Mrs. Roosevelt's Confidante (14 page)

“Let us pass,” Maggie said, suddenly sober.

“You like jazz?” he said, his voice rough. “You like dancing with colored girls? What else do you like to do with colored girls? I know what you two are.”

“Let us pass,” Maggie insisted. She looked around. It was almost midnight. The street was deserted, except for a parked car opposite.

“You wanna dance with me?” He grabbed at Maggie's shoulder. “Both of you? Maybe you first, then her?” He licked his lips.

“Hold this,” Maggie said to Andi, giving the shorter woman her pocketbook.

“I said, let us pass.” She shook off the man's arm. She could feel the adrenaline racing through her. It had been too long since she'd been in a fight, and Maggie found herself almost enjoying it.

He lunged for her throat.

She kneed him in the groin. When he was doubled over in agony, she grabbed his head by both ears and pulled him back up to standing, then smashed his jaw with the heel of her hand, the force of her entire weight behind it.

“Ow!” the man cried, both hands going to his injured nose. He staggered, then fell to the pavement and stayed there, moaning.

Maggie looked back at Andi, who stood frozen, holding both their pocketbooks, eyes wide. “Run!”

The two women ran.

Maggie smuggled Andi into the Mayflower using the service elevator. Once they were safely in her room, the door locked behind them, Maggie asked the other woman, “Are you all right?”

“I'm fine—but where did you learn to do
that
?”

Maggie thought of the various spy-training camps she'd been to in England and Scotland. “Well, you went to Paris. I had my own…finishing school.”

Andi peeled off her gloves, then unpinned her hat. “No offense, but you don't look like the type of woman who could do that. You seem the prim and proper type, more likely to clutch her pearls than knee a man in his—”

“Thank you, I think.” Maggie laughed, hanging up their coats. “Let's just say I'm full of surprises.” She got two rocks glasses from the bar and filled them both with water from the bathroom sink. “Come on, drink up,” she urged. “If we don't, we're both going to have horrible headaches tomorrow.”

Andi was still standing, looking uncomfortable. “I'll just have some water and be going—”

“Nonsense,” Maggie interrupted. She sat down on the sofa and pointed to the bed. “It's late. There's a crazy man out there with a grudge against us. And, let's be honest, you're not going to get a taxi. Stay here for the rest of the night and be safe. You take the bed, I'll take the sofa.”

“You sure?”

“Of course.”

Andi had just taken a seat on the edge of the mattress when there was a rap at the adjoining door and it swung open. John was shirtless and in pajama bottoms, and carried a bottle of champagne in a silver bucket. When he saw Andi, he froze. “I'm sorry—I didn't know you had a guest,” he managed, taking in the other woman.

Maggie realized that she'd forgotten about their late-night date—but was it so bad to put it off another night? True, John was gorgeous in his near nakedness and adorable in his modesty, shielding his chest with folded arms and the ice bucket in a vain attempt to cover up. “I'm so sorry,” she said, going to him and giving him a kiss on the cheek. “This is Andi Martin. Andi, please meet my…er, friend…John Sterling. Andi and I met at the rally for Wendell Cotton and went out to a jazz club. And then we were jumped when we left. I invited her to stay here, to be safe.”

“Are you all right?” John's face was stern.

“We're fine.”

“Your skinny little white girlfriend here has quite the street-fighting technique,” Andi added. The two women convulsed in laughter, laughing so hard that tears came to their eyes and Andi began to hiccup.

“Yes, I've seen some of her moves,” he deadpanned. Then, “Well, maybe another night then.”

“Tomorrow,” Maggie said. “I promise.” He kissed her on the cheek, then turned and left.

“It's perfectly fine with me if you want to go to him,” Andi said, kicking off her shoes. “Handsome devil.”

Maggie looked at the clock and considered. It was nearly one. She went to the door and knocked. “John?” She knocked harder. “John?”

“I'm tired,” he called through the door. “I need to get some sleep. You need some, too.”

“All right,” she said. “I'll see you in the morning.”

There was no reply.

“What the hell is that?” Royal Air Force Captain Maximilian Evans muttered under his flight mask. He was flying his beloved Spitfire on a reconnaissance mission over the coast of the Baltic Sea.

The red morning sunrise glowed above the island of Peenemünde. Captain Evans flicked his eyes to the photograph of the plump blond woman wedged into the glass of the cockpit. “Sorry, old thing, I know you don't like it when I swear.”

It was, quite literally, freezing in the cockpit of his plane—the temperature was minus fifty centigrade and the heat from the engines was being bled off to keep the cameras and film warm.

