Jack 1939

by Francine Mathews

  “And if you’re wrong?”

  Gubbins shrugged. “Call your diplomatic representatives. Or I will, if you’re in jug.”

  “Jug?”

  “Deprived of liberty. Rendered incommunicado.”

  “Thanks.” Jack took a swig from Gubbins’s flask. His forehead was clammy and chills were running up his spine.

  “Has it occurred to you,” the colonel said diffidently, “that you could put the wee hours of morning to better use?”

  “I know. I look like hell. I should be in bed.”

  “Not at all, dear chap. Quite the contrary. If Heydrich and every other Jerry has gone to the scene of mayhem—stands to reason the Spider’s room is empty. He’s searched yours. Might as well return the favor.”

  Jack stared at him. He’d wondered before if Gubbins was drunk or mad. “I don’t know how to pick a lock.”

  Gubbins’s teeth flashed. He produced something narrow and black from his dressing gown pocket. “This is a hotel, Jack. A simple hairpin should do it.”

  * * *

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER JACK was standing in the middle of number 5101, which reminded him strangely of Mayo. The Spider had left no trace in the room; it was sterile as a hospital ward.

  Gubbins had lent Jack gloves and told him to leave his shoes by the door to avoid footprints. So here he was, with a black balaclava over his face. It itched unmercifully and Jack was sure he was allergic to whatever it was made of. Merino. Angora. An animal never intended to touch the face of a guy who broke out in hives whenever he petted a dog.

  “The Poles swear by these when they’re getting up to a spot of mischief,” the colonel had said. “You could do a hell of a lot worse than learn from the Poles. They’ve managed, after all, to retain some national dignity, despite being conquered by every egotist with an army over the past thousand years. The jokes people make about them are grossly unfair.”

  He’d clapped Jack on the back and gone down to the lobby in the guise of a genial insomniac searching for company and perhaps a drink. Determined to know exactly when Heydrich returned. Gubbins as Spotter and Lookout.

  Quickly. He had to move quickly.

  Jack opened the Spider’s closet. A set of street clothes, a strange navy peacoat beside them. He’d expected camel’s hair. For an instant he was sure he’d broken into the wrong room. But Gubbins didn’t make mistakes. Did he?

  He ran his hand over the shelf above the hanging rod; nothing but an extra blanket. He unfolded it in case Daisy Corcoran’s account book was tucked inside. Nothing. He put the blanket back, his neck prickling.

  He got down on his knees and ran his hands under the Spider’s mattress. He’d liked to have tossed the whole thing off the frame, but Gubbins’s voice in his head stopped him. Leave no trace. The bedside table had a Lutheran missal, printed in German. And a New Testament in Polish.

  No briefcase. No book. No personal papers. No piece of stationery missing from the supply in the desk. He checked beneath the armchair cushions. He ran his gloved hands along the window canopy. If the Spider hadn’t thought to look there in Jack’s room, he hadn’t used it in his own.

  There was a washbasin with a shaving kit on the shelf above. Nothing else.

  The account book wasn’t there.

  For a wild moment, he thought: He doesn’t have it. We’re safe.

  And then he thought: It’s in fucking Heydrich’s room.

  A shaft of vertigo sliced through him. He would have to break into the room next door.

  He went for his shoes—and heard faint footfalls from the carpeted corridor outside.

  Someone was coming.

  He jabbed at the light switch, plunging the room in darkness. He thrust his feet into his shoes, not bothering with the laces. His blood was pounding in his ears.

  The footsteps halted at the Spider’s door.

  How the hell had Gubbins missed him?

  There was a pale chink of light where the corridor’s glow seeped through the keyhole. Jack watched as it was blotted out by the key. In a second the Spider would know that the door was already unlocked. He might even have sensed Jack’s breathing.

  Gubbins missed him because he didn’t come through the front lobby. He wasn’t with Heydrich. He never left the hotel. He’d been searching my room when they got the news about the truck.

