Jack 1939 Read online

  JACK 1939

  Francine Mathews

  RIVERHEAD BOOKS A MEMBER OF PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC.

  NEW YORK 2012

  RIVERHEAD BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Copyright © 2012 by Francine Mathews

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Published simultaneously in Canada

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Mathews, Francine.

  Jack 1939 / Francine Mathews.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-101-58844-4

  1. Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917–1963—Travel—Europe—Fiction. 2. Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882–1945—Fiction. 3. Hitler, Adolf, 1889–1945—Fiction. 4. Espionage, American—Germany—Fiction. I. Title. II. Title: Jack Nineteen Thirty-nine.

  PS3563.A8357J323 2012 2012006443

  813'.54—dc23

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  For Sam

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  Part One

  WINTER

  ONE. PLATFORM 61

  TWO. THE SPIDER

  THREE. HATCHECK GIRL

  FOUR. LOOSE ENDS

  FIVE. A HERO OF THE LAST WAR

  SIX. THE MARK

  SEVEN. FELLOW TRAVELERS

  EIGHT. TRAVELING TOURIST

  NINE. THE WARNING

  TEN. ROPE

  ELEVEN. INTELLIGENCE

  TWELVE. CONTEMPT

  THIRTEEN. KICK

  FOURTEEN. SINNERS AND SAINTS

  FIFTEEN. DRESSING FOR AMERICA

  SIXTEEN. STRATEGIES AND REINFORCEMENTS

  SEVENTEEN. RULES

  EIGHTEEN. TRAFFIC

  NINETEEN. PRAYER

  TWENTY. COLONEL GUBBINS

  TWENTY-ONE. TRICKS OF THE TRADE

  TWENTY-TWO. NIGHT

  Part Two

  SPRING

  TWENTY-THREE. CLEMENCY

  TWENTY-FOUR. THE CLOISTER

  TWENTY-FIVE. A GIRL NAMED DAISY

  TWENTY-SIX. CRUMBLE TO BLACK

  TWENTY-SEVEN. CHARITY

  TWENTY-EIGHT. GÖRING’S BANKER

  TWENTY-NINE. THE EXPRESS

  THIRTY. NOTHING LIKE JOE

  THIRTY-ONE. POWER

  THIRTY-TWO. THE ACCOUNTING

  THIRTY-THREE. CROSSING THE BORDER

  THIRTY-FOUR. RESEARCH

  THIRTY-FIVE. BACK CHANNELS

  THIRTY-SIX. CONTACT

  THIRTY-SEVEN. GAMBLERS

  THIRTY-EIGHT. THE BAKER STREET IRREGULARS

  THIRTY-NINE. THE DUMBWAITER

  FORTY. LOVE AND WAR

  FORTY-ONE. SOURCES

  Part Three

  SUMMER

  FORTY-TWO. A WILDERNESS OF MIRRORS

  FORTY-THREE. ON CHARLES BRIDGE

  FORTY-FOUR. DEDUCTIONS

  FORTY-FIVE. LAST DANCES

  FORTY-SIX. YOUR BABY NOW

  FORTY-SEVEN. ESCAPE AND EVASION

  FORTY-EIGHT. THE PRICE IN BLOOD

  FORTY-NINE. THE RAILWAYS OF CENTRAL EUROPE

  FIFTY. CLIFF-DIVING

  FIFTY-ONE. SLEEPING DOGS

  FIFTY-TWO. NAME-DROPPING

  FIFTY-THREE. AGENT PROVOCATEUR

  FIFTY-FOUR. THE DECOY

  FIFTY-FIVE. THE HOP FIELD

  FIFTY-SIX. THE LAST LETTER

  FIFTY-SEVEN. DIVIDING ALLEGIANCE

  FIFTY-EIGHT. A BLACKMAILER’S BARGAIN

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  PROLOGUE

  The Boy in Room 110

  “. . . patient’s 6000 cell count at intake,” Dr. George Taylor wrote, “has dropped to 3500. The persistent loss of white blood cells may indicate septicemia. Color and texture of skin are suggestive of jaundice.”

  He didn’t bother to note that if the count dropped to 1500, the patient would die. Any doctor reading the Mayo Clinic chart would know that.

  Taylor rubbed his eyes; it was after eleven, and he’d been poring over these files for hours while a snowstorm raged beyond his office window. The black-and-white Minnesota landscape was desolate in early February. But in the quiet of the hospital he should have been able to figure out why a good-looking, privileged college kid was wasting away in a bed down the hall. The patient’s charts and files told him little. Every doctor who’d dealt with the case over the past five years had been as baffled as he was. One man’s handwriting broke off, and another’s picked up, while the 1930s wore away. The boy waned and recovered, waned and recovered; but nobody could put a name to his illness—or explain his curious knack for survival.

  “Weight has dropped to 148 pounds, a loss of twelve pounds in six days, possibly due to eliminative diet of rice and potatoes.” Taylor had weaned the boy from wheat—it was just conceivable that he couldn’t tolerate it—but there’d been no improvement in the painful stomach cramps that made most meals an agony. It wasn’t bread that was killing his patient.

