Jack 1939

by Francine Mathews

  Jack’s brow furrowed. There was active fear in his father’s voice he couldn’t understand. They were such different people—Joe was terrified of death, whereas Jack had always taken it for granted. The only question was how and when it happened.

  “I’m going to Paris.” He snapped the brass clips on his suitcase. “I’ve got a thesis to research and write.”

  “It’s not gonna happen, son,” Joe said roughly. “You’re too damn sick. Even your mother can see that, and she never sees anything. You’re yellow with jaundice and you’re clammy with sweat. I heard you retching last night.”

  “Something in the Roman water doesn’t agree with me.”

  “Something in the world doesn’t agree with you, Jack. You look like walking death.”

  They confronted his reflection together in the hotel mirror. There was, Jack had to admit, a faintly yellow tinge to his skin. Nothing a little sun wouldn’t take care of. His eyes were sunken. His cheekbones were as prominent as a skull’s and his forehead looked a bit moist. “I just need some sleep. I’ve been burning the candle at both ends this week.”

  “You can sleep in London.”

  He grasped his suitcase. “I’ll wire when I get to Paris.”

  “I’m not funding this fool’s errand,” Joe said querulously, suddenly aware that his grown son wasn’t obeying him. “You won’t get a dime from me.”

  His last trick: playing the poverty card.

  “That’s okay, Dad.” Jack fleetingly calculated his loose change and few bills. “I’ll manage.” Without you.

  Ten minutes later, as his taxi pulled away from the curb, his father ran after it, swearing a blue streak—with a wad of cash in his outstretched hand.

  * * *

  THE ROME EXPRESS was a sumptuous Wagon-Lit train that would get him to Paris midmorning. Jack had a luxury sleeper to himself and the rest of Melbourne to finish; but he was lonelier tonight than he could remember being. He ached for Diana. She’d checked out of the Hassler Monday while Teddy took First Communion from the Pope. She’d left no forwarding address.

  Jack shivered. Chills ran the length of his body and he was sweating again. He mopped his forehead with a handkerchief, tossed his suit jacket on the rack with his luggage, and pulled a blanket from his berth.

  His leg throbbed and his entrails no longer behaved. He’d lied when he’d told Dad he was okay; he was a rambling wreck again, but nothing would force him to admit it. He would not let Roosevelt down. Even though he’d been too sick to transmit this morning, and had nothing new to report. Maybe he should use the DOCA once a day. But his supply of pellets was dwindling and he would not experiment on his body while traveling alone.

  As night fell, he stared out at the Italian countryside. Lombardy poplars, hills the color of wheat, the odd punctuation of ocher roofs. He could not decide where Diana’s loyalties lay. She’d ridiculed his father and called Chamberlain a fool; did that mean she wasn’t a Fascist? Cover, Dobler had called it. But cover could mean many things. Her story about Daisy Corcoran, for instance. How much could he believe? What if she’d gone to Paris last week to warn Wohlthat that Jack was nosing around Göring’s network?

  And had gotten Daisy killed?

  He didn’t know how to read Diana. She’d called him a teenager and a little brother Sunday night, then shuddered in his arms. Jack knew he was charming—charm was the most reliable weapon in his arsenal—but Diana had the pick of male Europe at her feet. Swooning over a college kid didn’t make sense.

  Leaving without a word the next morning did.

  It was painful to remember the way he’d felt on the Spanish Steps, touching Diana’s body—like he was drowning in it. Painful to recall the smell and feel of her skin, the taste of her mouth. For a few seconds he’d felt like he owned her, body and soul—that she was his for the asking—but she’d fooled him again and skipped town without a word. He suspected both Diana and her friend Willi Dobler had been playing him for weeks. They’d set him up from the moment he’d boarded the Queen Mary: offering a drink when he’d been sucker-punched; offering information when they knew—as Willi clearly did—that he’d been sent out by his president in search of it. Play Jack, they must have figured, and they’d play Roosevelt, too.

  And yet—and yet . . . Dobler had told him about the Little Sisters of Clemency.

  And Diana had lost her balance completely on the Spanish Steps.

