Dance on a Sinking Ship

by Kilian, Michael;

  Mrs. Simpson apparently indulged the prince’s flirtation as a means of advancing her social station in Britain, never realizing how deeply and dangerously it would involve her. She was obviously very uneasy with her situation and might be looking for a means of escaping it, according to the prècis. Her rise to the position of king’s “mistress,” a term not necessarily to be taken literally, had sharply divided England’s upper class into two hostile factions.

  Von Kresse wondered how much Ribbentrop had to do with this report. Goering called him a fool yet was more than willing to act on his information. It was so like him to discredit his sources of intelligence this way. If things went wrong, there was a ready place to turn with the blame.

  And there would certainly be no turning to the Reichscommissioner with blame. In the event von Kresse caused some disaster in this mission, Goering would be able to disclaim any responsibility. He would say he and the count simply had discussed the British royal romance over a companionable glass of schnapps that morning, and otherwise talked over old flying days. Goering would say he had once again tried to persuade von Kresse to join the National Socialist Party, but otherwise had not intruded politics on the conversation.

  As for von Kresse’s sudden journey with his sister, Goering would say he simply agreed that October was a marvelous time for a sea voyage, especially to America, where the count had so many relatives. And if the von Kresses chanced to provoke an international incident en route and damaged the New Germany’s good standing with Britain, well, what could you expect from one of these arrogant East Prussians with unreconstructed class attitudes and intellectual pretensions, especially from one with so many dangerous friends and so much Polish blood?

  So the reason for this bold intrusion upon the silly but awesomely consequential life of Edward, Prince of Wales, would remain their little secret, though it was perhaps the only matter on which von Kresse and his malevolent friend were in full agreement. Von Kresse had thought upon it for long hours after his morning with Goering. There was no other course to peace. England must be kept meek, friendly, and quiescent.

  Hitler was bent on putting every living German under National Socialist rule, including the chancellor of Austria and the president of the Danzig Senate. The sort of confrontation this would entail carried every risk of war, and war meant ruin. Absolute ruin. The old Germany represented by von Kresse and the new Germany proclaimed by The Leader would both be lost. There were too few new airplanes in the production lines of the secret aircraft works and too many horse-drawn artillery caissons in the Wehrmacht. Hitler was talking about remilitarizing the Rhineland. Mein Gott, the French army in Alsace alone could stop him, and the French were still bent on disassembling Germany into the scattering of quarrelsome principalities and duchies it had been before it was forged into nationhood by Bismarck sixty-five years before. They would seize the first opportunity Hitler gave them—if the British were to back them up.

  For all the evil and obnoxious things der Dicke had become in the course of his rise to power, he had not become stupid. He had foreseen the logical end of the first Great War even before von Kresse. The logical end of the next one was no less obvious. Hermann Goering, who stood shortly to become commander of all German military aviation, was steadfastly opposed to war. Swine and demon that he was, he would make every possible effort to deliver the Reich from doom.

  But there was for von Kresse an unwanted question. If the destruction of Germany was the only means of destroying the Hitler regime, was it not a morally desirable goal? Von Kresse was not yet prepared to address this issue. He had not yet resolved his own moral dilemma. He had not yet decided whether it was moral that he himself had lived beyond the last war.

  The count read on through the intelligence report, turning to the brief sketches of those reported to be the prince’s traveling companions. Lady Emerald Cunard, object of Ribbentrop’s clumsy flirtation and the diplomat’s compulsive correspondent, was a principal member of the entourage—a rich, powerful, supercilious, and desperately ambitious woman passing from middle age to old.

  Also of importance were the Mountbattens, he the very German British naval officer so closely related to all the royal families of Europe, she the wanton English heiress with, as Ribbentrop put it, the stain of Jewish blood in her veins. The ambassador suggested a German operative might want to perform the Aryan sacrifice of sleeping with her as a means of penetrating the royal circle. Von Kresse smiled. Just Ribbentrop’s form of sacrifice.

