Jack 1939

by Francine Mathews

  Polish Intelligence ambushed Heydrich-Enigma five days ago with British help STOP New cipher machine deemed unbreakable now being assessed STOP Gestapo embedded in Danzig possibly preparatory to invasion STOP Inform FBI White Spider recovering gunshot wound Kasino-Hotel Sopot STOP Am following Heydrich to Moscow STOP CRIMSON

  FORTY-ONE. SOURCES

  “CAN YOU TRUST THIS INFORMATION?” General Bill Donovan asked.

  “I believe so.”

  “I won’t ask who Crimson is.”

  “I wouldn’t answer if you did.” Roosevelt toyed with the hideous lunch on his plate; he noticed Wild Bill hadn’t bothered to eat a bite of it. The White House’s housekeeper, Mrs. Nesbitt, was fond of prunes; she thought they were good for a paralytic’s digestion. Also liver. There were weeks where she served Franklin liver and prunes every single day. Eleanor wouldn’t hear a word against her.

  “It tallies with London’s reporting,” Donovan was saying. “My contacts think the Heydrich-Enigma is much more complex than anything we’ve seen. They’d love to get their hands on one, but it’s the Poles’ baby right now, and God knows the poor bastards need it. Time’s running out for them.”

  Wild Bill had an informal army of spies in a number of countries, which was one reason Roosevelt invited him to lunch. “What else is London telling you?” he asked.

  “Something funny, actually.” Donovan pushed his chair back from the table and reached for his coffee cup. “Joe Kennedy had dinner on May ninth with Göring’s banker. A man named Helmuth Wohlthat. He sat down in a private room at the Berkeley Hotel in London and listened to Wohlthat’s pitch. I guess you’ll hear about it from Kennedy soon.”

  “I already have.”

  Wild Bill’s expression changed.

  “Wohlthat offered German disarmament and clear steps toward peace,” Roosevelt said neutrally, “if Old Joe could get me to pony up a billion-dollar loan from gold reserves. I’m supposed to sell the idea to the Brits. Then we put our hands in each other’s pockets and turn over the cash to Hitler.”

  “A billion dollars.” Donovan sipped the lousy coffee from the White House kitchens and grimaced. “Give us your gold so we can pump up our economy?”

  “—Give us your gold so we can take over Europe,” Roosevelt said.

  “Did Kennedy really think you’d buy it?”

  “I don’t know.” Roosevelt shrugged. “Joe has always confused business and politics, Bill. In his mind, this was a friendly conversation about a loan. The international power play behind it would be completely lost on him. I should add that I expressly forbade him to meet with Wohlthat. And that he went against my orders.”

  They were silent a moment. Then Roosevelt said, “I expect your friends in England are watching Joe Kennedy.”

  Donovan’s gaze never wavered; it was a habit Roosevelt valued. “They don’t trust Joe in the slightest. Think he’s a defeatist and an appeaser. It wouldn’t surprise me if the embassy’s bugged.”

  Which meant that Donovan knew it was.

  “You should recall him,” Wild Bill urged. “If he’s lost your confidence and the Brits’, he’s no use to you in London.”

  “He’s safer there.”

  Through the open window, Roosevelt could hear the high, birdlike call of his grandson as he ran across the White House lawn. The memory of former springs, of his young body running through fresh grass on a May morning, flooded his mind. With effort, he turned from that lost brightness.

  “Joe stays across the Atlantic until after the next election.”

  “You’ll have to work around him.”

  Roosevelt’s eyes strayed to Jack’s Danzig transmission. “I already am,” he said.

  Part Three

  SUMMER

  FORTY-TWO. A WILDERNESS OF MIRRORS

  AS ORDERED, Jack arrived back at Prince’s Gate on June twenty-first, the day before Eunice’s coming-out party.

  He had been all over Europe since Danzig. There was Moscow, of course—by way of Memel and Riga and Leningrad. Heydrich didn’t stop anywhere longer than a night and Jack retained a hazy impression of each of the old Baltic towns, a kaleidoscope of crumbling buildings and rivers swollen with spring, of gray-clad people made furtive by his English, of rundown hotels and the residue of brown coal soot deposited on his car with the sudden rains. But in Moscow Heydrich lingered for nearly five days, taking over the German ambassador’s residence; he spent nearly all his daylight hours closeted with the new Soviet foreign minister, Molotov, at the Kremlin. Which meant that Jack saw Diana again.

