Jack 1939 (21 page)

THIRTY-SEVEN.
GAMBLERS

IT TOOK A WHILE TO WALK
to the end of the pier. Jack figured it was about six football fields in length, maybe longer, and as he trudged farther out into the bay the wind picked up and the temperature dropped. He kept his hands thrust into his overcoat pockets and felt the heavy wooden trusses sway beneath his feet. There were small food concessions and gaming stalls and the occasional photographer’s booth, most of them boarded up and empty of life; it was only May, and the summer season came late to the Baltic. In August there would be an orchestra and a dance floor and colored lights strung along the pier, if the Nazis hadn’t bombed it by then.

Most of the people strolling alongside him turned back well before the pier’s end. Jack could just make out a solitary figure etched against the blustery sky; in a close-fitting dark coat and a tweed cap, it seemed contained enough to be Gubbins.

And if it wasn’t?

If he’d been set up, and a knife waited at the end of the walk?

It would be a long swim back to the beach.

The man turned as he approached. On three sides, the sea; on this rocking platform, only the two of them.

Jack held out his hand. “How’s business in brassieres these days?” he asked.

* * *

GUBBINS OFFERED JACK A LIGHTER
and his pack of Player’s. They drew smoke for a few seconds, staring out at the bay, and then the colonel said, “Thesis research, I take it?”

Jack nodded. “And you?”

“A sudden urge to see the Free City before it is no longer free.”

“There’s a hell of lot of gray uniforms in that hotel.”

“They’re likely to increase this summer.”

Jack looked at him. “You think they’ll take Danzig?”

“And all of Poland.”

“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

Gubbins smiled. “Why are
you
here, Jack?”

He hesitated. He had no idea who gave Gubbins orders, but he trusted the colonel. He badly needed advice in this country where he knew nobody, didn’t speak the language, and was determined to try to rob the Gestapo.

“I heard Heydrich was in town.”

Gubbins’s right eyebrow rose. “I watched him play roulette last night. For very high stakes. You’re hoping to interview him?”

“—Or the man he pays to knife people. I told you about him once. Hans Obst. He’s sometimes called the White Spider.”

The Englishman tossed his cigarette violently into the sea. “Blond, blue-eyed, medium build, with the body of a wrestler and an inch-long scar bisecting his upper lip?”

“That’s our Hans.”

“He shadows Heydrich like a Rottweiler.”

Jack’s pulse quickened. If both Obst and his master were in the Kasino-Hotel, the account book must be in one of their rooms.

“Obst must be feeling safe, surrounded by so much gray,” he said. “No fear of his crimes catching up with him. That’s good. It’d be a problem if he decided to hole up in his room.”

Gubbins looked at him. “You’ll have to find out which one it is, first. I don’t think he’s registered under Obst.”

“You’re not registered under Gubbins.”

A faint smile. “When traveling in the lingerie trade,” the colonel said carefully, “I am known as McVean. It’s a family name, of Scots descent. When this war is done I shall retire to Scotland, and take up the ancestral family profession.”

“Which is?”

“Killing invaders. Do you have a car, Jack?”

“A hired one. With French plates.”

“And a diplomatic passport, courtesy of your father?”

“Of course.”

“Excellent. It’s just possible I’ll need your help one night soon.” Gubbins gathered his coat collar about his chin. “Delightful to chat with you, but I’m chilled to the bone. I’ll start back. Give me five minutes before you follow. You’ll forgive me if I treat you as a stranger in public.”

“And in return for my help?” Jack asked suddenly. “You’ll find Obst’s room?”

Gubbins glanced at him. “In exchange for your help, I’ll kill the blighter if I have to.”

Jack stood for what felt like an age, his body shuddering in the wind. He counted five German planes in the sky over Danzig while the minutes ticked by. Bruce Hopper would have loved it.

* * *

DIANA WAS MAGNIFICENT THAT NIGHT,
supple from massage, her hair freshly coiffed, her face dewy and her beautiful body sheathed in a narrow slip of gun-metal gray. She carried an evening bag Jack had bought as a Danzig souvenir, and it dangled from a steel chain on her wrist. She radiated a cold and terrifying sort of charm and within seconds of her arrival in the casino, she was surrounded by Germans. There were other women in the room but none to equal Diana.

