CHAPTER FOUR

The ever-thorough Reichscommissioner Goering had been more clever than usual. He had promised Count von Kresse an assistant in this intrigue, an accomplice who would feel as at home as he in the rarefied strata at the pinnacle of the British class system yet who would also be capable of helping him meet any danger or difficulty. And so Goering had provided him with his sister, Dagne.

She had courage and ruthlessness enough. She was quite a strong and still youthful woman who, like Martin, had been confronted with physical risk and challenge from early on in her life as a proper part of her upbringing. She had climbed almost as many mountains as he and won even more equestrian medals. He’d seen her kill a wounded stag with a knife, throwing herself on the thrashing, bellowing animal when her rifle had jammed, cutting its throat. Though she would not admit to it, he guessed she was now armed with a pistol. Dagne also possessed infinite loyalty—to von Kresse, of course, but also to Reichscommissioner Goering. She would doubtless inform der Dicke of every aspect of her brother’s conduct throughout this adventure. She would insure that he carried out the Reichscommissioner’s wishes, in every way, by her mere presence.

But Goering was more thorough even than this. Surely there must be another accomplice whose identity was not yet known to von Kresse, or possibly even to Dagne. There might be several. As one of the count’s intellectual friends had said during a chess game in a coffeehouse near the Gedachtniskirche on a recent evening, the Third Reich was a universal concept. It was wise to assume its presence wherever one went.

Dagne was flaunting this truth. As the train rolled out of Gare St. Lazare at the start of its swift journey to the Channel, she took from her traveling case a copy of The Leader’s Mein Kampf.

“For God’s sake, Dagne. Is that damned book a badge for you?”

They were alone in a first-class compartment, seated facing each other. Dagne was wearing a very fashionable beige suit, with matching hat and light veil. She lifted the book still higher before her face, a challenge.

“If the old count were alive he would have you thrashed,” said von Kresse.

She began reading aloud: “‘And it is precisely for our intellectual demi-monde that the Jew writes his so-called intellectual press.’”

Von Kresse snatched the book from her hand and turned quickly to the front. “If you can’t think of decency, Dagne, for God’s sake at least think of your class. Listen to this, the men who fell in his pathetic Munich putsch, the men he dedicated this to, listen to who they are: ‘businessman, hatter, bank clerk, bank clerk, bank clerk, locksmith, businessman, headwaiter, student of engineering, valet, businessman, court councillor, retired cavalry captain, engineer, engineer, businessman.’ This is your ‘New Order.’ Clerks, valets, head-waiters, shopkeepers—‘businessmen.’ And let us not forget postcard artists. The lower-middle-class ascendant, the Countess von Bourke and Kresse in their train.”

She resented his use of irony. Her voice was soft and cool, but she was defiant. “The Duke of Saxe-Coburg und Gotha has joined the party and he is Victoria’s grandson.”

“He’s a silly fool, just like you.”

She took the book back and hurriedly thumbed through the pages to a remembered passage. “‘The class arrogance of a large part of our people, and to an even greater extent, the underestimation of the manual worker, are phenomenae which do not exist only in the imagination of the moonstruck,’” she read smugly, as if this was a revealed truth from the scriptures. “‘It shows the small capacity for thought of our so-called intelligensia when, particularly in these circles, it is not understood that a state of affairs which could not prevent the growth of a plague, such as Marxism happens to be, will certainly not be able to recover what has been lost.’”

“The lunatic is not even grammatical!”

“You should be very thankful that at this moment we are not in Germany.”

“You’ve no idea just how grateful I am for that.”

“Martin! Do you forget what barbarism lies just three hundred kilometers from our home? In what sort of world do you think you live?”

“Pit barbarism against barbarism and the result is still barbarism.”

She pushed herself away from him, into a corner of the compartment, lifting the book to completely obscure her face. “We have had this conversation, Martin. To no good end.”

“Indeed.”

He had a book of his own, Leopold von Ranke’s History of the Roman and German Peoples, but it was hardly the stuff to suit his mood. He moved closer to the train window, folding his arms and extending his left leg to ease the pain. The passing tableau of gray Parisian suburbs was not an enticing diversion either.

Goering had given him a hastily prepared prècis of his mission, including a one-page biographical sketch of Wallis Warfield Simpson prepared by Reinhard Heydrich’s Sicherheitdienst Security Service and some notes on her reported traveling companions. The count took this from the pocket of his gray double-breasted suit and read through it once again.

Though the author of the sketch seemed very excited about Mrs. Simpson’s possible Jewishness, he was careful to note this was in no way documented. Rather, it was a belief held firmly in those quarters of Baltimore society resentful of her social progress in England.

There was evidence that the family had been in Maryland as Warfield since the English crown grants of the early seventeenth century. By Wallis Warfield’s time, the family was in such reduced circumstances that they lived in a rundown house and took in boarders, or so Heydrich’s German-American correspondents in Baltimore reported. Her widowed mother was able to rescue them from their shabby gentility only by marrying a well-off but alcoholic and disreputable local politician.

Mrs. Simpson’s first husband was a U.S. Navy lieutenant. She had followed him to China in 1924. They had become estranged over his heavy drinking and patronage of Chinese brothels, but she had stayed on in China another two years, drifting from city to city and supporting herself in large part by living off friends and gambling. She was, according to the dossier, a skillful card player.

She was also, it said, highly claustrophobic and extremely self-conscious about her plainness, especially as concerned her oversized hands and nose and a large mole. She was given to salacious remarks and was reportedly very deft at the amusing conversational titillation so much in vogue in higher British social circles, which accounted for much of her initial social acceptance.

Mrs. Simpson apparently indulged the prince’s flirtation as a means of advancing her social station in Britain, never realizing how deeply and dangerously it would involve her. She was obviously very uneasy with her situation and might be looking for a means of escaping it, according to the prècis. Her rise to the position of king’s “mistress,” a term not necessarily to be taken literally, had sharply divided England’s upper class into two hostile factions.

Von Kresse wondered how much Ribbentrop had to do with this report. Goering called him a fool yet was more than willing to act on his information. It was so like him to discredit his sources of intelligence this way. If things went wrong, there was a ready place to turn with the blame.

