The Return of Lanny Budd

by Upton Sinclair

  After being helped through several corridors he emerged into a spacious, high-ceilinged place. He saw large double steel gates and an armed guard sitting by them. He saw a large desk or counter; behind it sat a man, and in front of it stood another man in military uniform, a Soviet officer. Lanny was half led, half carried to this counter. To his confused mind came the thought, I’m being taken away! And then the thought, I’m surely going to be shot! He looked at the officer and saw that he was smooth-shaven, good-looking, rather amiable; but he knew from experience that officers could look like that and still order shooting when it was called for.

  There was some conversation in Russian, which Lanny could not follow. There was a bit of business to be transacted; the officer signed a paper, presumably a receipt for this prisoner. Then he spoke to the warders who were holding the prisoner, and they walked the prisoner to the double gates of barred steel. The guard rose and drew back one of the gates. There was a heavy wooden door beyond it, and he opened that. The officer spoke again, and the warders put their arms around Lanny’s waist, half lifted him off the ground, and without a word walked him through the open doorway and down half-a-dozen steps. There was a high wall with heavy gates, and one of these was swung open before them.

  It was night and the street was empty, except for a car waiting at the curb. Lanny was shoved in, half falling. The officer followed at once, and the car started up. All around this prison were ruins, but Lanny didn’t see them. All he knew was that the officer leaned over to him and whispered quickly, ‘This is a rescue! I am taking you to West Berlin’.

  IV

  It was a moment before Lanny could take in the meaning of those words. His heart gave a great leap; but at once the scepticism he had learned with so much pain asserted itself. This must be a trick, he told himself. But no—his dizzy mind tried to sort out the thoughts—there could be no need for such a trick, the Soviet Army had plenty of men to transport prisoners, and it would not have such a menial task performed by one officer.

  Lanny found sudden strength; he had called for help and he had got it! ‘Who are you?’ he murmured, and the answer was, ‘I am a friend’.

  A friend! Lanny guessed that he was not supposed to ask, but he was permitted to think, and the power of thought came back to him. ‘Has my arrest become known?’ he asked. He used the word arrest deliberately; he was talking to a Russian, a stranger, and he thought the word kidnapping might be offensive.

  ‘The papers in the West have been full of it’, was the reply. ‘R.I.A.S. has been talking about it day and night’.

  The car had swung round a corner, and then another, as if to throw off pursuit. A minute or two later it ground to a halt. They could not have gone more than two or three blocks, Lanny was helped out and saw an entrance to the Untergrundbahn, the Berlin subway. ‘Senefelderplatz’ read the sign.

  He knew that this was the quickest and safest of ways to get into West Berlin. Thousands of workers lived in the East and worked in the West, or vice versa. They came and went for all purposes, and there was as yet no way to inspect them, to sort them out; many might be riding from one station in the East to another station in the East. In the middle of the night there would not be much traffic, but unless the alarm had been given there would be no enemy keeping watch.

  They found no enemy; the officer helped Lanny down the stairs, paid the pfennigs of the fare, and they stood on the platform until the train came. The effort and excitement had been too much for Lanny; he found that he was growing dizzy, and his rescuer, who was carrying a suitcase in one hand, had difficulty holding him up. The train came along, the doors were opened, and Lanny was half carried in and let down into a seat. The few passengers in the car showed little interest, and the officer whispered with a smile, ‘Don’t worry; they will think you are drunk’. Lanny was willing to have it that way; he leaned his head on the other’s shoulder and, incredibly, fell sound asleep.

  V

  He was used to finding it hard to be aroused from slumber and to suffer pain. His thoughts were in a whirl. Which would it be, Number One, Number Two, or Number Three? It took seconds for him to realise that he was no longer in the hands of the torturers; it would be weeks before he could waken from sleep without a throb of terror. The heaven-sent Russian spoke reassuring words, lifted him from his seat, and half walked, half carried him out of the car, on to the platform, and up the steps. ‘Cheer up!’ he said. ‘It’s all right now. We’re in West Berlin—well inside!’

  They stood on the sidewalk and breathed the fresh air, the free air—how different it was, how marvellous! They were safe now; it was conceivable that the enemy might send scout cars to look for them in the West sector; but the chances of being found in this vast city were slim indeed.

  Lanny couldn’t stand, and the nearest place to sit was the curb. The street was unlighted, and there was no one to observe them. The officer opened his suitcase and became suddenly very active; he explained that he was changing his uniform for a civilian suit. ‘If your military police should see a Soviet officer they would ask for my pass, and they might send me back where I came from’.

  ‘Who are you?’ Lanny asked. And the answer was, ‘My name is Tokaev. I’m a regular officer of the Soviet Army with the rank of engineer lieutenant-colonel’.

  ‘But why have you helped me?’

  ‘You have a friend. It is better not to ask about him. Suffice it that you are here’.

  Lanny didn’t ask; but he couldn’t keep from thinking, and there could be but one answer in his mind: Heinrich Graf Einsiedel! Lanny had helped him, and he had said that if the chance came he would do as much in return. And the chance had come! They had joked about it. The Untersuchungsgefängnis!

