Dance on a Sinking Ship

by Kilian, Michael;

  “You don’t really mean that?”

  “No, but I enjoy saying it.”

  She laughed. “And so it was au revoir, Nora. Only there will be no ‘revoir.’”

  “As I say, as she used to say, it was a shipboard romance. I’m grateful for the time we had afterward, though, here and in New York. It taught me what it would be like to be a kept man. I was offered that prospect, back in Europe—as a means of staying there.”

  “By the woman in Paris. That Whitney.”

  “How do you know about her?”

  “There’s a lot of gossipy talk that goes on with all that idle time aboard ship. You told Edwina Mountbatten about her and Lady Mountbatten can be a very chatty lady. I just listened. I didn’t say anything, but I listened.”

  “Her name is Madame Whitney Ransom de Mornay. Her husband is as rich as I’m not. It was her idea to institutionalize our ménage à trois by maintaining residences with both her husband and me. I was to quit my job and devote myself to the more romantic of her many needs. Flaubert, Verlaine, flowers in the Tuileries, and strolls along the Seine.”

  “Is that her picture on your bureau?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s quite lovely.”

  “Yes.”

  “We should go now, Mr. Spencer. But first I want you to come here.”

  Entirely confused now, Spencer came to stand before her. She studied him a moment, then reached to hold his shoulders with her hands and lifted her head to kiss him, once, gently, without opening her lips. Holding him firmly to prevent this encounter from becoming a full embrace, she then stepped back.

  “That was not an invitation, Jim,” she said. “That was a farewell. I did it to show you that I take you as a man of your word and that I trust you. I did it to show you gratitude and affection and friendship. But I’m not interested in an affair. I’m that way. I came to your room to kiss you because I couldn’t think of any other place that would be seemly to do it.”

  “Entendu.”

  “Now let’s go, please. I’ve been here much too long.”

  But at the door to the outside corridor, she paused again.

  “Jim. Do you need any money?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve so damned much money now. You tried to help us. You saved me. I’d be glad to help. No strings. No involvement. I’d really like to.”

  “Chasey, no. The whole point of this, of what I’m doing, is that I don’t plan to need money ever again, not the way I’ve always needed money. Please don’t be offended. I’m grateful, I’m flattered. I’m touched. I feel even more warmly toward you than I already did. But no. No, and thank you very much.”

  “Then let’s not say another word about it.”

  As they waited for the elevator, she lighted another cigarette, somewhat nervously.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “I’m going to Spain,” he said. “It’s the next big crisis in Europe. There’s an election there next month that could tear the country apart.”

  “You’re going as a correspondent?”

  “Yes. It’s what I do.”

  “But I thought you said you quit your job?”

  “I did, with a great deal of pleasure and relief. I’m a free man now. I’m going to work for myself. I’ll sell my reports to whoever will buy them. You can do quite well with that if you’ve got good stuff. I’ve talked to the Chicago Tribune and they’re interested. They’ve read my work for years in the Press-Bulletin, and my father and Colonel McCormick were kindred souls. Belonged to the same fox hunt, don’t you know. I’ve also talked to NBC. There are easy ways now to broadcast news reports from Europe over the wireless. I really find it exciting. I’m almost cheerful.”

  “Imagine you cheerful.”

  The elevator arrived, empty but for the attendant.

  “This has nothing to do with Nancy Cunard?” she asked as the doors closed.

  He laughed softly. “Heavens, no. If I see her in Madrid, I might buy her a drink. If you run into her anywhere, you’ve no choice but to buy her a drink.”

  “And Whitney, will you see her again? Will you go back to her?”

  The elevator operator tried to feign inattention, but was listening intently. Spencer wondered if he knew who Chasey Parker was and decided he probably did. She was putting her reputation at some risk.

  “No, I won’t go back to her. And I probably won’t ever see her again. She’d have to be willing to give up her life in Paris and come to me in Spain, or wherever else I go.”

  “And what are the chances of that?”

