Jack 1939 (33 page)

FIFTY-SEVEN.
DIVIDING ALLEGIANCE

TAP, TAP. TAPTAPTAP TAP.

The man lying in the iron bed had no idea what had awakened him. It had been so long since Morse code had broken the stillness of the presidential bedroom.

Tap. Taptap.
Tap.

Jack, he thought, as his eyes flickered open.
Jack.

He forced himself to a seated position and reached for his glasses. It was just after six a.m. on Wednesday, the twenty-third of August; the air was humid and still. Seven years in Washington, and still he could not abide the heat. His mind flew to Maine and the fog off Campobello, the fall that would already be coming into that country, the water temperature of the Atlantic hovering somewhere around forty-eight degrees; and then he reached for the wireless receiver he still kept beneath his bedside table, and set it on his knees.

He picked up the pad and pencil at his elbow.

The message would be repeated. He positioned his hand over the paper, and waited.

* * *

SEVERAL HOURS LATER
His Majesty’s ambassador to the United States stood in the Oval Office. The President would have preferred to have spoken to Neville Chamberlain, but the man was unreachable during his holiday. And Churchill, he thought wistfully, was not even in the Cabinet. Lord Lothian—the British ambassador—was as close as he could get to the reins of British power.

“You’re sure of this?” Lothian said. “It’s to happen in a
week
?”

“So my information says,” Roosevelt replied.

“You’re certain the man can be trusted?”

Roosevelt smiled savagely. “The intelligence was obtained directly from a member of Reinhard Heydrich’s inner circle.”

Lothian’s brows drew together. “May one ask by
whom
?”

“One may ask,” Roosevelt agreed genially. “One is unlikely, however, to receive an answer . . . I attempted to reach Mr. Chamberlain earlier, but I was told he was unavailable. Fishing in Scotland. Can that really be true?”

“It
is
August,” Lothian said fretfully. “One would think the Führer would be decent enough to respect the
conventions
.”

“A man willing to murder several truckloads of convicts in order to launch a war has no interest in the standards of British decency.”

“Still. A
week
. The first of September! Parliament won’t even be seated yet!”

“You could recall your members today,” Roosevelt snapped. “
Prepare
them.”
Good Lord,
he thought.
No wonder Hitler’s rolled Chamberlain. The man’s useless.

“In the middle of August?” Lothian snorted. “No, no, Mr. President—the Führer may not understand the sanctity of the Long Vac, but we do things very differently in England. Very differently indeed.”

“Ah,” Roosevelt said. He studied Lothian speculatively. He was the eleventh marquess of his line; a man about Roosevelt’s age, with a womanish air. Like Chamberlain, he appeared perpetually aggrieved. “I thought you should know.”

“Obliged to you,” Lothian retorted.

There was a soft knock at the door and Sam Schwartz stuck his head into the room.

“Begging your pardon, Mr. President—”

“What is it, Sam?”

“A cable from Moscow.”

Roosevelt took the single sheet of paper and scanned it. Then he glanced at Lothian, who was waiting to take his leave.

“The Nazis and the Soviets have just announced the signing of a non-aggression pact.”

Lothian’s face lightened. “Jolly good. At least
someone’s
renounced war!”

“Hitler and Stalin,”
Roosevelt said.
“
Allies!”

It took a moment for this to register with Lothian. “—But Communists and Fascists
despise
one another.”

Roosevelt looked at the nobleman in disbelief.

“They both like Poland,” Sam Schwartz murmured, as if he were reminding Lothian of a school lesson. “They’ll butcher it between them. One from the east, the other from the west. The country will cease to exist. Have you read Raymond Buell’s
Poland—Key to Europe
? It lays out the whole thing.”

Roosevelt met Sam’s eyes over the head of the British ambassador. “And there’s not a damn thing I can do to help.
Yet
. Thank God your government has pledged to stand by the Poles, Lothian.”

The ambassador reached for his hat. “Serves the bloody fools right, I say—starting a war in August! I shall urge Chamberlain
not
to lift a finger!”

“That’s advice he’s always willing to take,” Roosevelt replied.

