Americans in Paris_ Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation - Charles Glass [111]
Gaston was involved from the beginning, as he wrote,
One day, my brother declared firmly, ‘It’s necessary to put flowing water in the Sahara,’ and he exposed me, slowly, patiently, as was his habit, to the solution he envisaged, and for which common mortals tended to take him for a fool. Not only, he explained to me, was it necessary to create this aqueduct to bring the water needed on the future Trans-Saharan [Railway], but also that this pipe must permit simultaneously the provision of oil in Africa and France, given that the Niger basin must furnish the necessary peanuts, that we must establish at the beginning of the operation the refineries and that the oil and the water perfectly use the same channel.
Fearing his brother’s dream may not have corresponded to reality, Gaston invited ‘the most qualified’ engineer in France, Monsieur Rouelle, to speak with Charles. Rouelle, Gaston’s colleague at the Department of Highways and Dams in Beauvais, listened to the elder Bedaux expound his proposal. Charles, an accomplished salesman more than anything else, specified the pipeline’s measurements, distances between pumping stations and materials that could withstand the desert heat. Rouelle left to study the project in detail. Gaston wrote, ‘My friend returned to see me fifteen days later. “It’s fantastic,” he told me, smiling, “but you know your brother is no fool at all. I’ve done the calculations. And I find them as sensible as he does. He’s right. It’s possible. All that remains is to set the means for its realization.” ’
Bedaux faced two immediate challenges. The first was to persuade Vichy and the Germans to commit money, material, labour and the permits necessary for regular travel between France and French Africa. The second was to organize an accurate survey of the pipeline’s route. The reconnaissance mission was the kind of adventure across deserts and through jungles that Bedaux relished, but this would be his first without Fern. To guarantee he would not escape, she had to remain at Candé. An old friend from past transcontinental treks, however, would be welcome. Charles sent an invitation to the Austrian whom he had said was more like a son to him than his son, Friedrich von Ledebur. Ledebur had organized his previous African expeditions, taking care of the rifles and managing the many native porters. Needing him again, Bedaux wrote to Ledebur on 23 March. The letter was enclosed in an envelope, postmarked Lisbon, to his New York secretary, Mrs Isabella Waite. He wrote,
My dear Frederic,
It is time that you should return and work by my side. If you need it, get the necessary money from Mrs. Waite. Come any way you can, but come alone. With some good luck your brother Joseph will be working with me in a few weeks. I want you to return while there is still time for the peace of your Soul.
Working with me for a just cause I can promise you that you will have nothing to fear from anyone. You have our deepest affection.
Charles
Mrs. Waite. See to it that he does come back.
C. E. B.
Frederic, as Friedrich called himself in the United States, was living with wealthy friends in southern California. He and the actress Iris Tree had recently divorced. A ranch outside Burlingame, near San Francisco, occasionally employed him to care for its horses. He spent part of each year in New York, sleeping in reduced rate servants’ quarters at the Gladstone Hotel on East 52nd Street. If the offer of another adventure with Charles Bedaux tempted the penniless aristocrat, he managed to resist. Bedaux’s allusion to his brother Joseph, with whom he had had a falling out in 1939 over Joseph’s dedication to the Nazis, may have deterred him. The FBI read the letter before Frederic did, and its forensics laboratory determined it had been ‘written on a typewriter