Allenbee had been nervous ever since making contact with Willoughby and Penelope two weeks earlier. There had been the cocktail party to introduce him to the bluebloods and a full week of packing and waiting around before the train left. But once the long private train had pulled out of Grand Central Station, Allenbee had relaxed. He could not imagine a safer place to be than on a millionaire’s private Pullman car traveling south to the most isolated private playground in the world.
The trip had been a revelation, an introduction to a pampered world of self-indulgent wealth beyond his imagination. The private Pullman cars were a marvel of utilization. Every square inch seemed to be used up. Crammed into a sixty-five- foot car were a parlor, kitchen, dining room, two staterooms, a private bedroom and three toilets. Each car was unique. Tiffany glass fans and windows, chandeliers and candelabras, custom made Pintsch compressed oil lamps, a homage to earlier days, were common, as were electric fans since smoke and cinders from the engine made open windows hazardous and uncomfortable. The twelve private cars on the train had one thing in common—indulgent elegance.
Allenbee had used the train trip to familiarize himself with his wealthy victims. In the afternoons or after dinner in the evening he sat with them as they sipped Jameson’s Irish whiskey, Old Crow or John Dewar’s Extra Special scotch, smoked their Overland cigars, and subtly matched egos, each one casually trying to top the other.
Isolationism and profits dominated conversations. The talk was about impending war and the need for America to stay out of it. It quickly became obvious to Allenbee that most of these men wanted the U.S. to remain neutral. Allenbee listened, studying these men who mastered the country’s industry and finance. Fortunes—or greater fortunes—could be made by supplying the contestants on both sides without actively becoming involved in the wars now raging in both China and Europe.
On the last night, they were the guests of Grant Peabody, a Massachusetts industrialist who manufactured ball bearings and had the most opulent dining car on the train. It was mirrored, draped in scarlet with satinwood trim, had a crystal chandelier, gilded sconces, gold candelabras and Louis XIV furniture. Fresh flowers were provided at every stop. The meal was a connoisseur’s delight: a choice of oysters or terrapin soup, venison, pheasant or grilled salmon, several kinds of vegetables, Piper-Heidsieck Brut and G. H. Mumm extra dry champagnes, along with a variety of fresh berries for desert.
Throughout the meal, Allenbee quietly imagined how this pampered and self-indulgent millionaire would deal with the danger, the heat, the discomfort, the odors, the cramped quarters and rancid food of a U-boat on patrol.
Each night during the five-day trip, Allenbee—and he was Allenbee now, immediately entrenched in his new identity— Penelope and Sir Colin gathered in Willoughby’s stateroom to discuss the individual millionaires and revise the list of the twenty-seven men they would kidnap.
Now, sitting on the beach, he was savoring the mission, the power of knowing that the fate of America’s wealthiest men was literally in the palm of his hand.
Penelope suddenly shuddered.
“Are you getting cold?” Allenbee asked.
She shook her head. “I was just thinking about the submarine. It terrifies me.”
“Don’t worry about it. Leiger’s the best skipper in the whole Unterseeboot command.”
“I tend to be a bit claustrophobic.”
“Well, you’d better get over it by tomorrow night,” he responded brusquely.
Since they had arrived three days earlier, he and Penelope had been the talk of the island. Like true lovers, they wandered around the small residential compound, arm in arm, smiling, amiable, whispering to each other as lovers do, except their whispers were hardly the stuff of lovers. Allenbee had observed every facet of life on this secluded isle, revising every phase of their operation to conform to layout, temperament and time.
They had located the radio room, the phone exchange, the gun room, where most of the hunting weapons were displayed in locked glass cabinets. They studied the access to the dock, distances from one place to another, and the idiosyncrasies of the individuals. The previous night they had charted the route of the three guards, who were unarmed.
Allenbee leaned over and stared down at the map. They had walked off the various distances from place to place. The yacht dock, which was empty now, was two hundred yards from the clubhouse dining room. The radio room was a hundred yards beyond the clubhouse adjacent to the indoor tennis courts. The guards spent most of their time on the dock, making a sweep around the cottages, the Sans Souci apartments and the clubhouse, once an hour.
He would make his move after 6:30 when everyone was in the dining room. He had to take out the three guards and the radio operator, destroy the radio and the phone switchboard, and be back to seize the dining room by 7:30, when the U-boat was supposed to dock. Then he would hold everyone at bay until the U-boat patrol came ashore to help load the hostages aboard. He could not count on Willoughby or the woman for anything except to get the kitchen help, children and servants into the main dining room at precisely 7:30.
He looked at his watch. At ten, the radio operator would close down his station for the night. He would have to break into the radio shack and radio the U-boat:
“One, seven... the ghost has risen.”
Decoded: U-17. . . all clear for 19:30 tomorrow.
At one A.M., Keegan and Vanessa were in his kitchen making dressing for the Thanksgiving turkey. He stood over a wooden chopping block, dicing celery. Vanessa was sitting on the counter behind him, massaging his back with her feet. They had decided to cook dinner for Marilyn and her husband and Dryman, who had decided to spend his separation furlough in Keegan’s guest room.
“1 had to give up my plane, but I don’t have to give up the bar and the Rolls-Royce yet” is how he had put it.
“You’re sure this can’t wait until morning?” Vanessa asked.
“This is an old family recipe,” Keegan answered. “It has to bubble all night.” He plunged his hands into the bready mixture and began kneading it. “I promise you, the meal I cook tomorrow will make the chef on Jekyll Island look like a dishwasher. You’ll be glad you stayed here.”
“I’m already glad I stayed here.” She wrapped her arms around his shoulders.
“A fine time to get cozy,” he said, holding up his sticky hands. He twisted his head around and kissed her. “You’re sure you don’t miss the old days?”
“This year there are thirty-eight or thirty-nine plus guests,” she said. “It’ll be a zoo.”
“I would really have fit in well,” said Keegan. “Walking around in my knickers swatting golf balls.”
She looked at him slyly.
“You could flirt with the ladies.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“There’s one, Lady Penelope Traynor. She’d catch your eye.”
“What’s her father do, supply gold to the treasury?”
“He’s a journalist. She travels with him everywhere. If he weren’t so old I’d suspect incest.”
“You really are bitchy at times, Vannie.”
“I know,” she said with a laugh. “Anyway, you wouldn’t have a chance with her, she’s found a beau.” She arched her eyebrows and looked down her nose at Keegan, “John Ward Allenbee, the Third.”
“The Third, no less.”
“They make a grand couple, a union conceived in boredom. That cocktail party the other night cured me forever. It was so boring it was sinful.”
“I thought they were old friends of yours.”
“She is. . . well, not an old friend. She and her father have been going down to the island for years. Usually as guests of Grant Peabody. Everybody coddles old Willoughby because of that column he writes in the newspaper. She’s quite a dish, but a very cold dish.”