  “About the same as your coming away with me to Spain right now.”

  The back of the elevator operator’s neck was reddening.

  “Then I feel very sad for you,” Chasey said, “because there’s no chance of that, now is there? But will you at least ask her?”

  “No. What’s done is done. C’est fini. Tout fini.”

  The elevator doors opened. They turned down the Barclay’s ornate main hall and crossed the narrow lobby, pausing at the door to raise coat collars and arrange hats.

  “You haven’t told me what you plan to do,” he said.

  “Why, Mr. Spencer, I plan to go on being what I’ve always been, a respectable young lady of Philadelphia.”

  They stepped outside. The rain had lessened from the downpour but was still coming down hard.

  “Everything is so gray today,” she said as they crossed the narrow street in front of the hotel and entered the park. “The sky, the street, the buildings—even the trees and grass.”

  “It’s January that’s the cruelest month.”

  “All this grayness reminds me of that poor Count von Kresse. I feel so sorry for him. It was for different reasons, but he and I did much the same thing out on that boat, didn’t we? We bear the same kind of guilt.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “I won’t then, but I think it. All the time. What do you suppose happened to him?”

  “He said he was going back to Germany.”

  “And?”

  “If that’s the case, then I think he’s probably dead.”

  They reached the fountain at the center of the square, full of water from the rain, but not functioning, its stone circle as cold and gray as everything else.

  She turned to look at him one last time. He moved as if to pull her close, his own gesture of farewell, but she held him off by taking his hand, stiffly and formally. Her eyes were sad, but she offered him a weak smile.

  “It was very good seeing you again, Jim,” she said, giving his hand a slight squeeze. “Do look me up next time you’re in Philadelphia.”

  Then she turned and hurried quickly away down the walk that led diagonally out of the square to the row of elegant townhouses opposite, a sad dark figure, eventually disappearing into the gloomy mist.

  Von Kresse was escorted into the special chamber of the Reichschancellory by six members of Goering’s most elite Luftwaffe guard. They moved in exact, perfectly timed military step, and the count had to extend himself painfully to keep up with them, but he managed it, remaining as proudly erect as any of them, willing to go through the worst possible agony to do so.

  He had remained in the United States until December 21, when Lindbergh and his family secretly took ship on a United States Lines freighter with passenger accommodations and sailed to England. Von Kresse had met with the American again in London, on one occasion attending a small dinner party with Lindbergh thrown by the man who had become King Edward VIII. Then, knowing that his American friend would be following after, the count had gone on to Germany. He was received by a contingent of Goering’s guards, Himmler’s Death’s Head S.S., and several Gestapo agents at the dock at Hamburg, and now he was here in Berlin, at the very center of the Reich’s power.

  In a few moments would come the most dreadful, ugly, and painful experience of his life, a life in which so much had been dreadful, ugly, and painful. But he had steeled himself
to it, vowing to conduct himself through the agony of this ordeal with all the dignity he could summon. He would restrain himself from any outburst—somehow hold his tongue still when his soul’s greatest yearning was to curse them all with every vile name he knew. He would keep himself from weeping when they brought up his sister Dagne. He would carry on through this as he had vowed to do, as a Prussian, as a man who loved his country, his people, as a man who must always do what he must do.

  It would be over soon enough. All things came to an end.

  Helmeted guards with automatic weapons opened the huge twin doors that led to the dark, shadowy, cavernous chamber beyond. At the far end, the malevolent waiting figures stood in a circle, bathed in bright light, the Reich’s principal murderer at their center.

  Von Kresse hesitated, and felt himself pushed firmly on by one of his Luftwaffe escorts. He continued further, step by echoing step, closer and closer, until at last he stood before them. As he had promised his now-so-important friend he would do, he then did what he had for years sworn he would never do. He clenched his stomach muscles to keep from vomiting, clicked his heels as smartly as his afflicted legs would allow, and shot his right arm into the air.

  “Heil Hitler!” von Kresse said, so sharply the paneled walls reverberated with the sound.

