? The Ambassador looked uncomfortable; he had always known that this agreeable, rich fellow countryman was a “Pinko.”
XV
The ex-P.A. discovered that he was in a position to become something of a social lion if he so desired. His story had appeared in the Berlin papers, together with his picture, and a lot of people wanted to meet him and hostesses wanted to show him off. He stayed a few days and went about meeting the American officers of the governing staff, an immense bureaucracy with directors and deputy directors of this and that: staff sections for economic affairs, educational affairs, religious, fiscal, property control, information, public health, public welfare. All wanted to tell their stories to a traveling celebrity—even if he was that for only a week or two.
There was a world relief organization, UNRRA—United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration—and there were complaints about its operations in Germany. Its head was a British general who lived in a ducal palace a long way from the wretched DPs whom he was supposed to be aiding. He was a charming, fashionable gentleman and would give you a royal good time if you went to see him; but you wouldn’t hear much about the millions of victims of the war—Jews and Poles and such like. British officers looked out for the British Empire, as of old, and were wholly unsatisfactory to ardent young idealists who had got jobs because they were recommended by Professor Frankfurter.
Just now the papers reported that a new general director of UNRRA had been appointed. Ex-Mayor La Guardia of New York was promising to stir things up; did Mr. Budd know him? Lanny had never met him but had heard him over the radio, speaking in a high-pitched, excited voice. He was a squat little man, a comical figure of tireless energy; half Italian and one-quarter Jewish, yet four full quarters American. He was the friend of oppressed persons all over the world, and some of the Americans were hoping to see him give Lieutenant General Sir Freddie Morgan a chance to return to his native land. The General was quoted as saying that we were on the way to war with Russia and that our one duty was to build up Germany to be on our side. Lanny, who had heard of him at Wickthorpe Castle, was only too familiar with this point of view. He was shocked to discover that the American General Clay apparently had it also.
The Russians also were familiar with it, and it didn’t help Americans to win their confidence. There were the so-called “Anders’ Poles,” anti-Soviet refugees who had been formed into an army to fight the Germans and were now being subsidized by reactionary Polish
groups in London. If the Russians had an army of anti-British Germans, that was tit for tat, and you might argue till the coming of the next war which side had started it and which carried the greater share of blame.
The point was to get both sides to stop at the same time; and to do that you had to listen to those who wanted peace and not to those who were sure that war was inevitable. It was necessary to make plain to the members of the Politburo that they were not going to be permitted to take the rest of Europe by force; but it was also necessary to make plain that the governments of the Western world were in the hands of men who had no will to resist social change by force, but rather to guide it by wisdom and understanding.
XVI
Lanny had one more project in Berlin. The idea had occurred to him that it would be fun to see himself as the Germans had seen him; it would rest his mind to know the answer to some of the riddles that had puzzled him over the years. What had Heinrich Himmler actually got on the Führer’s American friend? What had he got on Oskar von Herzenberg and on Marceline? How had he found out that Monck was spying on Professor Plötzen, and had it ever been discovered that Lanny had helped Monck escape to Sweden? It would all be set down to the smallest detail with German Gründlichkeit in the voluminous files of the Gestapo.
Lanny had himself transported to Number 1 Wasserkafersteig, headquarters of the Berlin Document Center, Office of U. S. Military Government for Germany. He presented his credentials to the officer in charge and explained his purpose. The necessary clearance was granted, and he was taken to a room with a long table. GIs brought him folders, one after another as they were dug out.
The most fascinating experience that any war spy could imagine. It was like Judgment Day, when the books of the Recording Angel are supposed to be opened and all secrets revealed. It was as if the dream, or the nightmare, of Dr. Rhine had suddenly come true, and someone was able to read the minds of any and everybody else in the world. Here were practically all the persons the son of Budd-Erling had known in Germany, and some also in France, telling what they knew about his life and what they thought about his character: neatly typed documents in stilted official German, dated, and initialed by this and that official, often with comments. Many of the documents were duplicated in different files, having been accumulated by organizations or departments which had exchanged carbon copies.
The Gestapo had been watching Lanny from the first time that Göring had sent for him, in April of 1933. Lanny had known that they would be bound to do this and had guided himself accordingly. He was, they recorded, a Jew-lover, a sentimental idler, a spoiled, rich man’s son. Kurt Meissner had said he was a weakling but harmless, which was about what the great Komponist had told Lanny to his face. Heinrich Jung had claimed credit for having converted him to National Socialism and certified to the fact that he was an ardent admirer of the Führer. Seine Hochgeboren, Graf Stubendorf, had condescended to testify that Herr Budd was a highly regarded Kunstsachverständiger and undoubtedly a friend of the German people—here was his letter, duly signed.
So it went, down through ten years. Various members of the Fuhrer’s household, also of Göring’s, had been interviewed and had expressed opinions of this easy-going, self-satisfied American dilettante; they didn’t trust him or like him, but the Führer was determined to use him, and so was the Reichsmarschall. He was reported as being the lover of Hilde, Fürstin Donnerstein—which wasn’t true but might have been if he had wanted it that way. In 1940, before the invasion of France, Himmler had personally ordered a complete new investigation of him, and there were reports from New York and even from Newcastle, but they hadn’t found out about his being married to Mary Morrow! There had come a favorable report about Robbie, who was a genuine Roosevelt hater and was using his son to get information to be used against the administration.
