Jack 1939 (22 page)

THIRTY-NINE.
THE DUMBWAITER

AS THEY DREW UP UNDER
the portico of the hotel they saw a crowd of German officers waiting in the night. One of them was Reinhard Heydrich.

Gubbins said under his breath, “They’ll have heard about the truck. Whatever happens, don’t argue.”

And then Jack’s door was flung open and he was pulled from the car. A Nazi with a death’s-head patch on his collar—which meant that he was SS—jumped behind the wheel. Another held open the rear door for Heydrich to get in; apparently an
Obergruppenführer
never sat in front. Gubbins was already standing on the pavement with a sardonic look on his face. The motor gunned. Jack’s car sped off.

“Hey!” he shouted after it furiously.

“I gather we’ve been
commandeered
, old chap,” Gubbins drawled. “Wonder what’s got these chaps in such a snit? Two o’clock in the morning, no less! A man can’t even have his
nightcap
in peace.”

He strolled nonchalantly through the crowd of officers and into the lobby. As Jack followed, five cars roared up to the entry. The Germans piled into them with a barrage of orders that fell on his ears like machine-gun fire.

In a few seconds the cars had disappeared in a line of red taillights, and the portico was silent again—but for the panting breath of a valet, who’d run for a car and been punched by an irate German for his efforts.

Jack stood there a moment as quiet descended, taking deep breaths to calm his erratic pulse.
Heydrich was racing to the scene of the ambush.
He’d figure out pretty quickly it wasn’t a simple accident—wouldn’t he? Gubbins was insane to think a handful of crazy Poles could pull off a stunt like that, under the very nose of the Gestapo. The Nazis would return in a few hours and start rounding up the innocent. Shooting people. And it was Jack’s fault because he’d driven Gubbins in his car. Heydrich would remember that—the two of them driving up to the entrance with exquisite timing. They’d be interrogated, of course. Their story about a legation party and a flat tire, a pathetic joke under the circumstances.

Jack was swept with a wave of exhaustion so profound he swayed where he stood. He pulled a handful of Danzig currency from his pocket and gave it to the only other person still lingering by the hotel entrance in the waning night—the valet who’d taken a punch in the gut. He was a slight young man in a dark uniform who looked as spent as Jack felt. Jack figured he wouldn’t need much cash, once Heydrich was done with him.

* * *

THE CASINO WAS EMPTY
and there was no sign of Diana. He let the elevator carry him to the third floor, and hesitated outside her door. There was no light or sound within. He glanced down at himself. His evening clothes were a mess. Dirt and gravel were smeared along his trousers and he smelled of creosote and fire. He’d have to get rid of the suit. These were the evening clothes he’d had tailored at Poole’s, but he couldn’t risk keeping them.

He let himself into his room and stopped short, appalled.

It had been so thoroughly ransacked it rivaled the chaos of his
Queen Mary
stateroom. Obst and his picklocks, again.

“Fuck.”
He slammed the door. Torn books, spilled shaving kit. The contents of his suitcase dumped on the floor.

He crossed immediately to the room’s sole window, a tall, imposing affair heavily draped and canopied against the wind off the Gdansk Bay. The drapes had been drawn at dusk by the maid. Jack twitched them aside and reached up with his right hand, feeling along the interior wooden frame of the canopy. He’d hidden Willi’s Luger there.

And the Spider had missed it.

He pulled the gun from its hiding place and looked at it, gleaming blue in the overhead light.

If you want peace, prepare for
war.

He glanced around the savaged room. What else was precious? The books could be replaced. He’d had his passport and money with him. No letters from the family, nothing that could—

And then he went cold.
His
radio.

He sank down onto the carpet and huddled there, cross-legged, his head in his hands. He’d left the suitcase with the radio set locked in the trunk of his car. He had no real use for it, now that he was ignoring Roosevelt, and it seemed silly to lug the thing into every hotel along the road from Val d’Isère.

But Heydrich himself was riding in the car and either he or his driver might just use the trunk key Jack had left behind when they’d tossed him to the curb.

His first impulse was to get to the American legation and hole up until he could be sent home by plane or boat.

His second thought, which seemed saner than the first, was to find Gubbins.

