Jack 1939

by Francine Mathews

  Jack lifted his eyes to Dobler’s face. “Yeah. My father’s sent me a ride up to London.”

  “Wise man. We’re coming into Southampton now.”

  W.D. believed German Intelligence.

  Jack’s fingers trembled slightly; the smell of coffee and eggs hit his nostrils sickly.

  Everything Willi had done made a skewed sort of sense: Easing into Jack’s confidence at the Captain’s table; flattering him by disparaging his brother Joe; suggesting that he, Dobler, was intimate with Roosevelt; lecturing Jack on the finer points of espionage. If you hope to serve your president. . . .

  Willi must have known about the midnight meeting on Platform 61. He was a spy, for chrissake, with traitors in every corner. What had Roosevelt said? I can’t trust the State department with this. I can’t trust anybody right now.

  Jack tucked the telegram into his breast pocket, trying to mask the tremor in his fingers. Only a few people knew he’d met Roosevelt in the Pullman. Was it Casey? Foscarello? Somebody on the President’s staff? Maybe Sam Schwartz was in Dobler’s pocket—Schwartz was a German name, after all. But FDR had told Jack to work with Schwartz. He’d just sent the telegram he was fingering right now.

  Dobler was the one to fear—rescuing Jack in Tourist Class, from a thug who was probably on Dobler’s payroll. Walking Jack back to his stateroom, so he could tell the Spider which lock to pick. Snowing Jack with the Eiger story, to scare him silly.

  He’d almost asked Willi for help last night. It might have got him killed.

  Diana, he thought despairingly. She was a friend of Willi’s. And a Fascist. Neither fact was good news.

  Dobler settled his hat on his head with precise grace.

  “Have you eaten?” he asked. “No? I suggest we carry that tray into the First Class lounge—and let your man here get on with the packing. You’re making a bigger mess than the Spider.”

  He was a charming fellow, Willi, even if his looks would never fit Hitler’s Aryan ideal.

  Jack felt gauche and stupid. What the hell had FDR been thinking when he’d recruited him?

  Your own brand of guts. Your charm and your smile and your trick of making everybody underestimate you. You’ll find the network we’re looking for, Jack. I know you will.

  Roosevelt had guessed he’d be standing eventually in the ruins of some stateroom, wondering how to get out alive. He’d deliberately tossed Jack to the wolves—and would be wildly entertained if he survived.

  He reached for his breakfast tray.

  “You’re a rock, Willi,” he said with a smile. “Can I give you a lift to London in my Old Man’s car?”

  TWELVE. CONTEMPT

  “THE POOR FELLOW WAS PICKED UP in the Hudson?” Roosevelt asked.

  “Bobbing around in the shipping lanes,” Hoover replied. “We figure he was dumped off a boat.” He handed the President a black-and-white photograph of a white pectoral muscle. “The mark’s somewhat faded after several days in the water, but you can make out the swastika if you look hard.”

  Roosevelt reached for the magnifying lens he kept with his stamp collection and held it to his eye. There it was—Hitler’s juggernaut. A cartwheeling Black Widow. “You think there’s a link to the hatcheck girl.”

  Hoover shrugged. “We kept the swastika out of the press accounts of Katie O’Donohue’s murder. Which means this is not a copycat crime. It’s the same killer. Same military thrust to the heart. Question is, who’s the victim—and how does he fit into the Nazi cash network?”

  “You haven’t identified him?”

  “No papers. Clean as a whistle. Even his tailor’s marks were cut out of his clothes.”

  “And the quality of those clothes?” Roosevelt asked.

  “Good. Wool suit, long-staple cotton shirt. Handmade leather shoes.”

  Roosevelt lowered his magnifying lens and studied the middle distance. “He’d been in the water several days.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Transatlantic liners sail on Fridays and Saturdays.”

  “And the New York Harbor police found the corpse Monday. It was Wednesday before the coroner saw the swastika on the chest and figured something funny was going on. He called us. That’s why I’m just talking to you now, on Thursday.”