* * *

HE HAD SENT THE ENCODED MESSAGE
from the roof of the American embassy in Budapest at lunchtime, borrowing a commo kit from one of the State department clerks who made a hobby of shortwave radio. He let the guy watch him work the Morse key, in return for the favor.

“Who’s it going to?” the man asked.

“Can’t tell you,” Jack said. “Don’t ask what I’m typing, either.”

“Don’t have to,” the guy replied with amusement. “I know Morse. You’re sending complete gibberish.”

Jack grinned ruefully and said it didn’t matter—he just wanted to see if a buddy at Harvard could receive his message, and it was a fine summer day up here on the roof, with a great view of the Elizabeth Bridge throwing her arms across the Danube.

He’d made his choice of allegiances somewhere in a burning hop field. The evil Hans Obst so casually represented was impossible to bargain with. It could only be fought with every weapon he possessed.

He slept better that night than he had in weeks.

* * *

A SENSE OF URGENCY,
an awareness of the swift passage of time, propelled Jack across Europe to France, where he dropped his rented car in Paris and took a flight across the channel to England. He reached London on Monday, the twenty-eighth of August, and took a room in a cheap hotel near Victoria Station.

Early on the morning of the twenty-ninth, he jumped a train rolling south into Hampshire and, after a brief taxi ride from Edenbridge, presented himself at Chartwell, Winston Churchill’s country house. Churchill received him in his bath.

“You’re the only person I can give this to,” Jack said as he handed him Diana’s letter. “I’m sorry it took me so long to reach you. I couldn’t trust the news to anybody else.”
Except,
he thought,
Roosevelt.

Churchill pulled the stub of a cigar from his mouth. A bit of ash and a spurt of water trailed across the sheet of paper, instantly blurring the blue ink and Diana’s handwriting. Churchill was round and porcine in his tub. Jack kept his eyes fixed on the wall above his head as the statesman read.

“Poland?” Churchill grunted. “The first of September? We’ve
heard
.” He returned the letter to Jack and sank deeper into the hot water. It spilled over the tub’s rim in a gentle cascade and pooled at Jack’s feet. “Your admirable president had some foreknowledge of events—and the sense to heed it. He spoke to our ambassador, and our ambassador sent a thick-headed cable back to Whitehall—which the
right
people as well as the
wrong
seem to have read. Parliament has been recalled.”

“Good,” Jack said.

Churchill scowled. “That’s from Denys Playfair’s lady, I expect.”

Jack nodded, suddenly unable to speak.

“Grand girl, Diana.
Top-hole.
I assume we owe our measure of preparation—lamentable though it may be—to you both.”

“You owe it to Diana,” Jack said.

Churchill growled. “Saw the notice in the
Times
. ‘Suddenly, in Warsaw.’ Knew what
that
meant. Hand me the whiskey and soda siphon—there’s a good chap.”

Jack obliged, leaning awkwardly over the tub.

Dripping, Churchill mixed two drinks in glasses waiting at his elbow, and offered one to Jack.

“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,”
he said solemnly.

It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. Wilfrid Owen had called it the old lie, and Jack knew in his heart that it was. But he drank to Diana anyway.

* * *

“BACK AT LAST,”
his father said distractedly when Jack finally put in an appearance at the embassy in Grosvenor Square that afternoon. “All hell’s broken loose. Everybody’s talking war instead of sense. Poor Neville’s had to cut short his holiday. And if ever a man needed one—”

“So I hear.”

His father surveyed him irritably. “You look lousy. When’s the last time you cleaned that suit?”

“Can’t tell you. My other one got . . . damaged.”

“You seem to have given Kennan what-for, anyway. He’s been howling at Washington for the past week.”

Jack smiled faintly. “He’s got no love for the Kennedys.”

“Then the hell with him,” Joe said brusquely. “Did you find that account book?”

Jack glanced around. At least four members of his father’s staff were darting in and out of the ambassador’s office with pieces of paper, phone messages, the latest rumors from Berlin. None of them seemed to be listening to the second son.

“Yes,” he said quietly.

“Give it to me.”

There was a pause. His father’s eyes were very bright behind his spectacles. His expression offered no quarter.

“I can’t.”

“You damn well
can
, and you damn well
will
.”

“I don’t have it anymore.”

