The white face of a clock tower rose above him, the peaked mass of Parliament below. He stood on Westminster Bridge and watched as Charles Atwater’s passport and papers floated down the Thames.
The clock hands met at twelve. Big Ben boomed. He should have left London hours ago, but his desire for the girl with the auburn hair was suddenly overwhelming. He’d tried to slake it on the one he’d snatched from the shadows last night, but it hadn’t worked. He still saw the Kennedy girl in his mind whenever he closed his eyes.
He reached for his knife, stroking the shaft. Then he walked deliberately away from the train he should be taking, and toward Prince’s Gate.
* * *
THERE WERE LIGHTS burning in the house’s third-floor windows.
He stood on the lawn sloping down from the back terrace. Behind, Kensington Road and Hyde Park. In front, a row of French doors. He walked noiselessly toward a pair of these and paused, his eyes straining in the darkness. A house with so many servants would be careless about bolting every door. Careless, too, about investigating noises—there were too many children, too many comings and goings, for anybody to care.
He tried the handles of three pairs of doors before one gave beneath his hand. He eased it open, felt the panel push back against heavy drapes, and slid through the space into a ground-floor reception room.
The house was still as a tomb.
His heart raced. That pale perfection of a girl was somewhere above, in her dressing gown, maybe, as she brushed her hair before a mirror. Or she might be sprawled in bed with a book, breasts softly outlined in silk—
He crept noiselessly around the dim furniture, just visible in the glow from the French windows, to the darker passage beyond.
* * *
“WHERE ARE YOU GOING, Jack? Can I come?”
Teddy’s voice piped through the silence of the upper hall. Jack jumped, nearly dropping the suitcase he carried.
“Jesus, Brat,” he said. “You scared the hell out of me. What’re you doing up?”
Teddy, sturdy as a caboose, was standing before the elevator door in his bathrobe and slippers. His hair was tousled and his full cheeks flushed. “I’m hungry,” he said.
“You’re always hungry.” Bobby emerged, scowling at the light, from the room the boys shared. There were basset hounds with red bows all over his flannel pajamas.
“That’s because I’m growing,” Teddy protested.
“Sideways, maybe. Get back in bed.”
“I want some milk. And some of Banksie’s custard.”
“Okay by me,” Jack said, eyeing them both. “Can’t sleep if you’re hungry.”
“Mother wouldn’t like it,” Bobby said.
“Mother’s not here.”
“What’s the suitcase for?” Bobby’s attention was suddenly focused; he stepped tentatively forward. “You running away?”
“To Rome,” Jack said soothingly. “Remember? Dad and I leave before you do. I’m packing now.”
He was not about to admit to Gubbins’s radio transmitter. Or tell them he’d just come down from the roof. It had been chilly work and his fingers were numb, but he’d managed to find the frequency Gubbins had specified and send something like an encoded transmission. He’d been agonizingly slow. An hour of work with the Harvard fight song, for a few bursts of Morse code. Special to Schwartz. Have received radio and cipher. Will cultivate WD as instructed.
He’d waited twenty minutes in the freezing attic for an answering burst, but none had come. He’d try again tomorrow.
The elevator door opened and Teddy skedaddled into it, intent on the kitchen and food. With a shriek of protest about raids on the pantry, Bobby followed. Jack waited until the elevator door closed before heading for his room. He was faintly exhilarated at having dodged the kids’ inspection. Nazis had nothing on Bobby.
* * *
THE SPIDER STOOD MOTIONLESS in the shadows of the staircase as the conversation between brothers played out above. Children. Custard. He could hear the elevator car descending and for an instant he considered waiting for it to open, the boys emerging one after the other straight onto his knife. Then a key was thrust into the front door’s lock and his head turned swiftly. The sound carried across the octagonal marble foyer; someone had come home.
He raced past the elevator door just as the car bumped to the ground floor. He skittered down a back passage, the sound of his running feet masked by the iron rattle of the elevator sliding open, the fluster of arrival in the front hall. A girl’s rich laugh drifted to his ears. “Oh, come on, kid. It’s not like I’m moving in with Mussolini. I’ll see you when I get back from Rome.”