He changed his clothes, stuffed his acrid-smelling dress suit in the hotel’s linen laundry bag, and slipped out of his room. At the far end of the silent corridor there would be the inevitable service pantry: shelves piled with linens, butler’s carts, supplies of soap and towels. He prayed the door was never locked and that nobody was awake at this hour of the morning.

He was lucky on both counts. The pantry door opened at his turn of the knob.

A dangling string grazed his face—the light switch. He shut the door behind him and reached for it in the dark. The sudden electric glare revealed what he was looking for: the trash chute leading directly to the hotel incinerator. It ran alongside a much larger shaft that accommodated a dumbwaiter. There would be openings for both on every floor.

He dumped his damning clothes down the trash chute. There was a faint roar as the incinerator yawned far below, then closed on Savile Row’s finest tailoring.

* * *

“I SHOULDN’T LEAVE JUST YET,
old chap,” Gubbins said thoughtfully as he offered his hip flask to Jack. It was nearly three, now, and Gubbins had clearly enjoyed a bath while Jack was burning his evidence; no hint of what the colonel would call
petrol
lingered in the room. He wore a correct navy dressing gown that would not have been out of place at a Pall Mall club, and his face shone pinkly from his ablutions. “Might put the wind up the Gestapo. Turn their thoughts in an unpleasant direction. Best appear at your table this morning and tuck into a tidy breakfast of bacon and eggs. Engross the attention of that charming mistress of yours. Ten to one Heydrich will think the truck met with an unfortunate accident—and friend Death Head will never have opened your boot.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

Gubbins shrugged. “Call your diplomatic representatives. Or I will, if you’re in jug.”

“Jug?”

“Deprived of liberty. Rendered
incommunicado
.”

“Thanks.” Jack took a swig from Gubbins’s flask. His forehead was clammy and chills were running up his spine.

“Has it occurred to you,” the colonel said diffidently, “that you could put the wee hours of morning to better use?”

“I know. I look like hell. I should be in bed.”

“Not at all, dear chap. Quite the contrary. If Heydrich and every other Jerry has gone to the scene of mayhem—stands to reason the Spider’s room is empty. He’s searched
yours
. Might as well return the favor.”

Jack stared at him. He’d wondered before if Gubbins was drunk or mad. “I don’t know how to pick a lock.”

Gubbins’s teeth flashed. He produced something narrow and black from his dressing gown pocket. “This is a
hotel
, Jack. A simple hairpin should do it.”

* * *

TWENTY MINUTES LATER JACK
was standing in the middle of number 5101, which reminded him strangely of Mayo. The Spider had left no trace in the room; it was sterile as a hospital ward.

Gubbins had lent Jack gloves and told him to leave his shoes by the door to avoid footprints. So here he was, with a black balaclava over his face. It itched unmercifully and Jack was sure he was allergic to whatever it was made of. Merino. Angora. An animal never intended to touch the face of a guy who broke out in hives whenever he petted a dog.

“The Poles
swear
by these when they’re getting up to a spot of mischief,” the colonel had said. “You could do a hell of a lot worse than learn from the Poles. They’ve managed, after all, to retain
some
national dignity, despite being conquered by every egotist with an army over the past thousand years. The jokes people make about them are
grossly
unfair.”

He’d clapped Jack on the back and gone down to the lobby in the guise of a genial insomniac searching for company and perhaps a drink. Determined to know exactly when Heydrich returned. Gubbins as Spotter and Lookout.

Quickly.
He had to move quickly.

Jack opened the Spider’s closet. A set of street clothes, a strange navy peacoat beside them. He’d expected camel’s hair. For an instant he was sure he’d broken into the wrong room. But Gubbins didn’t make mistakes. Did he?

He ran his hand over the shelf above the hanging rod; nothing but an extra blanket. He unfolded it in case Daisy Corcoran’s account book was tucked inside. Nothing. He put the blanket back, his neck prickling.

He got down on his knees and ran his hands under the Spider’s mattress. He’d liked to have tossed the whole thing off the frame, but Gubbins’s voice in his head stopped him.
Leave no trace.
The bedside table had a Lutheran missal, printed in German. And a New Testament in Polish.