Jack watched her dip her cigarette holder in a flame. Watched her lips encircle the smoke. She wore elbow-length black gloves, and gave the impression of wearing very little else. She had lined her eyes in black and the effect was exotic and intimidating. The diamond solitaire at her throat winked enticingly. He could not imagine that he had ever possessed the strength to touch her, or that she had ever allowed it. She’d told him that night to leave her alone—she wanted to work the crowd, learn what she could, be a free agent. Jack fought the impulse to drag her from the room by her hair.

He ordered a glass of whiskey and carried it to the
caisse
, where he tried to buy a rouleau of chips. There was a delay. A whispered consultation. Eventually an imposing figure attached to the hotel—security? management?—came out of the
caisse
and asked him, in heavily accented English: “How old you are, boy?”

Jack felt the blood rush to his face. Wordlessly, he drew his passport from his coat and showed it to the man. It was a night of familiar humiliations.

When he looked next for Diana, the crowd of gray had parted, and somebody was bowing over her hand.

The high, domed forehead. The eyes, almond-shaped and narrow. A long, aquiline nose. Surprisingly full lips; everything of the sensualist in them. The ears perfectly molded and set close to the skull. The lean figure in the tailored uniform. Two lozenges of oak leaves on the lapels. The eagle and swastika on the arms. Gold braid at the shoulders.

I rang up his wife,
she’d said in Berlin.

She and Heydrich had met before, it was clear.

He led her out onto the dance floor and she turned in a waltz as though his hand at her back was intoxicating. Jack watched her murmur in his ear.

He keeps a string of mistresses without the courtesy of hiding
it.

Jack’s pulse was pounding in his head. With effort, he looked away. This was no sock hop in Hyannis, no Harvard Smoker. He searched the casino for other faces intent on roulette and dice, blackjack and chemin de fer. Gubbins was seated alone with a fatuous expression Jack mistrusted completely. He allowed his gaze to drift without recognition over the colonel, and come to rest on Hans Obst.

The White Spider was standing against the opposite wall. He wore a black Gestapo uniform and his eyes were locked on Heydrich as he moved around the dance floor. Jack had no idea whether Obst had noticed him. Was it possible the man could follow him across the Atlantic, through London, even to Rome—and not give a damn that he was in Danzig?

Then the Spider looked directly at him and lifted his glass in a mocking salute.
Don’t worry,
the gesture seemed to say.
You’re on my turf, now. I’ll kill you whenever I choose.

Jack saluted back. He was feeling just that reckless. With Heydrich leading Diana to an intimate table away from the gamblers, he needed a good brawl.

And then somebody jostled him and Gubbins’s voice exclaimed
so terribly sorry
, as his handkerchief swabbed ineffectually at the drink he’d spilled all over Jack’s evening clothes.

“Unforgivably clumsy,” the colonel fussed. “I’ve
spoilt
your evening. You’ll want to get out of those, I expect.”

“It’s okay.” Jack lifted his whiskey-stained shirt from his chest with his thumb and his forefinger.

“My name’s McVean,” Gubbins said, beaming. “Allow me to give you my card—I
insist
upon taking care of the cleaning.”

“In that case,” Jack said, pocketing the square of cardboard, “I accept.”

“Jolly good. Feel such a fool. Hope to make amends.”

The card, when Jack looked at it, offered little to the imagination.
James C. McVean,
Painter in
Oils.

* * *

HE STUDIED IT FOR A FEW SECONDS,
frowning, and then remembered something Gubbins had told him in the secret room behind the lingerie shop.

He made his way to the men’s room, and waited for the two Germans in uniform to finish their business at the urinals while he commandeered a stall. His trousers pooled at his feet for convincing effect, he pulled out his cigarette lighter and held the flame near the card. In a few seconds, words appeared, tiny but unmistakably Gubbins’s.

Car in 10 min. Stop end of
drive.

The colonel had written the message, Jack suspected, with Scotch.

THIRTY-EIGHT.
THE BAKER STREET IRREGULARS

“I DON’T KNOW THE ROADS
or the language,” Jack said.