It was she. He would know that voice anywhere. But he could not have her tonight—she was too exposed, he would not risk it.
He slipped through the salon’s French doors, which gave out onto the north-facing terrace, and ran pell-mell down the lawn to the Kensington Road.
Rome, she had said. It was as good a destination as any.
* * *
FROM HIS THIRD-FLOOR bedroom window, Jack glimpsed the dark shape of a man pelting from the terrace across the lawns. He did not need to ask himself what sort of predator fled the dreaming ranks of Prince’s Gate in the dead of night; he could trace the Spider’s outline in his sleep. His eyes strained to follow the figure until the deep black of Hyde Park swallowed it whole. Impossible to give chase at night. He slammed his window frame with his fists in frustration. The killer had entered his house. Where his family slept. This could not be allowed to continue. He sprinted down the hallway to the telephone closet, and put through a transatlantic call to the United States.
He’d memorized the number he’d scrawled on his shirt cuff in the Waldorf-Astoria weeks ago. It should be close to dinnertime in Washington.
* * *
“ROOSEVELT HERE.” The connection was very bad, with a constant swooshing sound as of wind or water, the sea washing over the transatlantic cable. But the President’s voice was high and thin and clear, familiar from a hundred fireside chats.
“Mr. President. It’s Jack Kennedy, in London.”
“Jack! How are you, my boy? I received your message. Well done.”
So it was Roosevelt, not Schwartz, who was decoding his bursts. There was no one between the President and himself. The President and his man in Europe. Jack’s pulse accelerated. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr. President—”
“Not at all. I’m free as a bird.”
“—but I thought you should know—or Mr. Schwartz should know—that the White Spider broke into our house tonight.”
“The Spider?” Roosevelt repeated.
Was that complete ignorance, or mild concern? Did he think Jack was babbling nonsense?
“He’s a very dangerous fellow, Jack,” Roosevelt said.
A wave of relief washed over him. “You know.”
“Indeed. He’s got two victims this side of the Atlantic to his credit, and I assume he’s killed a few more on yours. He cuts a spider into the corpse. But you know this. He crossed with you, didn’t he, on the Queen Mary?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sam and I have been talking to Ed Hoover. He thinks the Germans are rolling up that network we discussed. The girl who was killed in New York a few weeks ago, at the Stork Club—”
“Not Katie O’Donohue?” Jack said, his bowel twisting. Little Katie. I knew her people in Boston.
There was an infinitesimal pause on Roosevelt’s end. “You’re familiar with the name?”
“She was murdered the night we met on the Pullman,” he said quickly. “I saw the papers the next morning. But I didn’t know the Spider killed her.” Shit.
“Ah.” Roosevelt digested this. If he thought it strange that Jack should remember a name from a minor article read nearly a month ago, he refrained fro
m questioning it. Roosevelt ignored tangents, Jack realized; he kept to the facts. It was probably the only way to organize the flood of information constantly sweeping over him.
“We think it’s possible this man is after you,” he continued. “That he knows what I’ve asked you to do, and that he means to stop it. You must be very careful.”
“I realize that, sir.” He’d been lying to his father for weeks, saying nothing about his job for Roosevelt, and now he was lying to the President of the United States, too—keeping Dad and the hatcheck girl to himself, the fact that his father had gotten Katie the job at the Stork Club. She was dead and the Spider had killed her, which could look pretty lousy for Dad if the FBI found out. And they were bound to find out.
“Do you think,” he said, clutching wildly at straws, “that under the circumstances of the break-in tonight, I ought to tell my father?”
There was a pause. “About the Spider?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Jack . . . do you consider your father . . . a man of considerable courage?”
He took a deep breath to calm himself. Joe Kennedy was a born gambler. His risks and his instincts usually paid off. But was he brave, exactly? He’d refused to enlist for the last war, in 1917. If told that a Nazi assassin was prowling around, he’d mount full-time guards or move his kids into a Mayfair hotel. Joe was no warrior, no Bruce Hopper scanning the sky in the hope of enemy fire.