And there would certainly be no turning to the Reichscommissioner with blame. In the event von Kresse caused some disaster in this mission, Goering would be able to disclaim any responsibility. He would say he and the count simply had discussed the British royal romance over a companionable glass of schnapps that morning, and otherwise talked over old flying days. Goering would say he had once again tried to persuade von Kresse to join the National Socialist Party, but otherwise had not intruded politics on the conversation.

As for von Kresse’s sudden journey with his sister, Goering would say he simply agreed that October was a marvelous time for a sea voyage, especially to America, where the count had so many relatives. And if the von Kresses chanced to provoke an international incident en route and damaged the New Germany’s good standing with Britain, well, what could you expect from one of these arrogant East Prussians with unreconstructed class attitudes and intellectual pretensions, especially from one with so many dangerous friends and so much Polish blood?

So the reason for this bold intrusion upon the silly but awesomely consequential life of Edward, Prince of Wales, would remain their little secret, though it was perhaps the only matter on which von Kresse and his malevolent friend were in full agreement. Von Kresse had thought upon it for long hours after his morning with Goering. There was no other course to peace. England must be kept meek, friendly, and quiescent.

Hitler was bent on putting every living German under National Socialist rule, including the chancellor of Austria and the president of the Danzig Senate. The sort of confrontation this would entail carried every risk of war, and war meant ruin. Absolute ruin. The old Germany represented by von Kresse and the new Germany proclaimed by The Leader would both be lost. There were too few new airplanes in the production lines of the secret aircraft works and too many horse-drawn artillery caissons in the Wehrmacht. Hitler was talking about remilitarizing the Rhineland. Mein Gott, the French army in Alsace alone could stop him, and the French were still bent on disassembling Germany into the scattering of quarrelsome principalities and duchies it had been before it was forged into nationhood by Bismarck sixty-five years before. They would seize the first opportunity Hitler gave them—if the British were to back them up.

For all the evil and obnoxious things der Dicke had become in the course of his rise to power, he had not become stupid. He had foreseen the logical end of the first Great War even before von Kresse. The logical end of the next one was no less obvious. Hermann Goering, who stood shortly to become commander of all German military aviation, was steadfastly opposed to war. Swine and demon that he was, he would make every possible effort to deliver the Reich from doom.

But there was for von Kresse an unwanted question. If the destruction of Germany was the only means of destroying the Hitler regime, was it not a morally desirable goal? Von Kresse was not yet prepared to address this issue. He had not yet resolved his own moral dilemma. He had not yet decided whether it was moral that he himself had lived beyond the last war.

The count read on through the intelligence report, turning to the brief sketches of those reported to be the prince’s traveling companions. Lady Emerald Cunard, object of Ribbentrop’s clumsy flirtation and the diplomat’s compulsive correspondent, was a principal member of the entourage—a rich, powerful, supercilious, and desperately ambitious woman passing from middle age to old.

Also of importance were the Mountbattens, he the very German British naval officer so closely related to all the royal families of Europe, she the wanton English heiress with, as Ribbentrop put it, the stain of Jewish blood in her veins. The ambassador suggested a German operative might want to perform the Aryan sacrifice of sleeping with her as a means of penetrating the royal circle. Von Kresse smiled. Just Ribbentrop’s form of sacrifice.

The famous Coopers were in the party, the fading aristocratic beauty and the dissolute diplomat and politician. Their presence was reported with a strong warning. They were of the pro-French camp and critics of the Third Reich. Ribbentrop underscored the fact that Duff Cooper was a protégé of the feared and hated Churchill.

Last mentioned was a wealthy American named Henry Channon, a social climber from Chicago who had acquired the heiress to the Guinness fortune as a wife and had ingratiated himself into the prince’s favor. Ribbentrop noted that he was an admirer of Hitler’s and a friend of Germany’s.

Von Kresse refolded the papers and put them back in his pocket. Goering had told him to destroy them before leaving Germany but he had failed to do so, probably in subconscious rebellion. If someone gave him trouble about them, well, Dagne could shoot that someone.

He laughed at his little joke. She glanced up, her pale eyes disapproving. She was so little like him and her ideas were anathema to him, but he still felt the bond between them strongly. His wife, Lalka, had left him. His parents were dead. The mother of his only child was dead and the child was dead. Dagne’s was the only life still given unto his protection. For all her flaws and terrible ideas, he felt this responsibility deeply.

“Now you laugh. You are finding this journey amusing?” she asked.

“High comedy. A mirthful tonic to my fallen spirits.”

“The purpose is very serious.”

“All purpose is serious. That is why I avoid it.”

“Yet here you are.”

“As I must be someplace, better here than among all the gaudy flags of Berlin.”

She closed her book and put it aside, then lifted her veil.

“You are so scornful, Martin. Of yourself, of everything. It’s such a waste. You could contribute so much.”

“To National Socialism?”

“To Germany. God allowed you to survive the war, yet you do nothing in return.”

“I’m still puzzling over why He did it.”

“You are a noble man. He has a noble reason. There is a great and noble task that you must perform. Perhaps this undertaking of ours, perhaps this shall be that task. You are an instrument of Germany’s destiny.”

“Following the orders of the creator of the Prussian concentration camps.”

“I’m not talking politics.”

“You are always talking politics.”

She removed her hat and fluffed her hair. “We will talk about something else,” she said with a quick look at his book. “Let us discuss literature.”

He picked up von Ranke’s volume. “This is history,” he said. “And all history is political. But literature is appropriate. This conversation reminds me of a story by Henry James. You know him? The English author? He was once an American?”

“Decadent.”

“You see, politics again. James’s story was called The Beast in a Jungle. It was about a man who was convinced that something great, unique, and significant would happen to him. He lived a very long life, waiting and watching for it. But when he became old, he finally realized what that unique something was. It was that nothing at all important was ever going to happen to him. It will be the same with me. If I was made to survive the war for any reason, it was simply to demonstrate the pointlessness of war, of aristocrats, perhaps of life.”