Then in 1943, with America in the war up to its eyes, this international playboy had come into Germany from Italy, escorted under the Führer’s personal orders; that was when the Gestapo had really gone to work. But they hadn’t got anything about his connections with Monck, either in Switzerland or in Sweden. Himmler had personally warned the Führer against him, but the Führer had insisted that he was an old friend—Hitler believed in everybody who had known and admired him prior to his taking power. The Abwehr, the Counter-Intelligence of the Army, had also done some research, interviewing everybody in Nazi Europe who had done art business with the American visitor; there was nothing wrong about him except that he had been a Social Democrat when he was young—something he had told the Führer about. “Nicht mehr behelligen,” Adi had written on one report—don’t bother me any more! That was one of the documents Lanny held out to have a photostat made; he would have it framed and put on his wall.
The bust-up had come only when the Gestapo arrested Oskar von Herzenberg; under torture he had confessed and had named Lanny as having known about the plot on the Führer’s life. Marceline had stood firm and had insisted that she had no idea where Lanny was. A general alarm had been sent out for him, and there was a huge dossier about the efforts to find him. One curious thing he made note of: the Gestapo files showed that they had notified Abwehr and that Abwehr had acknowledged the order and promised to take all possible measures; but when Lanny searched the Abwehr files he could not find a scrap about the matter. Apparently they had done nothing. He was left to speculate about two Abwehr officials who had testified against the Nazis at Nürnberg—they having been secretly working for the Allies all through the war and before. Dahlerus and Gisevius had known and protected various Allied agents in Germany, and it could be guessed that they had sidetracked the orders concerning Lanny Budd. Even Admiral Canaris, “the little Greek” who headed this important agency, might have been helping to protect an American spy. Canaris had been discovered and shot.
XVII
Having finished with his own career, Lanny turned to his wife’s. She had been living in a pension in Berlin in the year of 1939, and suspicion had fallen upon her because she locked her manuscript up in her trunk so carefully and tore her spoiled pages into small pieces. Some of these pieces had been saved, and here they were, a set of jigsaw puzzles put together and pasted on sheets. Her room had been raided, but she had escaped and not been heard from again. Her clothing and books had been sold at auction, and the Gestapo had realized a total of marks 1927.53 therefrom. Her mss., which she had thought lost forever, were all here. The Army wouldn’t part with the originals but for a small fee would make photostat copies of every page.
And then Miss Elvirita Jones—the name Lanny had invented on the spur of the moment, at his wit’s end to get his fugitive out of Germany. He had taken her to the Berghof and introduced her to Hitler and Hess as a wonderful spiritualist medium; and of course the Gestapo had heard about that event. After she had been let out by way of Switzerland they had tried to track down Fräulein Jones; not even the excitement of the war’s outbreak had caused them to forget her; they had made inquiries among spiritualists in Paris, London, and New York, but no one there had ever heard of such a medium. Lanny wondered if this had been the work of Heinrich Himmler, hoping to get something on Lanny himself. Oddly enough, there was no record of the Elvirita Jones matter in any of the files on Lanny Budd. Apparently even German Gründlichkeit slipped up now and then!
BOOK TEN
He Shall Stand before Kings
30
Come You Home a Hero
I
The Ambassador’s car took Lanny to the British sector of Berlin, and from there he had a seat in a plane to London—the two armies did favors for each other in such matters. When he arrived he phoned Irma, to arrange to see Frances, and as always Irma invited him to the Castle.
An odd and rather amusing situation with his ex-wife now. The story of his testimony at Nürnberg had been in the London papers of course, and several of the baser sort which went in for gossip had mentioned that the self-confessed agent was the former husband of the Countess of Wickthorpe. And what were
Irma and Ceddy going to make of that? The collapse of Nazism had been too complete for this noble pair to admit any trace of their old-time attitude; but what would be the case inside their hearts? The presidential agent had been deceiving not merely Hitler and Göring, but also Irma and Ceddy and all their friends; he had been a snake in the grass, slithering into their historic home, and no doubt laughing in his heart at them.
They knew it, and their friends must know it, yet there wasn’t a thing they could do about it. Lanny was, indubitably, the father of Frances and had a legal right to half her time until she was of age and could make her own choice. If he couldn’t come to the Castle he would take her elsewhere and might not bring her back. So everything must be as if nothing had happened; the host and hostess must be polite, even cordial; they must tell him to stay as long as he pleased and to come again whenever he pleased. It is well known that in the great world people frequently practice such arts of masquerade; they maintain a surface of friendship while in their hearts are raging storms of hatred, contempt, jealousy, spite. Civilized life could hardly exist if everybody spoke his real thoughts.
Few persons had had more practice in superficial courtesy than this ex-P.A. He didn’t let himself worry because he had wounded the vanity of these two persons who thought themselves so important—Ceddy because he had inherited a title and a castle, and Irma because she was the daughter of Chicago’s onetime traction king. Lanny forbore to mention the Nürnberg trial, which was a world demonstration of their lack of judgment; instead he told about the situation in Berlin, a more agreeable topic, because it enabled them to imply that they had been right all along. Hadn’t they done their best to warn the world against the dangers of Bolshevism? Hadn’t they foretold how the Soviet revolution was bound to turn into Russian imperialism of the old type? The bear that walked like a man was now walking like a proletarian, but he was the same bear and was walking to the very same goals—warm-water ports on the Baltic and the Pacific, and control of the Balkans, the Dardanelles, the oil fields of Mesopotamia and Persia, and, of course, the treasures of India and China!
O Shepherd, Speak! Page 63