“Not really,” he said.
“Then let’s keep this between ourselves. We don’t want to alarm your dad—his work’s too important right now. We need Joe firing on all Chamberlain’s cylinders.”
“Yes, sir,” Jack muttered. So he would go on lying to them both. “What do you want me to do?”
“Research your thesis,” Roosevelt said. “If you leave London—perhaps the Spider will follow. And then you won’t have to worry anymore about putting your family in danger.”
Jack thought of Kick—of Teddy and Bobby—with rising hope. If he could lure the Spider to Europe . . .
“And Jack?” The distant voice was speaking again, very faintly in his ear. “A suggestion from Professor Bruce Hopper. We spoke the other day.”
“How is he, sir?”
“Quite well. But he thinks you ought to buy a gun.”
“A gun?” Jack repeated, startled.
“And learn how to use it,” Roosevelt said.
Part Two
SPRING
TWENTY-THREE. CLEMENCY
“JA-A-ACK,” ROSE called in her grating Boston drawl. “You’ve arrived, then. Darling.”
She was leaning in the doorway of his hotel room in Rome, arms crossed protectively over her chest.
“Mother,” he said. “You look well. How was Egypt?”
“Thrilling. Nothing compared to Jerusalem, of course—the site of Our Lord’s Passion. You simply must get there one day.”
Never mind that it had been nine months since they’d met; Rose kept a safe distance. Not for her the joyous embrace, the kisses showered on her boy. When he’d been dying that one winter at Choate, possibly from leukemia but probably from the Mystery Disease, it was the headmaster’s wife who had played gin rummy and gramophone records by his hospital bed in New Haven; the headmaster’s wife who summoned a Catholic priest in the middle of the night. Mrs. St. John had written letter after letter to Rose, detailing Jack’s illness—how worried all his friends were and how he was remembered daily at morning prayers, even though he was Catholic and Choate emphatically was not.
Rose’s secretary replied to the letters on engraved stationery: Mrs. Kennedy was too busy with the younger children to leave Palm Beach. She was sure that with God’s help and the ministrations of the doctors, Jack would pull through.
Jack knew his deteriorating body was a reproach to Rose, a public suggestion she’d failed as a mother. Failure was a judgment from God, and judgment terrified her. She firmly ignored Jack’s disease and Rosie’s vacuity and Eunice’s nightmares and Bobby’s loneliness. As long as her children looked presentable and didn’t embarrass their parents in public, Rose had nothing more to ask. The same rule applied to her husband.
She surveyed Jack critically now. “You’re still too thin. You were supposed to gain weight this winter, Jack. Get stronger. Have you been eating your ice cream?”
“I have,” he said hurriedly. “I just had a rough crossing, and—well . . . it was hard to keep much down.” Sweet Jesus, he was glad his bruises had finally faded. She’d have suggested he borrow Kick’s face powder, probably, to disguise them.
“Your clothes fit, thank heaven,” she persisted. “Poole’s, I suppose?”
“I’m on a last-name basis with the staff.”
His joke didn’t work with his mother. His humor never did. “That won’t do,” she said swiftly. “It’s bad form to hobnob with the serving class. You know that. The British already despise us because we’re Catholics.” Not to mention American Irish.
Jack tried to change the subject. “I like what you’ve done with your hair,” he offered. “Very Wallis Simpson.”
“It’s the Duchess of Windsor, Jack,” she said impatiently. “And don’t speak of that dreadful woman again. She’s done more damage to Americans—a divorcée, forcing the King to abdicate! It’s all I can do to hold up my head when she’s mentioned.”
Although Rose held it up fast enough, Jack thought, when the Duchess came to her summer parties in Cannes.
“Dinner’s at eight,” Rose called over her shoulder as she left. “Evening dress for the dining room, of course.”
“And morning dress in the morning,” he muttered as she swung down the hall. Just for once he’d like to show up in his underwear and shock Rose silly.