  ‘But they will arrest you when you go back!’ Lanny exclaimed.

  ‘I’m not going back. I had already made up my mind to come across. They suspect me as an enemy of the regime. I have had four warnings from my friends. The government has ordered me to Moscow, and I know what that means. They don’t want to arrest me in East Berlin, because I’m too well known’. He went on to explain, ‘I’m a colonel of the Soviet Military Administration; I’m employed as an expert on questions of aviation, rockets and reactive technology, and science. There are hundreds of subordinates and students who know me, and if I were arrested here it would make a scandal. but in Moscow it can be done quietly; I will just disappear. So I decided to come across; and it was suggested that I take you with me’.

  ‘You have a family?’ Lanny asked.

  ‘I have a wife and a child. They are already across. They went for a stroll yesterday’.

  Lanny said, ‘I owe my life to you. I will do what I can to repay you’. Then he had to put himself in the young colonel’s arms to keep from falling over. ‘I’m dizzy’, he said. ‘I think I need some food. I have had almost nothing’.

  They looked around them and saw that the station of the Untergrundbahn was close to one of those ‘villages’ which are scattered everywhere in great cities. Once these were actual villages, and then they became suburbs; the city grew around them, and they became shopping centres. The two fugitives saw the lighted sign of a little all-night cafe, and Lanny was half carried to it and set down at a table.

  ‘Don’t take too much’, cautioned Tokaev, and Lanny assented. He thought that a cup of coffee and a bowl of soup would be about right, and when it came he exclaimed with wonder over its flavour. There was a radio set in the little café. R.I.A.S. was playing ‘The Beautiful Blue Danube’, and Lanny’s whole being danced with it. Berlin was beautiful too! Beautiful blasted Berlin!

  VI

  The escapee’s strength came back miraculously; he still had pain, but he forgot it and plied his new-found friend with questions. How long had he, Lanny, been in the clutches of the Reds? He had lost all sense of time.

  Tokaev said it had been seven days and nights. Lanny replied, ‘I don’t know if I could have held out much longer. I had just about lost my wits’.

  ‘
What did they want of you?’ asked the other.

  ‘They wanted me to confess that I had plotted to kill Stalin’.

  ‘They had prescience!’ exclaimed Tokaev. ‘It may happen any day; but it will not do any good. Malenkov will supplant him, and Malenkov will be worse. Stalin is old and cautious; Malenkov is younger and brash. He looks like a scullion’.

  ‘You know them?’ Lanny asked, thinking it was a polite question; and the reply was, ‘I know them both well. I must tell you that I am holder of the Red Banner and Order of Lenin lecturer, and former lecturer at the Military Air Academy in Moscow’.

  Evidently they had taught him English; he spoke formally and precisely, as if out of a book. He continued, ‘For several years I lived and worked in close contact with the highest representatives of the Soviet Communist party, the Soviet youth movement, the trade unions, and our own military oligarchy. I penetrated the inner sanctum of the Politburo and had frequent meetings with Stalin himself. On many occasions I heard from his own lips and those of his closest collaborators direct and frank pronouncements on internal and world affairs, in unofficial as well as official surroundings’.

  ‘My God!’ exclaimed Lanny. ‘You will have things to tell our side!’

  ‘I will tell them all that I know. I have a lot of technical stuff, for I was acting professor of the Moscow Institute of Engineers of Geodesy and Aerophotography, with the diploma of Engineer Mechanic. I was also subprofessor of construction, soundness, design, and aerodynamics of aircraft. I will look to you to put me in touch with the proper authorities and help me in getting permission to stay in the West’.

  ‘I will be happy indeed to do that’, said Lanny, ‘and I am sure I’ll be able to’. Then he added, ‘Tell me, is our mutual friend determined to stay on?’

  ‘Our friend is a brave man, and he will stay so long as he thinks he can be of service. You must not speak his name to anyone under any circumstances’.

  ‘I will not speak it even to you’, said Lanny with a smile. He was able to smile again—something he thought he had forgotten. ‘You were a brave man yourself’, he added.

  The colonel insisted that it was nothing. The group to which he belonged had blanks of various documents, permits, and so on, which had been stolen, and it was a fairly simple matter to imitate the scrawled signature of the Marshal of the Soviet Union, Comrade Vasili Danilovich Sokolovsky. ‘Poor Vasili Danilovich, he will feel very much hurt when he finds out about me, because it will give him a black mark that will never be erased from his record. But he has known for some time that I do not approve of his regime; he knows that he himself is no longer a soldier of the people but an executor of the will of tyrants. Mr Budd, I do not have to ask about your experience in that Prenzlauerberg prison. I have been on the Conveyor myself, and I bear on my body the many scars which the N.K.V.D. inflicted. No one in the Soviet Union is safe against their intrigues. If you develop any form of ability and get any position of responsibility there are persons who envy you and spy upon you and tell lies about you. You are not safe if you are inside, because you have rivals in the organisation as well as the enemies you have made outside, and sooner or later you will be pulled down and destroyed. We are both of us out of it and we can count it a good night’s work’.

