Tycoon (19 page)

A
DMIRAL
C
OMPTON WAS A DIPLOMAT AS WELL AS A DISTIN
guished naval officer. He received Jack in his office at the Admiralty.

He was tall and handsome and ineffably aristocratic. That element of his character and presence defined him. Although Jack was wearing a beautifully tailored uniform that displayed the solid silver eagles of a full colonel, his uniform paled in comparison with the elegant blue and gold of a rear admiral in the Royal Navy. As soon as they were seated, Compton opened a silver cigarette box on his desk and offered Jack a smoke.

“You see,” he began, “until now it has been of vital importance to convince the American people that it is essential to their national interest to come to the assistance of the British. Now it becomes vital to convince the British people that the American personnel, who will be descending on this island in their millions, are highly civilized people—not just allies but
friends.
I want you to take charge of broadcasting to the people of the United Kingdom an honorable sample of what Americans hear on their radios, to let the British hear that we are very similar people with similar values and even, perhaps, a similar sense of humor.”

“Yes, Sir. I believe I understand the assignment. I'll do the best I can.”

“My subordinates will provide resources: offices and the like. And broadcasting facilities: those of the BBC.”

J
ACK HAD SUPPOSED HIS OFFICE AND STAFF WOULD BE SUP
plied by OWL. Within a day after his meeting with Compton he learned otherwise and realized that he would need the offices the British had offered and that he would have to recruit his own staff. To the United States Office of War Information, Jack Lear's department was decidedly a sideshow on which it did not intend to waste its meager resources.

Jack moved into the offices provided for him, in what had been a small and modest hotel on Half Moon Street in Mayfair. His staff consisted of a secretary, a tall, spare woman of fifty or so named Mrs. Eunice Latshaw, who explained to him that he would be expected to pay her wages. He assured her that he would, though he had no idea where the money would come from.

Jack sent a wire to his father-in-law, Harrison Wolcott:

FIND I WILL BE BEATING MY HEAD AGAINST WALL HERE FOR WANT OF RESOURCES ASSIGNED STOP MOST URGENT NEED IS FOR FIRST CLASS SCROUNGER KNOWLEDGEABLE ABOUT PROCUREMENT STOP CAN YOU ARRANGE STOP WIRE ME AT DORCHESTER STOP

Wolcott replied the next day:

WAR DEPT HAS ATTACHED SCROUNGER TO YOUR STAFF STOP CAPTAIN DURENBERGER WILL ARRIVE SOONEST STOP GENERAL MARSHALL PERSONALLY ADVISING COLONEL DONOVAN TO EXTEND COOPERATION STOP KEEP ME INFORMED STOP

J
ACK GAVE AN ASSIGNMENT TO THE RESOURCEFUL
J
EAN
Pierre Belleville, who was still in the employ of Lear Broadcasting, and the Frenchman carried out this assignment as effectively as he did any other. At seven the next evening, Jack heard a discreet rap on the door of his suite in the Dorchester. He opened the door, then opened his arms and fervently kissed Cecily Camden.

“What are you doing
here?”
she asked as he drew her into the room. “And dressed like a soldier! Belleville did say I was to meet with
Colonel
Lear, but even when he told me that, I wasn't sure it would be you—couldn't
believe
it would be you.”

She kissed him repeatedly. That was one of the things he had remembered about her—her great, generous, wet kisses. She hugged and kissed, and tears ran down her cheeks.

She had changed little. On the starchy diet of wartime Britain, her belly had kept its rotundity, and her breasts were even fuller than they had been before.

“Oh, Jack!” she sobbed. “Oh, Jack!” She had regained something of the London accent she had gradually suppressed while she was in the States. “I've
missed
you!”

“I've missed you, Cecily,” he said earnestly. He meant it. He
had
missed her. He had missed her innocent enthusiasm. “Sit down. Whiskey? I'll call for our dinner.”

“How are the kids? How's Missus?”