  His lip curled bitterly. He had as much of a problem with trust as she did.

  What if they’re both legit? his mind protested. What if Willi and Diana are on my side?

  As the swaying train climbed steadily north, Jack closed his eyes.

  Not even a college kid could be that gullible.

  THIRTY. NOTHING LIKE JOE

  JACK WAS SICKER THAN A DOG by the time he reached Paris.

  Alerted by a cable from J. P. Kennedy, Carmel Offie met the Rome train that morning. The vice-consul took one look at Jack’s face and threw his arm over his shoulder. Together, they staggered off the platform. Offie was short and Jack was tall and they made an odd couple, but Jack was too weak to protest. He’d spent most of the night vomiting.

  “Tummy troubles?” Offie inquired sympathetically. “That wretched Roman water.”

  Offie was what Joe Kennedy called queer; but Jack liked the little man, who’d grown up poor in an industrial town in western Pennsylvania, and had worked his way up to the highest levels of diplomatic service. He let Offie grasp his waist and pour him into the back of Bill Bullitt’s official car and speed through the streets to the ambassador’s residence on the Right Bank.

  “I need to send a telegram,” he said hoarsely as Offie helped him into the foyer. “To my doctor. George Taylor.”

  He was prostrate for the better part of a week in the Beaux Arts monstrosity Bullitt called home. It was lined with marble and echoed with emptiness. Bullitt lived there with two dozen servants; but in the summer months he moved to the Château de St. Firmin, a lovely mansion in the park surrounding the Château de Chantilly. Bullitt was a natural aristocrat, the master of the grand gesture; he pursued dangerous women, entertained lavishly, never considered cost, and drank as determinedly as Winston Churchill. With the nightingales singing in the woods, his string of horses stabled nearby, and the gurgle of water from a torrent behind St. Firmin, the peace of Chantilly was overwhelming.

  He took Jack to convalesce there. Jack implored Bullitt to say nothing to his father, and the ambassador—who had mixed feelings about Joe Kennedy—did as he asked. In return for silence, Bullitt demanded Jack see his doctor, but the man was bewildered by Jack’s symptoms and could prescribe only tisanes and red wine. Jack puked up both. It was a telegram from Taylor, offering the name of a specialist, that saved him.

  Dr. LaSalle was a researcher in endocrinology at the Sorbonne. An embassy car whisked him to Chantilly, where he examined Jack and injected him with a needleful of DOCA.

  “While you remain in France, I will visit you every few days for these injections, hein?” he said.

  “What’s wrong with my pellets?” Jack asked warily.

  “You used them too infrequently, mon ami, and now you are very ill. When you are better, we shall see if the pellets may be resumed,” LaSalle said serenely.

  “Why do I need the stuff so much?”

  The Frenchman’s brows lifted in faint surprise. “Monsieur le Docteur Taylor did not explain?”

  “Not really.”

  “DOCA is an adrenal hormone, monsieur. In normal cases, such things are secreted by the adrenal glands, you comprehend. But in your case . . .”

  “My adrenal glands don’t work?”

  The doctor shrugged. “I cannot possibly say, monsieur. I am merely doing as I am instructed by Monsieur le Docteur Taylor. As to the reasons for his treatment, I can give you no véritable
information. I assumed the matter was understood.”

  “What do adrenal hormones do?”

  LaSalle compressed his lips. “How to say in English? They conduct the salts in your blood.”

  “Salt?” Jack forced himself upright in bed, his head swimming. “That’s it? I just need to eat more salt?”

  The doctor shook his head. “I regret, no. Hardly so simple. You must discuss with Monsieur le Docteur, yes?”

  * * *

  JACK IMPROVED. HIS HIVES ABATED, his sweating diminished, and after LaSalle’s third injection he could approach a dinner table without bolting for the bathroom. But he’d lost precious time; it was the end of March before he walked into the embassy.

  He toured the beautiful old building on the Place de la Concorde, shook hands with Robert Murphy, Bullitt’s chargé d’affaires, and allowed La Belle Offlet, as he privately called Carmel Offie, to find him an unused desk. While the vice-consul fussed over the correct chair for a man of Jack’s height, Jack wandered through the embassy’s Cultural section.

