Charming. Reckless. Brilliant. Deadly. A young Jack Kennedy travels to Europe on a secret mission for Franklin Roosevelt as the world braces for war. It’s the spring of 1939, and the prospect of war in Europe looms large. The United States has no intelligence service. In Washington, D.C., President Franklin Roosevelt may run for an unprecedented third term and needs someone he can trust to find out what the Nazis are up to. His choice: John F. Kennedy. It’s a surprising selection. At twenty-two, Jack Kennedy is the attractive but unpromising second son of Joseph P. Kennedy, Roosevelt’s ambassador to Britain (and occasional political adversary). But when Jack decides to travel through Europe to gather research for his Harvard senior thesis, Roosevelt takes the opportunity to use him as his personal spy. The president’s goal: to stop the flow of German money that has been flooding the United States to buy the 1940 election—an election that Adolf Hitler intends Roosevelt lose. In a deft mosaic of fact and fiction, Francine Mathews has written a gripping espionage tale that explores what might have happened when a young Jack Kennedy is let loose in Europe as the world careens toward war. A potent combination of history and storytelling, Jack 1939 is a sexy, entertaining read. Francine Mathews is the author of more than twenty novels of mystery, history, and suspense. Her historical thriller The Alibi Club was named one of the fifteen best novels of 2006 by Publishers Weekly . A graduate of Princeton and Stanford, she spent four years as an intelligence analyst at the CIA and presently lives and works in Colorado. Part One WINTER ONE. PLATFORM 61 A BITTER COLD WEDNESDAY in February, nearly midnight. Jack strolled out of Grand Central Terminal and up Park Avenue to the Waldorf-Astoria, carrying his ancient suitcase. Seventeen hours on the 20th Century Limited, the most exclusive and luxurious train in America, and he felt as battered as if he’d traveled by camel. He hadn’t eaten much more than a Parker House roll. He hadn’t slept, either. His skin was drawn tight across his cheekbones and his eyes had the feeling of August on the Cape—too much sun and salt ripping across the Wianno’s bow. The hotel doorman was looking at him as though he were a Bowery bum in search of a heating grate. His clothes were a rumpled mess—they always were; his mother was constantly nagging him about it—but the Waldorf was Kennedy territory. His father had lived here for a year when Jack was a kid, and he still stayed at the hotel whenever he came to New York. His mother preferred the Plaza—and booked it whether Dad was at the Waldorf or not. It was a metaphor for their marriage. Never mind separate beds; Joe and Rose got separate hotels. “Checking in, sir?” the doorman inquired frigidly. Jack handed him the suitcase. The man’s arm sagged from the weight of his books. “I think my father already has a suite. Ambassador Kennedy?” “Of course.” The doorman snapped his ?ngers for a bellboy, his relief obvious. “Welcome to the Waldorf-Astoria.” “Thanks.” He thought about tipping the guy, but before he could ?nd a quarter in his pants pocket, a hand came down on his shoulder. A surprisingly heavy hand. Like a cop’s. “Mr. Kennedy?” He turned around. “Yes?” There were three of them—Foscarello, Casey, and Schwartz, as he would learn later. They wore trench coats and snap-brim fedoras, and although they bore no relation to one another, their faces had a blunt-featured sameness. Schwartz was in charge of this cutting-out expedition and it was he who’d clapped his hand on Jack’s shoulder. He was four inches shorter than Jack but his hips and chest had the centered mass of a wrestler. Jack could feel the doorman watching him; he saw the bellboy halt in his tracks. And so he ?ashed his smile at the men who were not cops, and said, “Gentlemen. What can I do for you?” THE MAN IN THE WHEELCHAIR couldn’t sleep, but that was nothing new. Because his days were ?lled with too much talk and competing bids for attention, he’d made a habit of insomnia; he thought more clearly in the emptiness of midnight. Four hours of peace were his as the train rolled north from Washington, and he’d spent some of it reading the manila ? le that Ed Hoover had sent over from the Bureau that morning. When his eyes grew tired, he stared blankly at the protective steel louvers that striped his private Pullman’s windows, thinking. He was pulled up in the lee of a desk bolted to the train car’s ?oor. It was covered with cables from Europe. He had owned this job for nearly eight years now, and the insomnia was building with the threat of war, a continuous adrenaline feed into his bloodstream. It was sapping his strength and his life, but he could no more give it up—this excitement like a second pulse throbbing beneath his skin—than he could choose to walk again. He knew, better than any man in America, just how critical the work was and how little time he might h