  Jack went hot and then cold. He’d coolly picked the man’s door, thinking he was thirty miles away in the smouldering woods. When all the time he was having a last drink. Or screwing a maid. Carving his mark into the girl’s breast—

  The Spider kicked in the door with smashing violence.

  If Jack had been behind it, he’d have been crushed against the wall with a broken nose. But instead he’d stood on the opposite side, and the second Obst appeared, he fired the Luger blindly. Striking before he could be struck.

  Force propelled the massive shape into the room, stumbling, until the Spider let out an animal grunt and rolled to his knees. One arm clutched his chest and the other swept out, desperate to stab; Jack slipped past the writhing man and bolted through the open door.

  What had he done?

  A guttural, inhuman roar filled the air behind him. That and the gunshot would be enough to sound an alarm.

  Jack ran straight down the empty fifth-floor corridor, shoving the hot muzzle of the gun into his waistband, burning the skin above his navel. He was still wearing the balaclava. He was fleeing like a thief in the night. Such obvious stupidity, if anybody saw. If a single bedroom door opened. There must be a service pantry at the end of this corridor. They would start looking at the other end, near the elevator.

  He pulled open the pantry door and shut it behind him. Standing in total darkness, he stuffed the balaclava down the incinerator, then pressed the button that summoned the dumbwaiter.

  It might have been forty seconds while the dumbwaiter lumbered five stories up, while doors opened, feet pounded, voices shouted in horror. Was the Spider dead? Or was he heaving himself painfully, arm over arm, through a pool of his own blood? Jack’s legs shook. He held down the call button savagely, urging the dumbwaiter to hurry. He prayed the Spider could not tell them which way he’d run.

  The dumbwaiter rose slowly into view. A forgotten chafing dish, a few napkins, a pot of stale coffee were still inside. Jack swung himself carefully on top, testing whether it would bear his weight. It swayed and held.

  He forced himself to keep his mind on survival. Forget the five-story drop. He reached for the pulley that supported the wooden carrier, and began to work the cables by hand. He and Joe had done this when they were kids. Loads of times. There was a dumbwaiter in the Bronxville house and they used to scare the hell out of the kitchen staff when they burst through the door. There was a dumbwaiter at Prince’s Gate, too. He’d have to show Teddy the trick sometime. If he lived long enough.

  He was still wearing his gloves and he was thankful for the thin protection they offered between himself and the cable. He lowered the dumbwaiter by degrees, hand over hand, until a break in the shaft told him he’d reached the fourth floor. He could hear nothing of the world beyond his vertical tunnel but he was conscious of squeaking, something weary and habitual in the mechanism, a clear signal to anybody listening that the dumbwaiter was in use at half past three in the morning. He was sweating and yet clammy with chills. He was afraid he would vomit. But it didn’t matter if he puked. Nothing mattered. The third-floor hatch was coming nearer. He could swing himself out and be safe—or stare down the barrel of a gun.

  He halted the dumbwaiter a few feet above the third floor. No light. No movement. Just a current of air betrayed where the shaft opened into the service pantry. He lowered himself the last small distance and swung through the opening.

  A hand grasped his arm. Another went over his mouth, stifling his scream of panic.


  “Got you,” Gubbins whispered.

  * * *

  THE COLONEL SAID THEY SHOULD brazen it out, so Jack folded himself onto the bottom of a butler’s cart while Gubbins draped a piece of linen over it. He took the dirty dishes from the dumbwaiter and arranged them attractively on the cart. Then he rolled through the pantry door and went whistling down the third-floor corridor, oblivious to the mayhem all around.

  Jack could just see through a narrow gap at floor level. Black boots rushed past. They were searching the entire hotel for the Spider’s killer. They were searching for him. And the Luger was still tucked into his waistband. If they found him, no dip passport or famous name would save him.

