Dragon Harvest, Page 2

  A hero—now and then a heroine—was a person who enjoyed no income, whether in dollars or francs, and seemed to leave it for the ravens to feed him or her. A hero was a person absorbed in the effort to save the world from falling into a condition of enslavement, which just now appeared to be its certain destiny. In many countries an outlaw, the hero was hunted like a wild beast, or worse—for beasts are merely killed, they are not tortured to make them reveal the hiding places of their kind. In the countries which still considered themselves “free,” the hero was left to his own devices, but was looked upon as a dangerous character, and feeding him was left to the ravens, of whom Lanny had often felt impelled to take the role.

  Bernhardt Monck, alias Herzog, alias Branting, was a self-educated man, but he had made a good job of it, and might have earned a comfortable living for himself and family in the bourgeois world. Instead he had risked death and torture worse than death, first in Germany, then in Spain—and now he was going back into Germany, in spite of the fact that the Gestapo had his photograph and fingerprints. What drove him was the sense of justice and the love of freedom, the same force which had caused thousands of American boys, British boys, French boys to leave their homes and schools and come to the red hills of Aragon, furnace-hot in summer and swept by icy blasts in winter, there to risk death and mutilation. A large percentage of them were the cream of their countries’ intellectuals, who might have become successful writers, politicians, scientists, whatever they had chosen; but they had been infuriated by the sight of greed and lies enthroned, and had chosen to become what the world called fools and would later call martyrs.

  VII

  For exactly a quarter of a century the grandson of Budd Gunmakers and son of Budd-Erling had been watching events like this, and helping a little here and there when he could. The leaders of his cause had told him that money was important, and he had been generous. “Distributing to the necessity of saints” had been St. Paul’s formula, which had a certain comical sound to unsaintly modern ears. But the more unsaintly the world became, the more it had need of new saints, by whatever name they were called—persons who believed in justice and freedom more than they believed in personal comfort and the good opinion of the personally comfortable.

  Of late Lanny had been told that there was something even more important than money, and that was information. All over this old continent intrigues were going on which might decide the destiny not merely of Europe but of the rest of the world for centuries to come. These secrets were supposed to be kept locked up in the minds of a very few powerful persons. But there is no person so cautious that he does not tell somebody, his secretary, his wife, his lady love; that person tells some other person, and presently there are rumors and confidential whispers. It takes expert listeners to judge these, for there are all sorts of pretenders, trying to peddle secrets or perhaps inventing rumors, and giving them out as warships in battle pour out clouds of black smoke to confuse the foe.

  So, more than ever, it had become necessary for Lanny Budd to travel on luxurious steamships and stop at expensive hotels and cultivate the rich and famous in the great capitals of Europe. There were few better places than his mother’s home on the Cap d’Antibes at the height of the winter season of 1939: a lovely villa, not too gaudy, and old enough to have dignity and reputation. Statesmen long since departed had found relaxation here. Oil magnates and munitions kings had discussed deals with cabinet ministers in its drawing-room; great musicians had played here; Isadora Duncan had danced on the loggia and Marcel Detaze had painted his masterpieces in a studio on the estate. Now the hostess of Bienvenu was close to sixty, and contemplated the very word with dismay; but she was still a lovely woman, whose kindness of heart was apparent to all, and whose understanding of human nature and the ways of the haut monde would be useful to any man of large affairs.

  Beauty Budd had specialized in friendship, and while she had often been disappointed she had never been embittered. She was not what was called rich on the Côte d’Azur; on the contrary, she called herself poor, having only a thousand dollars a month to live on, and an accumulation of bills which had to wait until Lanny sold another of the paintings of Marcel Detaze, his former stepfather. Everybody who was anybody in the neighborhood knew all about Beauty Budd, or thought they did, for she talked freely, or made people think that she did. She had been something of a scandal in her day, but now she had settled down and become the most respectable of grandes dames, and had made a new marriage so proper that it seemed slightly comical to her smart friends.

