Jack 1939 (15 page)

The murdered nun was Diana’s childhood friend.

“What were Sister Mary Joseph’s duties, Mother Superior,” he managed, “for your charity organization in Paris?”

“She was our
contabile
. How do you say? She made the accounts,” the nun replied as she closed her files. “And carried the money to Paris, of course.”

“The money?”

“Donations,” she corrected. “The Little Sisters of Clemency are in Rome, you see, because it is the center of the Catholic world. The Faithful bring alms for the poor. Sister Mary Joseph made certain it reached them. She took the money to Herr Wohlthat. It was all this she packed while the rest of us went to St. Peter’s this morning.”

Jack rose. “Have you checked her baggage?”

Something in the Mother Superior’s face changed. With swiftness surprising in one so large, she surged to the door.

Jack followed.

* * *

THE POLICE INSPECTOR
and his colleague were already in possession of Daisy’s room, which was so tiny and so painfully neat that it was obvious it contained little more than the narrow wooden bench on which she slept, the single small table and wooden chair positioned beneath the slit of a window, and three pegs at shoulder height in the wall. There was no mirror and no basin; but an earthenware ewer was half full of water, and a worn leather satchel rested near the door. The cell was so orderly, in fact, that Jack felt a spark of hope as he and the Mother Superior came to a halt before the open doorway: The White Spider
couldn’t
have been here. It looked nothing like the chaos of his stateroom, after the killer had ransacked it.

The inspector was lifting a prayer book and what Jack guessed was a habit from the satchel with hands already encased in gloves. The Mother Superior uttered a sharp question in Italian and the policeman answered, his eyes on her face.

“What is it?” Jack asked.

She ignored him and strode instead into the center of the tiny room, glancing distractedly from one corner to the other.

“Mother Superior,” he said gently.

“There was another
borsa
.” She gestured frantically at the leather satchel. “A black one, you understand. With the account book and the
donazione
inside.” She threw up her hands. “
Il dio mio
, Mr. Ken-ne-dy! She must have died for it. The
borsa
is gone.”

TWENTY-SIX.
CRUMBLE TO BLACK

THE JOURNEY TO THE ROOF
of the White House was too painful for a man in a wheelchair; and it would attract the wrong kind of attention. Roosevelt kept the radio receiver Wild Bill Donovan had given him in his bedroom, on the lower shelf of the table that stood next to his white iron cot, with a heavy flannel shawl thrown over it. Eleanor had her own room down the hall and nobody disturbed his. The last thing he did before turning off his reading lamp each night was tune the radio to Jack’s special frequency, the whistling and static from the ether almost soothing to his fitful sleep. Schwartz had instructed the boy to transmit, when possible, between ten and eleven o’clock in the morning, European time. The signal would reach Roosevelt as he waited restlessly for dawn.

When the click-clicking of the Morse keys broke into his sleep that morning, a few minutes past five, he awoke instantly. He’d learned Morse during the last war, when he was secretary of the navy, but it had taken Bruce Hopper nearly an hour to train him on the receiver and substitution code during the professor’s last visit. Hopper was an old army intelligence hand, and he knew some of the same people Wild Bill Donovan knew. Between them, the two men had arranged the secret session in the lingerie shop and Jack’s back channel commo link. Roosevelt was adamant: Nobody connected to the State department—particularly Jack’s father—must know about it.

Ciphers intrigued and excited him. They were a foray into the lost country of childhood, a Rudyard Kipling world, and the President insisted on receiving Jack’s messages himself. He trusted Sam Schwartz; but he was selfish about sharing the fun—and the burden—of espionage.

He dragged himself upright against his pillows and reached for a pad and pencil. His white bedside table was cluttered with several telephones, scraps of paper, pencil stubs, a bottle of nose drops, an ash tray, cigarettes, and a bottle of aspirin. He knew Jack was supposed to repeat his radio transmission until its receipt was confirmed. He’d missed the first few letter groups, but he could pick them up on the second round. He switched on his reading lamp and began to scribble down the Morse.

