What Lanny wanted was to deliver his uncle's message to Kurt; also to follow him at a safe distance and make sure of what happened at the post office. He watched his friend receive a letter and put it into his pocket and walk away. Lanny went to a telephone and told his mother that all was well. Then he returned to his safe job of trying to stop the fourteen little wars and one big one.
V
The Supreme Council decided to go ahead and complete the treaty with Germany, and ordered all the various commissions to deliver their reports and recommendations within a few days. That meant rush times for geographers, and also for secretaries and translators. Professor Alston's French was now equal to all demands, and Lanny's geography had improved to such an extent that he could pretty nearly substitute for his chief. There was work enough for both, and they hurried from place to place with briefcases and portfolios. A fascinating game they were playing, or rather a whole series of games — like the chess exhibitions in which some expert keeps a dozen contests in his head at the same time. In this case the chessboards were provinces and the pawns were national minorities comprising millions of human beings. Some games you were winning and some you were losing, and each was a series of surprises. At lunchtime and at dinner you compared notes with your colleagues; a busy chatter was poured out with the coffee, and human hopes were burned up with the cigarettes.
On the whole it was exhilarating, and contributed to the sense of importance of gentlemen whose domains had hitherto been classrooms with a score or two of undergraduates. Now they were playing parts in the great world. Their names were known; visitors sought them out; newspaper reporters waylaid them in lobbies and begged them for news. What a delicious thrill it gave to the nineteen-year-old Lanny Budd to say: “Really, Mr. Thompson, I'm not supposed to say anything about that; but if you will be careful not to indicate the source of your authority, I don't mind telling you that the French are setting their war damages at two hundred billion dollars, and of course we consider that preposterous. Colonel House has said that they play with billions the way children play with wooden blocks. There's no sense in it, because the Germans can never pay such sums.”
When Lanny talked like this he wasn't being presumptuous, as you might imagine; rather he was following a policy and a technique. Over a period of two months and a half the experts had observed that confidential information leaked quickly to the French press whenever it was something to French advantage; the same was the case with the British — and now the Americans also were learning to have “leaks.” Trusted newspapermen had found out where to come for tips, and would carefully keep secret the sources of their treasures.
Lanny didn't even have to have explicit instructions. He would hear his chief say to some colleague: “It mightn't be a bad thing if the American people were to know that one of the great powers is proposing to get rid of a large stock of rancid pork by selling it to the Germans and replacing it with fresh pork from America.” Going out for a walk Lanny would run into Mr. Thompson of the Associated Press, and they would stroll together, and next day a carefully guarded secret of state would be read at twenty million American breakfast tables. A howl of protest would echo back to Paris, and Lanny's chief would remark to his colleague: “Well, that story got out, it seems! I don't know how it happened, but I can't say I'm sorry.”
VI
In such ways the youth was kept so busy day and night that he had little time to think about his German friend. Beauty called up to ask if he had any news, and Lanny understood that his tenderhearted mother had taken another human fate into her keeping and had a new set of fears to mar her enjoyment of fashionable life in La Ville Lumiere. Lanny made note how little politics really meant to a woman. Beauty had been an ardent pacifist so long as she was hoping to keep Marcel away from the fighting; she had been a French patriot so long as that seemed the way to get the war over; now, tormented by the image of Lanny's friend being stood against a wall and shot, she was for letting bygones be bygones and giving the German babies food.
The youth didn't have time to call upon his uncle, but he got a little note saying: “Your friend called again. Thanks.” That seemed to indicate that Kurt had got in touch with his organization and was carrying on as usual.
At one of the luncheons in the Crillon, Lanny met Captain Stratton, and brought up the subject of the spread of discontent in Paris. The intelligence officer said it was a truly alarming situation: a succession of angry strikes, and protest meetings every night in the working-class districts; incendiary speeches being made, and the city plastered with affiches containing all the standard Bolshevik demands — immediate peace, the lifting of the blockade, food for the workers, and the suppression of speculators.