  The white-haired and rosy-cheeked Parsifal Dingle, New Thought devotee and religious healer, wandered about this beautiful estate, of which by a strange whim of fortune he had become the master. He took it serenely, for his convictions forbade him to be concerned with worldly affairs. He read his books and pamphlets, and prayed frequently to perfect himself in order that he might be able to help others. He never spoke an angry or impatient word to anyone, and to the servants and the flower-growing peasants of the Cap he was a new and unheard-of kind of saint, disapproving of church machinery and seeking no permission to work miracles.

  Beauty Budd considered him the most wonderful man in the world, and she strove to follow his ideals and really thought she was succeeding. The result was an odd mélange of this- and other-worldliness. The mistress of Bienvenu loved everybody, but at the same time she listened to gossip about them, that being the way of smart society. She tried to be humble in spirit, and told herself that she was succeeding, but at the same time she paid large sums for costumes which would give her what she called “distinction.” She told her friends that she no longer cared about money, but when she played bridge and gin-rummy she tried her best to win. When she asked her husband if it was right for her to play for money, he answered that some day her inner voice would speak to her on the subject. So far the only voice that Beauty had heard told her that if she didn’t gamble she wouldn’t have any friends at all.

  VIII

  Marceline, child of Beauty’s marriage to the painter Marcel Detaze, was in Paris, making her career as a dancer. She had left behind her a baby boy, not quite a year old, who bore his grandfather’s name and gave a new atmosphere to the estate. Every day at lunchtime, which was Marceline’s breakfast time, she would telephone to make sure the darling was all right, and someone would hold the precious bundle close to the receiver so that his mother could hear him coo; if he didn’t, his little toes would be tickled so that he would gurgle. The report was always favorable, for Bienvenu was a grand place for children. The villa was built around an open court, where flowers were encouraged and spiders not; the dogs were gentle, and an English nurse had been found, one who had reared several titled infants and was as dependable as sunrise.

  Lanny himself had been reared in that court, and other little ones had followed—one at a time, and at wide intervals, according to custom in the fashionable world. Marceline herself, and then Lanny’s little daughter Frances, and Freddi Robin’s little Johannes, who had been brought out of Germany and was now living in Connecticut. Lanny had watched them, one after another, and renewed his sense of the infinite mysteries of being. He had played music for them and watched their responses; he had taught them to dance, and in Marceline’s case had thus determined her career. He would have liked nothing better than to stay in this peaceful spot and watch the unfoldment of a new mite of life—half Italian, a quarter French and a quarter American. What other strains might have been mixed in, back through the centuries, all the way to Adam and Eve?

  Duty called to the son of Budd-Erling, and he couldn’t stay for the delights of child study; he couldn’t play the beautiful piano scores piled on the shelves in his studio; he couldn’t read the wonderful old books which had been willed to him by a great-great-uncle in Connecticut and had been calling to him for a matter of twenty years. There were devilish forces loose in the modern world, and if they could have their way, they would burn all the vital books and make fine music futil
e. They would make any Franco-American mother wish she had never brought a man-child into the world; they would turn a half-Italian boy into such a monster as history would grow sick at the thought of.

  So Lanny had to dress himself up and go out into that world which called itself great and high and noble and select. He had to drink tea or coffee in fashionable drawing-rooms and listen to the chatter of pleasure-loving ladies. He had to dance with them, flirt with them a little, and know how far he could go without offending them when he avoided going further. He had to sit in fashionable bars and learn to sip mild liquor while his companions drank it stronger. He would sail boats, swim, play tennis, watch polo and horse-racing, and now and then gamble, so as not to be offensively good. And all the time, day and night, his mind would be on the alert for the things he wanted to know: the names of key persons, and ways to meet them, and conversational devices to lead them to talk about what was happening in Europe, and what was being planned by those who had the future in charge.