  “Eight enemas have been administered in the previous twenty-four hours, and contents of the bowels examined; a significant quantity of blood is observable in the stool.” Maybe it’s a duodenal ulcer, Taylor thought. That could explain the drop in white blood cells. Or maybe it was simply acute colitis. A spastic colon, resulting in persistent diarrhea and the inevitable emaciation. Or even more worrying: What if the free fall in the boy’s white blood cell count meant he had leukemia?

  Taylor threw down his pen and thrust himself away from his desk. At this hour of the night, Mayo was a locked cloister; on their rubber-soled shoes the nurses were hushed as nuns. He didn’t know what was wrong with the patient, but he knew he was missing a critical fact—the puzzle piece that would sol
ve his problem. He was missing it.

  He strode down the half-lit corridor, his heels clacking obscenely—a tall, stooping, hawk-nosed man with a thin carapace of black hair on his skull. His patient was invariably restless; a confirmed night owl, he’d still be awake. Taylor halted in the doorway of room 110.

  “Jack.”

  “Hey, Doc!” The boy closed the book he was reading. “You’re up way past your bedtime.”

  Taylor ran his eyes over the six-foot frame, cadaverously thin under the sheet. Sweat beaded Jack’s upper lip, and his shock of unruly hair needed cutting. But his eyes were alight and a wave of energy seemed to flow from his body. It was uncanny, Taylor thought, how this sick boy could fill a room—even as he threatened to leave it behind forever.

  The doctor cocked his head sideways to examine Jack’s book. Young Melbourne, by somebody named David Cecil.

  “What happened to The Good Society?”

  “Finished it this afternoon.” Jack tossed Melbourne aside. “So what’ll it take to get me out of here?”

  “A higher blood count.”

  Taylor shifted the pile of books at the foot of the bed, frowning at the titles. History of Political Philosophy. Recent Political Thought. Dictatorship in the Modern World. Germany Enters the Third Reich.

  He hefted this last one in his hands. “You a Nazi fan?”

  “Oh, that’s from last year.” Jack was a junior in college now. “But I’m planning to drive through Hitler’s backyard in a few weeks. I figured I’d better reread it.”

  Taylor set the book down as though it burned his fingers. “About that trip—”

  “The Queen Mary’s got a stateroom with my name on it, Doc. She sails February twenty-fourth.” Jack’s jaundiced face was suddenly flushed. “If you try to keep me here, I’ll bring in the big guns. Which means my dad. He’ll spring me from this place.”

  “It’s a hospital, not a prison. We’re trying to save your life.”

  “Sorry.” Jack glanced away. “I just hate to be touched. Always have, ever since I was a kid. It drives me nuts when you guys turn me inside out and come up with nothing. Can’t we just accept that nobody knows what’s wrong?”

  “Not if it means you die,” Taylor said quietly. “What if you take a turn for the worse, all the way across the Atlantic?”

  “My family’s in London. So are a lot of doctors. I’ll be fine.”

  Taylor doubted it. He’d never met Jack’s parents, but their lack of concern about him was legendary at Mayo. Neither his father nor mother had set foot in Rochester; they communicated with Jack’s doctors by telegram. Taylor had never treated a kid who was so profoundly sick and so completely alone.

  “Look,” Jack persisted, “I’ve been sick all my life. You name it, I’ve had it. The last rites of the Catholic Church at age two. My body’s screwed up every plan I’ve ever made. I’m not going to let it screw my senior thesis.”

  “That’s why you’re going to Europe?” Taylor was surprised. “To write a thesis?”

  “Oh, there’ll be some parties, too.”

  “Parties will kill you.”

  “I’m dying anyway.” The boy gave a snort of laughter. “Don’t worry. I’m more interested in research than booze.”

  Taylor sat down on the bed and looked at him. “If you remember, four years ago, after you graduated from boarding school, you took another boat to London.”

  “Yeah. I was supposed to study with Harold Laski at the London School of Economics.”

  “What happened?”

  “I got sick.” His eyes flicked uneasily away from Taylor’s. “Had to come home.”

  “What was the diagnosis then?”

  Jack shrugged. “Agranulo-something. I was supposed to shoot up a liver extract. But it was hard to find in London. By the time I got back to the States, my blood count was higher and I never took the stuff anyway.”

  “Agranulocytosis?” Taylor suggested, his thoughts racing. “Was that the word?”

  “Could be.”

  Agranulocytosis was a disease of the bone marrow, akin to leukemia; it would explain Jack’s plummeting white blood cell count. It would explain a lot of things, in fact—his constant susceptibility to colds and infections, his sudden bouts of hives. The boy’s immune system was shot to hell. “Who diagnosed it?”

  “Some Harvard prof my dad telegrammed.” Jack was studying Taylor’s face curiously. “He didn’t entirely trust British doctors, so he wired this guy named Murphy.”