Twenty minutes later, Missy tapped on his door and entered in her bathrobe, a cup of coffee in her hand. She set it on the bedside table. He reached for her, pulled her onto his lap, and held her there for an instant, the decoded message discarded at his side. She’d been with him as friend and secretary and lover for twenty years, through his failed vice-presidential campaign, his governorship, his polio therapy at Warm Springs, and now the White House. She was forty years old and her hair was turning gray in his service. Her face, however, was still as sweet and unlined as when they’d first met. She smelled of flannel nightgowns and linen-closet lavender and the warmth of nighttime. He thought of the wiretap on her phone and blasphemed violently in his mind.

“You’re up early,” she said. “Did you sleep?”

“Couple of hours.” He reached for his coffee and drank some. “Listen, Miss—you’re Catholic, aren’t you? Who do you know in the Church hierarchy?”

She crowed with laughter. “Nobody at all.”

“Do you know anything about the Little Sisters of Clemency?”

“Never heard of them. What do they do—teach? Nurse? Or just pray?”

“I think they do a bit more than that,” he said easily. “The order’s name came up in conversation a few days ago. I’d like to know more about them—where they’re based, how they’re run, who supports them financially, that sort of thing.”

“Part of your drive to build community service?”

“Exactly. So many small organizations have sprung up in this terrible Depression, and few of them get enough recognition. But I don’t want to flutter the dovecot with a premature call from the White House. Think you could ask around, and tell me what you learn?”

“Eleanor’s much better at that sort of thing than I am.”

“But everything Eleanor says or does is front-page news.”

“And you’d like to sound out the Little Sisters before you burden them with presidential notice. I get it.” She sprang off his lap and padded in her slippers to the door. “You’ve got Henry Morgenthau at ten o’clock, don’t forget.”

“I won’t.”

“You might shave this time.”

“I might.”

When she’d gone, he picked up the discarded pad.
Spider strikes in Rome STOP Sister Mary Joseph nee Daisy Corcoran American citizen killed STOP Little Sisters of Clemency records and cash stolen presumably by Spider STOP Suggest you investigate activity of Sisters stateside STOP Am proceeding to Paris STOP Jack

And so it has begun, Roosevelt thought: the boy’s wandering. He thinks the Spider is following him. He’ll keep moving—keep asking questions—maybe even keep one step ahead of the killer. And what will he learn, in the end? Something worse than a stab in the gut?

Roosevelt reached for his lighter, lit a flame under the deciphered note, and watched it crumble to black in the ashtray.

TWENTY-SEVEN.
CHARITY

JACK SAT AND STOOD AND KNELT
with the reflexive habit of ten thousand masses—Teddy was receiving his First Communion from Pope Pius XII this Monday morning. But Jack could not get the cloister in Via Giulia out of his mind. The sacred hush of the Vatican chapel echoed with a woman’s wailing.

She’s dead,
he’d told Diana when he’d found her last night in the Hassler’s dining room, seated unfashionably early at a table. She was eating alone.

“Who’s dead?”

“Your friend Daisy. The one who had the smarts to enter a convent. Marriage is looking better and better, isn’t it?”

Her fingers went slack and her wineglass slipped out of her hand, shattering against a silver ewer of hyacinths in the center of the table.

A waiter sprang into action, mopping up the wine, but Diana said, “Never mind. I’ll have a whiskey.” Her expression hadn’t changed; she sat erect and elegant; but when the whiskey came, she tossed it back neat. “How?” she finally asked.

“Stabbed to the heart by the Nazi thug from the
Queen
Mary
.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I saw the body.”

“You can’t know that it was . . . that man.”

“I saw the body.”

“What do you mean?” She shoved the whiskey glass aside and gripped the edge of the table. “Tell me.”

“He cuts a spider into the breast of each of his victims. Daisy got one this morning.”

She thrust her index finger between her teeth and bit down, hard. Her eyes welled but she did not cry. No tears ever trailed down Diana’s marble cheek.

No mercy,
Jack thought.
No quarter.
“Did you tell him where to find her?”

