Jack 1939

by Francine Mathews

  He swung his legs over the side of the bed and waited. Words were not safe. He could not trust himself to speak.

  Her fingers slid through his hair. She was whispering something. Poor jack poor jack poor jack.

  He pressed his forehead against the flat plane of her stomach and closed his eyes. She was cradling his head and murmuring softly but it wasn’t a nanny he needed now. He slid his hands beneath the silk and pulled her down against him. Covered her sudden gasp with his mouth. And then she was beneath him, that fragile birch-twig body and the hoofer’s legs, sleek beneath his hands.

  He lifted the silk over her head. She wore a diamond solitaire at her neck. It flashed in the moonlight slanting through his window. He took the rock between his teeth.

  She held his face in her hands. “We’ll have to be quiet,” she breathed. “The others—”

  Because he hated to be touched, sex was usually something furtive and quick. It was more about release and triumph than anguish or need, but this was Diana, and he tried to remember she was no Radcliffe virgin. He tried to give as well as take. Circled her nipple with his tongue until she cried out and arched beneath him; swept his deft sailor’s hands along her inner thighs. He pinned her arms above her head and kissed the valley between her breasts, the dip of her navel. Traced each knob of her spine, delicate as a nautilus, and the sweet tendon behind her knee. As he buried his face in her sex, she gasped like a woman rising from deep water, legs pirouetting over his shoulders.

  Somewhere in the night he found he was weeping as she surged above him, her head thrown back and that diamond glinting in the moonlight. Her flesh tightened around him like a current, some memory of the sea. He did not fear drowning. He feared loss, himself marooned on an empty stretch of beach. He clung to the jetsam of her body and took the wave.

  “Why did you marry him?” he asked her near dawn. “Willi called it cover. Are you in love with either of them?”

  She snorted into the crease of his elbow, her hair flung over his arm. “They’re in love with themselves. Ever since they met at Oxford. Denys and Willi. Willi and Denys. It’s been that way for years.”

  He thought of Carmel Offie and his best friend Lem who’d made a pass at him at Princeton. Of the two men side by side in a black London taxi while he swayed alone on the jump seat. He thought of Dobler’s colleague at Number 8 Carlton House Terrace. You’re one of those. He should have seen it all before, but jealousy had blinded him.

  He’d seen only Diana.

  “In England it’s tolerated but still a crime,” she was saying. “In Germany they give you a pink triangle or hang you with piano wire.”

  He lifted her onto his chest and she rested there like a sphinx. He shook her gently. “Why did you marry him?”

  “Willi’s life is at risk. And I’ve grown fond of him. Denys is vulnerable to politics. Sheer bloody malice. They turn a blind eye at the Foreign Office as long as he does what he’s told—but he could be crushed at any time. They both need me, Jack. The sensational wife. The insouciant mistress. I’m plausible deniability. I draw enemy fire.”

  “And what do you get out of that deal, Diana?”

  Her eyes slid away. “A name. Position. More money than I could ever spend.”

  “And a hell of a lot of loneliness.”

  She pressed her body the length of his. “I seize my moments.”

  * * *

  HOURS LATER, after she left him, he cut a DOCA pellet into his thigh and slept for a while. His dreams were tinged with fever and he tossed beneath sweat-soaked sheets.

  When he awoke, it was after nine and the alpine sun was well into the sky. He knew now what he had to do.

  * * *

  HE FOUND WILLI DOBLER at the breakfast table draining the last of his coffee. He was dressed in loose woolen pants, leather boots, a heavy sweater. A pair of skis was propped near the door.

  “You’re up early,” Willi said. “Or didn’t you sleep?”

  Jack ignored the jibe. He pulled out a chair and reached for the coffeepot. “If I wanted to find the White Spider, I’d have to find Reinhard Heydrich first. Right?”

  “It’s a logical conclusion. But you don’t, Jack. Want to find the Spider.”

  Jack took a sip of coffee. “Fair enough. I want to find something he stole. From a nun he knifed to death in Rome.”

  There was a silence. “Sister Mary Joseph. Diana told me.”