  IX

  In Lanny’s happy childhood Juan-les-Pins had been a tiny fishing village, but now it had become an all-year-round playground of the rich from places as far apart as Hollywood and Buenos Aires, Batavia and Calcutta. There was a new casino, very swanky, a day and night club for everybody who had money and wanted to eat or drink or gamble or dance. In the restaurant of this establishment Lanny sat at lunch with a gentleman of sixty or so, bald, bespectacled, with a hooked nose, a large drooping mouth, and a complexion which made one think of gray rubber. Juan March was his name and he had begun life as a tobacco-smuggler in Spain. By the shrewd combination of finance and politics which characterizes the modern world he had become owner of the tobacco monopoly of his country; owner also of docks, steamship companies, banks, and a potash industry in Catalonia. He was an international pawnbroker and the financier of kings, and it was he who had made the Franco rebellion against the people’s government. He had put up five million dollars in New York and later half a million pounds in London for the purchase of war supplies. Don’t imagine that he had given it—any more than the twenty million dollars he had invested in an attempted comeback of ex-King Alfonso. He had got gilt-edged securities and the choicest concessions, and now, with the victory of the Fascists, he saw himself on the way to becoming the richest man in the world.

  Also, he was one of the most close-mouthed; very little was published about him, and nothing that he could help. He worked behind the scenes, as Zaharoff had done, and Kreuger, and Stinnes—as Schneider was still doing, and Deterding, and all the other really powerful men whom Lanny had ever known. The politicians and generals and kings lived in the limelight and enjoyed the glory, while the men of money stayed in the background and gave the orders, politely when possible, but making sure they would be obeyed. Señor Juan wouldn’t admit even in private that he was a man of great power; he was just a plain businessman, interested in getting things done, in producing useful goods; no public benefactor or anything pretentious like that, but making money, since without money you couldn’t do anything; using the money to build docks and steamships, and to produce potash—in short, the same line of talk that Lanny had heard from his father since earliest childhood.

  To Lanny Budd the Señor talked as one insider to another. Robbie Budd made excellent fighter planes, and March’s money paid for some of them, and would doubtless pay for more from time to time. Lanny knew all about these planes, and was doubtless looking out for his father’s business; March would respect him for that. Dealing in old masters was all right, too, for a tobacco-smuggler become gentleman wanted to know how gentlemen spent their money, and meant to have a palace as good as the best. Young Budd must be all right politically, for he had been into Franco Spain at the height of the conflict, and in Seville had visited General Aguilar, Fascist Commander. Lanny had lived most of his life in France, and was a sort of left-handed member of the de Bruyne family; he knew Baron Schneider, of Schneider-Creusot, which was about as sound a credential as anybody could present to the tobacco king. Also, he had traveled over Germany, and had been a guest many times at Karinhall and Berchtesgaden; he could tell what had happened when Schuschnigg, Chancellor of Austria, had come to the Führer’s mountain retreat to get a dressing-down. Very certainly Juan March had never attained to such honors, nor did he know anybody else who could make such claims—and prove them by authentic details.

  X

  Lanny referred to the recent effort of an organization known as the Cagoule to bring about in France the same coup d’état as Franco had achieved in Spain. March knew all about it, and doubtless had helped to finance it, though he did not say so. Lanny had an amusing story of how he had got himself implicated in that conspiracy, and had sought refuge in the château of Graf Herzenberg of the German embassy in Paris; the Graf had been scared to death of him but hadn’t quite had the nerve to put him out, and the story of the nobleman’s perplexity caused the heavy drooping mouth of the international pawnbroker to spread into a wide grin.

  So after that it was possible for Lanny to say, in a casual tone: “By the way, Señor Juan, I wonder if there is any truth in the report which I hear, that the four interested powers have agreed upon spheres of influence in Spain.”

  “It is a lot of nonsense,” replied the Señor. “Who tells such tales?”