  As an American staying at Spaso House, the glorious neoclassical mansion that was both embassy and residence in Moscow, he was constantly under surveillance. Diana, too, was hedged in on all sides—by Stalin’s people and Heydrich’s. If he hadn’t understood that she was Heydrich’s prisoner—a bird who’d flown straight into a steel cage—Jack learned the truth in Moscow. Diana was immured behind the German embassy walls, hustled into official cars, flanked by officers whenever she appeared in public. He had no idea whether it pleased or infuriated her that he was following, or whether she even knew he was there. He could not turn his back on Diana, although the knowledge that Heydrich touched her burned bleakly in his brain.

  There was no American ambassador in Moscow at the moment, and the harassed chargé d’affaires was electrified by the sudden appearance of Reinhard Heydrich in Stalin’s backyard. It was an accepted fact that Communists and Nazis abhorred each other. The chargé, a man named Manson, was frantic for an explanation. He needed a fly on the wall of the conference room. He had none.

  “Where does he eat?” Jack asked idly one afternoon, as Manson was ringing his hands over yet another cable.

  “Eat? Who?”

  “Heydrich. You can’t tell me Molotov sends him back to the German embassy for dinner every night. That’s no way to parade the Soviet miracle. Molotov wants to impress the man. Show him how Stalin’s big boys live. So where’s he taking him?”

  “I don’t know.” Manson stared at Jack. “The Metropol. Or the Savoy. They’re the most European hotels Moscow’s got.”

  “So send one of your staff to the dining room with a bribe. What would it be? A fistful of dollars?”

  “Fresh beef,” Manson said quickly. “Hasn’t been seen on the streets of Moscow in months. Bananas. Single-malt Scotch. We get all of them shipped over and hoard them like gold.”

  “Bribe somebody at both hotels. Find out whether Heydrich’s at the Savoy or the Metropol tonight. Then bribe them again to get a table. We’ll make a party of it. My treat. We’ll invite a couple of girls. One should speak German.”

  “Kitty Walker,” Manson suggested. “In Records. Her last posting was Berlin.”

  “Then we’ll seat her closest to Heydrich. Is she a looker?”

  “She’s forty-three, twice divorced, and hard as nails,” Manson said.

  “Perfect. He won’t give her a second glance. Where do you keep the Scotch?”

  * * *

  BEFORE THE REVOLUTION, the Savoy had been the meeting place of poets and dreamers. Now it was the playground of the Soviet elite, and had suffered from the change. It felt, Jack imagined, as Al Capone’s dining room might have, if furnished by William Randolph Hearst.

  What he would remember forever was the sudden dilation of Diana’s pupils as she entered the room and saw him. It was clear she hadn’t known he was pursuing her. From the slope of her shoulders and the faint ducking motion of her head, he guessed she was dying a little. His recklessness surged.

  Heydrich was studying every stranger, asking an aide why the Savoy wasn’t closed to the public tonight. The aide was soothing him, one hand hovering over his sleeve.

  They sat down.

  Diana’s clothes were new. She was wearing some sort of stole around her white shoulders and
he wanted to graze her skin with his teeth. She was too thin and there were hollows beneath her eyes, but she would never be less than magnificent. Heydrich knew it. He was sleek with the power of possessing her.

  In one jeweled hand Diana clutched the bag Jack had given her in Danzig.

  He dragged his attention from Heydrich’s table and said something meaningless to Kitty Walker. She had long red nails and brassy hair and a magnificent pair of breasts that had probably won her attention for most of her life. She was offering them now to Jack, purely from a sense of habit. He lit her cigarette and asked how she’d come to work for State.

  “Desperation,” she said frankly. “I hate to be tied down. The department lets me move every few years. No regrets. No obligations. No messy . . . heartache. You want me to eavesdrop on the table behind us, correct? Any particular fella in mind?”

