Mrs. Roosevelt's Confidante (23 page)

John struggled over whether to take a doughnut or not. In the end, he reached for one and took a bite.

Disney nodded. “Let's work together. You'll move out for the next six months or so—work with us here in Los Angeles. Let's win this war, Stalky!” He lifted his coffee cup in a toast.

John blinked, his mouth full of pastry. Move to California? Los Angeles? Now?

Disney smiled, the waxed ends of his mustache pointing upward. “I'll give you a few days to make your decision. But mark my words, Stalky—the side with the best stories is going to win.”

John Sterling left the Disney studio promising to think over the proposition and to return the next day, to see their presentation. After all, Churchill was convinced this meeting was necessary to the war effort. He decided to celebrate the offer with a swim back at the hotel. He went to his room and changed, then headed to the pool.

By the turquoise water, a man in a cabana was holding court with two pink telephones and a young blond secretary. In another cabana, there was an intense card game among four couples, fueled by pitchers of daiquiris. Men and women sunbathed, their bodies taut and coppery, while a few ladies of indeterminate age swam laps in the pool, careful not to get their elaborately coiffed hair wet.

John stripped off his shirt to his swim trunks and then unfolded his pale body in the striped lounge chair.

The woman next to him peeked over her sunglasses, large brown eyes with thick, dark eyelashes widening in appreciation. She was petite and brunette, wearing a bright yellow sun hat heaped with fake flowers, her even, white smile a tribute to the best of American orthodontia. “They're playing to see who's going to sleep with whom tonight.”

“Sorry?”

She nodded at the couples playing bridge in the cabana behind them. “That's why they're so loud. The blonde laughs like a hyena.”

“I see.” John settled in his lounge chair and closed his eyes. Then, deciding he was being rude, opened them again.

She had picked up her drink but continued to appraise him over her sunglasses. “Your accent is simply divine, by the way. What brings you to town?”

“Business.”

“Really?”

John, annoyed at feeling manipulated into a conversation he didn't want to have, yet unable to be impolite, countered, “And you?”

Once again, she flashed her perfectly straight teeth. “Divorce. I'm in Bungalow Seven until the papers come through.”

The waiter arrived just in time. His skin was dark, but still shades lighter than that of most of the suntanned guests. “May I bring you something from the bar, sir?”

John was unexpectedly homesick for England. “I don't suppose you have Pimm's?”

“We do, sir.”

“Then I'd like a Pimm's Cup, please.”

“Excellent choice, sir.”

As the waiter departed, John turned back to his neighbor. “These telephones,” he said, nodding to the cabana with the man holding two receivers, “how do they work? Do you just bill the call to your room?”

“Here, use mine.” She pushed a pink telephone toward him.

“I couldn't possibly—”

“No, really. I only get calls from my lawyer, which is too damn depressing to contemplate. Please. Go ahead.”

“It's long-distance, I'm afraid—”

“My soon-to-be-ex-husband's paying for it. Talk as long as you want.”

John smiled and lifted the receiver. When he got through to David at the White House, he said, “You'll never believe this. I'm calling you pool-side, old thing.”

“I loathe and despise you” was David's prompt rejoinder. Then, “Well, if it isn't Hollywood star Flight Lieutenant John Sterling, taking time from hobnobbing with the rich and glamorous in Beverly Hills to chat with us hoi polloi.” David was not hiding his annoyance.

His bitter tone confused John. “What?”

“We saw your picture in the paper. We know you're at the Beverly Hills Hotel.”

So they knew where he was, but still not why. “And I miss you, as well. Is Maggie there?”

“Afraid not.”

“I couldn't get her last night at the hotel, either. Is everything all right?”

“She's working.” David's words remained clipped.

“With the mick?”

“Afraid so. They're on something for Mrs. R. Can't tell you the details, but I do believe it's strictly professional.”

“On her side, at least.” There was a silence. “All right then, tell Maggie I called?”

“Of course.”

John replaced the receiver.

“Everything all right?” the brunette asked.

The bartender arrived with John's drink, garnished with cucumber slices and strawberries, beads of water condensing and dripping down the icy Collins glass. He accepted it, took a sip, and leaned back in the chaise under the hot sun. “Grand,” he lied. “Everything's perfectly grand.”