He glanced at his watch. Time to get out while he still could.
* * *
THE HOTEL D’INGHILTERRA sat in the Via Bocca di Leoni, a few blocks from the Piazza di Spagna. Jack had some idea of strolling along the Via dei Condotti in search of a quick drink, something to calm his rage at being treated like a schoolboy. As he approached the square he glanced up the Spanish Steps: the Swiss-run Hotel Hassler was at the top of them, and half the dignitaries who’d descended for the Pope’s coronation were staying there. The other half were in Jack’s hotel. The steps were a tourist magnet, a wide sweep of stone that twisted and turned up the hillside. It seemed to Jack as though half the city—regular Romans, intimate knots of lovers, the old and young—had found a seat there, sprawled in the kind of carefree abandon his mother deplored. He might as well sit down on the steps, too, and gaze out over Rome.
He picked his way through the crowd, listening to the lilting Italian voices. It was a chewable language; it rolled like wine on the tongue. After dinner, when he’d shaken off his parents, he’d grab Kick and come down here.
He reached the first landing, then the next. The climb was exhilarating after the long ride in the train from Paris, far preferable to sitting, so he kept going, his gaze fixed on the top of the Spanish Steps and the haze of green from the Villa Borghese beyond them.
Then he saw Diana.
She was leaving the Hotel Hassler. He knew that blunt sweep of black hair and porcelain chin beneath the upturned hat. Kick had taught him enough about clothes to recognize Chanel, and he guessed Diana’s had been acquired quite recently in the Place Vendôme. He stopped dead on the paving and stared, trying to convince himself that she was any other woman. A beautiful Italian, intent on a glass of prosecco at Antico Caffè Greco. But he failed; there was only one Diana.
He had looked for her everywhere two days ago on the streets of Paris while his father wasted an afternoon with Bill Bullitt. There were women enough to rivet Jack’s eye—blondes in stilettos and pencil skirts, girls with perfect complexions and slanting black eyeliner, red mouths begging to be kissed. He’d bo
ught a champagne cocktail for a great pair of fishnet stockings in the Ritz Bar, but his French had always been lousy and the girl spoke not a word of English. Diana was not in the Ritz Bar. She was in Rome. He hadn’t expected that.
A black-shirted Fascist was standing with a gun not ten yards away, a self-appointed guard of public decency. Such thugs were everywhere in Mussolini’s capital, but Jack had seen their kind before. Besides, he carried a diplomatic passport.
He continued climbing, intending to intercept Diana, but halfway down the top section of the Spanish Steps she turned fluidly into the archway of a neighboring building, and vanished.
He took the risers two at a time, dodging tourists and loiterers lounging on the stone. There was a shout behind him. The Blackshirt with the gun. Apparently it was no longer permitted to run in public; that kind of haste suggested violence, fear, the vulnerabilities Fascisti tracked like bloodhounds. Jack ignored the shout and ducked into the passage Diana had taken. It was an ancient little alleyway of the kind that riddled Rome, called a vicolo, the buildings on either side leaning toward one another from age and inclination. He could just glimpse her hat ahead, descending another flight of stairs.
A clatter of feet behind him; the man with the gun. Jack spun around to face him. He could whip his passport from his pocket but the Blackshirt was just as likely to keep it as not, and then he’d be at a standstill; he was supposed to have left it at the hotel’s front desk, and Dad would be furious if he lost it. Jack let the guy pound up to him, a belligerent look on his face and a torrent of Italian on his lips. A short man, but solid, in his midthirties. A cut to the chin might knock him backward, but it wouldn’t deck him. Jack went for his stomach, a powerful Harvard right the Blackshirt never saw coming. He doubled over with a whoof, completely winded, and dropped to his knees. Shaking his fingers painfully, Jack took off.
The stairs at the far end of the alley curved left and ended in another narrow passage. He skittered past two people, craning for a glimpse of Diana—and saw her step into a taxi. He sprinted the last hundred yards and emerged onto the Via dei Condotti, hand raised and eyes searching for another cab.
Jack 1939 Page 13
