Jack 1939

by Francine Mathews

  “What did you say to him?” Jack demanded as they drove past the rigid boy. “And where did you learn to say it?”

  Diana blew the guard a kiss. Waggled her fingers. “I told him when his call was done I wished to borrow his telephone. I had come expressly from London to introduce Herr Kennedy to my esteemed friend, the Führer—and I felt he ought to be warned of our delay.”

  * * *

  THREE DAYS LATER, they were standing in Berlin’s Adlon Hotel on Pariser Platz.

  Jack booked two rooms. The U.S. embassy was across the square, to the right of the horses topping the Brandenburg Gate, and he was afraid a well-meaning diplomat might cable his dad about the gorgeous woman he’d shacked up with.

  The embassy was old General Blücher’s palace, he of Waterloo fame. The staffers hated the location because the Nazi Party paraded through Pariser Platz whenever they needed to whip up a frenzy. Noise was a constant irritant. Roosevelt had recalled his ambassador the year before, to protest the atrocities of Kristallnacht, and relations between the two countries were deteriorating. Roosevelt had rebuked the Germans for seizing Czechoslovakia and Hitler had snarled in reply.

  A chargé d’affaires named Alexander Kirk ran the embassy, a suave and elegant friend of Carmel Offie’s who seemed to share La Belle Offlet’s sexual proclivities. He cared deeply about antiques, entertaining, and food, in that order, and assured Jack that while he did his best to keep his finger on the Führer’s pulse, he had no idea whether Reinhard Heydrich was in town. Kirk personally made it a point, he confided, to keep out of the Nazi security chief’s way.

  “Scary fellow,” he said. “Odd. Just looking at him gives me the heebie-jeebies. That incredibly high forehead. Those close-set eyes. The nose. You might talk to the commercial attaché, Sam Woods. He knows a good deal about friend Reinhard.”

  Kirk leaned conspiratorially toward Jack. “Woods reports directly to Roosevelt. Bypasses State completely. The President had him transferred here from Prague, before the Czech show blew up. Knows everything there is to know about this new physics business. Atoms. Woods is the man you want.”

  But Sam Woods had already left for the day, so Jack carried Diana off to a cabaret. She wore the nude chiffon with the black velvet bows that had entranced him on the Queen Mary. Her eyes were narrowed and her lips half parted and her foot tapped as she watched the dancers; and Jack sensed a bit of what she’d lost to her respectable marriage. Diana was dying to be on stage, shoulders bared and pelvis thrusting. She craved risk the way other women craved affection.

  This was something they had in common, Diana and Jack: They didn’t care if they died, or how. They were simply determined to live first. He’d never known a woman so much like himself and the knowledge made him hungry for her. He devoured Diana that night in her sanctified separate hotel room, his mouth roaming over her thighs, her breasts, her sex, until she knotted her fingers in his hair and swore.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING JACK knocked on Sam Woods’s door.

  The commercial attaché worked in a windowless room deep in the Blücher Palace, surrounded by posters of smiling American housewives and glossy American Buicks. He glanced up as Jack hovered in the doorway and said, “You’re the Kennedy boy. Kirk said you were in town. College junket?”

  “That’s about the size of it,” Jack agreed. He shook Sam Woods’s hand. “I’m researching my senior thesis. ‘Security in the Age of Fascism.’ It’ll be embarrassingly incomplete without the Reich Main Security Office. I was hoping you could get my foot in the door. Mr. Kirk says you follow Heydrich.”

  “Oh, I follow him, all right,” Woods said drily. He tossed a packet of what looked like financial data to one side of his desk. “Through half of Europe, these days.”

  Jack was tempted to ask why a commercial secretary was interested in the head of the Nazi secret police, but he stopped himself. Woods reports directly to Roosevelt . . . knows everything there is to know about this new physics business. Jack was looking at another of the President’s spies.

  “I can’t get you in to talk to Heydrich,” the attaché was saying, “but I can find somebody who’ll give you an hour. Got your dip passport with you?”

  Jack showed it to him. Woods made a few phones calls. He spoke impressive German. Not for the last time, Jack wished he did.