Maggie's tea had long grown cold in the First Lady's office. She'd copied down the President's code for the day of Blanche's murder and a few other relevant dates, then returned the datebook to its secret hiding place. She wished she still had the miniature camera she'd used to photograph documents in Berlin.

Now she leaned back in her chair and rubbed at her forehead. She was starting to get a headache. She was trying to break the code of the entry on December 22, the day of Blanche Balfour's death. It read: R S F G H V N R Q U Q R X X M N V F.

From everything she could glean, it was a substitution code—and so she tried letter frequency analysis, using the most frequently appearing letters in the English language in decreasing order of prevalence: E T A O I N S H R D L U.

No luck.

She did frequency analysis on the letters at the ends of words, the most common letters: E T S D N R Y.

Again, no luck.

She tried a frequency analysis of pairs of letters—TH, HE, AT, ST, AN, IN, EA, ND, ER, EN, RE, NT, TO, ES, ON, ED, IS, TI. Then she tried it on letters that are often doubled: LL, TT, SS, EE, PP, OO, RR, FF, CC, DD, NN.

Still, no luck.

She decided to try crib dragging. Of course, the method worked best when the would-be code breaker had some domain knowledge about the likely content of the message. But Maggie knew she could also try matching letters against the most common words in English: “the,” “of,” “are,” “you,” “a,” “can,” “to,” “he,” “her,” “that,” “in,” “was,” “is,” “has,” “it,” “him,” “his.”

And still…
Was it a Caesar cipher? No. Or a Vigenère cipher? Hmm, maybe. A Vigenère cipher was really just a mathematical formula that could be viewed algebraically. Maggie tried the words that first came to mind for President Roosevelt: “America,” “freedom,” “liberty,” “justice.” Then she used names of people she knew who were close to him—Fala, Eleanor, Harry Hopkins, Grace Tully—really anything and everything.

No luck.
Damn
.

David rapped at the door. “Children's Hour?”

Maggie shook her head. “Working. But thanks.” Then, “David, you and John never discussed Britain's colonies in front of me before.”

“Well, there's been this little thing called ‘a war' going on.”

“David!” Maggie rubbed her eyes and sat up straight. “But don't you think it's odd? With Mr. Churchill off to Canada, of course I've been thinking about the Commonwealth, and now with Singapore…”

“I love John like a brother,” David told her. “I would walk through fire for him. But that doesn't mean I agree with his politics. And we decided a long time ago not to talk about certain topics, including India. Because we'd most likely end up beating each other senseless. You really didn't realize John was such a imperialist ass?” David asked.

“I always knew he was an ass,” Maggie said, remembering their first days together at Number 10, “just never figured him for one of those Empire-loving, chest-thumping sorts.”

“He works for Winston Churchill!”

“Yes, but Mr. Churchill is”—she lowered her voice—“
old
. He's practically Victorian. But John's our age…”

“Plenty of men Mr. Churchill's age and older disagree with him on his handling of the colonies. So I don't think it's the Boss's age. I think it's truly his point of view. And John's, too. When it comes to this, to the concept of the British Empire, they are both absolute asses.”

“You can see how, for an American, this doesn't exactly sit right?”

“I can,” David said. “Which is why I think you should come along to Children's Hour. Even if your esteemed President is a trifle heavy-handed with the vermouth in his Martinis.”

Maggie sighed. She looked at the piles and piles of papers and folders in front of her and stacked on the floor to each side. “I'm sorry, but I really do have to work—”

“If you throw him over for that mick—fine,
Tom
—do it gently. John may be an imperialist ass, but I'm fond of him.”

“I'm not throwing John over for Tom, or for anyone for that matter. It's actually nice to see an old friend.” Maggie made sure they had absolute privacy, then looked to David. “You do realize that if you weren't ‘like that,' it would be you.”

“I know.” He puffed out his chest, pleased. “Oh, I know.”

“Have you heard from Freddie?” she asked, referring to David's “roommate.”

“Just sent him a postcard—the Lincoln Memorial. I think he'll like it.”