“What?”
An unaccustomed panic in J.P.’s voice.

“I sent it to Washington. In the diplomatic pouch from Budapest. It should hit Roosevelt’s desk in a couple of days.”

His father surged to his feet, swaying slightly. “Tell me you’re joking. God
damn
you.”

“I’m dead serious.” Jack walked deliberately to the door and turned. “You see, Dad—it was Roosevelt who asked me to find your network, months ago. And for maybe the first time in my life—I delivered.”

FIFTY-EIGHT.
A BLACKMAILER’S BARGAIN

WHEN SAM SCHWARTZ USHERED
Ed Hoover into the oval-shaped room on the White House’s second floor that rainy September morning, Roosevelt was busy with his new album—the one for stamps that would soon be obsolete. The State department had sent over some beauties from Poland. Along with the contents of the Budapest diplomatic pouch.

“Mr. President,” Hoover said.

Roosevelt glanced at the little man over his spectacles. “Edgar. Good of you to come. Please—make yourself comfortable.”

Schwartz left them alone.

Roosevelt concentrated on his tweezers. The delicate edge of the stamp. Patience was required, but also precision; a swift or clumsy hand destroyed the effort. He found that Jack Kennedy’s young face was hovering just beyond the range of his vision. The gift in the Budapest pouch, and the raw emotion in the letter that accompanied it, had taken Roosevelt’s breath away.

Hoover’s high-pitched voice broke through his thoughts. “I have some information for you. About Hans Thomsen.”

“The German chargé?” Roosevelt released the edge of the stamp.
Perfect.
“You’re going to tell me he plans to pay off the entire Pennsylvania delegation to next summer’s Democratic convention. Or is that William Rhodes Davis? No matter. The real point is the Philadelphia delegation. I suspect we can persuade them to take the German money, by all means—but vote their consciences. Which by next summer, will be mine to command
.
”

Hoover was frowning at him. Roosevelt could discern the rapid movement of the FBI director’s mind: from surprise to disbelief to calculation. He had already figured out that the President had more than one source of information. He would move immediately to pinpointing it. Hoover did not tolerate rivals.

“But I didn’t summon you here to discuss the Germans,” Roosevelt continued, pushing his wheelchair away from his stamp table. “I’ve found a curious thing in my Pullman, Edgar—or rather, Sam Schwartz and his people have. It seems I’ve been
bugged
.”

“Is that so, Mr. President?” Hoover hunched slightly, his neck disappearing into his collar. He stared out from the carapace of his clothing like a turtle from its shell. “I’d like to send my boys over to look at it. Just to verify that Schwartz knows what he’s talking about. Where did he find the thing, and why does he consider it a . . . bug?”

“In my portable telephone. And it’s a wiretap of some kind. But you needn’t verify it, Edgar. I know what your boys will say. Vincent Foscarello has explained that already.”

The wheelchair rolled to a stop barely two feet from Hoover. Roosevelt’s knees were splayed directly opposite his guest’s. An enforced intimacy. An invasion of space. “We had to ask ourselves, you see,” Roosevelt continued, “who had access to the phone. No foreign government that we could think of. No obvious Bureau man, helpfully appearing on every train platform. So Schwartz and I were forced to accept that the device was installed—and maintained—
by one of
us
. Someone we trusted. A
friend
.”

Hoover pressed backward into his chair. His ruddy complexion had drained to chalk, but he was grinning still, like a death mask.

“It’s terrible, that kind of knowledge,” Roosevelt said thoughtfully. “It eats away at trust and reason. One suspects every face. Schwartz, for instance. I actually took it upon me to suspect
Schwartz.
I suspected each and every friend, from Morgenthau to Hopkins to Berle. I suspected Miss LeHand. And my own wife. God forgive me, I even suspected
my son
.” He kept his gaze on Hoover. “I know, you see, how much Jimmy likes and needs money.”

The Bureau chief’s eyes glistened a little.

“But then Sam sat back and considered his own people. The ones who shadow me, day in and day out. He told me you’d attempted to buy them, Edgar. Sam’s a good leader of men. He makes a point of understanding the ones who work for him. Their troubles. Their passions. Their . . . vulnerabilities.”

