Mrs. Roosevelt's Confidante (21 page)

“Part of the President's entourage? No!” Mrs. Roosevelt looked as though she might faint. “And go through Franklin's papers? Miss Hope, of course,
I
could never do that.”

Maggie felt a pang of guilt for bringing the matter up.
How could I even have suggested it?
“I'm sorry—” She knew it was a transgression. And yet, it was quite possible that the President could be concealing evidence of a connection between his office and Blanche Balfour's murder.

Then the First Lady raised a hand. “
But
I can tell you that the President and the rest of his staff will be out tomorrow afternoon. And as I'm hosting a holiday tea at three in the Blue Room, I'll be keeping the entire household staff quite busy on the first floor.” She looked to Maggie and winked. “If you should happen to be in the office tomorrow, chances are you'll have the second floor all to yourself.”

As a former Royal Air Force pilot, John Sterling found flying as a passenger on someone else's plane an excruciating experience. Although a series of flights across the country was a luxury most people in the United States only dreamed of—and was reserved for only the richest businessmen, moguls, and movie stars flying on the studio's dime—he was nervous. He preferred being behind the controls himself.

John missed flying. He missed the RAF, and he missed feeling useful. But here he was—injured, not fit for service, now a passenger on someone else's plane. A civilian. One of what he and his crew used to call “the mundanes”—those who'd never felt the freedom of the sky.

Looking out the window to the plane's wing, he pictured a Gremlin. He pulled out his notebook and began to draw.

The lobby of the Los Angeles airport was plastered with vivid posters—
REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR! DEFENSE BOND STAMPS—YOU BUY 'EM, WE'LL FLY 'EM,
and
KEEP YOUR TRAP SHUT—CARELESS TALK MAY COST AMERICAN LIVES—
and everywhere John looked were soldiers in U.S. uniforms. At the terminal's entrance, a line of drivers held signs bearing the names of their passengers. John broke out in a chuckle when he saw his. It was bright white with unmistakable bubbly handwriting:
John Sterling.

“I'm Lieutenant Sterling,” John told the driver, a colored man with dark skin and a neat gray mustache, wearing a uniform and cap trimmed in gold braid.

“Yes, sir.” The man grinned, taking John's suitcase as he did so. “Merry Christmas, sir. How was your flight?”

They passed by a group of U.S. officers. All saluted. John returned the gesture. “Flights, many flights,” he replied. “And uneventful, thank heavens.”

The driver's eyes took in the tall man's British military uniform and the haunted expression in his eyes. “Maybe uneventful's not such a bad thing these days, sir.”

“Maybe not. May I ask your name?”

“Mack Hollis, sir.” The man touched his free hand to his cap.

“A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Hollis.”

“It's just Mack, sir.”

“That's not how we do things in England.”

“Well, sir, you may have noticed—you're not in England anymore.”

Stepping outside, John was hit by a dizzying wall of jasmine- and bus-exhaust-scented air, dry and heavy with heat. The sun glared down with an almost palpable weight; the sky above was a rich, sparkling blue; and palm trees grew hundreds of feet into the air, their ridiculous-looking fronds waving in the marigold sunlight. There were garish yellow and pink flowers in clay pots everywhere, women in brightly colored sundresses, their varnished nails peeping from open-toed sandals. A young boy dashed by, trailing a bouquet of rainbow-colored balloons. Everyone seemed bright-eyed, laughing, well fed. Utterly untouched by war—at least, war as they knew it in London.

“No, I guess I'm not in England anymore,” John murmured as they approached the white Cadillac limousine.

Hollis chuckled as he opened the passenger door. “What do you think of Los Angeles so far, Lieutenant Sterling?”

John took a deep, greedy breath of California air before he slid into the sapphire blue leather interior. “I think…Well, I think that I have no idea why anyone would want to live anywhere else.”

After driving dusty roads from the airport, Hollis finally pulled the Cadillac up Sunset Boulevard to the entrance of the Beverly Hills Hotel. The iconic sign was written in quirky cursive, and the stucco-covered Mediterranean revival hotel itself, hidden behind the palm trees and lush flora, was the startling color of a pink flamingo. Under the porte cochere, the ceiling was painted with stripes of cream and forest green. Wide-eyed tourists in island shirts with cameras lined the curb, no doubt hoping to catch a glimpse of the arrival of Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, or Howard Hughes.

“Here we are, sir,” Hollis announced, opening the door.