  “William Murphy? The Nobel laureate?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “That’s not in your file,” Taylor said irritably.

  “Maybe Murphy doesn’t write to Mayo.”

  Taylor stood up and began to pace along the side of Jack’s bed, stepping carefully around the piles of books. He’d have to contact William Murphy and find out why he’d diagnosed agranulocytosis—but that could take weeks, and Jack didn’t have that much time. Not with his white cell count dropping hourly.

  “I think we need to deal with your problem colon first.” Taylor was thinking out loud. “If we could get that under control, you might regain some strength—keep some food under your belt, keep some weight on—and then your white blood cell count might rise. Ever heard of DOCA?”

  Jack shook his head.

  “Desoxycorticosterone acetate,” Taylor said. “It’s an adrenal extract—highly experimental, like Murphy’s liver dose. It seems to control a spastic colon. The problem is, you’d have to administer it yourself.”

  “In Europe, you mean?”

  “Anywhere.”

  “I can do that.” Jack sounded confident, but Taylor wasn’t buying.

  “You wouldn’t do it four years ago, in London. Afraid of needles?”

  “No!” He looked insulted. “I told you. The liver stuff was hard to find.”

  “I couldn’t release you until I was sure the treatment was working.”

  “How long will that take?” Jack demanded.

  Taylor considered. “Two or three days.”

  “If it means going to Europe, I’ll stay another week.”

  There was so much hope in the boy’s ravaged face that Taylor bit his lip.

  “You’d have to keep in touch,” he warned. “I’d need reports on your condition.”

  “My friends will tell you I’m a devoted correspondent.”

  It was true—the nurses were constantly mailing out reams of Jack’s illegible handwriting. Letters, like books, seemed to keep his loneliness at bay.

  “Roll up your pajama leg,” Taylor said. “I’ll be right back.”

  He almost ran from room 110. The idea was crazy; it was irresponsible; it might not even work.

  When he got back, Jack’s right leg, thin and vulnerable, was stretched nakedly on the bed.

  “Play any sports?” Taylor asked as he readied his tools.

  “I swim for Harvard.” Jack sounded almost embarrassed; real men played football. “We went undefeated last year. And I box pretty well.”

  “Good.” Taylor held a scalpel in front of Jack’s nose. “I assume that means you don’t faint at the sight of blood.”

  He grinned. “I had to get twenty-eight stitches once. Head-on collision between two bikes.”

  “What’d the other guy look like?”

  “That’d be my brother. Not a scratch on him.”

  “You’re going to have to cut yourself, Jack, if you want to go to Europe.”

  The smile faded slightly. “I can take it, Doc.”

  With a single quick movement, Taylor sliced open a quarter-inch flap of skin over the boy’s right calf muscle.

  A hiss of indrawn breath. But when Taylor glanced up, Jack’s face betrayed nothing.

  “S
ee this?” The doctor held up a pellet.

  “DOCA?”

  “DOCA. You tuck it into the cut, Jack. Then cover it with a bandage. It should dissolve slowly into your system.”

  Jack nodded, his eyes fixed on Taylor’s fingers. “How often should I do it?”

  “We’ll figure that out,” the doctor said, “before you leave Rochester—”

  “By how much my colon improves, or my blood count fluctuates over time?”

  “Exactly.” The kid wasn’t stupid. He could analyze the data and draw his own conclusions. That might be a problem, Taylor thought, if the data worsened. . . .

  “And if the DOCA doesn’t help?”

  Taylor avoided Jack’s eye as he twisted the bandage around the wad of cotton. “Let’s hope it will.”

  Part One

  WINTER

  ONE. PLATFORM 61

  A BITTER COLD WEDNESDAY in February, nearly midnight. Jack strolled out of Grand Central Terminal and up Park Avenue to the Waldorf-Astoria, carrying his ancient suitcase. Seventeen hours on the 20th Century Limited, the most exclusive and luxurious train in America, and he felt as battered as if he’d traveled by camel. He hadn’t eaten much more than a Parker House roll. He hadn’t slept, either. His skin was drawn tight across his cheekbones and his eyes had the feeling of August on the Cape—too much sun and salt ripping across the Wianno’s bow.

  The hotel doorman was looking at him as though he were a Bowery bum in search of a heating grate. His clothes were a rumpled mess—they always were; his mother was constantly nagging him about it—but the Waldorf was Kennedy territory. His father had lived here for a year when Jack was a kid, and he still stayed at the hotel whenever he came to New York. His mother preferred the Plaza—and booked it whether Dad was at the Waldorf or not. It was a metaphor for their marriage. Never mind separate beds; Joe and Rose got separate hotels.

  “Checking in, sir?” the doorman inquired frigidly.

  Jack handed him the suitcase. The man’s arm sagged from the weight of his books.

  “I think my father already has a suite. Ambassador Kennedy?”

  “Of course.” The doorman snapped his fingers for a bellboy, his relief obvious. “Welcome to the Waldorf-Astoria.”