Jack 1939 by Francine Mathews

on the Southampton dock,
but I do not wish to provoke an international incident. Imagine the headlines, Jack. “Ambassador’s Son Befriends Hitler’s Man in London . . .”
    Dobler had walked Jack to the waiting embassy car, tipped his hat in farewell, and watched as the driver pulled away. Jack had been grinning to himself, alone in the backseat, convinced he’d called the German’s bluff.
    But he was beginning to realize that was tough to do.
    He drew back from the window. Anger tightened in his chest. He would not let them
watch
him, like an animal in the zoo. He turned and raced from the room, down the broad flights of stairs to the entrance hall, and slid back the bolts of the heavy oak door.
    Prince’s Gate was almost empty at this hour, the early northern dark falling on pitched roofs. He turned east and pelted down the paving to the point where the street bent north, toward the park, and stopped short in Kensington Road. He craned in both directions for a glimpse of the Spider. Was that a camel’s hair coat among the multitude of grays?
    He began to run, his gait wavering from six days in rough seas, the hard surface of the sidewalk reeling up to meet his feet, his arms pumping and his breath tearing in his lungs. Years of sprinting down football fields and indoor pools could not compensate for weeks of lying at Mayo. The threat of sickness caught at his throat. The camel’s hair coat was within yards now. Well-bred Englishmen spun out of his path. He thrust between two women and clapped his hand on the Spider.
    The man whirled to face him.
    Jack dropped into a boxer’s crouch, fists clenched and mind turning over his coach’s half-remembered lessons.
No gloves.
He’d break his hand on the Spider’s jaw—
    But it was not the Spider.
    Of course it was not the Spider.
    A middle-aged Englishman, with a look of terror on his face. He raised a furled umbrella against the coming annihilation.
    Jack eased up. “Sorry,” he gasped, his breath still ragged. “I thought you were somebody else.”
    “
Bloody
Americans,” the women seethed behind him.

FOURTEEN. SINNERS AND SAINTS
    JACK FOUND HIS LITTLE BROTHERS, Bobby and Teddy, established at one end of the long dining-room table while a woman he assumed was Teddy’s latest nanny sat nearby, correcting the boy’s use of fork and knife. Teddy had learned, in the past year, to hold the fork backward and shovel peas with the knife—Continental manners that would be punched out of him in boarding school back home, Jack thought. His little brother had just turned seven and was the baby of the family—sturdy and cheerful and prone to sliding down the banisters at Prince’s Gate. Bobby was six years older, taciturn and nervy and often alone—a touchy kid, who lashed out bitterly when he was hurt, which seemed to be most of the time. Bobby hated his London school and had made no friends. Jack would have liked to have helped him somehow, but he barely knew either of the boys. They were a different generation, growing up behind his back.
    Teddy prattled to the nanny as he ate and Bobby stewed in silence, his fork swirling aimlessly around his plate.
    “Hey, brats.” Jack tossed his hat down the table. It came to rest between the two of them. “How’s tricks?”
    “Jack!” Teddy ran to him, all draggled socks and scabby knees in his gray flannel shorts. “Daddy
said
you were coming today. I was going to wait up.”
    “Indeed you were not, Master Teddy,” the nanny said.
    “I was, too! There’s
hours
before bed yet.”
    Jack lifted him a few inches off the floor in a hug. Teddy was as solid as a truck; Jack’s back spasmed.
    “You missed my birthday,” the boy said accusingly.
    “I was stuck on a ship. In the middle of the ocean.”
    “You could’ve sent a telegram. Birthday wishes. Did you bring me a present?”
    “I thought we’d pick something out here. Your choice,” Jack improvised.
    “Take me to the zoo tomorrow! There’s a baby