  They were all there—Goering, Heinrich Himmler, Admiral Canaris, Joachim “von” Ribbentrop, and Herr Shicklgruber, Der Führer. It was one of the highest-ranking ceremonial functions held in the Reich in months, though it was being conducted entirely in secret.

  Hitler came forward, his eyes somewhat glassy, a boyish smile on his puffy face. He clasped von Kresse’s arms with both hands, and for a moment the count feared the hateful little man was going to kiss him.

  “My dear, dear Colonel,” Hitler said, never a man to indulge the nobility with their titles. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you. Or how badly I feel.”

  He stepped back and began walking about, as he liked to do when giving vent to his well-known hyperbole.

  “Never have I been so wrong about a man,” he said. “I, perhaps the most astute judge of moral character in the history of the world. I, who have perceived the weaknesses of every European leader arrayed against the Reich. I ignored your record of courage and gallantry in the war, your long years of loyalty to Germany in commanding forces defending our eastern border against the barbarians despite your painful infirmities.”

  He paused and swung about, his hands clasped behind his back.

  “I thought you a traitor!” he suddenly bellowed. “An enemy of the Reich! An enemy of your Führer!”

  His fierce expression melted and mellowed, and he recommenced his pacing.

  “But look what you have done, and I have a full report now from all these gentlemen on everything that happened on that Dutch ship. Minister von Ribbentrop here even talked to an eyewitness, the Englishwoman, Lady Cunard. Well, my dear colonel, you have been nothing less than magnificent. You sacrificed your very own sister—your own flesh and blood—to save the life of the greatest friend the Reich has in England, the man who is now King of England! Your very own sister! With your very own hands!” He whirled about, startling the others. “Who among you has done as much for the Reich?”

  Goering, Canaris, and Ribbentrop stood there silent, with vacant, stupid expressions on their faces. Himmler looked as if that very moment he would be happy to sacrifice his sister, mother, father, and wife to elicit the same adulatory remarks from his Führer.

  Hitler calmed himself, motioning to an attendant to come forward with a small wooden box.

  “And so you shall be rewarded,” the Führer resumed. “In the war you were one of just six hundred eighty-seven brave fighting men, just eighty brave airmen, to win the Pour le Mérite. Fighting in the trenches, you won, like me, the Iron Cross. But now, Colonel …” He reached into the box and pulled out a bejeweled black cross hanging from a crimson ribbon. “… for your bravery, loyalty, and sacrifice, I award you the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Diamonds.”

  As Hitler hung the ribbon around his neck, the others applauded. Von Kresse flinched when the Führer’s hand brushed his cheek, then prayed that the man would not notice.

  He didn’t. He beamed. The others gave out a “Sieg Heil” in unison. Von Kresge stepped back as would be required in a parade-ground awards ceremony, clicked his heels awkwardly, and once again saluted, gritting his teeth as the words “Heil Hitler” once more came out of his mouth.

  He knew that, in his own country, Charles Lindbergh would soon be making a similar sacrifice, and would pay a similar personal price.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The spring rains had ended and the long season of dry heat had begun for the Spanish capital. By midsummer, it would make explicable every madness and dark passion of these smoldering-tempered Moorish Latins, so famous for their homicidal pride.

  But this particular morning was strangely cool—a bright and sunny day full of light air and frequent breezes. It might have been Paris in May, or New York in October—not this sprawling pueblo on the plateau of Sierra de Guadarrama, this city of white buildings and women dressed in black, this place of dust and donkeys and death.

  Spencer’s idol Hemingway called this a sun-hardened country. Its harsh mountains and climate had been enough to defeat Napoleon, and the Duke of Wellington who vanquished his generals did not linger long. The Franks had defeated the Spanish Moors—but at Tours, not here. And if the Franks had won, they had not conquered. More an extension of North Africa than Europe, the Iberian peninsula had produced a people hard and cruel enough to conquer nearly all of South and North America, handfuls of sweating, helmeted men with muskets wiping out in a few years powerful Indian empires that had taken centuries to build. They had nearly destroyed France and England.