“Perfect.” Gubbins slid into the car. He’d been waiting among the trees that lined the avenue to the hotel, another shadow among shadows. “I’ve got a smattering of both, as it happens. Head out of town and drive south for a bit. I’ll tell you where to turn.”

He settled into the passenger seat, his collar turned up, his trilby pulled down. It was, Jack thought, like having a complete stranger beside him. And it occurred to him then that he knew nothing about Colonel Colin Gubbins. Even less about James McVean, Painter in Oils.

The car bucketed over an enormous pothole and they lurched toward the windshield like rag dolls.

“Have a care,” Gubbins murmured. “Get a puncture here, and the whole evening will be spoilt.”

“You sound like a girl with a new party dress.”

“Something like,” Gubbins agreed. “That’s what we’ll tell them, when they ask—we were bound for an evening party. At your diplomatic legation. Only we got lost and never found it. And then, God help us, we couldn’t find our way back to the hotel. Two hapless English speakers, lost in the wilds of Poland—perhaps we really
will
puncture the tire for verisimilitude.”

Jack wanted to ask where they were going and why. But he held his tongue. It was like a birthday surprise. Knowing what was in the box would ruin it. He badly needed suspense tonight. Anything to banish the memory of Diana in Heydrich’s arms.

They left the town of Sopot with its lights and its restaurants and its glittering vitrines behind them. The darkness of the Polish countryside closed around the car. The road unspooled before Jack’s hood like a ribbon; he was heading south, into the Corridor—the strip of land connecting Danzig to Poland.

“That siren you unleashed on the casino,” Gubbins said casually when they’d driven in silence for nearly fifteen minutes. “She wouldn’t be Denys Playfair’s
wife
, would she?”

“At the moment,” Jack said abruptly.

“Jolly good. Smashing girl. Has her wits about her, has Diana. Just give her a free hand—she’ll turn up trumps for you. Now,” Gubbins said in a voice that signaled they were done with social chat and were about to attend to business, “slow down. You’ll want to turn into that side road to the left—it’s unmarked, barely visible, but believe it or not that is a
direct
route from the Polish-Czech border, or direct as these execrable roads ever get. Veritable death traps for anything on four wheels—but that’s exactly what we want, tonight.”

His voice was so thoroughly amiable that Jack ignored the warning implicit in the words and turned obediently to the left, from one unlit road to another. Ahead lay a darker smudge that might be a storm or a mountain. He could not see beyond his headlights. No other beams knifed through the black.

Perhaps ten or twelve minutes passed. There were fields and the occasional glow from a lone farmhouse window. And then the looming smudge resolved itself into woods. Jack plunged into them.

The road bucked and curved through the trees. He slowed to a crawl. And then suddenly one of the trees was lying directly across the road and he could go no farther. It was a massive thing. It appeared to have been blown directly in his path by an epic storm; an entire canopy of roots loomed to the left.

“I suggest we stop here,” Gubbins said.

“Or turn around and go back to the hotel.”

“And miss all the fun? No, no, dear chap. It’s almost
time.
”

Jack threw the car into reverse.

“Perhaps a little farther from the tree,” Gubbins murmured. “I should leave at least a hundred yards.”

Jack did as he was told and killed the engine.

“Well, come
on
,” Gubbins said, and shoved his door. “Chilly in the Baltic region in May, what?”

Jack got out and went around the hood of the car. “Have you been drinking?”

“Not so’s you’d notice.”

“What the hell are we doing?”

“Pulling Herr Heydrich’s leg.” Gubbins glanced at his watch. “You were rather slow over that last bit of ruts they call a road.
Hurry.
”

He sprinted toward the fallen tree and began to haul himself over the trunk. Jack could just see, through the tangle of branches, the pale glow of approaching lights. Gubbins ignored them. Jack ran after him, grasped a branch, and climbed upward, wishing he was wearing anything but evening clothes. Gloves, for instance, would’ve been nice. He vaulted over the tree, looking for Gubbins. Landed hard on his left leg, the thigh throbbing viciously in protest. He could hear the approaching vehicle now; a heavy engine, whining with speed, probably some kind of truck.

“Over here!” the colonel hissed.

He was crouched in the brush at the road’s inner curve.

Jack joined him.

