Message For Hitler Read online

  Contents

  COVER

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Map of England-1942

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  EPILOGUE

  Good reviews are better than maraschino cherries

  THE ADVENTURE BEGINS:

  THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES!

  MORE BONUS MATERIALS!

  AUTHOR'S NOTES

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Cate M. Ruane

  Copyright © 2018 by Cate M. Ruane

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the author constitutes unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from this book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the author at www.catemruane.com

  Foxford Press, Asheville, NC

  First American Edition, July, 2018

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018950613

  ISBN-13: 978-1-948907-03-3

  To Glenda.

  PROLOGUE

  Somewhere in The English Channel

  A FISHING BOAT BOBS on choppy waters, as its captain scans the horizon with a spyglass. He tilts his wrist and moonlight illuminates the crystal on his watch.

  “They’re late,” he says.

  Inside the cabin, a radio operator taps out a message—the same message he’s been sending for more than an hour. He adjusts his headset, as though that will help, then shakes his head, “Negative,” he says.

  A crewman cranes his neck out the porthole and shouts, “Still no contact, Captain.”

  Just then, a whitecap rocks the boat, almost capsizing it. The radio operator is thrown against a pile of nets, but manages to hold onto the radio set.

  “We have contact!” he yells.

  The crewman shouts, “Contact, sir.”

  “Obviously, you idiots,” says the captain as he watches a thousand tons of steel rise from the waters. He waits until the submarine has surfaced, then orders the crew to come up as close as they dare. When the forward hatch swings open, two figures emerge from the belly of the submarine. The crew helps them aboard the fishing boat.

  The captain turns toward his new passengers. “Welcome aboard,” he says. Noticing their uniforms for the first time, he begins to laugh. He straightens his back and executes a fast and sharp salute, “It is always a pleasure to be of service to the Royal Air Force.”

  Both passengers turn toward the submarine, bidding its crew farewell. They raise their right arms, palms perfectly flat. “Heil Hitler,” they shout in unison. The salute is returned and the hatch shut.

  The German U-Boat vanishes below the waters of the English Channel.

  The captain says, “Back to England, boys. Nice and slow now.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  London, England

  I WAS WARM AND TOASTY in the back seat of the Rolls, on my way to meet my brother Jack in London, when Lord Sopwith—my guardian for the duration—said, “Duncan here will drop me at the Air Ministry, then take you around to the Eagle Club. Will that suit, old boy?”

  “Boy oh boy, sir—does it ever!” I said.

  My mouth began watering. The American Eagle Club was a joint to boost the morale of Americans serving in the British Armed Forces. They dished up peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on real Wonder bread, and cheeseburgers with fries and a Coke. With any luck, we’d get s’mores for desert—toasted marshmallows and Hershey bars squashed between two crisp graham crackers. Washed down with a Yoo-hoo, it was the perfect meal.

  I’d been to the Eagle Club before—a special guest of my brother Jack, who joined up to fly with the Royal Air Force before we Americans had the sense to start fighting off Adolf Hitler. Except for the squadron leader, who was British, all the pilots in my brother’s squadron were Yanks. Winston Churchill used the Eagle Squadron pilots to get America off the fence. He made sure their photographs appeared in Life magazine and Colliers, looking dashing in their flight suits, with parachutes strapped on their backs in case they had to jump from a burning airplane. They showed up in Pathé newsreels, dogfighting in their Spitfires against the German Luftwaffe. Getting metals pinned to their chests by the King and Queen of England. A Kansas girl, on a movie date with her Joe Shmoe boyfriend, took one look at them pilots and started swooning. Because of this, every man from sea to shining sea wanted to fight the Nazis. Ma called it propaganda, but it worked.

  “I’ll be back Sunday night, sir,” I told Lord Sopwith. “My brother will take me back to Warfield Hall on a Triumph motorcycle filled up with high-octane aircraft fuel.”

  “Then you’ll be back in time for dinner, no doubt,” said Lord Sopwith, adjusting his 14-karat gold wire frame glasses. “Invite your brother to join Lady Sopwith and me, will you? Just the thing—a good chat with a flyboy. Puts everything into perspective. Can’t have too much theory, what?”

  Lord Sopwith was an aviation pioneer. His company, Hawker Aircraft, made the Hurricane—the fighter plane my brother was flying when he shot down his first German plane. My guess was Lord Sopwith was headed to the Air Ministry to discuss his latest invention. He was working on top-secret airplane designs—very hush-hush.

  “And you’ll be billeted with the squadron?” he asked. “Should be jolly good fun being so close to the action.”