  The famous Coopers were in the party, the fading aristocratic beauty and the dissolute diplomat and politician. Their presence was reported with a strong warning. They were of the pro-French camp and critics of the Third Reich. Ribbentrop underscored the fact that Duff Cooper was a protégé of the feared and hated Churchill.

  Last mentioned was a wealthy American named Henry Channon, a social climber from Chicago who had acquired the heiress to the Guinness fortune as a wife and had ingratiated himself into the prince’s favor. Ribbentrop noted that he was an admirer of Hitler’s and a friend of Germany’s.

  Von Kresse refolded the papers and put them back in his pocket. Goering had told him to destroy them before leaving Germany but he had failed to do so, probably in subconscious rebellion. If someone gave him trouble about them, well, Dagne could shoot that someone.

  He laughed at his little joke. She glanced up, her pale eyes disapproving. She was so little like him and her ideas were anathema to him, but he still felt the bond between them strongly. His wife, Lalka, had left him. His parents were dead. The mother of his only child was dead and the child was dead. Dagne’s was the only life still given unto his protection. For all her flaws and terrible ideas, he felt this responsibility deeply.

  “Now you laugh. You are finding this journey amusing?” she asked.

  “High comedy. A mirthful tonic to my fallen spirits.”

  “The purpose is very serious.”

  “All purpose is serious. That is why I avoid it.”

  “Yet here you are.”

  “As I must be someplace, better here than among all the gaudy flags of Berlin.”

  She closed her book and put it aside, then lifted her veil.

  “You are so scornful, Martin. Of yourself, of everything. It’s such a waste. You could contribute so much.”

  “To National Socialism?”

  “To Germany. God allowed you to survive the war, yet you do nothing in return.”

  “I’m still puzzling over why He did it.”

  “You are a noble man. He has a noble reason. There is a great and noble task that you must perform. Perhaps this undertaking of ours, perhaps this shall be that task. You are an instrument of Germany’s destiny.”

  “Following the orders of the creator of the Prussian concentration camps.”

  “I’m not talking politics.”

  “You are always talking politics.”

  She removed her hat and fluffed her hair. “We will talk about something else,” she said with a quick look at his book. “Let us discuss literature.”

  He picked up von Ranke’s volume. “This is history,” he said. “And all history is political. But literature is appropriate. This conversation reminds me of a story by Henry James. You know him? The English author? He was once an American?”

  “Decadent.”

  “You see, politics again. James’s story was called The Beast in a Jungle. It was about a man who was convinced that something great, unique, and significant would happen to him. He lived a very long life, waiting and watching for it. But when he became old, he finally realized what that unique something was. It was that nothing at all important was ever going to happen to him. It will be the same with me. If I was made to survive the war for any reason, it was simply to demonstrate the pointlessness of war, of aristocrats, perhaps of life.”

  “In Germany now, no one’s life can be pointless. Certainly not yours, Martin.”

  “I remain a useless man, living a pointless life.” />
  “You have done significant things.”

  “Yes? I have killed a schoolteacher and her children and I have slept with my sister. For one of these I received a medal. But in the Third Reich, such things are now commonplace. Ordinary.”

  She turned her head and wiped her eyes. He had no idea what had compelled him to be so wounding. She would find some revenge. She always did.

  “I’m sorry, Dagne.”

  “So am I, Martin. So am I.”

  Rouen. The train had stopped in the Rouen station. When it came to a halt, Spencer’s window framed a sign on one of the depot pillars: ROUEN. A statement of fact.

  Nearly all the Hundred Years’ War was fought over this place. From here, fifteenth-century English generalissimos ruled the hapless north of France and even Paris. A last battle here had been all that saved France from being forever English. Now it was simply Rouen, a pausing on the road to the sea.

  Spencer could easily take up his baggage and descend from the carriage now. He could find lodgings and become for the rest of his life a citizen of Rouen. All that he had in Paris, all that he had had wherever he lived and traveled, he could find in Rouen. A few fine cafés, a few worthwhile friends, a good woman. They would ask what had happened to C. Jamieson Spencer. Someone would remember and say, “He lives now in Rouen.” Eventually they would no longer remember.