They waited. The sound of the engine grew louder. Twin beams arced suddenly over the trees, sharp as searchlights, and then the monster was upon them.

Jack drew a deep breath. There was a hideous squealing of brakes. A crash of gears as the truck tried to avoid the massive tree directly in its path. The engine howled. And then an enormous shape, square and shrouded in tarpaulin, seemed to double over on itself—somersault past them—in a shriek of gravel as Jack clutched Gubbins’s arm. It hit with a violence that shoved the fallen tree trunk sideways, as easily as though it were a discarded broom, branches and roots catapulting over and over with the truck somewhere in between. The whole tangled mess skittered down the dark road and Jack suddenly found his voice.

“My car!”

“Should be all right,” Gubbins said, rising to his feet and pulling Jack along with him.

At that moment, the smashed truck burst into flames.

They both ran toward it, Gubbins drawing a gun. Other figures emerged from the woods—dark figures, unidentifiable, in shapeless clothes. A dozen? Half a dozen? They moved so swiftly it was impossible to know. They ignored the cab, where there was certain to be men trapped by fire, maybe dead already from the crash; Jack hoped so. Gubbins made a dash for the rear of the truck and somebody fired a gun at the hasp that secured the doors. They swung open.

Gubbins was shouting in a language Jack recognized as Polish and two other men vaulted into the rear of the truck, canted crazily on its side. They tossed boxes out into the road in a kind of frenzy. Everyone ignored the boxes. Two limp figures in gray uniforms hung halfway out of the truck and Jack knew suddenly that they were German soldiers—this was a German army truck—and he wanted to ask whether the soldiers were dead or just unconscious, and what would happen to them now. But there was no one to ask. He stood in the middle of the road, feeling the heat of the burning engine and aware that the gas tank could explode in a matter of seconds. Gubbins was shouting and waving everyone back to where Jack stood, but the men wouldn’t move. And then a figure appeared in the canted truck doorway—stepped over the bodies lying there—and jumped to the ground. He was sprinting toward Gubbins.

There was a sucking sensation in the night, as though a giant had drawn breath, and then the concussion.

Jack was blown backward, falling hard to the surface of the road. Flames shot above him as he struggled to his feet. Men pounded past through the darkness. One of them was Gubbins. He was shouting in Jack’s face.

“We’ll have to work our way round to your car.
Quickly.
”

He plunged into the brush at the side of the road and Jack followed jerkily, his legs almost refusing to obey his screaming mind. Gubbins was scrambling up the bank, reaching for low-hanging branches, hauling himself into the cover of the trees. Jack stumbled after the colonel as he flitted among the trunks. Then down the bank and out onto the road, the burning truck with its charred human flesh behind them.

His car was still sitting where he’d left it.

He pulled open the driver’s door and almost fell behind the wheel.

“Shall I drive back, then?” Gubbins asked anxiously.

Jack shook his head. He fumbled in his jacket for his keys. They were still there.

Gubbins reached into his coat and withdrew a flask.

“Here,” he said, passing it to Jack.

The word had all the force of an order.

Jack took a swig, and felt the liquor burn its way down his throat. He closed his eyes on the rawness of it.

Then he shoved the keys in the ignition and the engine coughed to life. He backed down the road blindly, a sheet of flame from the burning truck soaring in front of him. He found room to turn the car. And sped away from the place as though the Gestapo were on his tail.

* * *

“IF ANYBODY ASKS WHERE
we were tonight,” Gubbins was saying calmly as they reached the turning for the Sopot road, “I should use the story about that party at your legation. And losing our way. Forget the punctured tire; that’s something that can be checked.”

“One of them already has a repaired puncture,” Jack said mechanically, “so that’s all right.”

“Oh, you noticed that, did you? You’re starting to think like a saboteur, Jack Kennedy. Been reading my manuals, haven’t you?
The Partisan Leader’s Handbook.
Jolly good. Changing a tire might explain the wreck of your clothes.”

Jack turned the car toward Sopot, a glow on the horizon. “Those men were Polish.”

“Yes.”

“And the truck was German.”

“Got it in one.”

“What were they stealing?”

Gubbins sighed. He smoothed his mustache with one hand, as though listening to internal argument.

