“Jekyll has a somewhat checkered history. Among other things, the last slave ship to come to this country unloaded its unfortunate cargo on the island. I won’t bore you with history for the moment except to tell you it is now the richest, most exclusive private club in the world. In 1885, a group of America’s richest men bought the island and established it as a private playground. J. P. Morgan, Marshall Field, the Vanderbilts, George Pullman, James Hill, Richard Crane, the Goodyears, the Astors, the Rockefellers, Joseph Pulitzer . . you understand what I am saying? The richest, most powerful men in the United States. The list goes on and on.”
He paused for effect. Allenbee leaned closer, studying its location among a string of other islands that dotted the southern coast.
“Through the years, they have built a rather splendid clubhouse, two apartment buildings and several what we jokingly call ‘cottages.’ The first ones were relatively modest. But as time went on and their egos began to clash, these so-called cottages got more and more lavish.
“Since the early thirties, a group of regulars consisting of twenty-seven families have been going every year for Thanksgiving and returning just before Easter. Penny and I first started going down as a guest of the Vanderbilts. We’ve been going on this jaunt off and on since then. The first trip, the very first time, it occurred to me that it would be a relatively simple thing to lift one or two of them. Then I thought more about it, Why not get them all? I took the idea to Vierhaus and he took it to the Führer who was fascinated with the idea.”
He turned to Allenbee.
“These men are the fatted pigs of American industry and society,” he said, his eyes aglow with excitement. “Think of it, Ward . . . the captains of America’s ships of state, some of the richest and most influential families in America with billions in foreign banks . . . all together at one time in one place, isolated from the mainland, literally unprotected. As the Yankees say, sitting ducks.
“Oil, steel, coal, transportation, the press, shipping, arms, munitions, automobiles, banking. The stock market! The heads of two of the biggest brokerage firms in America. My God, these are the men, Allenbee, who will create America’s arsenal if it goes to war with us. In fact, they are already providing England with the tools to fight us.”
Allenbee lit a small cigar with his gold lighter. He stared at the map without speaking, his face an unemotional mask.
“The plan is simple,” Willoughby continued. “We have been invited down for the first three weeks of the season. A U-boat is at this moment sequestered on Grand Bahama Island, approximately two hundred miles to the south. She will come up the coast on the night of November 23rd
“Thanksgiving?” Allenbee asked.
“Precisely. The U-boat will dock at the yacht pier and we will then take twenty-seven of the richest men in this country hostage, remove them from the island and take them back to Grand Bahama. We will negotiate with Roosevelt. If the U.S. remains completely neutral, when the war is over they will be released.”
“How do we get them off this island?”
“Another U-boat will meet us in Andros. The hostages will be split into two groups, to reduce crowding on the submarines. They will be transported to a mother ship in the mid-Atlantic and from there a clipper can take them to Spain. We can have them on our soil in . . . seven days.”
“And this was your idea?” he said finally.
Willoughby nodded, waiting for his reaction. None came. The man who was now Allenbee stood up and walked to the desk, studying the papers and documents and then the map on the wall.
“The U-boat is already in place,” said Willoughby. “The coded message you will send to the U-boat is in this envelope. It is in the Drei cipher. Not even I know what it is.”
He handed the envelope to Allenbee who tapped it against his cheek for a moment or two.
“And when do we do this?”
“The private train leaves in ten days. The trip down takes five. The timing is perfect. Poland is ours. France is in turmoil. The British have four divisions in France along the western lines. If America is neutralized, France and England will have to sue for peace.”
“That’s an oversimplification.”
“Not at all. The Wehrmacht will be on the coast, ready to invade. And jolly old England will be sitting out there all alone with her bloody pants down . .
“And,” Allenbee said, interrupting him again, “we’ll have the industrial and financial power of America in our hands.”
“Exactly.”
“What made such a good Nazi out of a stuffy old British bastard like you, Willoughby?” Allenbee said in a monotone, his expression still hiding his reaction to the scheme.
Willoughby chuckled. He sat down behind his desk and leaned back in his chair.
“1 interviewed the Führer for the first time in 1927,” he said. “He was nothing then—but I could feel his power. Then I became a disciple of Mein Kampf I’ve worked for Jews for years, been exploited by them for years. The Empire is finished, Allenbee. That faggot, Edward, running off with the American bitch. Canada gone. India will be gone. Just a matter of time. A great empire dead of dry rot and run by gutless ninnies. Need I go on?”
Allenbee slowly shook his head. “And you, Lady Penelope?”
“What has England ever done for me?” she said coldly.
He lit another cigar. “What’s my cover?”
“Why, you and Penelope are betrothed, old boy,” Willoughby said with an almost mischievous grin. “We’ll announce it here at a cocktail party two nights before we leave, that way there won’t be time for anyone to check on your background, if they so desire, which I doubt. We’ll be going down in Andrew Gahagan’s private car. There w11 be twelve private cars on the train. I’ll write the first story about the coming nuptials—parental pride and all that. If someone in the press begins to look too carefully into your background, it will be too late. We’ll be off to Georgia.”
“And what’s our story?” he asked Lady Penelope.
“I met you on our last trip to the Orient,” she said. “We fell in love in Hong Kong and you followed me back. All very romantic.”
“They’ll welcome you with open arms,” said Willoughby. “I’ve always written lovely stories about the place so they coddle me. You’ll find that the very rich are just as vain as anyone else, perhaps more so.”
“Tell me more about the plan. I don’t need lectures on human nature.”
“Quite. The island’s contained, only two miles wide at its broadest and about five miles long. The cottages are all in a nice, tight little cluster around the clubhouse less than a hundred yards from the docking facilities for their yachts—plenty deep enough to bring our sub in and take thirty people aboard.”
“1 thought you said twenty-seven.”
“Well, there’s you and me and Penny, we’ll have to leave. I will act as the negotiator.”
“Okay.” He stared at the smaller map for a while. “So there will be twenty-seven millionaires, their wives and guests, is that it?”
“Actually thirty-two. When we conceived this plot, twenty- seven regulars and their guests went down to the island every year. Since then the players have changed a bit.”
“And we take twenty-seven of them?”
“The list is right here,” Willoughby said. “We can take our pick. But it is my understanding that thirty is the limit.”