“What?”

“The White Spider. That’s his nickname, isn’t it?”

“Jack, I—”

“Is he a friend of yours, Diana? Somebody to dance with, when you drop in on Berlin?”

Her face hardened. “I don’t dance with Heydrich’s killers.”

“Few girls do, and live to brag about it. So you know he works for Heydrich. We’re getting somewhere. Did you tell the Spider that Sister Mary Joseph would be alone this morning—she needed to get out of town fast and was taking the account books and the bag of cash with her? Is that why you went to see her Saturday, Diana—to get the details right?”

She stood up and tossed her napkin on the chair behind her. Without a word she slid past the table and made for the door.

Rage flooded over him suddenly, unexpectedly, at the way he could not break her—could not penetrate that sleek mask she kept wrapped around her body and mind. He shoved his chair away from the table, heedless of the shocked faces of the few diners scattered about the room, and ran after her.

He knew what they’d be muttering.
Americano.

He caught up with her in the doorway and grabbed her arm.

She was wearing something light and silken; chiffon, probably. Kick would know. She felt as fragile as a length of birch. She drew back, resisting him.

“Sir,” a waiter attempted.

“You’re going to talk to me,” Jack muttered, “or I swear to God, Diana,
I will
hurt you.
Understand?”

“It’s all right,” she told the waiter. “My little brother’s had too much to drink. May I have my coat and hat?”

Jack pulled her out into the Hassler lobby and across the marble floor. The waiter ran after them with her things. Jack grabbed them impatiently and dragged her out the door to the sloping pavement beyond, the sharp descent of the Spanish Steps. Dusk was falling. The scent of lime blossom filled the air. He dropped her coat and hat in the street and pulled her roughly into his arms, careless of the world’s gaze. He kissed her hard and viciously, biting at her mouth, lashing her with his rage. She was fighting him and he could feel her anger like a coiled spring, a punch she wanted to throw. He kissed her chin and her arched throat and pulled his hands through her black hair saying
God damn you, Diana. God damn
you.

Her breath was coming in faint sobs, of fury or fear or passion he couldn’t tell. She strained against him, arching backward, hands pushing against his chest. Her hip bones grazed his groin and, that quickly, he stiffened beneath her, his hand sliding to the small of her back. Holding her against the sudden hardness. She sighed into his mouth. He wanted to rip her dress from her body. He wanted to eat her alive.

“Jack.” She clutched his shoulders. “Are you going to take me right here on the street?”

“Hell, yes.”

They were exposed to every tourist mouthing papal pieties, every Fascist ready to beat them for indecency.
Indecency.
He could think of a hundred ways to practice it on Diana’s supple body.

He broke away, his breathing ragged, and saw the anguish in her eyes. Something to do with Daisy, he thought—not this vortex between them. She was grieving for the dead woman on the convent floor with the obscenity cut into her skin. Her knees gave way and she sank down with him, the two of them huddled on the Spanish Steps.

“Blimey,” she said shakily. “That’s how you get a girl to
talk
?”

He fingered her fragile neck. “Tell me I’m not your little brother,” he said.

* * *

HER STORY WAS SIMPLE AND CLEAR.
Jack wasn’t sure he believed it—there were too many loose ends she refused to tie—but the bare outline was plausible enough. He did not expect Diana to trust him with the entire truth. He wondered if there was anyone she
did
trust. Whitehall Denys?

She’d never been to school with Daisy Corcoran, of course. Daisy had grown up in Boston and Diana in Liverpool. They’d met in the chorus of a West End musical when Diana was nineteen and Daisy was pretending to be. One of the principal actors got Daisy pregnant. Diana helped her get the abortion from a woman who operated illegally in Spitalfields.

“Daisy turned religious, afterward. Kept talking about mortal sin and the damnation of her eternal soul. She disappeared one day, without a word—and it was only after I married that she wrote. She’d seen something in the papers.
The Honourable Denys.
Has a taste for showy hoofers, has Denys.”

Hoofers.
Jack thought of Diana’s long, luminous legs in fishnet and heels, and closed his eyes.