“Fine. They write to you, don't they? I mean the kids.”

“Oh, yes. Every three, four months. John was very worried
about the Blitz. Afraid I'd be killed. I almost was, one night. You know what happened at the Elephant and Castle station?”

“No, not exactly.”

“We were down in the tubes, sheltering, and the fire was so hot above that they made us come out. They were afraid the heat would suck all the air out of the tunnels and we'd suffocate down there. I was out in the street during a firestorm! Hot coals came down from the sky and burned half my clothes off. A fireman squirted water on me. It was the last really big raid, the last really big one.”

“I'm sorry, Cecily, and I'm glad you made it. What are you doing? Are you working?”

She nodded. “I teach in a school across the river, in Putney. The regular teacher's flying for the RAF.”

“I want you to come work for me. I'm establishing an operation to broadcast American entertainment and information to the British people. I need help. I need people who know London well.”

She sighed. “Oh, Jack! I can give notice. What will I be doing for you?”

“Can you drive a car?”

“I have done. My father is a taxi driver, and he taught me to drive. He owns a little old car of his own, but there's no petrol now, so it's just sitting in a garage.”

“You know London pretty well, I imagine.”

“Yes.”

“One of the things you may do is drive for me. I expect to be assigned a car.”

Cecily smiled impishly. “We can probably find other things I can do for you.”

After dinner they did.

She remembered how well he had enjoyed having his shaft between her breasts, imprisoned between them by her hands holding them tight, and she did that. He did not come this time. She bent forward and put the tip of her tongue to his glans. He gasped and moaned.

“Ohh . . . So that's what you like. Well, I can't get pregnant that way even if I swallow it. Right?”

“Right,” he whispered.

Her kisses had always been wet and enthusiastic, and they were no different now in this new situation. She wet him thoroughly with her saliva, and he slid smoothly in and out of her mouth. She didn't lick. She just sucked on him as he moved in and out, between her tight lips. When he came, she grunted and sucked harder and swallowed every drop.

1942

F
IVE WEEKS AFTER
J
ACK ARRIVED IN
L
ONDON HIS
A
MERICAN
Information Service began a regular schedule of broadcasts over the facilities of the BBC. Combined Operations continued to supply office space and the services of one secretary, though she was supposed to be moved to the AIS payroll. The staff included the secretary along with Cecily, a second lieutenant, and a tech sergeant. Jack assigned responsibilities and established a small organization that would have run smoothly if only he'd been able to penetrate the labyrinth of army bureaucracy to obtain such basic supplies as another typewriter or even paper.

At first the AIS programs were one hour a day, five days a week. By late fall they were two hours a day, seven days a week.

Captain Emil Durenberger, the scrounger Jack had asked for, finally arrived. Durenberger was a career officer who had served with Pershing in pursuit of Pancho Villa in Mexico in 1916-1917, had been an assistant company commander in France in 1917-1918, had remained in the army between the wars, and had served here, there, and the other where, gaining a treasury of arcane knowledge about sources, regulations, forms, and especially the whole convoluted bureaucracy of the
War Department. He was a diminutive man, almost bald, whose face was constantly wrinkled with the amusement he found in nearly everything around him. Someone had said of him that he might have been a general if he had been more serious.

The reputation that brought him an assignment to Jack Lear and the AIS had also probably impeded his promotion. He was widely known as a skillful and unscrupulous scrounger. The general who had assigned him to Jack in response to Harrison Wolcott's request knew two more things about him: that he drank too much and that he had an unparalleled talent for breaking through tangles of prescribed methods and finding a direct way to accomplish whatever he wanted to.

On his first day in the office Jack had promised the secretary, Mrs. Eunice Latshaw, that she would be paid. Until Captain Durenberger arrived, he had been paying her himself. The captain chuckled and within two days had established Mrs. Latshaw as a civilian employee of the United States Army.