  “The one you can’t miss,” Jack murmured, blowing smoke over her head. “With the high forehead and the Asian eyes.”

  “The Golden Boy. Heydrich.”

  “You know him.”

  “I lived in Berlin for three years. He’s a sadist.”

  Her eyes were a brilliant cornflower blue. They were the most authentic thing about her. Jack smiled into them and slid an ashtray toward her. She’d brought a younger, blonder friend to dinner but Jack wasn’t interested and Manson definitely was.

  “Try to hear everything Heydrich says.”

  “He’s with Molotov. They’ve got an interpreter.”

  Jack reached for Kitty’s hand. Over her head he could see Diana. Glancing at him. Glancing away.

  “They’re planning to split Poland,” Kitty said through her smile, and managed a frivolous laugh as though Jack were flirting. “Raped from both sides.”

  “Have they mentioned any dates?”

  Heydrich’s fingers ran the length of Diana’s arm, as though it were a keyboard and he heard a peculiar music. He’s a sadist. Diana, his plaything.

  “No dates,” Kitty breathed. “Just who’ll get what. The Russians can have the Baltics, but they both want Danzig.”

  “Keep listening,” Jack said, and extinguished his cigarette. “They’ve got to talk dates sometime.”

  * * *

  TWO HOURS LATER, Kitty Walker excused herself to the ladies’ room. Manson’s blonde followed. Heydrich was no longer speaking at the neighboring table and an air of satiety prevailed. Manson eased back in his chair while Jack signaled for the bill and talked nonsense about his thesis. He was conscious of Diana’s empty place, of a vacuum where she had been. He was deathly tired and his forehead was sweating. The Savoy’s food was abominable, but tonight the Scotch was good.

  “I can’t cable this to Hull,” Manson murmured. Cordell Hull was Roosevelt’s secretary of state. “It’s not verifiable. A Nazi-Soviet Pact. Ribbentrop is Hitler’s foreign policy man, not Heydrich. And it’s absurd. Stalin in bed with Hitler? I’d be laughed out of town.”

  Jack shrugged and glanced toward the ladies’ room. If the Nazis wanted Russian ass, Heydrich was the perfect pimp. He’d appeal to Molotov’s instincts. Stimulate his greed.

  Kitty Walker was returning. Her wrap was tossed over her shoulder like a sumo wrestler’s and her hips swayed. She was an attention-grabber, Jack thought, determined to live on her own terms. He raised his Scotch glass in salute and grinned; she dropped a kiss, surprisingly, on his head.

  “Such a sweet boy,” she murmured. “You could be my son. If I’d been less careful.”

  She slipped a matchbook onto his lap.

  He palmed it with his eyes still fixed on Kitty. It would hold her address in neat, schoolgirl script, he thought. An invitation worthy of Mae West: Come up and see me sometime. But when he flipped open the matchbook cover later in the privacy of his bedroom at Spaso House, he found Diana’s handwriting.

  Ladies’ room Met 9 p.m. tomorrow.

  * * *

  “IT’S THE ONLY PLACE I’m ever alone,” she told him when he slid through the bathroom door the following night. “He’s got no female bodyguards, you see.”

  Jack had intended to lash her with words for leaving him in Danzig—had meant to strip her bare with his hurt and his anger until she pleaded for forgiveness—but that was senseless now and his mouth was on hers almost before she stopped speaking. It was there again, the vortex between them, draining his mind of reason. Enough to taste her. Enough to stop time for a little while. To forget the monstrous things waiting just beyond the door.

  She was stiff with what he guessed was self-loathing. Her scent overwhelmed him. For an instant he considered smashing a window and hauling her out into the night. But she was fragile. She might break.

  He loosened his hold and cradled her, whispering her name. Smoothed his hand over her cap of black hair as though she were a cat. She softened a little and leaned into him, the man who hated to be touched. It was the strangest love scene he’d ever played, both of them reflected infinitely in the Metropol’s mirrors.

  He’d stationed Kitty Walker outside to fend off all comers. Kitty powdered her nose from a gold compact and insisted a woman was ill in the bathroom. Too much vodka. The usual story.

