The Return of Lanny Budd

by Upton Sinclair

  Arriving in Berlin, Lanny drove down Unter den Linden past past the palace of Hilde von Donnerstein, in the basement of which he had been bombed, and past the Adlon, where he had stayed so often and would stay no more. He came to the division line between the Russian and American sectors, the great Brandenburg Gate. If he had been walking he could have crossed without question, but being in a car he had to stop and be inspected once more. He got out again and produced his persuasive permit. This time the guardians were Germans—‘Soviet Germans’ they were called by the non-Soviet Germans—dressed in dark blue uniforms. They were known as Markgraf police, being under the command of a colonel Markgraf, who had been a conspicuous Nazi soldier and had fought the Red armies all the way to Stalingrad. It showed very well how extremes meet and all dictatorships are the same.

  There were two policemen carrying on the inspection, each to watch the other. The one who did the talking spoke with a strong Saxon accent, and when the interview was over he congratulated Lanny upon his excellent German. He was impressed by the elaborate permit, of which he probably couldn’t read a word. He said very politely, ‘Papiere in Ordnung, Herr Budd’.

  The traveller drove to the hotel and had his car put away; then he registered and went to his room. It was then half-past four in the morning, a preposterous hour to call anybody, but he had Morrison’s home-telephone number, and he knew that Morrison would be glad to be waked up with such news. Anyhow, it was business, not pleasure.

  The phone rang for a while, until Lanny heard a sleepy voice. He said, ‘Excuse me for waking you—this is Christopher Columbus. Listen carefully. I have brought out an important man. This is what I want you to do: get two men to the lobby of the Savoy Hotel as quickly as possible and have them sit there. I am not sure just how soon my man will come. When I am through with him I will bring him down to the lobby. If he is ours I will introduce him to the men; if he is not ours I will give them a sign. Did you get all that?’

  ‘I got it’, said the voice, no longer sleepy. ‘Congratulations. Here is one thing: did you buy any of his stuff in the American sector?’

  Lanny said, ‘No, but I will’.

  ‘Don’t fail to, because then we’ll have him under our jurisdiction’.

  Lanny said, ‘I’ll have a nap now, because I’ve been driving all night. The lobby of the Savoy Hotel. Good-bye’. He took off his overstuffed coat and trousers and lay down and slept what the preacher in Ecclesiastes calls ‘the sleep of a labouring man’.

  XI

  It was broad daylight when he was awakened by the ringing of the telephone. When he answered the voice of the hotel clerk said, ‘A Guzman to see you’. Ein Guzman—as much as to say, a dubious appearing character. But characters were much mixed in Berlin these days, and Lanny said, ‘Send him up’. He ordered breakfast for two, including a pot of hot coffee.

  When the poor devil appeared he was soaking wet, his lips were blue, and he was shivering. Lanny said, ‘Take off your things and get into bed’. Guzman looked at those clean white sheets as if he had never seen such a thing in his life before; but he did what Lanny told him, and Lanny pulled a couple of blankets over him. The considerate host rang for a bellboy and ordered all the clothes washed and dried and pressed as a rush job. So there was the pusher, as safely a prisoner as if he were handcuffed and in leg irons!

  When the waiter brought the breakfast Lanny poured a cup of hot coffee for the man, who sat up and drank it greedily. Meantime Lanny locked the door against intruders and proceeded to unstuff his own coat and trousers. He laid all the money on the table alongside the breakfast tray. ‘There is your money. Take your time and count it’.

  ‘Never mind, Herr Budd’, said the man, as grateful as a dog. ‘I don’t need to count it, I trust you. I am ashamed I ever doubted you’.

  ‘That’s all right’, Lanny said. ‘This isn’t a very honest world we live in, and there are always people trying to play you for a sucker. Did you have any trouble getting across?’

  ‘Not a bit. It’s all right if you don’t travel on the highways’. Already the blood was beginning to come back into the man’s cheeks, and he was beaming with gratitude. Lanny made the occasion perfect by pushing the little table with the food up close against the bedside and inviting him to help himself. The host sat alongside and they breakfasted—perhaps the best breakfast that poor victim of world calamities had had in many a year. His money was right there on the table beside him and he could see it—all counted out in piles of ten, the way the banks do, each pile with a slip of paper around it. There were supposed to be forty of these bundles, and his eyes wandered to them as if to count them or at least estimate them.