  “I have heard it from persons who ought to know. They say Germany is to have the north, Italy the south, France Catalonia, and Britain a district around Gibraltar. Manifestly, the British would pay a high price for airplane bases for their Rock, which is now so difficult to defend.”

  “The people who repeat such rumors do not know the Caudillo. He would sooner part with his own eyes and hands.”

  “He will be heavily in debt when this war is over, Señor.”

  “That is true; but it is well known that international debts have been allowed to stand for long periods.”

  “You don’t have to tell that to an American,” said the son of Budd-Erling, fetching a smile.

  “My country has many resources, and we expect to allow a fair share to our friends—but very little to those who sat by and criticized us while we fought for their safety. Anyone who thinks otherwise will find Franco a stubborn man.”

  Lanny observed that an ex-smuggler, like all other Spaniards, had pride in his race. He talked freely about the great future in his native land, and especially her role as motherland to the South American countries. Spain had never had any love for the so-called Monroe Doctrine, considering it presumptuous as well as superfluous. “We Falangistas,” said he, “are firm in our conviction that we have the right method for dealing with populations which consist in great part of red and yellow and black races. Democracy is out of the question in such parts of the world, and becomes merely a device of demagogues and troublemakers.”

  “By the way, Señor Juan,” ventured the American, “I wonder if anyone has ever called your attention to the fact that the word for a member of your organization, etymologically I mean, should be Falangita. The falangista is a small tree-climbing animal.”

  The tobacco king expressed himself as surprised, and promised to look it up in the dictionaries and communicate with General Franco. He was impressed by the attainments of Robbie Budd’s son, and hoped that he might make the pleasure of meeting Robbie on the latter’s next visit to the Continent. That was the sort of thing Lanny could do for his father, as a by-product of his other activities.

  From this luncheon Lanny would go straight to his studio in Bienvenu, seat himself at his typewriter, and put into the fewest possible words what he had learned about the future of Franco Spain. He would seal this in an envelope and mark it “Zaharoff 103,” his code name and number as a “presidential agent.” This he would seal up in a second envelope and address to a man named Baker, at an inconspicuous small brick house in Washington, D.C. Baker would carry it at once to a personage commonly referred to as “That Man in the White House” and cordially hated by nearly everyone Lanny knew.

/>   XI

  On one of the many rocks, large and small, which jut out into the Mediterranean between Cannes and Juan there stood a terraced white château with a red-tiled roof, the home of a woman whose name had once been famous in New York and London. Maxine Elliott, the stage queen, had been linked in gossip with well-known names, including J. P. Morgan and King Edward VII. Now she was an old woman with high blood pressure, who took the role of royalty and played it with due arrogance. To her home came persons who had made successes in any and every walk of life, and Lanny Budd had made the discovery that this was an excellent place for the plying of his trade. Maxine provided the indispensable private swimming-pool, beside which wealthy and important persons lounged in deck chairs, relaxing from the world which had been too much with them. She was a backgammon addict and played endlessly under a red-and-yellow striped canopy, but there was never a lack of players, so Lanny could listen to conversation, and now and then put in a few words to guide it.

  Among the visitors at this retreat was the grandson of Maxine’s long-dead royal protector. Until recently this grandson had been King Edward VIII of England, but a year ago he had been forced from the throne on account of his determination to marry a lady from Baltimore who had two divorces and no royal blood. Now he was Duke of Windsor, and the lady was Duchess to everybody on the Coast of Pleasure except a few stiff-necked Britishers. The couple came to this “Château de l’Horizon” and impressed Lanny as two bewildered and shell-shocked human creatures who could have been benefited by Parsifal Dingle’s lessons in Divine Love. They were the objects of ravenous curiosity among all chic and would-be-chic people, and the first time Lanny met the royal pair, and his mother mentioned it—as of course she did at once—the ladies of her set came swarming to ask questions. “What has she got that we haven’t?” they all wanted to know, and Lanny replied with a mot that was repeated up and down the coast: “Well, she’s got the duke.”