  “Helmuth Wohlthat? He’s that German economist who runs a charity organization, right?” Nancy Morgan was a French major two years out of Bryn Mawr who’d jilted her Yale man for a wilder life in Paris. She took dictation and organized Bullitt’s lavish parties and she had superb legs, Jack noticed. She was perched on her desktop with her ankles crossed, an hourglass figure in cashmere.

  “You’ve met him?”

  “Sure. We get people asking about him all the time—American Catholics coming through town. His nuns get a lot of money from the States.”

  “So you know where he lives?”

  “Berlin, I think. But when he’s in Paris, he stays at the Crillon. It’s just across the Rue Boissy d’Anglas from us.”

  “I know.”

  She gave him a smile that entirely reached her brown eyes.

  “Your brother was here a few months ago. He took me to Le Mirabeau for dinner. That’s in the Sixteenth. Very top drawer.”

  “Impressive. He usually prefers the bottom bunk. I’ll give him your regards the next time I see him.”

  Nancy grinned to show she could take an off-color joke. “Beats me what a girl sees in a convent. I’d go stark raving mad without a man in my life.”

  “Got one?” he couldn’t resist asking.

  “Not at the moment. Charlie was shipped off to Moscow two months ago.”

  “Communist?”

  “First Political Officer.”

  “Either way, he’s happy. Is Wohlthat in town?”

  She draped a hand on her hip. “What’s it worth to you?”

  Christ, he thought. He was beginning to feel tired. It was his first day out of a sickbed. “A drink at the Crillon. I’m headed over there now.”

  Her smile faded. “I can order one of those any day.”

  “Then I won’t waste your time.”

  “Wohlthat’s not at the Crillon,” Nancy said coyly, as he turned toward the door. “It’s nearly Easter. He always spends the holiday skiing—at Val d’Isère.”

  “Thanks,” he said. Val d’Isère. He’d have to figure out where that was. Offie would know.

  “Boy, were the guys in the Political Section ever wrong,” she called petulantly after him. “They said you were a dead ringer for your brother. But you’re nothing like Joe at all.”

  He was smiling faintly as he left. It was good to know some girls could tell the difference between them.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING AFTER BREAKFAST, Jack found his way to Bullitt’s mansard roof. An arc of pale blue sky canopied Chantilly as he tapped out his cipher message to Roosevelt; the world in spring had never looked so beautiful.

  Suggest you find all available information on Wohlthat Helmuth German banker STOP Göring associate STOP Believed funneling money through Little Sisters charity network STOP am tracking now STOP CRIMSON

  He liked the codename he’d chosen. CRIMSON. It made him feel like an honest-to-God spy.

  THIRTY-ONE. POWER

  FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT LIFTED HIS magnifying lens to examine a rare Seebeck reprint—a Nicaraguan 1893 stamp—he’d recently purchased at auction. Or rather, Sam Schwartz had purchased for him. It was a lovely thing, pale purple, with a glorious figure of a woman rising from a swirl of drapery.

  He wasn’t thinking about Seebeck’s engraving, however.

  He’d deciphered Jack’s latest transmission early that morning. And compared it to Ambassador Joe Kennedy’s most recent cable. The latter was written in Papa Joe’s usual aw-shucks style.

  I thought I ought to tell you that Jim Mooney—head of General Motors over here in Europe—is convinced I should meet with a Dr. Helmuth Wohlthat. He’s connected to the Reichsbank, works with international loans and finance, and has some sort of deal he wants to propose for your consideration. Mooney hinted it might just resolve the whole Hitler mess. Why he thinks I’d make a good intermediary between you two I don’t know—maybe I’m known for sizing up a money guy from my Wall Street and SEC days. At any rate, if it’s all right with you, I’ll fly over to Paris and meet Wohlthat there—or someplace quietly here, whenever he’s next in London. I’d like to pick his brain about Hitler.

  The coincidence—if coincidence it was—intrigued Roosevelt. Father and son had stumbled on the same German, for wildly different reasons.