  Jack’s boat would have docked in Southampton today, Roosevelt thought. What had he cabled Schwartz? Please advise background . . . one alias White Spider, believed Nazi agent. White Spider. What if the cartwheeling mark Hoover called a swastika was in fact a spider? Not just a mark of German loyalty—but one particular killer’s calling card?

  The President steepled his fingers and tapped them lightly beneath his nose. Hoover was talking rapidly about something but he wasn’t listening anymore, he was following a thread in his mind. A body with a possible spider cut into its flesh had been found in the shipping lanes. And Jack had said the White Spider made contact on the Queen Mary. Hoover’s Nazi killer had almost certainly crossed the Atlantic on Jack’s ship. They had missed the point of the swastika mark—but the boy knew better. The boy worked fast.

  Roosevelt was disinclined to tell Hoover anything about Jack.

  “Embarkation lists,” he suggested vaguely. “Cross-checked against disembarkation lists, at the French and English ports.”

  “Beg pardon, Mr. President?”

  Roosevelt sighed. “There are two possibilities, Ed. Either this corpse floating in the Hudson is one of the Nazis’ bagmen, or he was an innocent who got in the way. If the latter, it’s possible someone was meeting him in London. A business associate. A lover. But he hasn’t arrived. Check the Missing Persons reports. Your corpse may be among them.”

  “I’ll get on the horn to Southampton and Cherbourg.”

  Roosevelt turned his wheelchair, an implicit dismissal. Sam Schwartz had slipped noiselessly into the room. He was staring at Hoover with open contempt.

  “Oh, and Ed,” Roosevelt tossed over his shoulder, “Sam here has learned that there’s a Nazi agent whose nom de guerre is the White Spider. It’s possible that mark cut into the bodies isn’t a swastika at all, but something more personal. One that could identify the killer.

  Comprehension filled Hoover’s face. “A spider.”

  “You might run the idea by Scotland Yard.” Roosevelt paused for satiric effect. “If you can spare a minute from spying on my friends.”

  THIRTEEN. KICK

  THE GIRL AT THE HEAD OF THE STAIRS was trying on a picture hat that tied under her ear with an enormous bow. She was frowning in the pier glass that hung between two marble pillars, obviously unhappy with what she saw—and Jack’s greeting died on his lips. Even at nineteen, Kick would never be a beauty; she was too Kennedy for that, with a freckled face, a snub nose, and a square jaw. But she was shrewd and funny and her smile lit up a room; half of London was in love with her.

  So why this desolate look?

  She must have felt him watching, because she turned and caught him, awkward and alone, in the middle of the sweeping staircase. She shrieked and held out her hands.

  “Hey, kid,” she crowed. “What’s the sto-ory?”

  It was what she always said when he showed up out of the blue. Jack lifted her off her feet and swung her around. He could feel her thin frame through the silk of her dress. The London season had honed her curves. Sharpened her. He hadn’t seen Kick since last September and it was this tightening of her bones that reminded him of how much time had passed. There was something painful about it. A childhood they’d lost.

  “Gosh, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” she murmured. “I’ve missed you, Jack.”

  “You’re looking snazzy, Kick. Where’re you going?”

  “Billy’s taking me to a dress party.” She glanced down the stairs, despair flooding her face again. “He’ll be here soon.”

 
; He lifted her chin, stared into her eyes. “What’s the sto-ory, kid?”

  “It’s just—Billy.”

  “Hartington?” He didn’t really need to ask; there was only one Billy worth mentioning, in London.

  “Marquis of,” Kick added gloomily. She pulled off her hat and tossed it on the bench beneath the mirror, then sank down beside it. “Mother hates him, Jack. She’s perfectly polite, but—”

  Rose Kennedy’s politeness was frigid enough to freeze the balls off a greater man than Billy, Marquis of Hartington. Who was heir to the Duke of Devonshire and his vast fortune, one of the most powerful men in England. Billy was the catch of the season, the Protestant Prince every British mother wanted. And Rose treated him like a chimney sweep. If she could have barred the ambassador’s residence to Billy Hartington, that aristocratic despoiler of innocent Catholic girls, she’d have done it in a heartbeat. But Billy’s family was too politically important to snub. So Rose settled for freezing off the poor guy’s balls.