  “I’ve seen the account book,” Diana said hurriedly, pushing him away. “It’d fit in your breast-coat pocket. Black leather cover, ruled pages. The list of names is dreadful. The Duke of Windsor. Wallis Simpson. Your father, of course. And poor Winston.”

  “Churchill? Holy shit.”

  “That’ll be Unity’s fault—Unity Mitford. She’s a cousin to Winston’s wife, and probably begged a contribution to her pet charity. He’d have no idea what it was really for, of course, poor lamb.”

  “Churchill should have asked. She drinks tea with Hitler.”

  “You don’t understand, Jack. Unity may be mad, but to Winston she’s family.”

  “Where does Heydrich keep the book?”

  “In a strongbox. He left it open on his desk when I was supposed to be sleeping.”

  Jack saw it then, the bedroom at night, Diana like a swan beneath the sheets, Heydrich repellent in a dressing gown.

  “He was called away by a trunk call from the Führer—never takes them where I might overhear. I had three minutes at most. Nipped over to the strongbox and leafed through the pages. I had to be sure the book was Daisy’s. I know her handwriting, you see. Then he came back. I was nearly caught.”

  Jack did not ask what happened when Heydrich came back. He’s a sadist. What did the man do in bed? What were his obsessions? It was worse to imagine than to know.

  “I’m racking my brains for a way to steal it,” Diana said.

  He glanced away. “You’ll have to take the whole damn box.”

  “I’d never get out alive. It weighs a ton. Two men are responsible for carrying it when we move. Killers like Obst.”

  “I’ll think of something.” Jack gripped the bathroom counter to keep from gripping Diana. “A false alarm that gets everybody out on the street. Smoke. Fire.”

  “No.” The word ricocheted between them like a bullet. “You’ve got to leave Moscow and leave now. He recognized you, Jack—last night. He remembered you from Danzig. I ran a terrible risk asking you here—when he’s right outside—”

  “I don’t care. You’re not safe. It’s hell thinking of you with him. The book’s not worth it, Diana.”

  “It is,” she said quietly.

  “Walk out of here with me now.” He took her face between his hands. “I’ll fly you out on the next plane.”

  “Jack.” She grasped his wrists, freed herself. “Heydrich will use that list. Hundreds of names from both sides of the Atlantic. We’ve got to get that dirty little book back, and I’m the only one who can do it. I’m inside. Go back to London.”

  “I can’t.”

  “He’ll have you killed.”


  “I’m dying already.”

  He lost control of his hands then. They roamed over her rib cage and circled her waist, pulled her pelvis toward his. The hollow at the base of her neck was mesmerizing. Her skin shuddered beneath his mouth and she curled into him, sighing. He slid the strap of her evening gown from her shoulder. His fingers traced the swell of her breast.

  “We can’t do this,” she whispered. “He’ll send someone soon.”

  Then she was clutching his hair and he was lifting her to the counter and her legs were around his waist. He felt the keen curve of her hip bones beneath his palms and her fingers on his trousers and then suddenly he was inside her, where he was meant to be, his heart pounding. She bit down hard to keep from crying out and held on to him as he plunged. As though it were possible he might save her.

  “I love you,” he muttered against her ear. “I love you.”

  “Hurry,” she said.

  FORTY-THREE. ON CHARLES BRIDGE

  JACK WAS THE LAST OF the Kennedy children to arrive back in London that third week in June. The younger girls were set free from their schooling at Sacred Heart, and Rosie was done with her Montessori course. Teddy pounded up and down the stairs in short pants and stout shoes, his knees perpetually muddy. Kick was consumed with a round of race meetings and country-house parties, debutante balls, and fittings in Paris—the high tide of the London season.

  And Joe was finally home, fresh from one of his “fact-finding missions,” this time in Vienna and Berlin. It had been a year since Jack had seen his big brother, and he felt a simple rush of relief as he grasped Joe’s hand. There was confidence and authority in every line of his brother’s muscled body, a vigor that followed him through a room. Whatever Willi Dobler might say about the simplistic thinking of the quintessential American, Joe slept well at night, untroubled by doubt. He rarely second-guessed his decisions. Jack envied him that basic certainty. He realized he’d missed it—and Joe—over the past few months.