“Foscarello’s a skunk,” Hoover said dispassionately. “He’s got—”

“—a gambling habit that would beggar Howard Hughes,” Roosevelt agreed. “And you took advantage of it, didn’t you? To commit a crime? You threatened to get Vincent fired. To trumpet his sins to the Treasury department, to his boss, even to me . . . unless he did you a favor. A small thing. A device hidden in the base of my telephone.”

Hoover’s grin faded. “Foscarello may have installed that bug.
Sure.
But you have only his word he did it for me. The word of a skunk, against mine.”

“Very true,” Roosevelt agreed. “I suppose a court of law would settle the question, however, were I to have you arrested. A court of law could establish the manufacture of the device and its probable origin. And I could have you arrested, Edgar—I most certainly could. For breaking the surveillance laws and possibly, even, for treason. Sam Schwartz is standing by now, with a warrant.”

Hoover looked at him shrewdly. He was unfazed. “I wouldn’t advise you to do that, Mr. President. The consequences might be . . . unfortunate.”

There was a slight pause. A slight humming, as of a distant aeroplane, in the background. Hoover’s eyes strayed to the sitting-room door, but it remained firmly closed.

“You refer, of course, to your files. And everything in them,” Roosevelt said wisely. “The secret files you keep on innocent citizens, for your own edification and pleasure.”

“No one in power is innocent,” Hoover replied.

“Not even yourself,” the President agreed. “I’m willing to concede the point. Which is why I would propose a bargain, Edgar. One that may prove of equal value to us both.”

Hoover’s neck emerged slightly from his collar. His pink mouth pursed.

“You keep your job and your professional reputation. In return, you hand over the files you’ve amassed on my family, my cabinet, and my guests in my private Pullman. You hand over the file on Miss LeHand.”

“I can certainly ascertain whether such files exist,” Hoover said slowly, “and if they do—and were compiled in violation of federal surveillance laws—I would certainly ensure that they were destroyed . . .”

Roosevelt shook his head. “Not good enough. I shall have to summon Sam. He can search the entire Bureau with impunity once he takes you into custody.”

He wheeled his chair around.

“Wait!”

Roosevelt glanced back.

“All right.” Hoover swallowed. “All
right
. You get the files.”

“Excellent,” the President said softly. He reached for some papers on his desk. “I took the liberty of compiling a list of the ones I expect to find on my desk by this afternoon.”

The FBI chief glanced over it. The faintest expression of pain suffused his features.

Like parting with his children,
Roosevelt thought.
I have taken hostages from J. Edgar Hoover.

“Oh, and Edgar,” he continued, “—there’s one other thing you could do for me, if you’d be so good.”

“Yes, Mr. President?” Hoover said woodenly.

“This second list.” Roosevelt handed him a compilation of names culled from Daisy Corcoran’s account book. “I’d like you to start watching
these
people, if you please. Wiretaps, surveillance, whatever quasi-legal methods you deem necessary. They’re dangerous Fascist subversives in the pay of the Nazis. I believe the FBI claims the right to monitor subversives?”

“Ever since you gave it to us, sir,” Hoover replied. “After the affair of the American Liberty League. May I ask where you got these names?”

Roosevelt ignored the question. He flashed his dangerous smile. “No secret files this time, Edgar. I expect detailed reports on my desk each week. That will be all.”

* * *

AFTER THE BUREAU CHIEF
had left, the President rolled over to his desk and reached beneath it. Schwartz had obliged him recently by consulting with Wild Bill on a technical matter—and had installed a recording machine that could be operated from the President’s desk. From now on, Roosevelt would capture his private conversations
himself
. He flipped off a switch, and the faint sound of a distant aeroplane abruptly fell silent.

One name he had not included on the Subversives List was that of J. P. Kennedy. This was not because he regarded the man with compassion, or cared about his public reputation, or hoped to shield his son. Jack had made it quite clear, in the letter he’d included with the account book, that he understood the depth of his father’s perfidy.

Roosevelt would keep Kennedy’s name, and all the evidence that damned him, like a pilfered jewel in a private safe. He now possessed the power to control the man for the rest of his life. And he refused to share that with Hoover—or anybody.