Because there were no weapons in Max's plane. Even though he was flying a Spitfire, as he had as one of “the few” during the Battle of Britain, his was a stealth mission. With Western Europe on the brink of defeat, Britain had once again turned to the iconic plane. However, this one was armed not with guns or bombs but with something that might keep them one step ahead of the Nazi war machine—an F-52 surveillance camera, pointed down through portholes in the fuselage. The multiple cameras shot straight down, producing overlapping vertical photos.

Max loved flying, and he loved his Spitfire. But he didn't like to be alone. And so he'd tucked a picture of his fiancée, Lady Sybil Bristol, in the crevice between the dashboard and the window, and he spoke to her often. “Nothing moves in Europe that we don't see, darling. And we're supposed to be looking for some kind of Nazi super-weapon. But, naturally, I have no idea what it is.”

Below Max was an island. On the island were a huge factory and a surrounding village. But what caught Max's attention were three enormous cleared circles, made of what looked to be concrete. They were surrounded by equipment Max didn't recognize.

He flew over the sea, then turned his Spitfire around and leveled out for another pass, this time to take photographs. He flew a straight, level approach, so the plane's movement wouldn't cause distortions.

As he kept a low and steady course, the cameras clicked and rolled. But Max's eyes were wide. “Holy fuck,” he muttered. Then, to Lady Sybil's picture, “Er, sorry, darling.”

The next morning, Prentiss had his secretary buy all the day's newspapers, including the
Buffalo Evening News,
from the paperboys on the streets and also the nearby tobacco store. And he had her fetch him an ice pack, which he pressed against his swollen nose.

Sitting in his office, facing the framed Confederate flag, he went through all of them, looking for any mention of the death of Blanche Balfour.

As he finished with each one that produced nothing, he threw it on the floor, then wiped his inky hands on his fishbone tweed trousers. In
The Washington Post
's obituary section, in small print, toward the bottom of the page, he finally saw a mention of Blanche. It read:

BALFOUR.—Blanche Imogene, daughter of Donald and Hazel (Ellis) Balfour of Alexandria, Va., was born in Alexandria on Aug. 5, 1919. She died suddenly at her home at Washington, D.C., on December 22, 1941; aged 22 yrs. She was engaged to be married to Byrd Prentiss, also from Alexandria, Va. She is survived by her mother and two sisters, Stella E. Balfour and Violetta (Balfour) DeBolt, both of Alexandria, Va., as well as her maternal grandparents, George and Mary Wagner of Buffalo, N.Y. Memorial services will be held at her native Christ Church in Alexandria, Va., and interment made in the burial lot nearby. Services will be performed by Rector Pierce Van Deventer of Christ Church, assisted by associate Rector George Whitfield Klemmt.

“ ‘Died suddenly'?” There was no mention of suicide, no mention of any sort of letter, no mention of Eleanor Roosevelt—nothing. “Damn!” he raged, crumpling up the offending page and then flinging it at the wall. First Blanche had ruined everything by not wanting to go through with their plan, then the note implicating Kissing Fish had disappeared, and now it all seemed to have been for nothing. What the devil had gone wrong? And how would he redeem himself? He needed to pull this off. “Goddamn it!”

His secretary knocked timidly at the door. “Is everything all right, Mr. Prentiss?” the pale young woman asked. “Do you need more ice?”

“Get me the Washington correspondent for the
Buffalo Evening News
on the telephone,” he roared, slamming his fist into the leather-tooled desktop.
“Now!”

After a quick breakfast of bacon and eggs and coffee at the diner, Maggie and John walked back into the White House. The office was filled with red dispatch boxes from the British Embassy. David's desk was strewn with newspapers, as he was following the American media's reception of the Prime Minister's visit. Maggie went through them—there was a copy of
Time
magazine, its cover a painting of “Japan's Aggressor: Admiral Yamamoto.” The
Los Angeles Herald and Express
had a large banner proclaiming
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
under which ran “exclusive photos of torpedoed seamen,” and the
Los Angeles Times
's front page announced
FOE LANDS 75 MILES FROM MANILA!
The day felt somber, despite the good notices in the papers for the Prime Minister's press conference and promising news from Russia.

Maggie looked out the window and shivered, drawing her cardigan sweater closer around her. The view was gray, and the leaden skies threatened rain. She went back to the papers. It was clear that the Allies were on the defensive, and would continue to be for some time. There had been Nazi spies—fifth columnists—arrested in New York City. There were calls for an inquiry into America's lack of preparation for Pearl Harbor. Wake Island was being invaded. The British were near surrender in Hong Kong, Malaya, and Burma. Australia was in danger.