  ‘You’ll find it’s all there’, Lanny said reassuringly. ‘I didn’t count them when you gave them to me, but you count them when you take them back’. He smiled again, and they were friends; everything was lovely, and it was certainly wonderful to be in a sumptuous hotel room, with plenty of steam heat, and a breakfast of hot coffee with cream, poached eggs, and hot rolls with butter and marmalade. Amazing the way these Americans lived—even right after a war!

  Lanny said, ‘You can have a hot bath bye and bye—I judge you need it’.

  ‘Herr Gott!’ exclaimed the other. ‘Did you ever take a bath in winter in a shed without any heat? Pretty soon the water will be frozen hard every morning’.

  XII

  When the meal was eaten Lanny got down to business. Said he, ‘I have spent those American bills I bought from you. I need another right away for a tip, so I want to buy one at the same price as the others’.

  ‘I will make you a present of one’, said Guzman with a burst of gratitude.

  Lanny said, ‘No, no, I want to buy it’. He counted out another three hundred and fifty zloty and put them into the pusher’s hands. Is it all right if I take one of these off the table?’ he asked and slipped one out of the topmost little packet. ‘That is all right? That is a deal?’ he enquired playfully.

  ‘That’s a deal’, said Guzman with no play in his voice.

  Lanny continued, ‘Now I want to show you something about how to hide money’. He brought his own pair of trousers and sat by the bed and showed Guzman the hiding place under his belt in front. He took his little pair of nail scissors and severed a thread and pulled it out, and there was an opening into the hidden pocket. Out of that Lanny slipped a smooth, new, shiny greenback—this time not with the sad countenance of Abraham Lincoln but the benevolent grandfatherly features of shrewd old Benjamin Franklin, most appropriate to the present occasion. The figure on the bill was not five but one hundred. Lanny laid that down before the astonished eyes of his new friend and then slipped out another and another. Each time he looked into the eyes of the friend—until there were five of these hundred-dollar bills in a little pile.

  ‘Now, Guzman’, he said, ‘here is money that will really interest you. This is real money, from a real bank in New York. It is not make-believe money like yours’.

  Lanny had his eyes fixed on the other man’s face and saw the eyes widen and the jaw fall and the look of utter dismay. ‘Ach, nein, Herr Budd!’

  Lanny said, ‘Don’t waste any more time trying to fool me. What you have is Himmler money and you know it, and I knew it from the first moment you told me about it’.

  The man tried to speak again, but his voice failed him, and apparently his ideas failed him too.

  ‘Now get it straight, Guzman’, said Lanny. ‘You sold me three of these notes in Poland, and I could have had you arrested under Polish law; but I didn’t want to fool with that. I brought you here into the American sector, and you have just sold me one of those notes in the American sector, so that brings you under American military law’. The man started up on his elbows, as though he were about to leap out of bed and run naked from the room; but he thought better of it and cried, ‘Oh, Herr Budd, you wouldn’t do a thing like that to me!’

  ‘Think what you were doing to me’, said Lanny. ‘Doing it as hard as you could. Bu
t don’t get too excited. I have a proposition to make you. Lie back and take it easy and think it over’.

  XIII

  Guzman lay back. His head was propped up by the pillows so he did not have to take his terrified eyes off the speaker’s face.

  ‘You see these five one-hundred-dollar bills which I put before you; you can have those without too much trouble. All I want you to do is to tell me where you got this money and all you know about the people who made it and are circulating it’.

  Lanny’s words did not decrease the fear in the man’s face—quite otherwise. ‘Mein Gott!’ he exclaimed. ‘If I did that, Herr Budd, I would be a dead duck. They would not let me live a day’.

  ‘I can arrange to have you taken care of’, Lanny replied. ‘I can’t promise to send you to America, because our immigration laws are strict, but you could go to Mexico or to any country in South America, and you would have money enough to give you a start at an honest life if you wish to’.