Maggie smiled. “Freddie's a lucky man.”

“Oh, he is!” David agreed, nodding. “And, Mags, I'm about half-done with the book. Beth's terribly sick with scarlet fever…”

“Shoo,” Maggie said, not unkindly. “I need to work.”

Von Braun and Todt were in the concrete observation room at the base in Peenemünde, while around them, machines and control panels buzzed and hummed. This time, for this rocket launch, the room was empty. Everything rode on this demonstration; von Braun wanted no distractions.

“We have additional guidance for the rocket,” von Braun said. “Rudders and such.”

“The Führer doesn't care how you do it, as long as the rocket reaches its target.”

Von Braun mopped at his face with a linen handkerchief. It was time. He pressed the large red button that would initiate the launch sequence, hoping Todt didn't see his fingers tremble. Stuffing his hands into his pockets, he leaned back on his heels as they intently watched the rocket on the monitors.

Once again, the orange flames blasted.

Once again, the ground shook, so hard it made their teeth chatter.

And once more, the rocket lifted from its launch pad.

This time, however, it flew up, then kept going.

Von Braun had forgotten to breathe. Todt's face remained impassive. The rocket flew higher and higher, until they lost sight of it on the monitors.

“Come on!” von Braun called, running for the stairs that led to the exit. “Let's see!”

The two men scrambled to the outdoors, where the frigid air still reeked of smoke. The rocket continued its trajectory, flying farther and farther, until it was a vanishing speck of black in the sky.

“I did it!” von Braun muttered, as if he didn't quite believe it himself. Then, louder. “I did it! Did you see?”

Todt smiled. “
We
did it,” he corrected.

Von Braun couldn't stop rocking on his heels. “Do you realize what we've done? The spaceship is born! I've changed the world!”

“What I see is what will save us—a wonder weapon.” Todt glanced around for his aide, who immediately stepped up. “Send the film to the Führer. He must know what we have, what we're capable of. He will want thousands! Millions!”

A shadow passed over von Braun's face. “But this is the only one that's worked so far.”

“But it
did
work—don't you see? You get to keep your rockets program. We'll have a super-weapon. We're now in a race against time.” Todt thrust his hand out, and von Braun grasped it. “We'll need as many rockets as you can make, as fast as you can make them! Point them to London, and we'll flatten it! With no loss of our men!” Todt looked von Braun in the eye. “This rocket, my friend, will decide the outcome of the war. Heil Hitler!”

This time, von Braun was able to answer with equal enthusiasm, “Heil Hitler!”

Clara had requested a copy of Noël Coward's play
Design for Living
from Lord Abernathy.

He'd delivered it a few days later with a quizzical expression on his face but no comment. The play was about the lovely young Gilda, a decadent aesthete, who finally settles on a relationship with two men—who are also in love with each other.

In the yellow drawing room, as Clara and Kemp drank after-dinner brandy before the blazing fire, she read aloud,
“ ‘I love you. You love me. You love Otto. I love Otto. Otto loves you. Otto loves me. There now!' ”

Kemp uncrossed his legs. “So she's with one, then the other, then the two men are together. And then the three of them decide they only work as a trio—so they all live together?”

“It was a way for Coward to get around the censors. As long as there was a woman in the mix, the play wasn't about homosexuals.”

Von Bayer, playing one of Bach's English Suites, stopped and went to the bar cart to pour himself a drink.

Kemp shook his head. “Degenerate English bunk.”

Clara sipped her brandy and eyed him. “More or less. But with such witty repartee.”

“I'm surprised you'd read something by an English author, let alone something so decadent. I don't believe our Führer would approve.”

The blonde stretched and sat up. “Yes, but Herr Hitler's not here, is he? And all those rules were just for the workers, anyway—the bourgeois. And I'm so dreadfully bored. I want something to happen.” She stalked back and forth on the carpet, like a lithe jungle cat in a cage. “I want something to
happen
! Even if it's bombs falling from the sky. I can't stand the monotony anymore.”

“Have another drink,” Kemp urged.