He did the same for Cecily Camden. Then he had her assigned a room in the Park Lane Hotel, not adjoining Jack's suite but on the same floor. He had moved Jack to the Park Lane because it was a three-minute walk from the AIS offices on Half Moon Street and also because the army would pay the rental of a suite in that hotel, which was entirely comfortable but less luxurious than the Dorchester. Jack paid Cecily's rent himself.

Finally, Captain Durenberger obtained an olive-drab 1938 Ford for Colonel Lear and the American Information Service.

1943

C
ECILY RARELY USED HER OWN ROOM.
S
HE SLEPT WITH
J
ACK
and took her meals with him, either in his suite or in a nearby restaurant. The only times she didn't stay with him were when visitors came from the States.

Harrison Wolcott was the first to visit. Jack entertained him in the suite, and Cecily stayed in her room. Then Dan Horan, Connie's husband, arrived. He was a captain in the Army Air Corps and was adjutant for a bomber squadron. At first Jack feared he might be stationed in or near London and might drop in from time to time, unannounced. In fact, he turned out to be stationed on a field in Kent, and he never came in to London without calling first. Probably he surmised that Jack did not live alone in the hotel suite.

Anticipating that Dan or someone else would tell Kimberly that Cecily was working for him, Jack told her himself in a letter, saying he had been fortunate to find her and to be able to hire her as driver and factotum.

Kimberly wrote constantly that she should be allowed to come to London. Her father settled that as firmly as Jack did, by reminding her that she could not leave the children alone.

Connie also wrote that she hoped to arrange a visit to England, to be with her husband for a few days. Dan must have discouraged it, even though travel restrictions would have allowed it.

Jack's expertise at bridge made him a welcome guest in many homes, and he soon developed a circle of friends. Until Lord Mountbatten went out to Burma, he occasionally invited Jack to dinner and bridge. So Jack played cards with General Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff; Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden; press lord Max Beaverbrook; Randolph Churchill; and General Bernard Montgomery. He also met General Charles de Gaulle and Prime Minister Winston Churchill, though he made no claim to be friends with them.

Cecily shared Jack's taste in theatrical spectacles. The theaters remained open, and Jack especially enjoyed the Windmill Theater. In accordance with British law, girls could appear on stage stark naked so long as they did not move. Naked girls stood on pedestals and posed while scantily clad ones danced around them. Jack and Cecily went as often as the show changed.

Curt arranged a standing relationship for Jack with the bespoke tailor in Savile Row. From then on, the tailor would see to it that Mr. Lear had such suits as the seasons required, billing him only annually. In those years, the clothes were mostly
uniforms, spring and fall weight, and winter weight. Each one was tailored from the finest fabrics and made to fit. When General Eisenhower arrived in London and was seen in the short, tight jacket that came to be called the Eisenhower jacket, Jack asked the tailor to make him one of those. The man covered his eyes with his hands and protested, “Mr. Lear! You
wouldn't!”
And Jack never did.

MAY 1943

K
IMBERLY PULLED A LAST DRAG FROM THE
H
ERBERT
T
AREY
ton in her cigarette holder, then put it aside. The radio beside the bed was tuned to the midafternoon news on WCHS, and this afternoon the news was of the American recapture of Attu, an island in the Aleutians.

It was early afternoon, and she was lying on her bed, letting the radio play but paying it minimal attention. She could not remember a time in her life when she had been more bored. She could not recall a time when she had been more dissatisfied.

Part of the trouble was her self-image, which was badly damaged. She was thirty-six years old, and she smoked, drank, and ate too much. Her body, which had once been spare and taut, was now heavier, and her flesh was looser. When flat chests were fashionable she had not been compelled to strap her breasts down, for they were small and firm. The current style was to wear brassieres that molded breasts into conical shapes and thrust them up and forward à la Lana Turner, the sweater girl. Kimberly was not comfortable with that style—in fact, she thought it was demeaning—but lately she had the flesh required. Her friend Betsy, on the other hand, who was five years older, gloried in showing off her boobs and was elated that fashion now dictated that she should.