Maggie searched through the newspapers until she found the one she was looking for,
The Washington Post
. She flipped to the obituaries and saw Blanche's. Maggie scanned the item.
Thank goodness,
she thought. There was no mention of suicide. And there was no mention of a note or anything regarding the First Lady. She breathed a sigh of relief.

The Prime Minister, dressed in a dark blue suit and chewing on a cigar, looked in on his staff. “I'll be in meetings most of the day with the President,” he informed them on his way out the door. “The very fate of our British Empire hangs in the balance!” he roared, his husky voice trailing down the hall.

“What does he mean?” Maggie said when Mr. Churchill retired. “Roosevelt's decided to go after Hitler first, not Japan. It's what the P.M. was praying for.”

David sighed. “True, but to no one's surprise, the fate of the British colonies
is
a source of tension between our two fearless leaders. Otherwise, they're thick as thieves.”

“Roosevelt's not fighting the U.K.'s war, he's fighting his own. He was brought in not by Britain but by the attack on Pearl Harbor.” John, packing up papers to be sent back to London, looked dour. “Churchill wants above all to preserve the British holdings, which is anathema to Roosevelt.” He set the last stack down on the desk. “And there you have it.”

David was addressing files to be sent to the British Embassy. “Haven't you ever realized? The Old Man is obsessed with Empire. Obsessed! If he were talking about a chip shop in Salford, he'd find a way to mention how important its chips were to the Empire.”

“But as the Boss said in the meeting, ‘Empires just don't bargain.' ”

David retorted, “And as Mr. Roosevelt said, ‘Republics do.' ”

“Britain's colonies are dissolving like a lump of sugar in Roosevelt's teacup.” A muscle in John's cheek twitched. “Do you want to see the Empire destroyed? The Germans are already calling the Boss ‘the Undertaker of the British Empire.' ”

David remained calm. “I'd like to see self-rule in India and the other colonies. Mark my word, it will come.”

John exploded. “But it's the
British Empire
!”

David tried to deflect with humor. “Honestly, I think it was the horrible food in Blighty that led to colonization,” he said, in an aside to Maggie. “We invaded all these other countries because we were hungry for something besides mutton and turnips.”

“I see the Boss as unwilling to commit Britain to principles that would undermine political ties, such as self-determination of India and elimination of the 1932 Ottawa Agreements,” John said.

“But that's hypocritical!” Maggie protested. “If we're not careful, this alliance could be British colonialism in new form, with too much to do with Empire, and too little to do with democracy. As a citizen of a colony which fought for independence—and won—I can understand their frustration. South Africa, India, the Far East—didn't the Atlantic Charter promise self-rule?” Realization struck. “If not, then Hitler's invasion of Europe and Japan's invasion of China are just a logical continuation of colonialism begun by the Spanish, Portuguese, Italians, and French. And…the British.”

“Hear, hear!” David cried.

Maggie turned back to John. “The current collapse of the Far East because Japan herself is colonizing the British colonies sounds a bit like chickens coming home to roost, now, doesn't it?”

“Every man is free when he sets foot on British soil.”

“Not if you're a colonial!”

“It's the end of the Empire,” John insisted.

“And is that such a bad thing?” Maggie shot back.

“As Secretary of State for the Colonies, the Boss stated that within the British Empire ‘there should be no barrier of race, color, or creed which should prevent any man from reaching any station if he is fitted for it.' ” John's voice was rising.

“Yes,” David retorted. “Yet he immediately qualified it, saying that ‘such a principle has to be very carefully and gradually applied because intense local feelings are excited'—which was a flowery way of saying that its actual implementation should be delayed indefinitely. He's”—David looked around to make sure they were indeed alone—“absolutely inconsistent! He's like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde! The key to the Boss is to realize that he's Victorian—steeped in the politics of his father's period. He's never developed a modern point of view.”

“I am an admirer of Gibbon,” John countered. “And I support the British Empire for Gibbonian reasons.”

“British rule in India is the most horrible of all spectacles,” David argued. “The strength of civilization without any of its mercy.”

“Don't you think that what's happening in India now is similar to what happened in the U.S. before the Revolutionary War?” Maggie asked.

“The situations are not the same,” John said, a warning in his eyes.

“But they
are
the same! They're
exactly
the same! ‘Britons never, never, never shall be slaves' as per ‘Rule Brittania'—but it's perfectly fine to enslave others?” Maggie protested.