“In Germany now, no one’s life can be pointless. Certainly not yours, Martin.”

“I remain a useless man, living a pointless life.”

“You have done significant things.”

“Yes? I have killed a schoolteacher and her children and I have slept with my sister. For one of these I received a medal. But in the Third Reich, such things are now commonplace. Ordinary.”

She turned her head and wiped her eyes. He had no idea what had compelled him to be so wounding. She would find some revenge. She always did.

“I’m sorry, Dagne.”

“So am I, Martin. So am I.”

Rouen. The train had stopped in the Rouen station. When it came to a halt, Spencer’s window framed a sign on one of the depot pillars: ROUEN. A statement of fact.

Nearly all the Hundred Years’ War was fought over this place. From here, fifteenth-century English generalissimos ruled the hapless north of France and even Paris. A last battle here had been all that saved France from being forever English. Now it was simply Rouen, a pausing on the road to the sea.

Spencer could easily take up his baggage and descend from the carriage now. He could find lodgings and become for the rest of his life a citizen of Rouen. All that he had in Paris, all that he had had wherever he lived and traveled, he could find in Rouen. A few fine cafés, a few worthwhile friends, a good woman. They would ask what had happened to C. Jamieson Spencer. Someone would remember and say, “He lives now in Rouen.” Eventually they would no longer remember.

The train lurched, groaned, then slid forward, gaining speed. A procession of depot pillars hurried by, and then there was the sudden darkness of a tunnel. When they emerged into the hazy sunlight, Spencer saw houses on a hillside among drooping trees. Soon they were in the yellow-green countryside again, and all sign of Rouen was gone. His imagined café there was gone. The charming, fleshy, mothering woman he would have chosen for himself there was gone. His life there that never was had ended.

The door to his compartment slid open. Until they had pulled into Rouen, there had been a French family with him, father, mother, two daughters, and an aunt, shabbily dressed but highly mannered, traveling first class with much custom, though they looked not well able to afford it. They had left the train in Rouen, disappearing into that life that would never be Spencer’s.

Now there was a beautiful face at the door, bright green eyes and copper hair. The young woman hesitated, then slid the door open farther and stepped inside, seating herself decorously opposite him. She was dressed all in green. He recalled that she had passed by once before, just after leaving Paris, and glanced in, when the French family had been there. She was looking at him now with both embarrassment and great curiosity.

“Excuse me,” she said. She drew her hands together nervously in her lap. She was wearing dark-green gloves and matching shoes, very expensive. She dressed better than Whitney, which could be said of few women.

“Yes?” he said. He had been about to reply in French, but she was American. She was considerably more than that. He had seen her in a newspaper photograph—within the last few days.

“This is embarrassing,” she said. “I wasn’t sure where you’d be getting off the train. I wanted to talk to you before you did. I saw you before you got on. In the station. In the Gare St. Lazare.” Her hands fluttered a moment, then came to rest, firmly. Her eyes now held his quite directly.

“Yes,” he said. “I was in the Gare St. Lazare. That’s how I came to be on this train.”

“I’ve seen you in other places. You were in the bar of my hotel. The Ritz. And at a party last night in Paris. And now you’re on this train. It’s as if you were haunting me.”

“Mademoiselle, I am often in the bar of the Ritz. I am often at the de Mornays’, as I was last night, if that’s the party you mean. The de Mornays are close friends of mine. I can’t recall seeing you in either place. I had no idea you’d be on my train. I assure you, that’s not why I’m on it.”

“I’m sorry. This must sound very queer. I’ve had a difficult time these last few days, except for yesterday. I’m traveling alone. I guess I’m a little jumpy.”

“These are jumpy times.”

“You’re a newspaperman, aren’t you? That’s what they told me, at the de Mornays’.”

“I am a newspaperman. I believe you are Nora Gwynne, the actress.”

“Yes. So you see … I mean, I thought you were somehow—I thought you might be hounding after me for a story.”

“I am not hounding you, Miss Gwynne. People get thrown together these days in a lot of strange ways. A woman died in my arms the other night, during the rioting in the Place de la Concorde. I had never seen her before.”

“I’m sorry.” Her look softened.

“You have nothing to worry about, Miss Gwynne.”

“I’m sure. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I thought I was doing, barging in on you like this.” She rose and put a gloved hand to the brass handle of the compartment door. She paused. “You are taking this train all the way to Le Havre?”

“All the way.”

“To board a ship?” She glanced at his luggage.

“Yes. I’m sailing tonight for New York.”

“May I ask on what ship?”

“The Wilhelmina.”

She pulled open the door with a quick snap of the handle and darted hurriedly into the corridor. He thought of going after her but caught himself. If he took a step in pursuit, she might well scream.

He leaned back against his seat, turning his head back toward the window. In the distance, beyond the blur of trees along the track, was a large house with a red roof. The family within might be looking out the window, watching the passing train, perhaps thinking about the passengers—where they had come from, where they were bound. Spencer could not truly answer them.

He closed his eyes. This Gwynne woman was guilty of haunting him. She had descended upon him like a biblical visitation. She was trouble. It had begun with Carlson and now would follow him all the way across the Atlantic. As she’d made obvious, they would be fellow passengers on the Wilhelmina. She would be a herald going before him, denouncing him to anyone who was interested as a newspaperman, a prying reporter.

Charles Lindbergh would definitely be interested.

Le Havre embraced the sea and the estuary of the Seine, but it seemed hotter even than Paris. What breeze there was came from the south, scarcely stirring the air in the train sheds of the elegant new Gare Maritime. Out of long habit, Spencer carried his own bags. He had but two. Setting off down the platform, he moved out ahead of the other passengers, most of whom were still gathering their own luggage or calling for porters. He heard English voices, American accents, and a large number of French, though most did not look as if they were bound for a ship. As Spencer passed a tall, gray-haired man with a limp and a very stylish woman with blond hair, he heard them speaking in German. It seemed odd for citizens of the Third Reich these days to be taking ship from a French port instead of Bremerhaven or Hamburg. Certainly they must be Swiss or Austrian, though their accents reminded him of Berlin.