  A harsh splutter of German broke out above his head and the cart was suddenly reeling sideways, thrust along with Gubbins against the wall. Jack clung by his fingertips to the shelf, terrified one of his legs would swing out and betray him, aware as if from a great distance that Gubbins was snarling something in Polish, the perfect reaction of an abused waiter; and in an instant, the cart had righted itself and rolled on.

  He closed his eyes. Gubbins stopped at his door, pounded on it with his fist, called out something that must be Room Service in Polish—and thrust a hairpin deftly into the lock.

  The cart glided into the sanctuary of Jack’s bedroom and he heard the door slam closed behind them. He slid to the floor and lay there an instant, staring at Gubbins’s shoes.

  “Now,” the colonel said, “get into pajamas. They’ll search every room—and you’ll want to look plausible. Where’s the gun?”

  Jack pulled it from his waistband.

  “A Luger. Clever, that. If they bother to check the Spider’s wound ballistics, they’ll think another German did it. Lord knows some of that cretin’s friends must want him dead. Put it away safe. And for the love of Christ get off the floor.”

  Jack scrambled to his feet. Gubbins was already at the door, with his cart full of dirty dishes.

  “Did you find what you were after?”

  Jack shook his head.

  “Pity,” Gubbins said, and backed his cart out into the hall.

  FORTY. LOVE AND WAR

  HE WOKE TO THE COOL TOUCH of Diana’s hand on his face and the knowledge that he was sick again.

  The ceiling lurched through his fever. Someone had told him he must be careful and stay in bed. He had killed a man. He heard himself ask what time it was.

  “Five o’clock,” Diana soothed. He tried to focus on her face and caught only a blurred outline. “Friday evening. There’s a doctor come to see you, Jack. Can you sit up?”

  He sat up, trying to pin down Friday. They had reached Danzig the first of May. Monday night. And later he had shot the Spider.

  A man with gray hair and ridiculous glasses hanging from a chain was easing him forward so that he could press a stethoscope to Jack’s back. The man wore a plaid wool waistcoat as though it were winter. “Breathe,” the man said. Jack breathed. He closed his eyes. His mouth was dry as sandpaper. The man was speaking German. Diana was speaking German. He wondered again where she’d learned it.

  The sound of abrupt consonants tossed his memory back, suddenly, to an oblong of light falling into the corridor, Diana fierce in a filmy wrapper, her face lifted to a Nazi’s, her voice insisting angrily He’s ill can’t you see how ill he is. My God he can’t even stand you will not search his room—

  And now it was Friday.

  “May fifth,” he said, working it out.

  “Yes,” Diana replied. “Dr. Groenig wants to see your leg. The one where you put the pellets.”

  “Der pellets also,” the doctor interjected ponderously.

  He was German but he did not wear his death’s-head on his sleeve. Jack wanted to ask Diana what had happened to Obst but Gubbins’s voice in his fevered brain said Don’t mention it, old boy. He lifted the sheet from his thigh and slumped back against the pillows.

  Groenig probed the reddened gash. Jack groaned.

  “Where are the pellets, Jack,” Diana asked clearly.

  He managed, this time, to focus on her face. “Shaving kit.” She rose and went into the bath. Then handed the bottle to Groenig, who furrowed his brows as he read the label.

  “Ach.” The doctor studied him over his glasses. “You are very ill boy.” He directed a spate of German to Diana.

  “He wants to give you an injection, Jack.”

  This was how they’d execute him for murder. With a needle. Ambassador Kennedy we regret to inform you that your son John Fitzgerald passed away after a short—

  He shook his head violently and the room whirled. “No.”

  “Jack—” Diana took his face between her cool hands and forced him to look at her. “Do as he says. He’s a good doctor. He came to treat that poor fellow who was shot the other night.”

  She said it casually enough, but he caught the warning in her voice. It focused him.

  “What fellow?”

  “One of the German soldiers. Dr. Groenig very kindly agreed to examine you today, once he’d checked the other chap.”