  “I’ve got to go send a cable to the White House now,” the attaché said, “but I’ve gotten you into Heydrich’s shop. Be outside the embassy in ten minutes. You won’t need pen or paper for notes, by the way. The Gestapo give nothing away.”

  * * *

  JACK WAS DRIVEN IN an official car to Prinz Albrechtstrasse 8, a five-story Beaux Arts building, the Gestapo’s home. Hitler’s security services took up most of the block, stretching around the corner to Wilhelmstrasse. If Jack could just get inside, he’d figure out what to do next.

  “Could you begin,” he asked the bland figure in the perfectly tailored SS uniform who’d ushered him into an office, “by explaining the difference between these forces—the Kripo, the Gestapo, the SD? None of them existed before the Nazi Party came to power, right?”

  “The degeneracy of recent governments, and the chaos in civil society they encouraged, led to a general lawlessness that required a firm response,” his handler said in dispassionate English. His name was Storck. “The German crisis demanded innovative methods. Disciplined personnel and clear penalties. Examples the general populace could understand. We are now a model of civic order envied throughout Europe.”

  “It’s pretty confusing,” Jack said. “All these police groups, all run by the same person—General Heydrich. He has quite a grip on the reins of power, doesn’t he?”

  Storck smiled thinly.

  “I don’t suppose he’s around? Willing to talk to a visiting American?”

  “The Obergruppenführer will be desolated when he learns he has missed your visit, Herr Kennedy,” Storck replied, “but he is occupied with pressing duties. There is never so much time as the Obergruppenführer would wish. Your question is an excellent one, however, and I shall attempt to answer it. Kripo is the name of the Reich criminal police . . .”

  Jack listened to a disquisition on Nazi repression for roughly twenty minutes before Storck deemed he’d said enough. Then he was turned over to a pair of Gestapo men and marched to the entrance of the Albrechtstrasse building. The corridors were wide and vaulted like a church and populated by SS and Gestapo uniforms. Guards were posted every few feet. They eyed Jack as though he were a prisoner bound for interrogation. There was no chance of finding Heydrich’s office in this fortress. If the White Spider had already delivered Göring’s account book, Jack would never retrieve it. He felt like a fool.

  He bought himself a drink in the Adlon bar and stared moodily through the plate-glass window at Pariser Platz. He rolled the whiskey around his mouth and thought about his final year at Harvard, once his dad was exposed as a traitor. He’d be shunned. A pariah. Could they kick him out of Spee Club? His brother Joe would be furious—he was starting Harvard Law in the fall, and his whole life was about running for president one day. That plan wasn’t looking good. Kick’s romance with Billy would come to a screeching halt as well. Eunice’s debut would end in a public shaming. At least he, Jack, only wanted to wander the world as a foreign correspondent. There were still remote places where nobody’d ever heard of the Kennedys.

  Somebody slid onto the neighboring bar stool and propped a handbag on the counter.

  “He’s in Poland,” Diana said crisply. “Danzig, to be exact. Probably plotting how best to steal it. Buy me a cognac? We ought to toast something.”

  He ordered the drink, grasped her gently by the arm, and led her to a cocktail table. She shrugged her furs off her shoulders and pecked him on the cheek. “You look tired.”

  “It’s been a tough day.” He kept his voice delibera
tely low, as though he were talking smut. Diana smelled divinely of cold air and lilies of the valley. “How did you find out?”

  “I rang up his wife.” She held her drink aloft and said, “The Thousand Year Reich.”

  “Heydrich’s wife?”

  “Of course. She’s a sad sort of cow, pathetically eager for chat—he married her years ago to advance his career, and barely spares her a thought. Keeps a string of mistresses without the courtesy of hiding it. You know the sort.”

  He did. He thought of Gloria Swanson and Clare Booth Luce and pushed his father out of his mind.

  “Anyway, she invited me to tea while you were storming Albrechtstrasse.”

  “Speak softer,” Jack murmured in her ear. “People listen. Especially to English.”

  “Sorry. It’s been rather a . . . trying . . . afternoon.” She downed the cognac neat. “Unity Mitford was there. Know her?”

  “I like her sister Debo better.”