No briefcase. No book. No personal papers. No piece of stationery missing from the supply in the desk. He checked beneath the armchair cushions. He ran his gloved hands along the window canopy. If the Spider hadn’t thought to look there in Jack’s room, he hadn’t used it in his own.

There was a washbasin with a shaving kit on the shelf above. Nothing else.

The account book wasn’t there.

For a wild moment, he thought: He doesn’t have it.
We’re
safe.

And then he thought:
It’s in fucking Heydrich’s
room.

A shaft of vertigo sliced through him. He would have to break into the room next door.

He went for his shoes—and heard faint footfalls from the carpeted corridor outside.

Someone was coming.

He jabbed at the light switch, plunging the room in darkness. He thrust his feet into his shoes, not bothering with the laces. His blood was pounding in his ears.

The footsteps halted at the Spider’s door.

How the hell had Gubbins missed
him?

There was a pale chink of light where the corridor’s glow seeped through the keyhole. Jack watched as it was blotted out by the key. In a second the Spider would know that the door was already unlocked. He might even have sensed Jack’s breathing.

Gubbins missed him because he didn’t come through the front lobby. He wasn’t with Heydrich. He never left the hotel. He’d been searching my room when they got the news about the
truck.

Jack went hot and then cold. He’d coolly picked the man’s door, thinking he was thirty miles away in the smouldering woods. When all the time he was having a last drink. Or screwing a maid. Carving his mark into the girl’s breast—

The Spider kicked in the door with smashing violence.

If Jack had been behind it, he’d have been crushed against the wall with a broken nose. But instead he’d stood on the opposite side, and the second Obst appeared, he fired the Luger blindly. Striking before he could be struck.

Force propelled the massive shape into the room, stumbling, until the Spider let out an animal grunt and rolled to his knees. One arm clutched his chest and the other swept out, desperate to stab; Jack slipped past the writhing man and bolted through the open door.

What had he
done?

A guttural, inhuman roar filled the air behind him. That and the gunshot would be enough to sound an alarm.

Jack ran straight down the empty fifth-floor corridor, shoving the hot muzzle of the gun into his waistband, burning the skin above his navel. He was still wearing the balaclava. He was fleeing like a thief in the night. Such obvious stupidity, if anybody saw. If a single bedroom door opened. There must be a service pantry at the end of this corridor. They would start looking at the other end, near the elevator.

He pulled open the pantry door and shut it behind him. Standing in total darkness, he stuffed the balaclava down the incinerator, then pressed the button that summoned the dumbwaiter.

It might have been forty seconds while the dumbwaiter lumbered five stories up, while doors opened, feet pounded, voices shouted in horror. Was the Spider dead? Or was he heaving himself painfully, arm over arm, through a pool of his own blood? Jack’s legs shook. He held down the call button savagely, urging the dumbwaiter to hurry. He prayed the Spider could not tell them which way he’d run.

The dumbwaiter rose slowly into view. A forgotten chafing dish, a few napkins, a pot of stale coffee were still inside. Jack swung himself carefully on top, testing whether it would bear his weight. It swayed and held.

He forced himself to keep his mind on survival. Forget the five-story drop. He reached for the pulley that supported the wooden carrier, and began to work the cables by hand. He and Joe had done this when they were kids. Loads of times. There was a dumbwaiter in the Bronxville house and they used to scare the hell out of the kitchen staff when they burst through the door. There was a dumbwaiter at Prince’s Gate, too. He’d have to show Teddy the trick sometime. If he lived long enough.

He was still wearing his gloves and he was thankful for the thin protection they offered between himself and the cable. He lowered the dumbwaiter by degrees, hand over hand, until a break in the shaft told him he’d reached the fourth floor. He could hear nothing of the world beyond his vertical tunnel but he was conscious of squeaking, something weary and habitual in the mechanism, a clear signal to anybody listening that the dumbwaiter was in use at half past three in the morning. He was sweating and yet clammy with chills. He was afraid he would vomit. But it didn’t matter if he puked. Nothing mattered. The third-floor hatch was coming nearer. He could swing himself out and be safe—or stare down the barrel of a gun.