  The train lurched, groaned, then slid forward, gaining speed. A procession of depot pillars hurried by, and then there was the sudden darkness of a tunnel. When they emerged into the hazy sunlight, Spencer saw houses on a hillside among drooping trees. Soon they were in the yellow-green countryside again, and all sign of Rouen was gone. His imagined café there was gone. The charming, fleshy, mothering woman he would have chosen for himself there was gone. His life there that never was had ended.

  The door to his compartment slid open. Until they had pulled into Rouen, there had been a French family with him, father, mother, two daughters, and an aunt, shabbily dressed but highly mannered, traveling first class with much custom, though they looked not well able to afford it. They had left the train in Rouen, disappearing into that life that would never be Spencer’s.

  Now there was a beautiful face at the door, bright green eyes and copper hair. The young woman hesitated, then slid the door open farther and stepped inside, seating herself decorously opposite him. She was dressed all in green. He recalled that she had passed by once before, just after leaving Paris, and glanced in, when the French family had been there. She was looking at him now with both embarrassment and great curiosity.

  “Excuse me,” she said. She drew her hands together nervously in her lap. She was wearing dark-green gloves and matching shoes, very expensive. She dressed better than Whitney, which could be said of few women.

  “Yes?” he said. He had been about to reply in French, but she was American. She was considerably more than that. He had seen her in a newspaper photograph—within the last few days.

  “This is embarrassing,” she said. “I wasn’t sure where you’d be getting off the train. I wanted to talk to you before you did. I saw you before you got on. In the station. In the Gare St. Lazare.” Her hands fluttered a moment, then came to rest, firmly. Her eyes now held his quite directly.

  “Yes,” he said. “I was in the Gare St. Lazare. That’s how I came to be on this train.”

  “I’ve seen you in other places. You were in the bar of my hotel. The Ritz. And at a party last night in Paris. And now you’re on this train. It’s as if you were haunting me.”

  “Mademoiselle, I am often in the bar of the Ritz. I am often at the de Mornays’, as I was last night, if that’s the party you mean. The de Mornays are close friends of mine. I can’t recall seeing you in either place. I had no idea you’d be on my train. I assure you, that’s not why I’m on it.”

  “I’m sorry. This must sound very queer. I’ve had a difficult time these last few days, except for yesterday. I’m traveling alone. I guess I’m a little jumpy.”

  “These are jumpy times.”

  “You’re a newspaperman, aren’t you? That’s what they told me, at the de Mornays’.”

  “I am a newspaperman. I believe you are Nora Gwynne, the actress.”

  “Yes. So you see … I mean, I thought you were somehow—I thought you might be hounding after me for a story.”

  “I am not hounding you, Miss Gwynne. People get thrown together these days in a lot of strange ways. A woman died in my arms the other night, during the rioting in the Place de la Concorde. I had never seen her before.”

  “I’m sorry.” Her look softened.

  “You have nothing to worry about, Miss Gwynne.”

  “I’m sure. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I thought I was doing, barging in on you like this.” She rose and put a gloved hand to the brass handle of the compartment door. She paused. “You are taking this train all the way to Le Havre?”

  “All the way.”

  “To board a ship?” She glanced at his luggage.

  “Yes. I’m sailing tonight for New York.”

  “May I ask on what ship?”

  “The Wilhelmina.”

  She pulled open the door with a quick snap of the handle and darted hurriedly into the corridor. He thought of going after her but caught himself. If he took a step in pursuit, she might well scream.

  He leaned back against his seat, turning his head back toward the window. In the distance, beyond the blur of trees along the track, was a large house with a red roof. The family within might be looking out the window, watching the passing train, perhaps thinking about the passengers—where they had come from, where they were bound. Spencer could not truly answer them.