  For the past year, the London papers had been full of Billy and Kick. They were caught in the glare of flashbulbs at race meetings and cricket matches and debutante balls and the wicked 400 Club, where Kick was forbidden to go.

  “Mother’s in Egypt,” Jack said bracingly. “Who gives a damn what she thinks?”

  “God, apparently. She’s got a direct line to the Almighty, and He says I’m in mortal sin if I so much as kiss Billy.”

  “You already have.”

  Kick’s dimples flashed. “How was Mayo?”

  “Swell. Turned me inside out and found nothing.”

  “You look good. Thin—but . . . you’re always thin.”

  “I like your hat.” He tried it on. “Frames the face.”

  “You think so?” she asked anxiously. “You think Billy will like it? I never wore half so many hats in the States. I’m not used to it. I’m not very good at it, Jack. There’s so much to learn, here. About dress—and . . . parties, and . . . the right way to act at weekends in the country. Sticking your shoes outside your bedroom door to be polished, like in a hotel. Tipping the servants. I’m always doing or saying the wrong thing.”

  “Which is why they love you, Kick. You’re real.”

  “I’d better get going.” She grabbed her hat off his head and took one last look in the mirror.

  “Is Dad here?” Jack asked quickly.

  “Still at the embassy. Never home, really—always off holding Chamberlain’s hand. Or some showgirl’s tush.”

  There were no flies on Kick, Jack thought. She’d always known what their father was.

  “You don’t like Chamberlain?” he asked.

  “Billy hates him,” she said simply. “Thinks he’s a coward. Flying off to see Hitler, with an umbrella in his hand and a bowler on his head, like something out of Mary Poppins. Billy says the Germans will never be satisfied with just the Sudetenland and it’s only a matter of time before they roll into Prague and seize all of Czechoslovakia. And it’ll be Chamberlain who gave them permission. As if they needed it. Billy says there’s going to be war—”

  Billy says. If Kick quoted Hartington every third sentence, no wonder Rose was worried.

  “And Joe?” he asked.

  “He’s in Spain.” She rolled her eyes in profound boredom. “He got all lofty and superior and called it a Fact-Finding Mission, but I think he’s just sightseeing. Daddy was furious when he got off the boat and found out Joe had beat it for Madrid. He thinks he’ll get shot or something. But I guess Joe was just fed up. Hanging around the 400 Club, getting tight, isn’t terribly interesting when there’s a fight going on somewhere.”

  That was Kick—offering up the Spanish Civil War as a cure for yesterday’s hangover.

  A bell sounded in the octagonal hallway below; an elderly butler moved in stately procession across the marble tiles. Number 14, Prince’s Gate, was a whale of a house, with six storeys, thirty-six rooms, an elevator, and a staff of twenty-four. J. P. Morgan had owned it years ago; but J. P. Kennedy had spent a quarter of a million dollars redecorating it. Jack wondered which bedroom was his. The housekeeper would know.

  He’d never really had a room of his own growing up, just temporary beds in a series of enormous houses. All the Kennedy kids lived like that—shuttled between boarding schools and whichever place their parents went next. Only Hyannis Port felt like home. Life was a suitcase.

  “That’ll be Billy,” Kick said breathlessly. “I have to go. If Daddy asks, I’m out with Debo Mitford. Got it?”

  “Sure I’ve got it.” He looked at her quizzically. “You lie to Dad, too?”

  “Where Billy’s concerned, I’m lying about everything.” Kick was taking the stairs two at a time, her voice trailing behind her. “Meet us at 400 around midnight. There’s bound to be a girl you’ll like.”

  A girl he’d like. When his whole heart ached for a woman run wild in Paris.

  He could just see the top of Billy Hartington’s head below; the British prince was dark and tall and was sure to have perfect manners. Kick ran to him, and his arm came around her waist.

  Jack stared down at them. He’d never seen his little sister in love before.

  * * *

  HIS ROOM WAS THE SAME AS LAST SUMMER, a high-ceilinged space on the third floor with no closets and a couple of armoires, an en suite bath with pipes that banged terrifyingly, wide windows overlooking Hyde Park where society still rode on horseback each day.