  ‘They would follow me to the ends of the earth, Herr Budd. It is a Vehm—a Vehmgericht! Do you know what that is?’

  ‘I know’, Lanny said. ‘I have read German history. But don’t let yourself be fooled; it is just some gangsters trying to frighten you by taking the name of a medieval secret society which had the reputation for cruelty’.

  ‘They are plenty cruel on their own, Herr Budd. They would surely hunt me out and torture me to death’.

  ‘Listen carefully’, said Lanny, ‘and get clear in your mind what your position is. You stand to get a long term, maybe ten or twenty years, in prison here, and Americans will be running it, not Germans. On the other hand, you can go scot-free; you won’t be required to appear in court. I can guarantee that. All we want is the names of the top people, and we will dig out the information for ourselves. You can just disappear, take another name, and nobody need have any idea where you have gone. Surely you can think of some pleasanter part of the world to be in than cold and rainy Poland, where you have to live on cabbage and potatoes and be lived on by fleas, bedbugs, and lice!’

  ‘Yes, Herr Budd’, said Guzman in a feeble voice. ‘If I could be sure—’

  ‘You can be absolutely sure. I am an agent of the United States Secret Service, and I have authority to tell you. We are not interested in the little fellows, the pushers; we have several of those already. What we want to do is to cut out the brains of this organisation. You will tell us what you know, and we will keep you safe and comfortable while we check on it. Needless to say, we’re not going to let you fool us or doublecross us. If you will talk straight and spill it all, we’ll get you a ticket to whatever part of the world you name, and we’ll put you safely on board a steamer or a plane, and you’ll have these five hundred-dollar bills or any other kind of money you prefer. You can take a new name and start a new life, and there is no way on earth that your so-called Vehmgericht can find out about you’.

  ‘Yes, Herr Budd’, said Guzman again, ‘if I could really—’

  ‘Can’t you see that we wouldn’t let these criminals get away with murder? That would make it impossible for us to get any more evidence. We will take care of you, and we’ll make it worth your while. We don’t use the methods of the Nazis and the Reds; we don’t torture people, and we don’t break our promises. Tell me, do you owe anything to these people at the top? Do you share any of their ideas, or hope to be made into a commissar, or something like that?’

  ‘No, Herr Budd’.

  ‘It was just a living for you?’

  ‘Yes, Herr Budd, and not a good one’.

  ‘All right then, I offer you a better living, and you would be sensible to take it. You can do it with a clear conscience, because surely you know that you are doing harm to society when you put out phony money. To the extent that you are able to put out a quantity, you dilute the value of all the money in circulation; prices go up, and it is harder and harder for the poor to live. If you could put out enough bad money you could buy up everything in the world, and the poor would starve to death. That’s common sense, isn’t it? Why should you want to go to jail to protect a set of criminals to whom you owe nothing? Think it over and be sensible’.

  ‘You are a smart man, Herr Budd’, said the pusher suddenly.

  ‘Don’t try to flatter me’, Lanny said with his customary smile. ‘I have a powerful organisation behind me, and I’m doing what they tell me to do. We are protecting the law, and we obey that same law. If we agree to do something, we do it’.

  ‘I have to take a chance with you, Herr Budd. There is nothing else I can do’.

  XIV

  Lanny got a writing pad out of his suitcase and a fountain pen out of his pocket. ‘Now you are going to tell me all about it; but let me repeat, don’t tell me anything that isn’t true. If you do I’ll surely find it out, and then I’ll see that you get a double penalty’.

  ‘All right, Herr Budd. I have nothing to gain by making things up. If I’m going to talk I’ll talk straight’.

  ‘Tell me about this secret group, this Vehmgericht as you call them’.

  ‘It is the most secret society in the whole world. They call themselves the Völkischerbund; it is a blood brotherhood, and it is death even to speak the name except to a member.

  ‘Oh, they are Nazis then?’

  ‘They were all high Nazis. Those who founded it all had war wounds. There were six; each of those six was pledged to get three new members, but only one knows the names of those three; each of those three get three more, and so on. It will spread, they say, the way bacteria spread in a broth. It will spread all over Germany, and nobody will know how fast it has gone or how far—until some day it will be like an explosion. Der Tag will come, and it will burst into the open’.

