Jack 1939

by Francine Mathews

  Offie summoned LaSalle and his needles full of DOCA; he coddled Jack with private cables and interviews with French officials, who seemed as bewildered as the British by the mess they were about to receive.

  At night, Jack drank in a series of glittering boîtes. Alcohol played havoc with his system but it dulled the pain he could not locate, the void where Diana had been. He did not know whether she’d deliberately hurt him to send him away—whether everything she’d said on the bridge was a lie—or whether he’d been duped by her all along. What was the truest thing about Diana? Her love, or her hate?

  * * *

  IT WAS A QUESTION HE ASKED himself all the way back to London.

  Now, as he looked at his sister Eunice, exquisite and fragile in her Paquin dress, he came to some sort of answer.

  “Prague’s the loneliest place on earth, kid,” he said. “Would you save me the first dance?”

  FORTY-FOUR. DEDUCTIONS

  “DO YOU THINK THE BOY KNOWS?” Sam Schwartz asked.

  Roosevelt rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully. “I’d be astonished if he didn’t. I asked him to track this down, after all. And he’s given us every lead we’ve followed.”

  A sheaf of paper lay between them on the desk. Handwritten, not typed, in Schwartz’s careful script. The Secret Service man had done his work thoroughly and well. A certain charity’s tax records had been laid as bare as a filleted salmon. Daisy Corcoran’s deep-pocket donors might have given anonymously to the Little Sisters of Clemency, but those same deep pockets couldn’t resist taking the charitable deduction on their individual tax returns. Weeks of patient cross-checking among the IRS files had yielded a crop of names. Joseph P. Kennedy’s headed the list.

  “He may have donated in all innocence,” Schwartz suggested. “With no idea the charity was just a Nazi front.”

  “That’s what he’ll claim,” Roosevelt said with a studied lack of emotion.

  “He’s Catholic. They’re nuns.”

  “—run by Göring’s banker. Who just pressed Kennedy to ask me for a billion-dollar loan. Too cozy a coincidence, Sam.” He ran his eyes down the list of names, marveling at the effrontery of it. Two-thirds of the near-defunct American Liberty League had ponied up funds for the Little Sisters. So had a prominent Pennsylvania politician, a famous aviator, and the highest-paid lawyer in Manhattan. All were pillars of their communities. All would be shocked to be branded Nazi sympathizers. And all were apparently quite comfortable with the idea of buying a presidential election. They would argue, of course, that they were just supporting a Catholic charity; and he had no hard proof otherwise. But Roosevelt noted that most of the donors were Protestant. No wonder they’d given anonymously.

  “Jack will think his father never knew it was a Nazi front,” Schwartz persisted. “Do you want to destroy the boy’s respect for him, sir?”

  “If Joe Kennedy is a traitor? Perhaps it would be for the best. Jack doesn’t seem the kind of fellow who enjoys living a lie.”

  Schwartz’s lips compressed.

  Roosevelt wrestled his chair in the direction of the bedroom. He considered his own sons. Jimmy, in particular—who was so frighteningly weak. Jimmy, who admired Joe Kennedy’s charm and street smarts and ability to make money hand over fist—and had gotten them all into trouble because of it. When the press discovered the President’s son was importing liquor from Scotland with his “partner” Joe Kennedy, there’d been more than a whiff of scandal. Jimmy had actually moved back into the White House with his entire family—supposedly to support his Old Man, but in fact to regroup and lick his wounds. Roosevelt would bet on the probability that Jimmy figured somewhere in J. Edgar Hoover’s files.

  But if somebody tried to tell Jimmy that his father was no good—a traitor, a rogue, a nasty piece of work—how would he feel?

  Jimmy would hate the messenger. And he would never speak to the man again.

  God have mercy on my soul, Roosevelt thought. I sent Jack off to hunt down his own father, and made it sound like hero’s work. He must know his father stabbed me in the back and used German money to do it. Now it’s impossible for him to keep faith with both of us. That’s why the radio’s full of Hitler’s alliances and I’ve heard nothing about Wohlthat or the charity network in weeks. He’s waiting for somebody else to hang Joe high. Not him. Never the Black Sheep.