  Jack threw open his window and leaned out, the Portland cement of the sill snagging the sleeves of his wool jacket. He sniffed the brown coal smell of London. Lights were coming on, faint and sulfurous; and as his gaze drifted over Hyde Park, a sudden movement caught his eye.

  A broad and compact figure in a camel’s hair coat, a fedora pulled low on his brow. Impossible to see the hair or face, but something about the set of his shoulders screamed thug.

  Jack leaned farther out, his gaze intent. The man was strolling along Kensington Road, which separated Prince’s Gate terrace from Hyde Park. He stopped and looked up at number 14.

  Their eyes met.

  And Jack knew.

  Willi Dobler was having him followed.

  I would like nothing better than to ride up to London with you, in your father’s car, Dobler had said as they parted on the Southampton dock, but I do not wish to provoke an international incident. Imagine the headlines, Jack. “Ambassador’s Son Befriends Hitler’s Man in London . . .”

  Dobler had walked Jack to the waiting embassy car, tipped his hat in farewell, and watched as the driver pulled away. Jack had been grinning to himself, alone in the backseat, convinced he’d called the German’s bluff.

  But he was beginning to realize that was tough to do.

  He drew back from the window. Anger tightened in his chest. He would not let them watch him, like an animal in the zoo. He turned and raced from the room, down the broad flights of stairs to the entrance hall, and slid back the bolts of the heavy oak door.

  Prince’s Gate was almost empty at this hour, the early northern dark falling on pitched roofs. He turned east and pelted down the paving to the point where the street bent north, toward the park, and stopped short in Kensington Road. He craned in both directions for a glimpse of the Spider. Was that a camel’s hair coat among the multitude of grays?

  He began to run, his gait wavering from six days in rough seas, the hard surface of the sidewalk reeling up to meet his feet, his arms pumping and his breath tearing in his lungs. Years of sprinting down football fields and indoor pools could not compensate for weeks of lying at Mayo. The threat of sickness caught at his throat. The camel’s hair coat was within yards now. Well-bred Englishmen spun out of his path. He thrust between two women and clapped his hand on the Spider.

  The man whirled to face him.

  Jack dro
pped into a boxer’s crouch, fists clenched and mind turning over his coach’s half-remembered lessons. No gloves. He’d break his hand on the Spider’s jaw—

  But it was not the Spider.

  Of course it was not the Spider.

  A middle-aged Englishman, with a look of terror on his face. He raised a furled umbrella against the coming annihilation.

  Jack eased up. “Sorry,” he gasped, his breath still ragged. “I thought you were somebody else.”

  “Bloody Americans,” the women seethed behind him.

  FOURTEEN. SINNERS AND SAINTS

  JACK FOUND HIS LITTLE BROTHERS, Bobby and Teddy, established at one end of the long dining-room table while a woman he assumed was Teddy’s latest nanny sat nearby, correcting the boy’s use of fork and knife. Teddy had learned, in the past year, to hold the fork backward and shovel peas with the knife—Continental manners that would be punched out of him in boarding school back home, Jack thought. His little brother had just turned seven and was the baby of the family—sturdy and cheerful and prone to sliding down the banisters at Prince’s Gate. Bobby was six years older, taciturn and nervy and often alone—a touchy kid, who lashed out bitterly when he was hurt, which seemed to be most of the time. Bobby hated his London school and had made no friends. Jack would have liked to have helped him somehow, but he barely knew either of the boys. They were a different generation, growing up behind his back.

  Teddy prattled to the nanny as he ate and Bobby stewed in silence, his fork swirling aimlessly around his plate.

  “Hey, brats.” Jack tossed his hat down the table. It came to rest between the two of them. “How’s tricks?”

  “Jack!” Teddy ran to him, all draggled socks and scabby knees in his gray flannel shorts. “Daddy said you were coming today. I was going to wait up.”

  “Indeed you were not, Master Teddy,” the nanny said.

  “I was, too! There’s hours before bed yet.”

  Jack lifted him a few inches off the floor in a hug. Teddy was as solid as a truck; Jack’s back spasmed.