Clara's eyes looked feverish. “Or the plague!” She walked back and forth in front of the fireplace, rubbing her slender arms against the chill. “I don't put it past Hitler to introduce the plague into Germany if the Fatherland is ever invaded. Just imagine—he takes half a dozen or so SS men and makes them wander about somewhere at the back of Aachen, spreading plague. If the English and Americans catch it and don't know how or from where, I wonder whether they would stay.”

“What a question!” Von Bayer stirred his drink.

Clara leaned against the marble fireplace mantel. She was wearing a clingy red-satin evening gown. “Admittedly it would hit the German people as well. But he's perfectly capable of it!”

Kemp nodded. “Yes.”

“He would, of course, inoculate himself first, and then the rest of the vaccine would go to the high-ranking members of the party.”

Kemp pulled out a silver cigarette case. “Yes, it's really quite a good idea.”

“Yes,” the blonde mused. “To spring a trap at the end, if everything is lost.”

Von Bayer downed the last of his drink and poured another. “A ‘good idea'?”

“Well,” Clara replied, “as a last resort, before everything…Don't you think so?”

Von Bayer spoke as if to a small child. “But our own people would be done in by it, as well.”

She sighed. “Yes, well, that's the rotten thing about it. What we ought to have are weapons to which all Germans are immune. Ones which will only hurt the enemy.”

Von Bayer's good eye blazed. “This,” he said enunciating carefully, “is why history will judge us and find us savages, despite our culture. We have sinned. This system has broken every moral code in the world. If you admit life is ruled by a great moral code, you must condemn yourself.”

“I have no moral code.” Clara fixed her gaze on von Bayer, one eye focused on him, the other just a little to the right. “We're all struggling to survive. That's what I do, I survive. It's Darwin's world now, not God's.”

“You, my dear, have not seen actual combat.”

“Yes, but those are very isolated cases,” Kemp interrupted. “For which even the SS can't be blamed.”

“You have no idea what you're talking about,” von Bayer countered, “the atrocities perpetrated by the SS, the shootings, the mass executions…”

Kemp tapped ash into a heavy crystal ashtray. “I am the last to defend such actions, but you must admit that we were bound to take the most severe measures to combat the guerrilla warfare in the East.”

“And what will they say when they find the mass graves in Poland?” von Bayer shouted. Kemp stood. For a moment it seemed the two men would come to blows.

Von Bayer kept talking, egging the other man on. “The worst thing about this is that we're to blame for the way things have gone,” he persisted. “In the Great War, at least, we could say we were the decent ones and were dragged into it—we were cheated and deceived, and we fought decently. But in this war it's the other way round. We are the attackers, the instigators, and we have behaved like beasts. We
continue
to behave like beasts!”

“God, that's depressing.” Clara sighed and poured more brandy into her teacup. “But your world is based on faith, on religion.” She smirked as she poured. “Mine is ruled by blood.”

Von Bayer blinked. “We have gone against the laws of world order, Frau Hess—and, mark my words, we will be held responsible, by a world tribunal.”

“The people simply gave vent to their rage.” She reached out and stroked von Bayer's cheek with one long finger. “If one were to destroy all the Jews of the world simultaneously, there wouldn't remain a single accuser.”

He drew back, as if burned. “One doesn't need to be a Jew to accuse us. We ourselves must bring the charge.”

The slender blonde sank back down on the cracked leather and lifted her cup. “Oh, please. Do you think our Führer has nothing up his sleeve?”

“I'm afraid he might be out of aces,” von Bayer said. “Spread himself too thin this time.”

Clara looked up at him through thick lashes. “I am disappointed that they haven't started using the retaliation weapon yet.”

“The rocket? That again?” Von Bayer snorted. “I can't believe in this rocket—if a rocket carried all the fuel it needed, it would never get off the ground. It's simple physics.”

“The secret is liquid propellant,” said Clara. “This rocket business,” she mused. “I saw it once, you know, with my own eyes. There's a special testing site on the Baltic Sea, a little place called Peenemünde. They've got these huge tubes. They go fifteen kilometers into the stratosphere.”

“How do they aim them?”