  Roosevelt had no desire to alienate Jack Kennedy. He had plans for him.

  “Very well, Sam,” he said. “We won’t mention this. Yet.”

  FORTY-FIVE. LAST DANCES

  JACK MIGHT HAVE CONFRONTED his father with Daisy and her account book, or the dead hatcheck girl, the next morning when he reported for work at the embassy. He might have asked him about Göring. Who approached whom. Whether Dad volunteered the Little Sisters of Clemency’s charity network as an ideal vehicle for collecting treasonable cash, or whether exploiting the nuns was purely a Nazi flourish. But he didn’t have the chance. His brother Joe was lounging in the armchair opposite the ambassador’s desk. Joe idolized their dad. Jack had no intention of destroying him in his brother’s eyes; and Joe wouldn’t believe him, anyway.

  “. . . should have been allowed to show them around,” his father was saying irritably. “The King and Queen of England make their first visit to the United States, and Franklin side-steps me completely! Goes over my head to issue the invitation—then forbids me to travel with the royal party! As if I didn’t know Bertie and his wife better than he does! They’ve had us to stay at Windsor. It’s goddamn insulting.”

  “He’s just a tired old man, Dad,” Joe offered. “It’s obvious. Time to head back to Hyde Park and make way for the new fella.”

  “You said it.”

  Jack leaned in the doorway. Dad was working in his shirtsleeves and his thumbs were shoved into his waistcoat. He was supposed to be a risk-taker. A brilliant tactician. Only to Jack this morning, he looked like any other unscrupulous bastard blinded by ego and desire.

  “He’s running again,” Jack said casually.

  “Who is?” his father demanded.

  “Roosevelt. If that’s who you’re talking about.”

  “Bullshit,” his father said immediately.

  “He can’t,” Joe burst out.

  “There’s no law against a third term.”

  “That doesn’t matter!” Joe flung himself out of the chair. “It’s un-American, Jack. Don’t you know your history? They’d never let Roosevelt do it.”

  “Who’s they? The Democrats? Republicans? Or the Nazis?” Jack looked innocently from his brother to his father. He thought Dad’s eyelids flickered. “Hitler has everything to lose, way I see it, if FDR stays another four years.”

  “Wrong.” His brother planted a forefinger in Jack’s chest; he’d always been physical when it came to debate. “We lose.”

  “The Kennedys?”

  “Every American! If Roosevelt’s reelected, we’re all going to war. Nobody wants that.”

  “I do,” Jack said quietly.

  “Like hell.” The faintest amusement tinged Joe’s voice. “You won’t pass the physical, my friend. You’ll get a nice, cushy desk job somewhere, while I’m soaking in a trench. Oh, my stomach,” he whimpered in falsetto. “Oh, my crapper. It hurts when I shit.”

  “That’s enough.” Their father held up his arms. “Nobody’s going to war. This’ll all be over by August.”

  “Care to bet on that?” Jack asked.

  “How much money you got?” Joe retorted instantly.

  “A few pieces of worthless property in Central Europe will change hands,” their father persisted. “The Germans will go home happy; and people like Churchill will have egg on their faces. And come next November, we’ll get a new broom in Washington for a change.”

  “And you’re the clean sweep,” Jack concluded wearily.

/>   “Well . . . if it’s what the American people want . . .” His father bared his teeth. “I’ve never been one to shirk my duty.”

  “Oh, Christ.” Jack rubbed his eyes fretfully and turned to leave. “I can’t listen to this anymore.”

  Joe gripped his shoulder, halting him in his tracks. “Have some respect, Jack. Dad knows a lot more about politics than we do. He’d make a great president.”

  “Who told you Roosevelt was running for a third term?” his father demanded.

  Jack shrugged. “That’s the word at Harvard. Has a guy named Helmuth Wohlthat contacted you, by any chance?”

  J.P.’s expression was suddenly watchful. “What business is it of yours?”

  “We met in Val d’Isère. And had quite the conversation. What’d he ask for this time, Dad? Something only the Führer could love?”

  “Jack, what exactly are you insinuating?”