He pressed on, striding out ahead of everyone, arriving at the taxi stand first. The driver was greatly pleased to see him, or at least his minimal luggage. If he were quick, he might make three trips to the quay from this train.

“Bonjour, monsieur,” he said, putting the bags in front. “Quel bateau?”

“La Wilhelmina.”

“Wilhelmina?”

“Oui. Un nouveau bateau. Un paquebot du Lage Lander.”

“Ah, oui.”

It was a very short distance from the railroad station to harborside, but the driver had to thread his way along the quays past two other liners, one of them the magnificent new Normandie. Spencer had been up to Le Havre for its departure on its maiden voyage that May, a grand occasion that had brought forth President Lebrun, Pierre Cartier, the writer Colette, Mrs. Morgan Belmont, and even the Maharajah of Karpurthala. Spencer had spent most of that afternoon aboard the Normandie, touring the decks and mingling with the passengers and guests through all their amusements as if one of them. When the summons came for reporters and visitors to return to the dock, he had done so with great reluctance. Now he was being summoned again just as commandingly, back onto a ship. Ordered off the docks. Ordered out of France.

The Dutch ship was somewhat smaller than the great French liner, and its maiden voyage was going largely unrecognized. There were workmen standing or walking about at quayside, and a small group of men in black suits had gathered at a point just in front of the prow—obviously company officials conferring where they had the broadest view of the ship that had been the focus of all their energies and was now the focus of their worries.

Spencer had the taxi driver stop near them, though it meant a fair walk with his bags to the embarkation building. After tipping the man generously with some of the expense money Carlson had given him, he watched the taxi roll away. He stood a long moment in the heat, looking up at the ship. The haze deadened her color, dulling the Prussian blue of her hull and imbuing the white of her superstructure with a dingy grayness. Still, she was a beautiful creation, with a dramatic rise of bow and beautifully flowing flare and sweep of following line. Spencer had gone to sea in not a few rotting hulks in his time, rustbuckets that seemed scarcely able to steam out of harbor. Abord the Wilhelmina, at least, it was not his life he would have to fear losing but simply all those things that made it worth living—if he failed.

He glanced about, as if one of the many human figures walking and standing about might somehow prove to be Charles Lindbergh, as if he might conclude his business with a quick, dockside interview and then be off back to Paris and Whitney.

There was no Lindbergh in view and no predatory crowd of reporters hanging about. If Lindbergh was aboard that ship, it was still Spencer’s secret.

A couple was clearing the passport officer’s station as Spencer entered. By the time he reached the counter and set down his bags, he was the only passenger present. The officer, a tall young man full of his uniform and authority, went through Spencer’s passport with overzealous care, examining each visa stamp as if it contained clues to a criminal conspiracy. Spencer had been in and out of France at least a dozen times that year, and the youthful official apparently found this exceedingly suspicious.

Spencer cursed every country’s passports and the war that had brought them into being. Before 1914 there had been no such bureaucratic requirement except for the internal passports of the Russian Empire, and a gentleman could cross frontiers wherever and whenever he wished.

He was no longer a gentleman, so it didn’t matter that he must carry a passport.

“Je suis un journaliste,” he said.

The officer squinted at him. “Pardon, monsieur?”

“Je suis un journaliste. A newspaperman. That is why I have been traveling so much.”

The man paused, then snapped shut the passport. “Avancez,” he said, handing it back to Spencer. He turned sharply, as if to attend to someone next in line, but there was no one.

A young ship’s officer standing just beyond gave Spencer an idiotic servile grin, as if this submissive expression compensated for the passport official’s rudeness and any and all other inconveniences this voyage might visit upon him. Beside the officer was a very Dutch-looking young woman, wearing a sort of naval uniform—a blue double-breasted jacket with a thin gold stripe and shoulder boards and a crisp white skirt. Spencer tried flirting with her, but she dealt with him very seriously, in the manner of the Dutch.

“Your ticket, sir.”

He handed her the envelope, which he had not yet opened. She did it for him, with a quick tear, then pulled forth the folded document.

“All is in order, sir. Welcome aboard.” She said this firmly but quietly, with only the faintest of smiles softening the line of her mouth. She seemed a little nervous.

Spencer nodded and moved on, joined instantly by two ship’s porters in red jackets and red pillbox caps. They were Asian, Malays or Javanese, with merry eyes and happy faces. Each took one of Spencer’s bags and hurried on ahead of him, up the gangway that led to gaping doors in the side of the ship at the level of main deck. As Spencer stepped aboard, he was greeted by two lines of similar Asian crewmen on either side of a red carpet rolled out over the lobby’s purple carpeting. All smiles, they chanted “Welcome, sir, to the Wilhelmina” in something approximating unison. The porters, quickening step, hurried him over to the purser’s desk, where he was asked for his ticket again by another young officer he presumed to be the assistant purser.

“Ah, yes, Mr. Spencer of Paris. Cabin 459,” he said to a clerk scribbling into register beside him. “Welcome; sir, to the Wilhelmina.”

Spencer was handing tips to the two porters and his attention was distracted. As a steward came forward to carry his bags to the cabin, Spencer suddenly bade him stop. He had barely set foot aboard ship and already his enterprise was in trouble.

“What cabin did you say?”

“Cabin 459, sir.”

“What deck?”

“‘A’ deck, sir.”

“That’s second class.”

“Yes, sir. You have a second-class ticket.”

“There must be some mistake. I can’t possibly have a second-class ticket.”

The assistant purser examined another ledger, then turned it around to face Spencer, his finger aimed at an entry bearing Spencer’s name.

“But, sir, there is no mistake. Your ticket was paid for by check, in the amount of second-class passage. You see? All very exact. Did you wish other accommodations, sir?” He glanced at Spencer’s rumpled British jacket, as if he might not be worthy of anything better.

“No. No, thank you.”