  VII

  They sat chatting while Lanny let his food digest and its energy be distributed throughout his organism. Presently the music stopped and R.I.A.S. began giving the news—of course in the German language. Tokaev understood it, and both of them listened attentively. Presently Lanny heard in the quiet, routine voice of the broadcaster a statement that gave him a start.

  ‘Mrs Lanning Prescott Budd, wife of the kidnapped American broadcaster, today paid a visit to Marshal Sokolovsky in East Berlin, accompanied by Colonel Slocum of General Clay’s staff. She went by appointment, and the marshal received her courteously and gave her the assurance that he knew nothing whatever about the whereabouts of her husband. Returning to the American sector, Mrs Budd stated that she is unable to accept the marshal’s assurance. She is certain that her husband has been kidnapped and taken to the Soviet zone, and she cannot believe that the marshal is ignorant of such an action. She stated over R.I.A.S. last evening that to make such an assumption would be to accuse the marshal of gross negligence and incompetence’.

  ‘My wife!’ exclaimed Lanny. Somehow in all the confusion of his mind and in all his thinking about Laurel it had not occurred to him that she would take a plane to Berlin. But of course! She would have flown first to Washington, to appeal to the authorities there and to get her passport; then she would have taken the first plane and would have been laying siege to Monck and to General Clay and to R.I.A.S.—to everybody she could get hold of.

  Now, of course, his first duty was to get in touch with her and let her know that he was safe. He guessed she would be at his hotel; rooms were scarce, and she would probably have taken his. There was a telephone in the café; it was set on a wall, and he wasn’t sure that he could stand up to it. He asked his friend to come and hold him if need be. He called the hotel and asked for Mrs Budd; there was some delay, and he thought that perhaps she was asleep. But she would want to be disturbed. Then he heard her voice: ‘Hallo’, as they say on the Continent.

  ‘Hello, darling, here I am!’

  For the first time in his life he heard her scream. ‘Lanny! Lanny! Where are you?’

  ‘I’m in West Berlin. I’m all right’.

  ‘Oh, Lanny! What have they done to you?’

  ‘I’m all right. Don’t worry, I’ll be with you soon’. There was no reply; he spoke her name, waited, then spoke her name again. Still there was silence, and he could guess that she had fainted; he had never known her to do that, but this was a special occasion. Perhaps she just felt dizzy and had had to settle down on the floor. He had heard no sound of a fall.

  He himself had to sit. He told Tokaev, ‘I’m afraid she has fainted’. So the officer called the hotel and explained the situation. They must go to Mrs Budd’s room and find out what had happened.

  The pair sat and waited. The Russian said, ‘You ought to notify R.I.A.S. There are a great many people who are anxious about you, and they should spread the news’.

  Lanny replied, ‘You do it’.

  It was three o’clock in the morning, but R.I.A.S. was running all night now. Tokaev called and asked for the programme director or anyone who was in charge. He told the news: ‘Lanny Budd has escaped from Prenzlauerberg Prison. He is in West Berlin. He had been questioned for seven days and nights and is exhausted, but after a rest he will come to the station’.

  ‘Who is this calling?’ asked the voice. And Tokaev said, ‘It is someone who helped him to escape. Nothing is to be said about me now. You will hear Mr Budd’s voice’.

  So Lanny took the telephone and said, ‘This is Lanny Budd. I am all right. You may announce it. No, I can’t tell how I escaped, but I will tell later’.

  There was no one in the little café but the proprietor. He had been listening to this conversation and was in a dither; he wanted to shake hands with Lanny Budd. ‘I have listened to you on the radio’, he said. ‘You are Herr Fröhlich; they have been telling us about you. All the Germans have been listening. They will be so glad to hear the news’.

  Lanny realised that he had again become famous. The first time was when he had testified against Göring at the Nürnberg trial. He didn’t like it a bit; it was a nuisance. He would have to shake hands with a lot of people, he would have to tell the same story over and over and listen to the same comments. It was one more trouble the Reds had made for him. But they had given him more power, he realised. Many more people would listen to R.I.A.S. now; he would tell them about the Conveyor, he would make it plain to a mystified world how it could happen that man after man would sign statements confessing to crimes they had never committed. Some men had come into open court and sworn to it; they were men apparently in possession of their faculties, not dazed, not under the influence of dru
gs. It was an amazing phenomenon, a triumph of perverted science.

  VIII

  How were they to get to the hotel? There were no taxis in this neighbourhood and at this hour. The proprietor said he knew a man just around the corner who had a little truck and would take them. The proprietor would shut up the café, and they would go.

  The Russian officer paid the score. Lanny’s change and billfold had been taken from him, his watch, his fountain pen, his notebook—everything. The men helped him along for a distance, and the proprietor rang a bell and banged on the door and presently a sleepy man came to a window. When he was told that he would be well paid he put on his clothes and came down and got out his little truck. All three of them rode on the seat, Lanny squeezed between the other two for support. His buttocks still ached, but the man folded a blanket and put it under him.

  So they drove through a city which had great gaps in every block, with half walls and girders sticking up in the moonlight. They came to their destination, the driver was paid, they went into the hotel. Lanny had to shake hands with the clerk and the elevator man and receive their congratulations and tell them that he was all right.