  “Did she mention the charity’s account book is missing?”

  Dobler shook his head. “She was more concerned about the loss of her friend. I take it you talked to Wohlthat.”

  “And he to me. Told me more than I wanted to know.”

  “You scared him to death. He left this morning at first light.” Dobler eased back in his chair and studied Jack. “What insanity are you contemplating, my friend?”

  “You said something once. About walking away from the mess Hitler’s made of Germany.”

  “I told you I couldn’t do it. Because people would die.”

  “Yeah.” Jack swallowed some tepid coffee. “There are a number of ways to die, Willi. One of them is a spiritual kind of murder. The body lives on, but the soul’s gone out of it. That’s what my family’s facing. A public humiliation. The ruin of all our lives. I can’t shrug off the problem, Willi—I can’t quit the game this time. I have to find the Spider before he gives Reinhard Heydrich the means to blackmail my father. And he has almost a month’s start on me.”

  “Less,” Dobler corrected. “He was in Paris the middle of March. Wohlthat said so. It will take him weeks to work his way across Europe. Police somewhere must be after him.”

  “He won’t waste time with the account book. He’ll take it straight to his master. So tell me, Willi—where’s Heydrich right now? Berlin? Prague? Danzig?”

  “If I were near an embassy—I could answer you in five minutes. As it is . . .”

  “Come on, Willi. You know everything. Before it happens.”

  The German sighed. “Even if I did know, I’m not sure I’d tell you. I’ve no desire to send you to your death, Jack.”

  “That’s touching, Willi. Thanks. But it’s not your decision to make.”

  After an instant, Dobler nodded. “Then start with Berlin. It has the advantage of being closest. If Heydrich’s there, you’ll know soon enough. You can work your back channels. Ask the American chargé to arrange an interview for your . . . thesis.”

  “And then rob the Gestapo chief.”

  “If you want to put it that simply.” Dobler’s voice was flat. “You’re talking about the most dangerous man in Europe, Jack.”

  “Including Hitler?”

  “Including Hitler.”

  Jack lifted his eyebrows and waited.

  “Do you have a gun?” Willi asked.

  He shook his head regretfully. “Roosevelt said I needed one.”

  “—And? You couldn’t ask the little man in the lingerie shop to help you?”

  Jack laughed out loud. “Is there anything you don’t know, Willi?”

  “Not much. Wait a moment.”

  He left the table and headed upstairs, taking the narrow wooden stairs at a bound, and Jack heard the sound of his boots tramping across the ceiling. When Dobler returned, he carried a flannel-wrapped package.

  “Si vis pacem, para bellum,” he said softly, and handed the thing to Jack.

  It seemed there was a use for Jack’s Latin after all.

  If you want peace, prepare for war.

  Jack unwrapped the piece of flannel. It had lovingly concealed a Luger P08 semiautomatic pistol, the Parabellum. The German army’s sidearm of preference for the past forty years. It was a thing of beauty, Jack thought, in the strangest of possible ways—with its slim barrel, elegant as a cigarette, and its grip canted at a fifty-
five-degree angle. A semiautomatic, recoil-operated pistol, it had a toggle lock and took eight 9-millimeter bullets in its magazine. The bullet shells ejected once they were fired.

  “Ever use one of these?” Dobler asked.

  Ever? Jack had never used any kind of gun at all.

  Dobler glanced out the window. “It’s high time we woke Val d’Isère. Get your coat.”

  * * *

  HE WORKED WITH THE PISTOL for nearly an hour, under Willi’s patient tutelage. Learned to load it, and to steady it in both hands, held straight out like a shot-putter; to correct for the inevitable recoil; to correct for the vagaries of sight and nerve. He fired into snowbanks. He fired at trees. Purely by accident, he fired at Willi—and missed. For that he got a lecture on gun safety.

  They drew a crowd of three silent Frenchmen, and as a gesture of goodwill Willi let them hold the Luger.

  “De la guerre,” one said. And the others gazed at Willi with sudden mistrust.