  “Unity came over for the Führer’s birthday last week. She gave him a present. From her smug expression, I assume it was her virginity.” She motioned to the waiter. “Another cognac, please. Then I promise I’ll stop.”

  The man smiled at Diana. Her color was high.

  “Heydrich’s been gone for weeks,” she murmured into her glass. “Prague, of course, and Warsaw, and some filthy little town on the Czech-Polish border I couldn’t possibly pronounce. Planning something. War with us, probably.”

  “Thank you, Diana,” Jack whispered.

  “We should leave for Danzig tonight. Whatever you’re looking for, it won’t be here. He’ll carry it with him. He trusts nothing and nobody.”

  Jack lifted her chin and stared into her black eyes. “I’m hunting for Daisy’s account book.”

  “You said the Spider took it. When he killed her.”

  “My father’s name is in it.”

  “The charity wasn’t a charity,” she said slowly.

  “It’s a Nazi front,” Jack agreed. “Hitler’s trying to buy the next American election. Roosevelt’s running for a third term, and Hitler wants him to lose. He wants an isolationist in the White House, so that the United States will turn its back on Britain and everybody else in Europe whenever he decides to attack. He wants the vast firepower of America neutralized, Diana—and he found a willing bunch of isolationists and appeasers, in my country and yours, to fund his operation.”

  “I bloody well did my bit,” she whispered. “I collected for Daisy. Begged alms from the Mitfords. And Lady Astor. The whole Cliveden House set— Good God . . .” Something in her expression sharpened. “Did Daisy . . . ?”

  “—Know? I think so.”

  “But your father . . . he was just giving alms . . . I mean, he is Catholic—”

  “He’s ambitious.” Jack looked down at his hands. They were clasped in his lap and his leg was throbbing. “He wants the White House, too. Even if it takes Nazi money to get it.”

  “He admitted to . . . to . . .”

  “Treason? I haven’t confronted him yet.”

  “Then you can’t be sure. You can’t be sure, Jack.”

  “That’s a luxury I can’t wait for. Wohlthat expects Heydrich to blackmail him—and my father as well. That’s why the Spider killed Daisy for the account book, and risked everything to get it to Berlin—that’s why it’s so precious. Consider the possibilities, Diana, in all those names! Heydrich will threaten each of them, one by one, with public exposure, unless they do what he asks. Linchpins of the American and British establishment, terrified of the charge of treason. They’ll fall over themselves to do his bidding—little things, nothing important at all, really, that determine the fate of England. The alternative being unthinkable to each and every one of them.”

  “Is it so unthinkable to your father, Jack?—Accepting responsibility, I mean? Taking whatever comes with admitting to what he’s done?”

  “That’d be what you people call cricket.” He glanced away from the intensity of her face. “God forgive me, I wish I could believe old J.P. capable of that kind of courage—but he’s never been a courageous man, Diana. He’ll tell himself he can’t ruin his kids’ lives. My future and my brother Joe’s. He’ll say he’s doing it for my mother. Christ, that’s rich! And if he caves to Heydrich . . . when he caves . . . The U.S. ambassador to England will be under the Gestapo’s thumb. My father has been Roosevelt’s principal liaison with Neville Chamberlain, Diana. Chamberlain trusts my dad. That could give Heydrich enormous influence over England’s future . . .”

  “So you’re off to save your father from himself,” she said acidly, “or die trying.”

  “You don’t have to come.”

  “Jack.”

  He looked at her. She was more than annoyed, now. She was blazingly furious.

  “Get me another drink. If I order it, the waiter will call me ein Lügner.”

  “I don’t speak German, Diana.”

  “A liar,” she said.

  THIRTY-FIVE. BACK CHANNELS

  . . . AN IMPROVED MODEL of the coding machine is presently being constructed at several factories on the Czech-Polish border, and is confirmed to be Heydrich’s pet project.

  “How convenient for the sake of Herr Heydrich’s pet project,” Roosevelt sighed as he studied the document in his hands, “that the Nazis now control the entire Czech border. I wonder if Mr. Chamberlain knew how useful he would be, when he graciously invited the Führer to take the place.”