Clara knit her brows, remembering. “You can only aim at a general area, but if you aim for somewhere densely populated, you're bound to hit something. Von Braun was there, and he said, ‘Oh, next year the fun will start!' But it was all quite secret.”

“So, why aren't we hearing anything about them?” von Bayer demanded.

Kemp rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Yes, this rocket business is all very well and good, but why haven't we heard anything about long-range bombs here? We get the broadcasts, all the newspapers….They couldn't hide something like that from us.”

“Believe me, gentlemen,” Clara said, “they're not using them yet—but wait until they do. These are weapons unlike anything you've ever imagined.”

Kemp looked up. “If they prepare them in time, they could change the course of the war!”

Von Bayer nodded, longing in his eyes. “We could go back to Germany.”

Kemp showed his teeth. “We could. We'd be heroes!”

Clara stretched and twisted her shapely legs. “We would.”

Kemp began to pace again. “We could put this wretched chapter behind us once and for all. Move on.”

“But what about the Jews? What about the witnesses?” Von Bayer cried.

“We'll kill them, too! We'll kill them all!” Kemp declared, throwing back the last of his brandy. The trio's gaiety was morphing into hysteria. “There won't be any witnesses—and then we can forget this all ever happened!”

Clara grabbed Kemp and kissed him hard on the lips.

Von Bayer cleared his throat. “I'll be going, then.”

Clara looked him in the eye. “You don't have to,” she said. She walked over to him, bent down and kissed him, gently at first, then harder, biting his lip. “You could stay if you want.”

Von Bayer groaned.

Clara smiled at him, her catlike smile. “Do you want to watch?” she asked, slipping her gown's narrow straps off her shoulders. “Or do you want to be part of things?”

“Watch,” von Bayer managed, gasping for breath.

Up in the attic of Chatswell Hall, Arthur and Owen locked eyes. “Wait, is she with Kemp?” Arthur asked.

“No, she's with von Bayer! Wait, I think—both?”

Arthur dove to take the needle off the record. “We don't need to record this.”

“No, wait—” Hank said. “I want to listen.”

“Oh, good Lord…”

“Shut up!”

“I'm leaving. Go ahead, listen, if you want. If they say anything more about this rocket business, just don't be so distracted that you forget to record.”

Edmund Hope had been watching. He'd been watching for weeks through the chink Clara had left in the blackout curtains.

He'd been watching the Tower of London, when Clara had been held there, through binoculars. He knew his wife had been sentenced to death. And, then, against all odds, he'd watched as she'd been transported away from the Tower.

But where? As a high-placed Bletchley code breaker and spy in his own right, he'd manipulated his way through red tape until he learned of Chatswell Hall, learned Clara was being held there.

And he'd taken the Tube to Cockfosters, walked to the Hall, then slipped in through a gap in the barbed wire. It was dark; no one saw him—no one knew. Why should they? The guards were concerned with prisoners getting out—not anyone sneaking in.

He'd watched Clara through the blackout curtains—watched her laugh and sing and flirt and smile. Now, when he saw her kiss the Nazi officer, he knew she had to die. And if His Majesty's Government wasn't going to do it, then he would kill that woman—for all of them.

For Britain.

The President and Mrs. Roosevelt had spent the evening dining with John Gilbert Winant, Ambassador to Great Britain, as well as Harry Hopkins and several other judges, politicians, and dignitaries. They said good-bye to their guests by eleven, and then retired to their separate bedchambers. But the First Lady couldn't sleep. In her nightgown, flannel dressing gown, and woolen slippers, she went to her husband's bedroom door. It was closed, but there was still a strip of light visible. She knocked.

“Yes?” she heard.

She pushed open the door. The President was in his blue-and-white-striped silk pajamas, sitting up in bed with Fala curled at his side. “Franklin, I know it's late, but—”

“What is it, dear?” he asked, putting down his book.

The First Lady walked into the room, stepping over piles of books and papers, then sat in a tufted chair next to the bed. Fala thumped his tail in welcome, and Mrs. Roosevelt reached out to stroke the wiry fur on his head.

The President favored her with one of his tremendous smiles. He smelled of peppermint toothpaste. “Now, that's an awfully long face, Babs,” he teased.