  ‘That’s all an old story’, Lanny said. ‘Do they have a propaganda or ideas?’

  ‘They send out what they call das Wort. It is one sentence every week, and all Germans are supposed to learn it and remember it. Each man tells it to his three, and so it spreads’.

  ‘Are you a member of this organisation?’

  ‘No, Herr Budd, I am just a poor devil that puts out their money on commission. I’m supposed to sell a five-dollar bill for not less than three dollars, and I pay them two dollars for it’.

  ‘Then how do you come to know so much about this organisation?’

  ‘It was something that frightened me pretty nearly to death. There’s a warehouse in Stubendorf that was wrecked, and in one corner that had a roof was where I came to get the money. I came there one night, cold and wet, just like I was with you. There were some old pieces of carpet that had been dragged out of a burning building and had been put away in the corner. I knew about them, and I crawled in under them to get warm and fell asleep. A couple of the top men came in, and they thought they were alone and were talking in low tones about their affairs. I was scared out of my wits, because I knew they would stick a knife into me if they found me. I was afraid I might sneeze or cough or something, but I kept still until they went away, and that’s how I know about it’.

  ‘Who is the head of this organisation?’

  ‘It is a man named Brinkmann, Heinrich Brinkmann. He was high up in Göring’s Luftwaffe. He is a big dark fellow. He hides in the forest near Stubendorf’.

  ‘I thought all the Germans had been driven out’.

  ‘There are Germans who speak Polish and pretend to be Poles. They join the party and talk like Communists, but they work secretly to undermine it. They help others who live in hiding. I suppose they are Communists in East Germany too—and maybe here in the West they are democrats. I don’t know. It is an underground’.

  ‘Do you know where they keep the money?’

  ‘No, I only know where I went to get it, and a package was handed to me. I wasn’t even allowed to count it; I just carried it away. But I always found the count was right. I was strictly forbidden to pass any of it in Poland or East Germany—I just took a chance on you because I saw you were a stranger passing through.
I was glad when you offered to take me to Berlin, because here is where I have been working most of the time. You have to work in a big city where people can’t find you again. And you have to keep moving’.

  ‘I can understand that’, said Lanny with a smile. ‘There will be people looking for you. Tell me, do you know anything about the plates?’

  ‘The plates?’ asked the other, and Lanny explained that he meant the clichés, the copper plates from which the money was printed.

  ‘I never heard about them’, he said. ‘It may be that they won’t have to do any printing for a long time; they may have lots of the money’.

  ‘This money, I take it, is being used to undermine the Communists, and these men live on it in the meantime. Is that it?’

  ‘I suppose so, Herr Budd. They use it to travel about and spread “the Word” as they call it’.

  ‘This word, what is it?’

  ‘They don’t tell me, Herr Budd. I am just a poor guy that wanders about peddling their stuff and coming back for more’.

  ‘This family of yours that you told me about—is that real?’

  ‘That’s just something I made up, Herr Budd. I had a wife, but she went off with another fellow. I was thinking I might get a girl, but how can you when you can’t stay in one place, and you have to be watching out for the police and for the people you have swindled?’

  ‘You don’t know any other people connected with this Völkischerbund but those you have named?’

  ‘There’s the man who writes “the Word”. I never heard any of his words, but I heard his name. It is Meissner’.

  XV

  Now Lanny Budd had learned how to conceal his emotions. He had had a beautiful worldly mother who had taught him that nobody ever trusts anybody completely, and just who should be trusted at all, and who not at all. He had learned to watch worldly people dealing with other worldly people on that basis—it was called ‘tact’. As a purchaser of art works he had learned to watch the owners of such treasures and to judge shrewdly what portion of the specified price they really expected to get. As the son of the European representative of Budd Gunmakers Corporation he had been taught to watch the purchasers of such wares and all their business subtleties. As the son of Budd-Erling he had helped his father in deals with such large-scale rascals as Hermann Göring; and then as a secret agent on his own he had learned to listen and watch people and to keep his face a mask.