  And now they were bent on destroying themselves.

  Spencer and his workmates, like theater critics at a Roman arena, military historians counting the corpses at the battle of Canae, were there with their ledgers and notebooks, ready to record the debacle for history on flimsy, thin pages of newsprint that their stirring accounts would share with advertisements for new fur wraps available at Saks Fifth Avenue and Marshall Fields and reports of Alice Marble winning the U.S. lawn tennis women’s singles championship.

  The reporters who had been earliest on the scene—in time for the wrenchingly polarizing elections that had seen the militantly left-wing Popular Front seize power by the narrowest of margins—had taken the best rooms in the grand, sprawling Palace Hotel on the Plaza de las Cortes. Occupying a full, huge Spanish block and enclosing a thousand chambers, this Iberian version of Beaux Arts Parisian splendor could at least claim four vital necessities of life for the American and European correspondents—telephones that worked; usually running water; periodic electrical power; and a continuously open bar and wine cellar.

  Spencer had taken a suite as an accommodation to those among his colleagues who were his friends. It was relatively early in the morning, as the Spanish went about daily life, but his associates had been out pounding hard for an hour or more. Dick O’Brien of the Irish Times and Ronny Batchelor of Reuter were working at typewriters, one set on a desk and the other on a room service table still holding spoiled fruit. Robert Rowley of the Boston Globe was puzzling over a communique from the new government, with glass of Tio Pepe and Spanish-English dictionary readily at hand. Jan Cawley of the United Press was talking to someone in the United States over one of the telephone lines in the suite; Nancy Cunard, sitting on the window sill, swinging her legs and swigging from a bottle of Paternina, was prattling on over the other phone with some editor in Harlem. They were disagreeing over some point in her story about the Negro antecedents of Spain’s Moorish kings, the editor disputing any association with the sub-Saharan peoples most closely identified with bringing the joys of slavery to those who became American blacks, Nancy ragging him for some reason about Othello. Adding to the intensity of the dispute was the
fact that it was just after four A.M. in New York. No one minded that Nancy went on so over the phones. She kept the lines open, and she was paying all the phone bills.

  Bill Laingen came in, boisterous and cheerful, if utterly fatigued. His face was reddened and moist with sweat, despite the strange morning coolness.

  “I come directly from the office of His Excellency the People’s Premier Manuel Azana,” he said, causing everyone in the room but Nancy Cunard to pause in what they were doing. Laingen took a sip of Rowley’s Tio Pepe. “The office of His Excellency, et cetera, et cetera, wishes to announce that it has nothing to announce. Off the record, though, one of His Excellency et cetera, et cetera’s secretaries discreetly informed me that there would be nothing to announce tomorrow, either.”

  There was laughter, and curses, and shaking of heads, then they all resumed what they had been doing, except for Nancy, who hung up her phone, took up her wine bottle, and went out into the white bright sun of the balcony. She sat down on its flooring and leaned against the railing, looking down on the street.

  Spencer was by no means as amused as the others. Azana was feckless. The Popular Front, like Kerensky’s provisional socialists in the first Russian Revolution of 1917, clung to a center that was rapidly vanishing. The militant socialists were pushing them to the left, the communists were pulling them violently in the same direction, and the anarchists who had so recently held so much power were standing off in contempt of all. The army, abetted mightily by the Church, was reacting with unexpected swiftness, emerging as the most potent foe of a Republic besieged from every ideological quarter. Attempts had been made on the life of the Right’s most able political leader, Calvo Sotelo. Spencer was planning to write a piece—that day, if possible, certainly that week—warning of a right-wing revolution and the disaster of civil war. Ronny Batchelor was writing one at that very moment.

  Laingen stopped by Spencer’s chair, resting a hand on the back. He nodded to the main door of the suite.

  “Someone in the lobby wants to see you, Jimmy. Won’t go away until you come down.”