  “Franklin.”

  He set down his magnifying lens and twisted around in his chair; then held out his hand to Missy. She slipped her own into it. “Look at this beauty.”

  “The girl, or the stamp she’s printed on?”

  “You’ve known me long enough to answer that.”

  “Not if I live to be a hundred.”

  He slipped his arm around her waist. “You didn’t come up here to look at stamps.”

  “Or girls. No. I’m reporting for duty.”

  He studied her quizzically.

  “The Little Sisters of Clemency. You inquired.”

  “So I did.”

  “I was the soul of tact,” she said briskly, “but I think I’ll have to go to confession, now I’m done. Tact is hardly honesty.”

  “I should say it’s usually the opposite,” he agreed. “What’d you find out?”

  “They’ve been operating all over the East Coast for the past thirty years—but the bulk of the work is in New York. They run a soup kitchen for Bowery bums and trot over to Ellis Island once a week, ministering to disoriented immigrants as they beat on America’s doors.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Nope. A few relief places in Philadelphia and Boston. I understand they do much the same sort of thing in Europe.”

  “No fancy patron saint with deep pockets?”

  “Lots of ’em. All signing themselves Anonymous. I guess giving away a boatload of cash in the middle of a Depression makes some people bashful.”

  “Not so shy they’ll skip the tax deduction,” Roosevelt said drily. He patted Missy absentmindedly in dismissal. She rose without a word, handed him his stamp tweezers, and left.

  Roosevelt stared blindly at the album sheets scattered over his table, his mind focused instead on a scene played out in this very room a few hours before.

  William Rhodes Davis, Hoover had said. You know him?

  “Of course,” Roosevelt replied. “Oil man. Persuaded the Mexican government to sell millions of dollars’ worth of oil to Germany. The State department thinks he’s a Nazi agent.” He didn’t add that State had been keeping a file on Davis’s movements since 1928.

  “He’s taking money from Göring,” Hoover replied. “A hundred and sixty thousand dollars so far, near as we can tell. Delivered by the Germany embassy’s chargé d’affaires—one Hans Thomsen.” The FBI director had paused. “We’re just not sure, yet, who Davi
s is paying.”

  Edgar was a master, Roosevelt thought, of the partial disclosure. The tantalizing tidbit. He’d drop enough cards on the table to catch your eye, then fold his hand close to his chest and wait for your answering bid. He knew the mere mention of Davis—a white-haired Southern gentleman of considerable charm—would send Roosevelt’s anxiety soaring. Davis was close to John L. Lewis, the powerful labor organizer. Whose union votes were essential to electing any Democratic president. If Davis’s Nazi cash was buying labor votes for Roosevelt’s rivals . . .

  “Then I hope you’re watching the man,” Roosevelt had told Hoover genially. “I look forward to your next report.”

  He set down the tweezers and thrust his chair back from the table with a single forceful turn of the wheels. Damn J. Edgar Hoover and his throttle-hold on facts! Roosevelt was beginning to feel manipulated. Managed. Dare he say it—trapped?

  He needed something to barter with Ed Hoover. A chip to toss on the green baize table. An independent source of information. And the Little Sisters of Clemency’s donor list just might provide it.

  Hoover, Roosevelt could tell, had no inkling of the thread Jack Kennedy was following through Europe. It was purely conjecture, at the moment—but if Jack was right, and Göring’s banker was using a Catholic charity as a front—and Roosevelt could get the names of his American donors without having to ask Hoover for help, without having to depend on FBI favors—

  He took a deep breath and spun his wheelchair around. Rolled back to his stamp table and grasped a corner of the 1893 Nicaraguan delicately with his tweezers. With infinite care and steady hands, he placed it in the precise spot he’d reserved for it in his album.

  He would cable J. P. Kennedy in London and order him not to meet with Göring’s banker. He’d let Jack learn what he could about Wohlthat, instead.

  He reached for a small hand bell and rang it.

  Sam Schwartz stuck his head in the door.

  “Sam,” Roosevelt said. “Did you sweep my Pullman?”