  He met J.P.’s gaze squarely. “Everything you could possibly imagine.”

  His father’s face reddened. He opened his mouth, then closed it again.

  “They never ask just once, you know,” Jack said. “They come back again and again. Until you haven’t got a thing left to barter, or a shred of self-respect. And it’s not just about you, Dad—it’s all of us you’re gambling away. My life. Joe’s future. You always said he’d be president of the United States if you didn’t get there first. Keep dancing with Hitler, and it ain’t gonna happen.”

  “What are you talking about, Jack?”

  The expression of shock in his brother’s eyes might have been comical, if it hadn’t struck Jack as so sad. Maybe he ought to take Joe aside and explain exactly what he’d learned on his own fact-finding mission through Europe. But Joe would demand proof before he’d believe a word against their father. Jack had no proof of J.P.’s treason. That was hidden for all the world to see in Daisy Corcoran’s account book.

  He watched his brother’s move from surprise to anger. Then Joe shoved him back against the office wall.

  “Apologize to Dad.”

  “I can’t,” he said. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  They stared at each other, tense as tomcats on a back alley fence. Joe’s fists were balled up at his sides but he would never use them, not against Jack, not here. There was the faintest tinge of uncertainty in his gaze and it sharpened the edge of sorrow deep in Jack’s gut. People he loved were going to be hurt by what he knew. Not just Joe, but Teddy and Jean and Kick and Bobby. Even his mother, he supposed.

  “Jack had too much to drink last night.” His father’s voice was savage but calm. “He’s hallucinating. And he’d better get out of my office right now, before I throw him out.”

  “Sure,” Jack said tiredly, opening the door and backing out. “But let me know when you’ve got your story straight. You’re going to need one, Dad. For Wohlthat and his bosses. And Roosevelt, of course. If you want to run it by me, I’m always ready to listen.”

  He stayed away from the two Joes as much as he could, after that. His services didn’t seem to be needed at the embassy, and Kick was happy to drag him along on her summer ride.

  It was a relief for Jack just to be with her. He never had to explain his moods to Kick or tell her what he was really thinking. And she didn’t ask. They’d spent too many rainy days together as kids, in the basement of the Hyannis Port house, watching B movies on their dad’s screen over and over, until they could mimic Cary Grant and Mae West in She Done Him Wrong. They were both wild at heart and restless as hell, always ready for a jitterbug or a game of touch football; but unlike Jack, Kick had a healthy body.

  “It’s my consolation prize, kid,” she said as she watched him cut the DOCA into his calf one afternoon, “for not having your brains.”

  It was true she wasn’t much of a student. She was talking about going to Sarah Lawrence back in Bronxville, but if she did, it wouldn’t be for the classes. Jack didn’t attempt to explain to her the strategic importance of Danzig or the complications of his recent life. He said nothing about Diana Playfair or the Heydrich-Enigma he’d helped to steal or, God help him, the specter of their father’s treason. Kick would have found all of it incomprehensible. Worse, if he’d shared his worries, she’d have been burdened with something like sin. So much unhappiness in Jack’s life would weigh on Kick’s. She’d go in search of a confessor, and that was the last thing Jack wanted.

  So he kept his secrets and went out with Kick’s friend Sally Norton, the wellborn British deb he’d rescued from the Serpentine back in March. Sally was as unlike Diana Playfair as any girl could be, honey-colored and lean, with aristocratic bones and an upper-class drawl. Though she was polite to Jack in the most English of ways, it was obvious she had eyes only for Billy Hartington. Jack’s charm had never been so wasted. He kept Sally occupied, however, which was a favor to Kick and the Protestant Prince. The four of them frittered away night after night drinking champagne at the 400 Club.

  There was a feverish atmosphere in London, this final summer before the war. Everyone figured the Luftwaffe would level the city in a matter of weeks, that civilian casualties would be in the hundreds of thousands, and that they were all going to die, as Billy put it, “as soon as the balloon goes up.” So they danced the big apple and stayed out until dawn and drank deep whenever fear grasped their throats. Jack saw the willful stupidity of it all, but he was returning to America soon, to Harvard for his final year of college. He had no right to sneer at his English friends. Besides, he had failed. Heydrich had the means to blackmail a significant chunk of the Anglo-American elite, which might guarantee England’s downfall. The span of their lives might be weeks or months. Why not die happy?