“It's because they're brown-skinned,” David said to Maggie. “That is the difference—let's not tiptoe around it.” The words hung in the air, suspended by ugliness.

The three were all breathing hard and glaring when Mr. Fields knocked and entered. “A note for Miss Hope,” he announced in his burnished bass voice, handing over a missive. His face was impassive. Maggie hoped he hadn't heard what had just been said.

“Thank you, Mr. Fields,” she said, smoothing back her hair and taking the envelope. “No silver platter and messenger for me,” she added, trying to lighten the atmosphere.

“What is it?” John asked.

“It's a note from my aunt Edith, confirming tea this afternoon. To which you are both invited. Hint, hint.”

“Ooooh, the infamous Aunt Edith Hope!” David exclaimed. “I'd love to come! Not sure if I can, of course—still lots of work for the Boss's speech at the tree lighting tonight.”

“John?”

John had resumed sorting through stacks of correspondence from the Embassy. “I'll do my best,” he said, without looking at either of them.

The Prime Minister returned, smelling of Blenheim Bouquet and cigar smoke. “Edith Hope? You're meeting your aunt?” he asked.

“What do you need, Prime Minister?” David asked.

“My glasses,” the P.M. grumbled. David set off to find them.

“Yes, we're meeting for tea at the Willard Hotel, sir. We discussed my time off—” She'd mentioned having an afternoon to see her aunt to the P.M. multiple times, but he didn't always remember such things.

However, this time, he did. “Yes, yes,” he said, waving a hand. “See your aunt, of course, as long as it's all right with Mrs. Roosevelt. Is this aunt of yours still British?”

“She's been an American citizen for over twenty years now, sir.”

“Another one, lost to the colonies!” the P.M. griped. “Gimme—” he said to David, who had procured his glasses.

John cleared his throat and pulled at his collar. “Sir?”

The P.M. had put on his thick, gold-rimmed glasses and glared at John, his eyes magnified. “Yes? Speak up, Mr. Sterling!”

John gave Maggie a guilty look, then turned back to the P.M. “When you have a moment, sir, I have something I need to discuss with you.”

“Yes?”

“In private, sir.”

“Fine,” he said, stomping out once again. The three held their breath, but he didn't return.

“By the way,” John remarked to Maggie and David, hands in his pockets, leaning against the map room's doorframe. “A piece I wrote might run in
The
Saturday Evening Post
.”

“Really?” Maggie and David chorused. “What about?”

“Being shot down near Berlin.”

“Gracious!” Maggie said. “I didn't know you were writing an article.”

“Of course not! When do we have time to talk?” John looked pointedly at David. “In private?”

David shrugged. “There's a war on, you—”

“That's because there's no time!” John exploded. “There's no time for
anything
anymore!”

“Well, I'm very happy for you,” Maggie said. And she was. “Will we at least have tonight?”

“Yes—yes, by God.”

Maggie stepped closer. “Penny for your naughty thoughts, Lieutenant.”

John's lips twitched. “You'll just have to wait and see, Miss Hope.”

David sighed. “Heroic Hera—you two, there are things I don't need to know.”

Maggie jumped when she heard the distinctive high-pitched voice. “I'm sorry you all have to work today.” Mrs. Roosevelt peered into the room. “It's Christmas Eve day, and you're all so far away from home.”

“Holidays and workdays are the same, ma'am,” said David, giving Maggie and John a dark look. “Until this war is over, nothing else but work can be on our minds.”

“Miss Hope, would you come with me to my office?” the First Lady asked.

“Of course, ma'am,” Maggie replied.

Together they walked the hallway, stopping at the President's open door. There he was with the Prime Minister, engrossed in talk, poring over a map. Both men were flushed with excitement and animated, speaking loudly as they moved pushpins representing ships, submarines, and aircraft carriers around the blue-ink oceans.

“Sometimes when I see them together, they remind me of a boys' book of adventure. They're having a wonderful time, really.” The First Lady looked sorrowful. “It's the male tendency to romanticize war, I'm afraid. I've seen it before. Uncle Teddy, that is, President Theodore Roosevelt, cared about environment and social progress—but then he got caught up in the Spanish-American War and that was the end of it.”

Maggie's gaze went back to the two world leaders, ostensibly engaged in military discussion yet for all the world looking like two little boys playing soldier.

“Well, they're having a wonderful time with all this derring-do,” the First Lady remarked as they continued down the corridor to her office. “I just hope not
too
wonderful.”