He could not believe Carlson’s infinite stupidity. The man had taken him off the Paris bureau’s biggest story of the year, perhaps of the decade, to pursue the extraordinarily elusive Charles Lindbergh. Everything depended on Spencer’s cornering Lindbergh on this crossing—on his doing so undetected by any other newsman—yet Carlson had now rendered that accomplishment virtually impossible. There was no class mobility aboard ship—certainly not upward. The wits he would need to track down Lindbergh and somehow engage him in conversation would instead have to be devoted to the task of crossing the barrier that separated second class from the upper deck exclusivity of first. Just where did Carlson think Lindbergh would be traveling? After his epochal trans-Atlantic flight, the government had sent a U.S. navy cruiser to fetch him. The fury Spencer felt for Carlson was overpowering. He was on the brink of unleashing it upon this innocent functionary.

“Is there a problem, sir?” The purser had joined them.

“Yes,” said Spencer. “I’m supposed to be in first class. My company purchased the wrong ticket.”

The purser looked over the various entries. “Your company, sir?”

“The Chicago Press-Bulletin. I—” Spencer caught himself. He had been about to identify himself as a reporter. Discovery of this could prompt Lindbergh to flee the ship here in Le Havre, or lock himself in his cabin until the voyage’s end.

“My father’s newspaper,” he said. “My father is C. Jamieson Spencer, the publisher. I always travel first class.”

His mind fetched up the remembered image of a dreadful train he had ridden through the uplands of India, sitting on the roof of a third-class coach with all the untouchables.

The purser spread his arms, palms upward. “No problem, sir. We have many empty cabins on this voyage. We will simply change your accommodations.” He scribbled on the ledger. “If you will just write us out a check in this amount.”

Carlson would kill him if he spent one penny more than had been authorized. He would report it to Chicago as evidence of Spencer’s prolifigacy.

“The policy is the same for all the shipping lines, sir. Passage payment in advance.” He stood with arms folded, waiting. Perspiration was flowing down Spencer’s cheeks and neck.

“I’ll take second class,” he said uncomfortably. “For now. If it isn’t suitable, I’ll come back to you.”

“As you wish, sir.” The purser returned to other business abruptly. His assistant eyed Spencer with some triumph, as the steward took Spencer’s bags toward the staircase that led to A deck one humiliating level below. Lindbergh could be as many as three decks above and all the way forward, by the bridge, where the best staterooms and suites likely were. For Spencer’s purposes, the Great Hero might just as well be making the crossing in the Spirit of St. Louis.

Edwina Mountbatten had opened a porthole by her bed, but with the ship still fast to the dock and not a breath of wind, it only seemed to increase the volume of heat-soaked air in her stateroom. She had removed her skirt, blouse, and jacket to change into clothes more appropriate for late-afternoon drinks, though she had not decided on which. Despite her very important guest, she wore only her slip. While she pondered what to wear, she would keep herself as comfortable as she could be in this infernal sweaty sog. Holding up one dress and then another, and then another, she finally tossed them all on her bed and sank wearily into a plushly upholstered chair, picking up her glass of vodka, lemon, and melted ice.

Her husband Dickie prided himself on being able to change clothes within three minutes, to the point of designing a damned foolish set of evening clothes with zippers he could get into in sixty seconds flat. Sometimes it took Edwina hours to change.

She crossed her still quite lovely legs circumspectly. She often sat about her bedchamber dishabillé, but the person with her now was not her husband or a lover or a servant but Mrs. Wallis Warfield Simpson.

Glancing up suddenly from her drink, Edwina caught Mrs. Simpson staring at her. The woman blushed and looked away, but not soon enough.

A chill ran over Edwina’s shoulders. There were uncertainties about Mrs. Simpson that made her very nervous. The woman was the prince’s mistress, but curious things were said about their love life and of that the prince had enjoyed with his previous mistress, Thelma Furness.

Memory increased Edwina’s agitation. Thelma’s sister, Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, had lost custody of her daughter because of an outrageously public scandal over her liaison with Lady Nada Milford-Haven in a Cannes hotel in 1931. Gloria’s sister, Consuelo “Tamar” Thaw, another notorious lesbian, was part of the traveling party. So was Wallis Warfield Simpson. She had ended her holiday abruptly, leaving the other three behind, but she nevertheless had been with them for several days, traveling with them all across France. And she did have such a masculine face.

She had often spoken to Edwina of her beauty. Lady Mountbatten assumed it was only envy. The woman herself was decidedly unbeautiful but, in her way, despite the manly countenance, deep voice, and brittle manner, she was still oddly attractive. Her nose, forehead, jaw, hands, and feet were all too large, but harmonious when observed ensemble. She was quick, smart, and carried herself well, and her body was lean and lithe enough to show her chic, understated clothes off to good advantage. The jewelry Edward showered upon her was excessive, but she wore it becomingly.

Another of Edward’s earlier mistresses, Freda Dudley Ward, was vivacious and feminine and heterosexual enough, and he had stayed with her for nearly ten years.

Edwina flushed these soiled thoughts from her mind as she might pull the chain of a water closet. They were irrelevant to the needs of her relationship with Mrs. Simpson, which was strictly utilitarian. Besides, she had had her own run-in with Lady Milford-Haven, who was married to Dickie’s brother.

“We should be underway soon,” Edwina said, leaning back her head and closing her eyes a moment. She thought of sea breezes with great yearning.

“I’m not looking forward to it, actually,” Mrs. Simpson said. Une belle laide, Cecil Beaton had called her. Beautifully ugly. “I’m not looking forward to it at all.”

“It’s only a fortnight, darling,” Edwina said with a sleepy yawn. “Think of it as rather a long party.”

Mrs. Simpson took a folded piece of blue letter paper from the pocket of her dress, glanced at it, then folded it more tightly.

“He wants to have a party this afternoon, when we cast off,” Mrs. Simpson said. “When everyone is supposed to be out on deck. Lord Brownlow and Fruity Metcalfe insist that David stay inside, at least until the ship is under way. They think there may be reporters about. There’s supposed to be an American movie actress aboard. They always attract photographers and press people. It’s so loathsome.”

If she spoke so contemptuously to impress Edwina, she erred. Edwina and Lord Louis doted on actors and actresses.

“Really?” said Edwina. “What fun. Who is it?”

“Norma? No, Nora. Nora Gwynne. She’s quite common. Irish, I believe.”