  One morning in late June, Jack’s Spee Club roommate, Torby Macdonald, showed up at Prince’s Gate, dying for a summer in Europe. He brought a letter from Bruce Hopper that began with Mon Brave and ended with Cheers and asked, in between, if Jack had ever gotten to Moscow. Jack wrote a reply full of remorse and Spaso House and his observations of Molotov. He said nothing of a possible Nazi-Soviet Pact.

  July set in with unusual heat. Torby planned a trip to Paris and Jack figured he’d go along. He was continually restless, the fog called Boredom or Death hovering just over his left shoulder. The image of Diana’s white face above the piers of the Charles Bridge stabbed like lightning through his mind. He wondered where she was. How she survived. If she survived.

  And then one night, when he thought he couldn’t bear the not-knowing any longer, an unexpected voice fell on his ear.

  “Fancy,” Denys Playfair murmured, nursing a cigarette between his beautiful fingers. “Jack Kennedy in the flesh. The Terror of Happy Households. How do you get on, pet? And what the hell have you done with my wife?”

  * * *

  THEY WERE STANDING ON the west terrace at Blenheim Palace, gazing out over the Duke of Marlborough’s magnificent water parterre, lantern-lit in the twilight, while a waltz swirled in the Long Library behind them. The Duke’s daughter, Lady Sarah Spencer Churchill, was the same age as Eunice and the two girls had met while sitting out dances in a bathroom. The vast and bewildering palace, the thousands of acres of parkland, the allées of ancient trees and the casual assumption of power that Blenheim represented seemed unreal to Jack, like something out of Young Melbourne. He was remembering a different night on the outskirts of Danzig, the flames in the wood and the smell of burning flesh, when Denys Playfair spoke.

  He turned. “You haven’t heard from Diana?”

  “Not in a month. Beginning to give me the willies. You?”

  “We last spoke on the twenty-ninth of May,” Jack said carefully. “In Prague.”

  “And it’s the seventh of July. She ought to have been back for Ascot but sent her regrets instead.” Playfair offered him a gold cigarette case. “Smoke?”

  Jack took a Woodbine and allowed Playfair to li
ght it. The tobacco stung his throat. “You know she’s with Heydrich.” It was not a question.

  “So she said. He seems to allow her the odd letter. I’ll wager he reads them before they’re posted.”

  “And you can live with that?”

  “No choice, old chap. She’s lived with Willi for donkey’s years.”

  Unexpectedly frank, from the exquisite Denys.

  “Look, you’ve probably gathered that Diana is nobody’s fool,” Playfair said. “I owe her my continued reputation and my peace of mind. I never grudge her the least amusement.”

  “Heydrich’s not funny. He’s scary as hell.”

  “But she’s doing her bit,” Denys said evenly. “In an unofficial capacity.”

  “By sleeping with the Gestapo?”

  “If you must. Yes.”

  “He hurts her, you know. She looks like hell.”

  Denys studied his fingernails. “I wonder, Jack, if you’ve time for a private chat? I was sent to fetch you, actually.”

  He followed Playfair’s perfectly tailored form back through the French windows and out of the Long Library, down a series of corridors lit solely by candles, up a short flight of steps, and into an altogether different wing. He was thoroughly lost but Playfair seemed at home in the Duke of Marlborough’s palace. He tapped lightly on a paneled door and threw it open.

  Two men stood in a small, high-ceilinged room before a small fireplace with a cheerful fire. One of them was Colin Gubbins. The other was Winston Churchill.

  He had been born at Blenheim, Jack remembered. The Duke was his cousin. Of course he’d attend Lady Sarah’s come-out. But what on earth was Gubbins doing here?

  “Colonel,” Playfair was saying as he lounged across the room. “Winston. I don’t know whether you’re acquainted with Jack Kennedy? The ambassador’s second son.”

  Jack forced himself forward and extended his hand. “Sir. It’s a pleasure to see you again.”