“You borrowed my car,” Jack pointed out. “Hell—you borrowed
me
.”

“So I did,” Gubbins agreed. “And I’m damn grateful. You’ve got diplomatic immunity, d’you see. They wouldn’t prosecute you, Jack, if we’d been found at the scene. A Painter in Oils has less pull than Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy’s son.”

“Christ
,
” Jack said tensely.

Gubbins was willing to toss him to the Gestapo.

Christ.

“They were stealing a wireless transmitter,” the colonel was saying. “Heydrich’s latest model of something called the Enigma. The Polish Intelligence service has been breaking German codes for years, Jack, but Heydrich has tumbled to the fact and changed the game. The Germans are perfecting a new machine, far more complex, and rumored to be unbreakable. The Poles badly wanted one so they can take it apart, figure out how it works. They’ll need as much advance warning of Hitler’s invasion as they can get—and the Führer’s orders will be transmitted through the Heydrich-Enigma.”

“He found it,” Jack said suddenly. “The guy who jumped out of the truck, right before it blew.”

“Yes. We’d learned a model was being sent from a factory on the Czech-Polish border straight to a Gestapo unit embedded near Danzig. There were several routes it could take from the border, but only one into Danzig itself—so we advised the Poles they’d best sabotage the truck here, under Heydrich’s nose. And make it jolly well look like an accident,” Gubbins added reflectively. “I think they succeeded.”

“Who’s
we
?”

“Beg pardon?”

“
We.
You keep saying
we learned
and
we advised
. Who’s we? You and the partisans in the woods back there?”

Gubbins shrugged. “I’ve learned a lot from the Poles. They’re clever chaps and exceedingly resourceful—that’s what comes from being sandwiched forever between Russia and Germany. But no, Jack—my employers, such as they are, are known informally as . . . BSI.”

Jack thought about it. “British Secret Intelligence?”

Gubbins laughed out loud. “Hardly so exalted, my dear chap! It’s for Baker Street Irregulars. After Sherlock Holmes’s gang of boys. Our offices are around the corner from Baker Street, in fact.”

“I thought Britain had military intelligence. MI being the acronym.”

“
That
would be Mr. Chamberlain’s service,” Gubbins said comfortably. “And I’m afraid, Jack, he’s not inclined to use it. Has more faith in his ability to
reason
with the enemy. He thinks spying isn’t
cricket
. We’ve had to work around him.”

We
, again.

“Nobody ambushes a Gestapo truck for the sake of friendship,” Jack said, “no matter how much you’ve learned from the Poles. The risks are too high. What’s in it for BSI?”

“The Enigma, of course. Our friends in the woods have a few months, perhaps, to tinker with the model we helped them nick—but if Hitler rolls the Poles as easily as he’s rolled the Austrians and Czechs, their work will be shut down. And then
we
shall have to undertake it.”

“Figuring out how the Heydrich-Enigma works? Breaking the German codes?”

“Yes. We’ll have to smuggle the machine out of Warsaw—it’s already on its way to Polish Intelligence headquarters there—and carry on the work in England. You realize, Jack, that once Poland falls, Hitler’s encrypted communications will be directed against
us.
England has pledged to defend Poland, after all, and that will mean war once Hitler invades.”

“England can’t save the Poles?”

Gubbins sighed. “With Mr. Chamberlain in office? We shall hardly save ourselves.”

“He knows nothing about what happened tonight, does he? Or this Enigma machine?”

“Really, Jack. Would
you
tell him?”

Jack had a haunting suspicion he’d thrown in his lot with a gang of extragovernmental criminals, and for an instant he wanted to stop the car and kick Gubbins out. But he remembered, then, the cable sent by Sam Schwartz with the curious bona fides, and the unquestioning assistance he’d received in the cupboard beneath the trapdoor in Gubbins’s office.

Roosevelt knew the Irregulars existed. Jack had been deliberately handed to them.

“One more thing,” he said. They were back in Sopot now, and the Kasino-Hotel loomed before them.

“What’s that?”

“Our deal. My quid for your quo.”

Gubbins smiled. “The Spider sleeps in room 5101, directly next door to Heydrich. Have you got a gun, dear boy?”