“She’s supposed to be very charming. Norma Shearer says so, at any rate.”

“Duff Cooper said she gave him a violent erection in one of her films. I told him he shouldn’t exaggerate.” She smiled, almost sweetly. Wallis Simpson had one of the most lascivious tongues in Mayfair. It was supposed to be one of her charms. She had made a few indiscreet comments about Edwina, all of which Edwina had heard about and let pass. For the duration of her liaison with Edward, Edwina would be her friend, no matter what.

“I didn’t know Duff was so keen on the cinema,” Edwina said.

“Perhaps not, but he’s certainly keen on his erections.”

Edwina said nothing. The woman wanted something but was holding back.

“I’d really rather not have a party just now,” Mrs. Simpson said. “He’s so out of sorts. Do you know that silly game he plays, when he tries to build a tower of matchsticks balanced on the top of a champagne bottle? He makes everyone who’s around him stop what they’re doing and watch. That’s what he’s been doing since lunch. But the ship keeps rocking. The silly towers keep falling over and he keeps flying into a rage. It’s quite impossible.”

Edwina felt up to a pretty good scream herself. Instead, she drank deeply of the warm lemony vodka. “Wallis. It’s because he’s out of sorts that he wants to have a party. After the terrible time we had in Paris, he deserves one. We all do.”

“I just don’t want him to start in with that heavy drinking again.”

It was the most visible measure of Mrs. Simpson’s domination over the prince, her having put an end to his practice of often getting hopelessly drunk at night. If he began to lapse, some might begin to think her hold over him was slipping. She obviously was not entirely happy with the relationship, but she seemed in no hurry to abandon it.

“Wallis. You’re simply going to have to indulge him some of the time. He’s been indulged all his life, and it won’t be long before His Royal Highness becomes Rex Imperator. That we’re his friends doesn’t change who he is.”

“I know, Edwina. I’m much more aware of that than you might imagine. I—”

She leaned forward now, the folded blue note clenched in her hand.

“Edwina,” she said, “You are my friend, aren’t you?”

“Of course, darling. How could you think otherwise?”

“And I can count on your discretion? Your complete discretion?”

“Absolutely. I shan’t even tell Dickie. What is it?”

Wallis leaned forward farther. Her voice a little tremulous. “I’m very troubled, Edwina.”

This was a confidence already shared by half of Mayfair. “I’m sorry to hear that, Wallis.”

“In fact, I’m afraid.”

“We’re quite safe now, especially once we’re out to sea.”

“No. I don’t mean that. I’m afraid of what’s about to happen, to my friendship, my relationship with David.”

“Don’t be silly. He utterly adores you.”

“That’s what I mean, Edwina. That’s why I’m afraid.”

The two women looked into each other’s eyes for a long moment, Mrs. Simpson searching, Edwina watching and waiting. The whistle of some boat sounded not far away. When it ceased, they could hear the loud scree of startled gulls. Suddenly Mrs. Simpson stood up.

“Here,” she said, pressing the folded blue notepaper into Edwina’s hand. “I really don’t want you to read this. But someone must. I have no one to turn to. Edwina, I really, really need your help.”

She turned and left the stateroom in clumsy haste, banging her leg against a side table but paying no mind. Edwina stared after her, not moving until she heard the door click shut.

The handwriting on the note was compellingly familiar. The prince and Lord Mountbatten corresponded frequently—at least as much as either of them did with anyone. “Tuesday, 1:30 o’clock A.M.,” it began.

Wallis—A boy is holding a girl so very tight in his arms tonight. A girl makes drowsel, but a boy cannot. He lies awake. He will miss a girl very much tomorrow, because he must travel separately to Le Hve. But he will see her again tomorrow night and will be such a happy boy.

A girl must know that not anybody or anything can separate WE, and that WE belong to each other for ever. WE love each other more than life. WE must be joined for ever and ever as one, in every way. A boy thrills to think of holding a girl’s hand, if she will not mind, far out on a beautiful sea, with eanum cares left far behind. God bless WE. Your David.

Edwina sat back, utterly astonished, as she rarely was at this cynical stage of her life.

“Make drowsel,” she knew, simply meant to sleep. She had overheard them using this term with one another. The “WE” was easy enough to decipher—“W” stood for Wallis and “E” for Edward. The meaning of “eanum” was beyond her, except that it seemed to connote something weak, small, and pathetic.

The essential message of the note was absolutely unmistakable, however, for all its banality. The silly little man intended to marry her. The next King of England wanted to marry a divorced, married American woman from Baltimore.

Edwina picked up her drink and began to walk about the room. Freda Dudley Ward and Thelma Furness had been ideal companions for the prince because they were so irretrievably married to men important in London society, men who conveniently viewed their wives’ royal attachments as something required of their high station. Wallis had seemed almost as logical and safe a choice. Though the Simpsons were hardly so prominent, Ernest Simpson, a Harvard-educated American who had joined the Coldstream Guards and become a British subject during the war, seemed to consider Wallis’s connection with the prince as something good for the family ship brokerage business. That she had been married once before and divorced had made her doubly safe. Anything beyond “friendship” with Edward was unthinkable, was too, too ghastly to even imagine.

Yet the whimpering little fool must be bent on it. He was steaming on through all obstacles toward inevitable disaster and caring not at all. If nothing was done about it, the monarchy could find itself in its biggest trouble since the rise of Oliver Cromwell. The great British general strike and the rise of the Socialists were not that long ago. Times were very, very bad for many of the people in England. They were weary of all British governments. If the common masses still held the royals above all the political muck, they would not for long once Edward’s scandalous self-indulgence became widely known. And there was nothing the stuffy, imperious Windsors could do about it, save hire someone to have Mrs. Simpson kidnapped. Once he became king, their royal house was a shambles.

