Jack 1939 Read Online Free PDF Page A

Roosevelt’s nostrils, veiling his face for an instant. “Talk to anyone who’ll agree to see you, in London and Paris and Munich and Prague. Chat up Stalin himself and Hitler into the bargain, if you can pencil yourself onto their dance cards.”
    Jack nodded, but his brows pulled together slightly. “Forgive me, sir—but aren’t dance cards my father’s job?”
    There was a silence, the heavy kind that falls over a chessboard when a player considers checkmate. There were a number of questions within Jack’s question, a number of possible answers. The notion of loyalty—and of dividing it—hovered over their heads. Then Roosevelt smiled. It was, Jack thought, his characteristic smile—sharp enough to slit throats.
    “Your father is tied down in London. You’re a free agent. And to be honest, Jack . . . I can’t trust the State department with this. It’s a different kind of job.”
    And then the President lowered his voice and stabbed the desk in front of him with one long forefinger and took Jack into his confidence—right into his breast pocket.
    “I’ve decided to run for a third term,” he said.
    Jack frowned. “Is that legal?”
    “Of course. It’s just never been done before.”
    “Bucking history, aren’t you, sir?”
    “—Because George Washington thought eight years should be enough for any man? He never met Hitler, Jack.”
    The conversation was increasingly unreal, as though his tiredness and the stale underground air of the Pullman were lulling him to sleep. He blinked at Roosevelt and tried to argue, but the President forestalled him.
    “I’m afraid for this country. Afraid of what will happen if an isolationist gets his hands on power. Somebody who’ll wash his hands of Europe and hope the Germans never come calling. Somebody who’ll hide his head in the sand until it’s bombed out beneath him.”
    “An isolationist would be right up Hitler’s alley,” Jack agreed.
    “That’s why he’s trying to buy one. To install in the White House.”
    He stared at Roosevelt. “What do you mean?”
    “The Germans are flooding Democratic precincts all over the country with cold, hard, cash.” Roosevelt smiled thinly. “Money that people need, money that Regular Joes can give their wives and children. Money to pay for coal and bread and a new pair of shoes. Provided they vote the way they’re told. Which will certainly not be for me.”
    “How much money are we talking about?” Jack asked.
    Roosevelt adjusted his spectacles, well aware that price tags never shocked a Kennedy.
    “Ed Hoover puts it at about a hundred and fifty million.”
    “Marks?”
    “Dollars.”
    Jack whistled thoughtfully. “He actually thinks he can
buy
an American election?”
    The President’s fingers fluttered. The cheroot’s tip described a glowing arc. “You think it hasn’t been done before?”
    After that, Jack gave up questioning the strangeness of the night, his own exhaustion, the intimacy of the hidden train car, or the fact that several floors above him, people tossed restlessly in the Waldorf’s beds. He was talking conspiracy with Franklin Roosevelt. He recognized some of the names the President dropped like cooling ash on his Pullman floor: Democratic labor leaders, union people, local bosses, state senators. Isolationists to a man. All ready enough to take a Nazi buck and kick the one guy willing to fight them out of power.
    “We know Hermann Göring proposed the plan,” Roosevelt was saying. “We know Hitler approved it. What we don’t know is how a hundred and fifty million is getting into all these men’s pockets, in Ohio and Pennsylvania and the coal mines of West Virginia. That’s a hell of a lot of money, Jack, to send over from Germany in a diplomatic pouch. We have to find who’s running the network—and how.”
    “When you say you can’t trust the State department—”
    “I mean I can’t trust anybody right now. Particularly over at State. Cordell Hull’s an