  “Come along, old chap,” he muttered as he threw an arm over Jack’s shoulders and turned him toward the inn. “My father used this at Verdun. And the French have long memories.”

  * * *

  JACK SETTLED HIS BILL and tucked his bags into the hired car. He would be driving higher on the Col d’Iseran, to the Italian border, then turning north to Germany.

  “When you reach your embassy in Berlin,” Dobler said, “send Denys a telegram. He’ll be back at Whitehall the end of this week. We’ll all want to know how you are.”

  Jack shook his hand. He got into the car and put it in gear. Dobler stepped back onto the steps of the Hotel de Paris and lifted his hand in farewell. It was an English gesture, nothing like the Nazi salute. Jack glanced over his shoulder as he wheeled the car around and caught a clouded glimpse of Diana’s face.

  She had appeared out of nowhere and was standing at Dobler’s elbow. She was wrapped in furs. A suitcase sat at her feet.

  “Jack,” she called.

  He stopped the car.

  Dobler stepped through the inn’s doorway and disappeared.

  Diana leaned into his side window. “Jack.”

  She was fumbling at the door handle.

  “Diana, I have to go.”

  “Take me with you.”

  “I have to go.”

  He was reaching for the passenger lock to slam it home when she opened the door and slid into the seat.

  His hand fell instead onto her shoulder.

  She stared at him, her black eyes unreadable.

  “Don’t do this, Diana.”

  Her lips compressed. She busied herself with settling her luggage. For a woman of fashion she had brought surprisingly little.

  “This isn’t a vacation. It’ll be dangerous.”

  “And I know everybody in the Nazi hierarchy in Berlin, Prague, and Poland,” she snapped. “You’ll find I’m useful, Jack Kennedy. You’ll find you can’t manage without me. You’ll wonder how you ever dared.”

  “I thought Willi could be trusted.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t blame him. I know nothing, really. It’s all a guess. But you need me, Jack.”

  He did not ask what she needed from him.

  Her lips were swollen from his urgency the night before and the mere sense of her beside him made his head swim.

  “Denys,” he muttered.

  “—Has other distractions. And he has been left before.”

  He leaned into the fur collar and kissed her.

  THIRTY-FOUR. RESEARCH

  THEY LURCHED UP THE COL D’ISERAN toward the Italian border and did not look back.

  Later, Jack would remember these days imperfectly, the way he remembered dreams. Fragments of images slid through his mind, some heavy with meaning and some inexplicable. The way the country spread like an antique map at their feet as they descended from the mountains. The way April turned green again as they left the snows behind. Lambs in the fields. Lamb for dinner. Diana lying naked on a bed, a glass of red wine in her hand. Diana stalking angrily through an olive grove, clutching her suitcase, while he drove alongside, urging her back into the car. He could not remember what they had argued about. Something trivial. Nothing compared to the blood sports that would divide them later.

  He admitted her to the secret of DOCA and she revealed herself as a competent nurse, swabbing the gash in his thigh with iodine. Somewhere she bought gauze and insisted on dressing the wound. After that, she studied him covertly for signs of fever, and strangely Jack did not mind. With every passing hour he let her further into his life, and this was part of the dreamlike quality of those days. He never let women come so close.

  “Tell me,” he urged, running his hand up her silk-clad leg to the garter’s clasp. “Tell me who you are. Where you come from. How you got here, Diana.”

  She would not look at him. She was annoyed. His fingers slid beneath the garter and caressed her thigh. Slid deeper, to the wet heat between her legs. She drew a sharp breath, her knees convulsive. With his other hand he held the steering wheel of the small French car and the road was very narrow and very fast. Diana liked it dangerous.

  “Tell me.” His fingers fluttering. “Tell me.”

  But she refused, her head thrown back, taking her wordless pleasure from his hand and the speed. He pulled the car to the verge beneath a tree and rucked her skirt to her waist and thrust himself between her legs. He meant to punish her for all she refused to say but instead felt only this passion, the certainty of losing himself, the conviction that he would never come to the end of Diana. She was too strong. She held too much back. He wanted all of it, forever.