Edwina felt a genuine pity for Wallis. Her sin wasn’t social climbing, which was a way of life for most in her circumstances, but that she had been too good at it. Her scheming pursuit of the prince’s attentions had taken her far beyond the pale, and she now had good reason to be terrified. Yet Edwina sensed something else in the ugly woman—a small, still-burning hope, a little flame of unquenched ambition. It was as if deep down she somehow yet believed that it was possible for her to become the wife of the man who would be king, that for all her fears it was worth hanging on, no matter what she might be dragged through. In asking Edwina for help, she was also seeking approving counsel, some sign that what she was doing was indeed the wisest course, that the slim chance that was the object of her small hopes actually existed.

If that were the case, then the ultimate catastrophe was inevitable. Edwina had no intention of intervening. Lord Mountbatten might if he could see it coming, but of course he wouldn’t. Edward’s stammering clod of a brother Bertie would be donning coronation robes as George VI before Dickie caught on that he’d been backing the wrong royal.

Edwina would be discreet. She would say nothing to her husband. She would be helpful and supportive of Wallis and her pathetic little dream. She would be her friend.

God save the queen.

Edwina laughed, swallowed down the remainder of her drink, then removed her slip and stood naked and sweaty. She would have another bath before she joined the others. However briefly, she would feel good again.

Captain van der Heyden had been three times down into the bowels of his ship that morning—once on a ritual inspection of his own to make certain that all was in readiness for sailing, then again to confer with the engineer, Jan Brinker, over a small problem with the steering hydraulics, and now with van Hoorn, the ranking company man from Amsterdam, who had wanted to see firsthand the segment of electrical wiring involved in the last night’s brief fire.

It was in the long bank of immense electrical boxes that constituted the main machinery supply switchboard in the after-turbo generator room. This equipment extended approximately fifty feet across, and three of the units had been scorched black from the fire and surges in current. Two of these huge boxes would have to be replaced. The surges had also burned out several of the giant resistors in the nearly seven hundred miles of electrical cable that ran through the Wilhelmina’s innards.

Brinker held an electric torch high to illuminate the burned wiring as brightly as possible. Some new cabling had been installed, its black covering, not yet painted the institutional green that covered the original equipment, standing out starkly, proclaiming the accident, the mistake.

Van Hoorn peered more closely, examining some splices that had been added.

“You are certain as to the fire’s cause?” he said, his eyes still on the cables.

“Ja. Maakt kortsluiting. The resistors at the junction box were the wrong size. We replaced them. Maakt u zich geen zorgen.”

“I do worry, Captain. Everything now depends on the Wilhelmina, and she is giving us cause to worry.” He frowned and patted the metal, as if trying to placate a huge beast.

“The radiator and fan circuits on each of these switchboards,” he said. “They’re supplied through a single-pole circuit breaker, yes?”

“Ja.”

“And this is controlled from the bridge?”

“Yes, that is correct.”

“And in the event of fire, the radiator and fans in the affected area can be shut off from the bridge?”

“Yes, this is so.”

“Well, why weren’t they? You could have contained the fire much more easily.”

“I don’t know, mijnheer. I was dealing with some passengers at the time.”

“Well, you find out what went wrong, Captain, before we sail.”

“We are going to replace two of these units and more than a dozen resistors. Our sailing will be delayed, but only an hour or so.”

Van der Heyden took a deep breath, holding back any outward sign of his increasing anxiety. If van Hoorn was trying to make a case for canceling the sailing, the captain wished he would find the fortitude to resolve the matter quickly. It was not an easy decision. Another postponement of this maiden voyage and the Lage Lander Line could find itself facing bankruptcy again. But the time for departure was nearing, and van der Heyden still had many things to do—whether they sailed or stayed.

Van Hoorn still hesitated. “You have checked the voltages?”

“Several times. All is correct.”

The company man frowned, as if any statement so confident could not possibly be correct. “I want to look at some more junction boxes.”

“Brinker will show you whatever you want to see.”

“Please accompany us, Captain. I don’t want to come to any conclusion you do not share.”

Before van Hoorn was finally satisfied, they passed through the entire length of the ship. After emerging at last by the forwardmost third-class cabins of C deck, they returned up the grand staircase to the navigation deck and van der Heyden’s cabin. The captain poured the man a small congratulatory glass of Bols, following company custom, but none for himself. He would have nothing to drink until after the last watch that night.

Van Hoorn set the drink aside and asked to see the passenger manifest again. He sat down at van der Heyden’s desk to look through it. At sea, no one would dare do that.

“Our special American passenger? He is aboard?”

“Since last night,” van der Heyden said. “He is remaining in his cabin. He will take his exercise at night. This is how he wishes it.”

“Very good. And the American actress?” She must be aboard by now. We improved her accommodations. Instead of a stateroom, we provided her with one of the suites on the sun deck. The best, actually.”

“A worthwhile investment of company resources. Anyone else of consequence?” He flipped a page and drew his finger down the next list of names.

“Cardinal Bloch, the archbishop of Wurtzburg, as you know. Also, an English traveling party booked passage late yesterday.”

“Yes? Prominent people?”

“Lord and Lady Mountbatten, Lady Diana Cooper and her husband.” Van der Heyden smiled. “And Emerald Cunard.”

“What? Lady Cunard? On our ship?”

“Yes. There’s a vote of confidence.”

“I wonder why.”

“They seem to be on a lark. Aristocrats at play, discreetly. With us they might not be noticed.”

“Anyone else?” Van Hoorn was now looking very nervous.

If van der Heyden revealed the Prince of Wales’ presence, he was sure it would prompt van Hoorn to cancel the voyage. The captain wanted to give the ship a chance—to give them all a chance.

“In the English party?” van der Heyden said. “I’m not sure about the others. There’s a man named Principus. Edvardus Principus, according to the registry.”

“Yes, I see it. Sounds Greek.”

“He’s blond.”

“Scandinavian, perhaps. That’s all? No other special guests?”

“Just ordinary passengers, although I think there are a few big bank accounts and noble titles among them. No one else particularly famous.”

Van Hoorn rose and went to the porthole. “Very few reporters,” he said somberly, as if that were a bad sign. To the captain, it had been an unexpected blessing.

“Six,” said van der Heyden. “Four Dutch, one French, one British. I have the first officer escorting them, in case any questions come up about the fire or any of the other problems. I think they’re interviewing the American actress in the first-class lounge. I’m not sure they’re even aware the Mountbattens are aboard. They’ll be leaving directly.”