  Sam Woods, the commercial attaché at the American embassy, Berlin, had sent his latest cable to the President; and the President was assiduously reading it. Woods was a highly trained engineer by education, a scientist first and a diplomat by only a distant second. His report did not deal with the “new physics,” as the chargé, Mr. Kirk, might have assumed; but it dealt with something equally interesting—something Roosevelt had specifically asked Woods to investigate, when the President arranged for the engineer’s transfer from Prague to Berlin: the newest form of encrypted communications currently under development by the German military. Roosevelt’s ad hoc adviser on all things espionage, General William J. Donovan, had suggested communications would be mortally important in the coming months.

  The “Heydrich-Enigma,” as it is known, improves on the commercial version first developed after the last war. Sources say the new machine will replace all existing communications equipment throughout Nazi Germany. Heydrich is convinced the coming war will be won by unbreakable encrypted communication. The Polish Intelligence service has been breaking Enigma codes for the past six or seven years. This new machine is Heydrich’s response.

  A knock on the door broke Roosevelt’s concentration. Sam Schwartz stuck his head around the jamb. “News from Scotland Yard, sir.”

  “Tell me they nabbed the Spider, Sam.”

  “He’s been traced. Seems a body was found last month near the Thames shipyards, with a spider cut into its chest.”

  “Last month?”

  “It took the Brits a while to identify the corpse, sir. The victim was a Polish merchant seaman—the Yard had to wire his ship for confirmation, which was halfway around the world by then. The man’s papers were subsequently passed in Italy and France.”

  “Italy, and then France?” Roosevelt repeated. “The killer went east, and then doubled back?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Roosevelt stared thoughtfully through his office window, which was streaming with spring rain. Jack had gone to Italy, and then France.

  As if reading his thoughts, Schwartz said: “Any news of young Mr. Kennedy, sir?”

  “He’s in Berlin.” Roosevelt didn’t add that young Mr. Kennedy had piqued the attaché Sam Woods’s interest with a few choice questions about Reinhard Heydrich. Or that Woods had arranged for Jack to interview the Gestapo.

&nbs
p; Why was Jack on the scent of the most vicious man in Europe?

  And why hadn’t he communicated with Roosevelt in weeks?

  THIRTY-SIX. CONTACT

  THE FREE CITY OF DANZIG was an anomaly in the heart of Europe, an ancient trading port on the Baltic Sea that acknowledged no overlord. It had once been part of the Teutonic Order and the Hanseatic League; but these were commercial ventures Danzig understood. It abhorred political ones, which had brought it only trouble. With its beautiful old medieval halls and red-tiled roofs, Danzig reminded Jack-of-Amsterdam or Prague; but its piratical merchant’s heart conjured Venice and Constantinople.

  Every ambitious warrior in history had fought for Danzig, including Napoleon. Prussia and Poland had played tug-of-war with it for centuries, but Danzig’s people hailed from all over. There were Scotsmen and Russians, Dutchmen and Jews. Danzig had its own parliament and currency. Its own anthem and flag. Its own post office and stamps.

  Its own immensely lucrative shipyards.

  The city was dominated by Poland to the south, which needed it for access to the sea. Ninety percent of Danzig’s population, however, identified itself as German. German territory bracketed the city east and west. And therein lay Danzig’s fate: Hitler was screaming for it. What he really hoped was that the Free City would skip joyfully into the Reich of its own accord, just as Austria had done the year before. Then he could cut off Poland’s trade and its navy’s sole port.

  Reinhard Heydrich and his secret police were in Danzig, Jack assumed, to make sure the spontaneous revolt went exactly as Hitler planned.

  It was two hundred fifty miles from Berlin to the Free City, but Jack and Diana had set out in the late afternoon and the roads were so poor their progress was slow. Jack found his way into the heart of Danzig a few minutes past ten o’clock at night on May first. He was tired and suspected he had a fever. Spots were dancing before his eyes. He ignored them because the chance of finding somebody like Mayo’s George Taylor or even the Sorbonne’s Dr. LaSalle, with his convenient hypodermics, was extremely remote on the Baltic Sea. Jack’s DOCA regimen wasn’t quite working at the moment but he would simply have to gut out the Mystery Disease. His family’s salvation depended upon it.