“Anyway, Daisy had turned into Sister Mary Joseph. She was working with a charity order, trying to atone for what we’d done. She told me she didn’t blame me for my part in it—good of her, I suppose. She said she prayed for me.
Christ.
”

“Did you write back?”

“Not right away.” She shrugged. “What was there to say, after all? Our lives were so different. I sent fifty quid to her charity. I suppose it was a lot of money, to Daisy.”

There were families in London that lived for months on fifty quid, Jack thought. It would be a lot to anybody.

“Anyway—she kept me in mind. Whenever her charity needed . . . help in some way.” Diana laughed bitterly. “It wasn’t exactly blackmail, but it wasn’t innocent, either. Daisy believed in Sin. Hers
and
mine. Asking for cash was a way to remind me.
I found the abortionist.
”

“She made her own choices,” Jack said. “Some women would have thanked you for what you did.”

“Not Daisy.”

He thought of Kick. Rose insisting that if she married Billy, she’d be damned forever. The desperate sadness of his sister’s expression, that first afternoon he’d arrived in London, as she adjusted her hat in the mirror. Jack knew there was such a thing as being
too
Catholic.

“Is that why you stopped by the convent yesterday? To give her cash?”

“The charitable works sort of . . . evolved.” Diana was looking at her fingers, which she’d laced through Jack’s. “By this time, Daisy was managing a relief network for refugees—Czechs displaced from the Sudetenland—and coordinating it out of Rome. The thought being that if the refugees aren’t
miserable
, they won’t make life difficult for the rest of us.”

“Chamberlain’s theory,” Jack mused. “Keep Hitler happy, and maybe he’ll go home.”

“Yes. I took up a collection among some people I know—Nancy Astor, Oswald Mosley, the Mitfords. Other people, in New York. It was enough cash that I thought I’d better deliver it myself. I went to Paris, but Daisy’d left. I might have sent her a check, I suppose, but I don’t trust Mussolini’s mails. So I came on to Rome.”

She gazed at him steadily, her black eyes serene; she had spoken her piece clearly and well.

No, he didn’t believe much of it, Jack decided. The White Spider had no reason to kill a nun, much less steal her books. Unless the charity was funding something far different from Sudeten Czechs.

Did Diana know that?

How much had she lied to him?

The answers, he thought, were in Paris. Daisy had been packing for Paris when she died; and Göring’s banker might still be waiting there. It was time to conduct some thesis research, Jack thought. He would leave for Paris tomorrow.

He smoothed Diana’s black hair from her brow, then lifted her to her feet. Her coat and bag were still lying where they’d fallen, haphazardly on the Spanish Steps.

“I’ve made you conspicuous,” he said. “In the middle of Rome.”

“Good of you. I usually manage that all by myself.”

“Be careful.” He grasped her wrist and shook it lightly. “Daisy’s killer is still loose.”

“What could one of Heydrich’s thugs possibly want with me?”

“What did he want with Daisy, if it comes to that? What possible threat did a nun pose to the Gestapo?”

She stared at him, arrested. He had asked the unforgivable question, the one to which she had no answer. Her eyes narrowed. “We’ll never know, will we?”

“Oh, yes, Diana. We’ll know. I’m going to find out.”

The air between them chilled. She stepped back. “Don’t be a
bloody fool
, Jack. It’s nothing to do with you.”

“Sure about that?”

There would be no more confidences tonight.

She was definitely
not
going to invite him up.

Jack stood awkwardly while Diana smoothed her dress. He’d crushed it, kissing her, and the sight of the creases felt as intimate to him as the sheets of a tumbled bed. Desire twisted in his groin, unreasoning and overwhelming; but she was not for him, anymore. He was going to Paris. And he had no intention of telling her.

“Until tomorrow, then,” he said.

She waved a cool good-bye. Already thinking of something else. Or
someone
else.

The Hassler’s glittering doors closed behind her.

He walked back alone to the Hotel d’Inghilterra, looking for Spiders in the dusk.