“Don’t advertise the Mountbattens. We want the publicity to come on the other side of the ocean, after you’ve gotten them across. Then we want the whole world to know about the Mountbattens. And Lady Cunard. If that doesn’t reestablish our reputation, I can’t imagine what could.”

“Does that mean you want to proceed?”

“Of course. Did you have any doubt? Bring me my drink, Captain. And pour a little one for yourself. Never mind the regulations. I know you bend them on occasion.”

“As you say, Mr. van Hoorn.”

“Just don’t burst the boilers trying to make an express crossing. Safety first, no matter how long it takes.”

“Safety first.”

They stood facing each other with the porthole between them. The hazy sunlight was glinting on the water below.

Van Hoorn lifted his glass. “To your happy arrival in New York, Captain.”

“To the Wilhelmina.”

“Hear, hear.”

They drank, emptying their glasses in a swallow. Van der Heyden relaxed. The biggest decision of this voyage had now been made for him.

Spencer lay on his bed, listening to the sounds on the dock outside as he leafed through the printed directory listing the names of the passengers. There weren’t many. As he had been a late booking, his own name did not appear. He found a few others he thought he recognized, though none were friends or acquaintances. There was certainly no name on the first-class list that might be a variation of Lindbergh’s.

He dropped the directory onto the night table, hoping an addendum would be published the next day to account for late bookings. He had to find someone to get him into first class. His current situation was akin to purgatory.

The garden photograph of Whitney was atop his dresser—in this narrow cabin, almost within arm’s reach of his bed. Staring at it brought back such vivid memories. One came now of her beside him in an open car, her leg pressed against his as they sped through the Bois in the dark of a warm Paris night.

He had lied to her at their last, brief, passionate reconciliation during last night’s party. He had told her he was going back to Chicago to see to his affairs and end his relationship with the Press-Bulletin. Then he would return to Paris and live as she wished—ménage à trois, Spencer a prisoner of her money—in an idyll of museums and recitals and picnics and bistros. And wild, fast drives through the Bois at night.

Why she had believed him he could not say. But she had, with childlike happiness. In this manner he had purchased time. Whitney was his until he returned to her. If this voyage was to change his circumstances, his life, he would have the time to accommodate it, to do what had to be done.

The dockside noise outside seemed to be increasing, the activity more purposeful, the rumbles and bangings within the ship more frequent. He had hoped for time to bathe and nap before they sailed, but he’d allowed the interlude to drift away from him.

He felt the ship begin to shudder and vibrate. The steam turbines were running. Through the open porthole came music from above—the ship’s orchestra playing on deck. It was time to go to work. As he had dragged himself to his airplane in the war, as he had risen from the ditch and returned to the road in China, he rose from the bed and began to change clothes, pulling a creased blue blazer and gray flannels from the closet, getting bloody on with it.

He stopped at one of the two bars in second class for a gin and quinine, then carried it out onto the promenade deck. With so few passengers, there was plenty of spectator space at the rail. He took a place distant from the merry din produced by the band, watching with some amusement as the scatterings of people on the quay below did their best to create a celebratory noise in farewell.

The elaborate holdings of hawser and rope were undone and the ship was cast off. She came away from the dock smartly, two French tugs pushing and pulling her in a tight arc until she was pointed at the opening in the breakwater and gathering speed. The water began to hiss at her sides, audible despite the band music and horns and cheering. She was departing Le Havre as a bride might a church. Streamers were being flung gleefully and clumsily from the upper decks, and one fell over Spencer’s head and shoulder. He let it remain, his mind still on Whitney, lifting his glass toward land in a final toast to her. He drank, slowly, the glass as smooth and cool against his lip as her kiss.

He felt the streamer move, not falling, but as if it were being slowly pulled away. He turned, almost as slowly, and found himself looking into a woman’s staring face. It was a hard face, on the verge of age, with thin, unsmiling lips. But her eyes were extraordinary—huge, a haunting blue in color, and full of madness. She was thin and birdlike, her lower arms all but encased by a multitude of wooden African bracelets. She might have been very attractive once, before her lunacy. She was the kind of woman one encountered in bars rather than cafés—the kind of woman one avoided.

A large black man stood just behind her, looking elsewhere, as if embarrassed.

“Do I know you?” she asked Spencer, her voice very British.

“I do not believe that you do,” he said.

“Are you a gentleman of Paris?”

“Very much so.”

“Then I must know you.”

“No. Sorry.”

“A pity, then. Sorry.”

Her eyes never moved as she spoke, remaining fixed on his. When she finally glanced away, it was as if Spencer was released from an imprisoning grip.

“Sorry,” she repeated. “Quite, quite. Sorry.”

She took the black man’s arm and they moved off along the deck. Spencer shuddered slightly but stared after them. Hers would likely be a story of great pathos, sin, the bizarre, and—from the sound of her accent—a high birth squandered. Altogether, it would be a much more interesting story than Lindbergh’s, though that was a truth no editor of the Chicago Press-Bulletin would ever dare admit.

The shoreline was receding on either side. As they passed through the breakwater, small boats came chasing up, then fell away. The offshore mist embraced them, illuminated ahead by the diffused light from the setting sun. Behind them, the land now faded into dark shadows.

The ship’s horn thundered with a long, final farewell blast, then fell silent. Spencer lingered, transfixed, his nostrils full of the scent of the sea, his skin fresh with the sudden coolness of the landless air. The Wilhelmina was into the English Channel now, steering sharply west into the orange and pink haze. Other boats’ whistles and ships’ horns could be heard in the unseen distance, and an occasional ghostly shape would pass by. The water was churning and spewing now at the ship’s side. He turned his head to appreciate the full extent of her line, to sense her heavy load of life—cut off from the land as if by an act of God and sent into the limitless void of ocean.

Spencer suddenly felt himself utterly free of all his ties and bonds, but it was not a feeling of elation—rather, one of loneliness and helplessness. The ship sailed strongly, steadily on, but he was adrift.