John took a deep breath and stepped out onto the thick red carpet leading up the hotel's front steps.

The tourists and the magazine photographers, struck by his height and his uniform, flocked to him, snapping pictures. John looked hunted for a moment. But then he straightened his shoulders, flashed his best fighter-pilot grin, and gave the V for Victory sign.

Flashbulbs exploded like fireworks.

Hollis smiled, his amber eyes glinting in the reflected light. “Welcome to Beverly Hills, sir.” As John passed through the pink pillars, he called: “A star is born!”

When the woman at the reception desk saw who'd made John's reservation, she threw a significant look to the hotel's manager, so it was he, and not the bellboy, who took John's luggage and escorted him back outside to his bungalow.

John and the manager navigated the winding paths of the hotel, the sultry air smelling of jasmine and oleander. Orange butterflies flitted among the hot-pink bougainvillea like rising embers. In the distance, a Mexican gardener tenderly pruned and watered the roses.
BUY A BOMBER BREAKFAST!
proclaimed one sign outside the restaurant; for a thousand-dollar bond, John saw, one could get a breakfast of ham, eggs, buttered toast, and the piano accompaniment of Eddie Cantor himself. At the Polo Lounge, people with tanned faces and heavy watches held court at leather banquettes.

The manager nodded. “The Sand and Pool Club, sir.” The water was a shimmering turquoise. The pool was ringed with oiled and bronzed bodies draped on lounge chairs, cushioned in the same green-and-white stripes found everywhere in the hotel. “If you like to sunbathe, sir, we have white sand imported from Arizona for the tanning section,” he added.

John was rarely at a loss for words, but even he took a moment. “S-sand?”

“Many of our guests feel a beach tan is superior to a pool tan. So we had sand imported.”

“I see,” John said, stepping aside to let two beautiful women in tennis whites pass by.

“We're patriotic, sir, at the Beverly Hills Hotel,” the manager explained. “After the attack on Pearl, we offered to drain our pool for antiaircraft enhancement. But the Army didn't see fit to take us up on it.”

“Is the West Coast worried about an attack?”

“Oh, yes, sir. San Francisco has a complete blackout now. Those Jap subs are definitely out there, patrolling. They've sunk a couple of merchant ships and scuffled with our Navy—dirty yellow bastards.”

When they reached John's bungalow, the lights were on, the windows were open, and the blinds were pulled back, so that the private garden with its perfect pink roses could be properly appreciated. The former pilot whistled through his teeth, taking in the suite's cream and beige living room, the well-stocked bar cart, and the open doors to the bedroom and marble bath, as the manager put down his suitcase. “Thank you,” John murmured, slipping him some coins.

“Oh, sir—it's my pleasure,” he said, pocketing the tip as he withdrew. “Would you like me to send a butler to unpack for you, sir?”

But John was already closing the door behind him. On the low coffee table was an impressive bouquet of flowers he couldn't identify, a basket of oranges, a plate of pink-frosted sugar cookies wrapped in rosy cellophane and tied with a gaudy satin bow, an ice-filled bucket of champagne, and an enormous box of See's chocolates.

John scooped up the bottle of champagne in one hand and with the other opened the door to his private garden, complete with potted palms. He sat down, stretched out his long legs, and opened the wine. It popped open and bubbled over, he thought wryly, exactly as if he were in a Hollywood movie.

Taking a swig from the open bottle, he sighed, leaned back in the chair, and took in the cerulean sky, the tiny yellow finches chirping in the lemon trees. In the distance, he could hear the faint sound of people laughing and splashing in the pool. He thought about Maggie, and how he'd love to share this with her.

He raised the bottle in mock salute. “Cheers, love.”

At Danesfield House in Medmenham, Bea Spencer knocked at the open door of Captain Mitchell's office. “Sir, I have something you may want to see.”

Captain Owen Mitchell gestured for her to enter. His metal military-issue desk seemed incongruous on the parquet wood floor and beneath the intricate plaster molding and the medallions on the ceiling. A picture of the King was the only ornament on the lavender-blue walls. Captain Mitchell was a middle-aged man, with thinning hair, gray, bushy eyebrows, and thick horn-rimmed glasses.

Bea walked in past a dead palm slanting in a Ming pot, handing over the photographs of Peenemünde taken by the pilot Max Evans.

Mitchell glanced at them and blinked. He studied them for a moment, then ran his fingers through what was left of his hair. “And what am I supposed to be looking for, Miss Spencer?”