  “She was in service,” she said finally, as he sprawled in the wreck of her stockings and clothes. “My mother. She was a cook. Her fingers smelled of onions. My father was an actor who came through town. He left, of course, and went on to the next one. She boarded me with her sister and worked her fingers to the bone. At night, after I’d gone to bed, she’d come in and stroke my hair. All I remember is the onion smell. I ran off when I was fifteen.”

  He waited until he was sure she was done talking. Then he said: “My mother never sat by my bed in her life. Or stroked my hair. Not even when I was supposed to be dying.”

  She gave a bark of laughter. “You’ve nothing to envy, Jack.”

  Diana was her daddy’s girl, a wandering trouper, her roles so fabulously layered it was impossible to know what was real and what was legerdemain. Jack took the fables she told as warnings. She could not be trusted. Only admired for her perfect pitch.

  Three days out of France they reached the American consulate in Milan. Jack presumed upon his diplomatic status long enough to send two telegrams: one to Offie in Paris explaining where he’d gone, and another to his father in London. Getting some interesting thesis material, he wrote. Headed east over next few weeks.

  Before he left Milan, the consul sent Joe Kennedy’s reply to Jack’s hotel.

  Get your ass back here by 22 June for Eunice’s debut party.

  From this, Jack concluded his father had no idea their lives were as good as over.

  * * *

  “WHAT IS IT YOU’RE AFTER?” Diana asked him as they drove north toward Lake Como. “If I’m to help you, I should know.”

  He’d been agonizing over exactly this point throughout the journey. From selfishness and desire he’d allowed her to join a hopeless quest. He might have to use her Fascist contacts to locate Heydrich, once they got to Berlin. But he could not trust her because she had Fascist contacts.

  How far did this “cover” of hers extend? Was Diana’s Nazi pose purely personal, for the better protection of Denys and Willi—or was it political, too? Was she a Fascist by convenience—or conviction?

  “Tell me who you’re working for,” he suggested. “Then I’ll decide what I
can share.”

  She glanced over at him, her eyes invisible behind dark glasses. “Can’t,” she said.

  “Can’t, or won’t?”

  “Both, I suppose.” Her gaze drifted back out to the landscape. “The less you know, the safer we both are.”

  “That cuts both ways.”

  “I don’t doubt it. But the fact remains: You’re hunting something. I’m offering you my help. The offer’s useless unless I know what to look for.”

  What if you’re nothing but a beautiful lie? he asked himself. The most beautiful lie I’ve ever wanted to believe?

  He had been asking this question about women, more or less, all his life.

  He drove on toward the Swiss border.

  Their lovemaking that night was a pitched battle. Neither took prisoners.

  They climbed north through Switzerland and crossed into Germany a week after leaving France.

  Jack’s diplomatic passport drew immediate attention from the border guard across the river from Stein am Rhein, the picturesque Swiss hamlet they’d abandoned for the Reich. The boy in the field gray uniform—he was years younger, Jack guessed, than himself—was immediately suspicious and uncertain, as though advance notice of an American’s official travel should have been wired to every German checkpoint. The guard had no instructions regarding Mr. John Kennedy. No real proof that he was a diplomat at all. And he claimed to be driving to Berlin, on official business? Why had he not traveled by train, with a secretary, like a proper American? The fact that Diana, a British subject with entirely different papers, was traveling with Jack was even worse. How to account for such a companion, other than by scandal? Diana sat in the open car doorway, her long, silk-clad legs crossed at the ankles, smoking a cigarette with obvious boredom. Jack peppered the tight-lipped boy in ever-louder English, all flattened vowels and drawling consonants, his Boston patrimony, of which the guard understood perhaps one word in ten.

  When the boy moved to his pillbox, determined to call Berlin, Diana barked out a few phrases in German.

  The guard froze. His expression, Jack saw with fascination, was abject when he looked at her. Diana made a business of crushing out her cigarette and dusting ash from her fingers. The passports were suddenly stamped and returned, the crossing bars lifted from the lonely roadway.