  He closed his eyes. This Gwynne woman was guilty of haunting him. She had descended upon him like a biblical visitation. She was trouble. It had begun with Carlson and now would follow him all the way across the Atlantic. As she’d made obvious, they would be fellow passengers on the Wilhelmina. She would be a herald going before him, denouncing him to anyone who was interested as a newspaperman, a prying reporter.

  Charles Lindbergh would definitely be interested.

  Le Havre embraced the sea and the estuary of the Seine, but it seemed hotter even than Paris. What breeze there was came from the south, scarcely stirring the air in the train sheds of the elegant new Gare Maritime. Out of long habit, Spencer carried his own bags. He had but two. Setting off down the platform, he moved out ahead of the other passengers, most of whom were still gathering their own luggage or calling for porters. He heard English voices, American accents, and a large number of French, though most did not look as if they were bound for a ship. As Spencer passed a tall, gray-haired man with a limp and a very stylish woman with blond hair, he heard them speaking in German. It seemed odd for citizens of the Third Reich these days to be taking ship from a French port instead of Bremerhaven or Hamburg. Certainly they must be Swiss or Austrian, though their accents reminded him of Berlin.

  He pressed on, striding out ahead of everyone, arriving at the taxi stand first. The driver was greatly pleased to see him, or at least his minimal luggage. If he were quick, he might make three trips to the quay from this train.

  “Bonjour, monsieur,” he said, putting the bags in front. “Quel bateau?”

  “La Wilhelmina.”

  “Wilhelmina?”

  “Oui. Un nouveau bateau. Un paquebot du Lage Lander.”

  “Ah, oui.”

  It was a very short distance from the railroad station to harborside, but the driver had to thread his way along the quays past two other liners, one of them the magnificent new Normandie. Spencer had been up to Le Havre for its departure on its maiden voyage that May, a grand occasion that had brought forth President Lebrun, Pierre Cartier, the writer Colette, Mrs. Morgan Belmont, and even the Maharajah of Karpurthala. Spencer had spent most of that afternoon aboard the Normandie, touring the decks and mingling with the passengers and guests through all their amusements as if one of them. When the summ
ons came for reporters and visitors to return to the dock, he had done so with great reluctance. Now he was being summoned again just as commandingly, back onto a ship. Ordered off the docks. Ordered out of France.

  The Dutch ship was somewhat smaller than the great French liner, and its maiden voyage was going largely unrecognized. There were workmen standing or walking about at quayside, and a small group of men in black suits had gathered at a point just in front of the prow—obviously company officials conferring where they had the broadest view of the ship that had been the focus of all their energies and was now the focus of their worries.

  Spencer had the taxi driver stop near them, though it meant a fair walk with his bags to the embarkation building. After tipping the man generously with some of the expense money Carlson had given him, he watched the taxi roll away. He stood a long moment in the heat, looking up at the ship. The haze deadened her color, dulling the Prussian blue of her hull and imbuing the white of her superstructure with a dingy grayness. Still, she was a beautiful creation, with a dramatic rise of bow and beautifully flowing flare and sweep of following line. Spencer had gone to sea in not a few rotting hulks in his time, rustbuckets that seemed scarcely able to steam out of harbor. Abord the Wilhelmina, at least, it was not his life he would have to fear losing but simply all those things that made it worth living—if he failed.

  He glanced about, as if one of the many human figures walking and standing about might somehow prove to be Charles Lindbergh, as if he might conclude his business with a quick, dockside interview and then be off back to Paris and Whitney.

  There was no Lindbergh in view and no predatory crowd of reporters hanging about. If Lindbergh was aboard that ship, it was still Spencer’s secret.

  A couple was clearing the passport officer’s station as Spencer entered. By the time he reached the counter and set down his bags, he was the only passenger present. The officer, a tall young man full of his uniform and authority, went through Spencer’s passport with overzealous care, examining each visa stamp as if it contained clues to a criminal conspiracy. Spencer had been in and out of France at least a dozen times that year, and the youthful official apparently found this exceedingly suspicious.