“There, sir, on the left.” Bea pointed.

He picked up a loupe and peered. “Where they're extending the airfield?”

“No, sir,” Bea replied. “The circles.”

“That's a dredging operation, dear—drains, most likely.”

“Sir, do you think it could be a launching pad—for a rocket? The memo from London asked us to continue to look into anything that could be rocket installations.”

“That”—Mitchell jabbed a finger at the photograph—“has something to do with sewage, I'm afraid.”

Beatrice stood her ground. “Then what
do
rocket installations look like? Sir?”

Captain Mitchell pushed his chair back from the desk. “Miss Spencer, no one knows, because we've never seen a rocket installation before. They might not even exist.”

“Our instructions were to ‘look for something unusual.' ”

“What you're showing me is hardly unusual.”

“See this shadow?” she persisted. “It shows that this—what looks like a pole—is actually forty feet tall. Look, and then that building, there, could be the observation tower.”

“It could,” Mitchell countered, “also be a partially deflated barrage balloon.”

Beatrice ground her teeth. “Sir, I believe it's a rocket.”

Mitchell glared at her, then sighed. “All right. We'll get some more photographs, then.” He took a closer look at Beatrice, his eyes running up and down her body. “And what do you happen to be doing for dinner tonight, young lady? How would you like to keep an old man company?”

Beatrice smiled. “Why don't you write the report on this, I'll file it, and then we'll talk?”

Captain Owen Mitchell didn't believe the forty-foot tube was a rocket launcher, but in order to secure Beatrice Spencer's company at dinner, he wrote a report, then sent it by motorcycle courier, with copies of the photographs, to Duncan Sandys. Sandys was Finance Member of the Army Council and the newly named Chairman of the War Cabinet Committee for Defense against German Flying Bombs and Rockets.

When Sandys saw the photographs, he immediately called a meeting of the War Cabinet.

It was almost ten in the evening on December 26 when the Cabinet members filed into the meeting room in the Cabinet War Rooms, minutes away from Number 10 Downing Street under the Treasury. This underground warren of rooms was hidden beneath a thick slab of protective concrete and served as their bomb shelter. Even though the ventilation system—called “air-conditioning”— was on and black fans mounted on the walls whirred, the space was hazy with smoke. The conversations of the men in uniform rumbled in the small space.

“The P.M. is in Washington, of course.” Sandys spoke from the head of the U-shaped table, and the men quieted. Duncan Sandys was a handsome man, tall and lean, with prominent cheekbones, a high forehead, and a noticeable limp from a battle wound he'd received in Norway. “But he's asked me to look into German weapon development. In front of you are folders containing the latest intelligence. I believe that what we're looking at are rockets—forty-foot rockets on the Peenemünde site.”

“Science fiction,” Lord Cherwell muttered. A former physics professor at Oxford and one of Winston Churchill's oldest and closest confidants, he had only recently been named a baron. From his association with the P.M., he wielded considerable power in the War Cabinet, offering advice on science and technology, including the making of anthrax and other bioweapons.

“What was that, Lord Cherwell?” Sandys asked rhetorically as he folded his hands in front of him. While his face betrayed nothing, his knuckles had gone white. He and Cherwell had been battling about the rocket situation for years now. Sandys believed they existed and were a threat; Lord Cherwell did not. “Didn't quite catch it.”

“I said,” Lord Cherwell spoke with emphasis in his patrician, German-inflected accent, “it's all a load of science fiction. Maybe after the war you can carve yourself out a little career as an author, but for now, we need to fight the actual war—not one made up by H. G. Wells.”

A few members of the War Cabinet thumped their palms on the table in support.

The men were exhausted, all of them. And while Hitler had currently turned his attention to Russia, and their Prime Minister was shoring up their new partnership with President Roosevelt and the United States, no one had any time or energy to waste on chasing untested theories.

“So, just because we don't have it—it's not possible for them to have come up with it?” Sandys arched an eyebrow. “The reason I called this meeting, gentlemen, is that we have
new
evidence in hand—photographic evidence—evidence that points directly to a German rocket-building program.”

“Balderdash.” Lord Cherwell glanced through his assembled folder, then pushed it aside. “Your ‘intelligence' is not very intelligent. As a scientist, I know the weight of a warhead would be too heavy for any rocket propelled with cordite to lift. It's against the laws of physics.”