The countdown continues. Taking London goes on sale just two months from now. In the meantime, here's a little Easter gift for all my readers. I've long threatened to write a fiction piece. For the past few months, as part of my daily warm-up, I've written a little of this and a little of that. No title yet. Not sure if this stab at fiction will ever see the light of day but it's been a lot of fun. I hope you enjoy this sample, and have a great Easter!
Chapter One
August 30, 1939
New York, New York
4 p.m.
"Bonjour."
Fitzgerald Martin wedges his dogeared phrase book into a rear pocket of his Levi's. Right fist grips a three-year-old gym bag with Olympic rings branded into the leather. He walks fast along the Hudson waterfront, searching for his ship to France. He's headed for Pier 88 and Normandie.
Fitz passes De Grasse's empty berth. He nervously taps the stiff new passport in his right front pocket. Then his left, to make sure he feels the bulge of his wallet. Just to make sure they're where they should be. Then each one again. He knows it's compulsive and doesn't care.
Stay in New York.
It would be so easy.
Get a job. Find a new girl. Move on.
War is coming. The dockside smells like diesel and fear. A tugboat horn. Clang of s ship's bell. August humidity. Travelers hustling to their ship, tickets in hand, dragging suitcases and children. Mighty ocean liners dock side by side like runners on the line, waiting to sprint across the Atlantic, stacks puffing smoke. Bremen, Normandie, Aquitania — German, French, British, just like the battle lines in Europe. The New York Times says war could start tomorrow. These could be the last crossings for months.
Fitzgerald Martin is desperate to be away.
Sightseers with nothing better to do on a Wednesday afternoon stand in place, ogling this special moment in history, titillated by the morbid thought that these powerful ships could be sunk, tons of steel and hundreds of passengers condemned to the deep. Fitz continues pressing through the crowds: cigarette smoke, the garlic and grease of a vendor's cart, cop in a blue uniform swinging a nightstick like a character in a movie, stale whiskey breath, a new mother with baby vomit on her shoulder but no baby. She looks Fitz straight in the eye as if knowing his secret but says nothing.
"Bonjour."
She looks away. He says it again but this time not to her. Quietly, to himself, needing to get the accent just right. First impressions are everything. Something as simple as saying hello could have a firm impact on this next phase of his life.
"Bonjour." This time with upward inflection to show optimism.
Bremen casts a long shadow. Twin stacks, hull painted black. Berlin is waiting. Germans in perfectly straight lines wait to board. From way up on the main deck, the pop of a solitary champagne cork. No U-boat is going to sink this luxurious beast. That big red swastika flying over her decks tells every German skipper she's off limits.
Fitz' shoulder slams into a lone man rushing to the Bremen, spinning them both sideways. The stranger's hat falls off, revealing slick blond hair with a part on the left. Early twenties, face like a greyhound, annoyed. "Pardon," Fitz says with a hurried French inflection, snapped back into the moment.
"It's nothing," replies the man in superior Prussian. He picks up his hat and glares. The German does a double-take. "It's you," he mumbles.
"Luther," Fitz acknowledges coldly, recognizing him in an instant. The shock of the chance meeting wears off fast. But it's Tobias Luther who gets in the last shot.
"I was the better man that day. I would have won. You know that, right?"
A smirking Luther is gone before Fitz can set him straight, hustling home like the good Nazi that he is.
De Grasse is now somewhere out in the Atlantic, bound for Cherbourg, in a hurry to beat the war. Room for 1,200 passengers but only sailed with 134. Fitz should have been one of them. But as he stood in line to purchase his ticket something told him the French liner was doomed. So, he booked passage on Normandie. He spent the additional night in Manhattan wondering whether that was his gut talking or a quiet voice of fear telling him not to go into the war zone at all.
Now, Fitzgerald wishes he'd sailed on De Grasse. Normandie is the biggest, fastest, and most luxurious ship in the world — a rich French target begging for a German torpedo to split her hull. Hitler would cackle at news of her sinking. Probably award some lucky bastard an Iron Cross. But she's also the last ship leaving for France. Now it's Normandie or nothing.
Fitz has the routing memorized: New York to Le Havre. Le Havre to Marseilles. Marseilles to Algeria and a little town named Sidi Bel Abbes, there to find French Foreign Legion headquarters, volunteer to fight as a legionnaire, and be given a new French name.
If allowed to choose, it will be D'Artagnan, like the musketeer.
The young athlete makes a mental note to do push-ups and sit-ups during the crossing. Maybe even run on deck if they'll let him.
Fitzgerald takes off his hat and pushes a hand through his tangled brown hair. Total strangers do an abrupt double take. Some stare. He slams the hat down hard on his head and ignores the looks. Fitz wonders why in the world anyone would want to be famous. It's horrible.
For a moment, just a moment, nausea and homesickness take over.
Fitz forces his way through the crowd, ticket is in his valise, as he now calls his gym bag. The more French words he adopts right now, the easier the transition into the Legion, where he will speak the language all the time.
Finally, Normandie. She towers over 88, a hundred feet high and three football fields long. Black hull, white superstructure, three red funnels. Twelve decks. Top speed a remarkable thirty-two knots, fast as a battleship. Able to cross the Atlantic in four days. Never in his life has Fitzgerald stood in the shadow of something so large. It's impossible to imagine that anything in the world, even Nazi torpedoes, could sink this behemoth.
A single narrow bridge connects Normandie to the dock. No one stands in line. Fitz steps smartly to the gangplank.
A security guard blocks his path. Tailored uniform with piping and epaulets. Normandie embroidered above the left front pocket in peignot font. "Help you?" the man says like a New Yorker but with a smooth Parisian accent. Barely older than Fitz. Tanned, hair slicked down and parted, a faint smell of rose water.
Fitz holds out his ticket. "Bonjour." A bit rough.
"Bonjour." Like poetry.
"I'd like to come aboard."
"But why?"
"I have a ticket."
"I can see that. But why do you want to get on board?"
"It says here," Fitz insists, doing his best not to sound panicked. "That we depart in two hours."
"Cancelled," replies the guard, shrugging his shoulders and pursing his lips in a way Fitzgerald considers uniquely French.
"I have a ticket."
"The voyage is cancelled."
"Now see here, I need to get to France."
The guard pretends Fitz no longer exists. He lights a Gitanes and turns his back, lifting his eyes to appreciate the sweeping lines of Normandie's upper deck.
"I came all the way from California!"
The guard flicks his hand in dismissal.
Fitz has a few choice things he would like to say. Might even throw a punch, though Lord knows he's used up his allotment of stupid impulsive moments. He turns. Walks ten steps. Drops his valise — gym bag, he tells himself, scorning his pretensions. Then he turns and charges back toward the guard, deciding a punch in the mouth is just what this situation requires.
A booming voice stops him.
"Time magazine, am I right?"
A lot of Chicago and a little something British in the accent.
Fitz turns and confronts a handsome man scarcely older than himself, dressed in a thousand-dollar suit. Silk school tie. Not an ounce of body fat. A beautiful red-haired woman who looks like a movie star stands at his side.
The man smiles broadly in that easy way of someone at home in his own skin. Extends his hand. "Billy Fiske. Bobsled. '28 and '32. This is Rose. You ran the 1500 in `36, am I right?"
Fitz shakes his hand. Fiske is legit. Olympians know Olympians.
"Fitzgerald Martin. Yep, that's me."
"I've read all about you, Fitzie. And I can well imagine why you'd want to run away.”
"Now let's see about getting you to Europe. I'm going there to fight. Are you?"