  “Chap’s alive?”

  “Yes. Shot through the lung. Weeks, probably, before he recovers.”

  Relief flooded over Jack. They wouldn’t execute him for a lung. But he had stopped the Spider for a while, and right now that was enough.

  Groenig was swabbing his arm with alcohol.

  “They think it was a Pole who shot him,” Diana said conversationally as the needle plunged into Jack’s thin bicep. “They’ve been rounding up Poles for days, poor blighters.”

  * * *

  THE DOCTOR RETURNED ON SATURDAY and gave him another injection while Diana fed him lukewarm tea. She read to him from the only English novel she could find, Du Maurier’s bestseller. Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. Jack dreamt of monsters coming through the door, hulking black shapes that exploded in petrol fire.

  The next time he woke it was Gubbins who sat by his bed, dressed in tennis whites. He’d been down to the courts, he told Jack; a glorious day. He might even take out his easel and capture some views of the Bay. Gubbins made a point of introducing himself as James McVean, Painter in Oils, to Dr. Groenig who’d returned for the third day in a row, hypodermic in hand. It was unclear how well the doctor understood English but Gubbins kept up a soothing patter while Groenig was there. Once the doctor left, Gubbins reached for a bowl of soup and raised a spoonful to Jack’s mouth.

  “Your car’s back, by the way,” he said easily. “All serene, as far as I can tell. No disturbance to the boot. The keys are on your dresser.”

  “Thanks,” Jack said. His mind was clearer. “What day is it?”

  “Sunday, old man. Have another spot of soup.”

  “Is Diana okay?”

  Gubbins’s gaze shifted fractionally. “Saw her playing tennis. Seemed in good form. Dashed competent backhand.”

  “Tennis? With who?”

  “Whom. Heydrich, of course. She doesn’t waste her chances, Diana.”

  “No.” Jack closed his eyes. Heydrich. “If you see her—”

  “I’ll tell her you’ll be on your feet in no time.”

  * * *

  HE NEVER KNEW WHETHER Gubbins gave Diana his message, because by the time he dressed and came downstairs—Monday afternoon, May eighth—both of them had left the Kasino-Hotel.

  There was a note from Gubbins waiting in his pigeonhole. Delightful to have struck up an acquaintance, old chap, it read. Do look me up at my club once you’re back in Town.

  He’d signed it James McVean and enclosed his card. On the back was a handwritten address in Baker Street.

  Diana’s letter had been shoved under his door that morning while he still slept.

  He’s asked me to go with him to Moscow. We must assume
he has what we want. You know that we both need to find it. Other names beside your father’s are in those pages.

  Don’t hate me, darling.

  He had read and reread this note, his knees propped up beneath the sheets, his fever for the first time gone cold. He could feel the shape of the Luger hidden beneath his pillow.

  We both need to find it. Other names beside your father’s . . .

  English names, presumably. Ones too vulnerable to blackmail. Had she known what Daisy’s accounts were really for, all along? Did she get into his car at Val d’Isère because she was under orders to find the network’s records before he did? Had Diana slid into his bed with the same calculation as she did Reinhard Heydrich’s?

  She doesn’t waste her chances, Diana.

  Or was she just determined to do what he was too weak to accomplish?

  Don’t hate me, darling.

  But in that moment he did. Diana was like every other woman he’d ever allowed himself to love. His mother, long ago when he was kid. Frances Ann, just last winter. Women had a way of taking his deepest feelings and twisting them into a noose around his neck.

  Diana. He was hanging here, twisting.

  * * *

  FOUR HOURS LATER, Jack was on the road to Moscow.

  He stopped only once on his way out of Poland, pulling into a dirt track that led through a wood. He unpacked the radio transmitter and ran a lead from the car battery as Gubbins had taught him. If he could not save his father’s carcass, he might at least do something for the man fighting this war before it even began. He encoded his message with a few words of the Harvard fight song and sent it into the ether.