  We were passing by Downing Street. I rolled down the window, getting ready to wave if I caught sight of the prime minister, Winston Churchill. If you ask me, he got gyped. His house was smaller than the White House pantry.

  “Close that window, boy, before we catch our deaths,” said Lord Sopwith, shivering. He buttoned up his coat and pulled a scarf tight around his neck. Then, to drive home his point, he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and sneezed into it. I rolled up the window fast. Lord Sopwith is a real gentleman, so he didn’t take a look at the booger that came out of his nose. Instead, he folded the handkerchief back into a perfect triangle and tucked it into his pocket.

  I said: “I’ve already sat in a Spitfire, sir. I am learning how to fly one.”

  Lord Sopwith blew out a puff of air: “It’s come to that, has it? God preserve us.” He wasn’t taking me seriously. It happened all the time, even though I was a hero of the Belgian and French Resistance after rescuing my brother from the Nazis when his plane went down in occupied Europe.

  “Really, sir,” I said. “I’ve started my training, just the same way Jack did. He put me in his Spitfire with a blindfold around my head. Had to feel for the instruments and
name them one by one. Once I get that right, he’ll let me fly the girl. The fellas call it ‘feeling the tits and bits.’ ”

  “Rather risqué for a twelve-year-old, what?”

  I knew he was dead right, and that my ma wouldn’t like Jack using colorful language to refer to the thing that fit into a lady’s brassiere. She wouldn’t like him teaching me to fly either. Ma wanted me home to East Hempstead, New York, because she was missing me something awful. Problem was that with the war full on, there was no way for me to cross the Atlantic without getting torpedoed by U-Boats. Last week a German submarine sank the British freighter Goolistan. Every living soul on board was now on the bottom of the ocean floor being eaten by catfish.

  I was sure grateful to the Sopwiths. While I waited for a safe passage home, they were letting me hole up at Warfield Hall. “It’s the thing to do,” said Lady Sop. Everyone lucky enough to own a grand country estate was expected to take in stray children—save them from the German bombs dropping on London. Lady Sop was in cahoots with my ma. Every single day she made me write a letter home, even if all it said was “I’m still alive and kicking.” She’d always check the spelling and grammar and make me rewrite the whole letter over if there was one mistake: “Mind your Ps and Qs,” she’d say. Which was strange, seeing that I hardly ever used words with the letter Q. I wrote my letters at a special desk made for letter writing. Lady Sop called the desk by its French name, escritoire. It had built in letter slots, inkwells, pen stands and matching blotters. There were also secret drawers, designed to confuse thieves. That was where you were supposed to keep the jewels and treasure maps. I checked, but the drawers contained nothing but rubber bands and paperclips. Turned out Lady Sop kept her diamonds in a safe-deposit box at the bank, which was probably a good idea.

  If a day came when a letter didn’t arrive to East Hempstead, my ma would know I’d been killed in action. Ma knew the Germans were dropping bombs on Southampton, England, near where the Sopwiths lived. There was no hiding the fact—she’d seen it in a newsreel. The Supermarine Aviation Works had factories around Southampton making Spitfires. A Spitfire can go 400 miles an hour and push 600 in a nosedive. That’s so fast it will make the pilot black out. When a Luftwaffe pilot sees a Spitfire coming he starts praying. Living at Warfield Hall, it being so close to the Supermarine factory, meant my life was in grave peril. Ma was lighting so many candles for me, she said Saint Brendan’s Catholic Church looked like the Consolidated Edison power plant.

  Duncan, the chauffeur, slid open the glass divider and said, “Whitehall, your lordship.” Lord Sopwith pressed a bowler hat to his head, put on a pair of kidskin gloves and waited for Duncan to open the back door.

  “Toodle-oo, sir,” I said as he exited the Rolls.

  The door slammed behind him. He knocked on the glass to get my attention, motioning for me to crank down the window. I figured he’d forgot his attaché case containing top-secrets but then I seen he had it in his hand.

  “Promise me you’ll stay out of mischief, Tommy,” he said. “Remember, you’re my responsibility. And I must answer the American ambassador for your conduct. So be a good chap and no tomfoolery. Consider this an order from Ambassador Winant himself. On second thought, make that F.D.R.”

  “Oh, don’t you worry, sir. My brother will keep a tight reign on me.” I yanked an invisible leash wrapped around my neck, choking with my tongue hanging out.

  Lord Sopwith took off his glasses, rubbing at his temples. Him and Lady Sopwith were against me visiting my brother for the weekend. It took all my powers of persuasion to convince them to let me go. Last time I left their house unattended, their Chris-Craft powerboat ended up over in German-occupied Belgium where it was still sitting. Docked next to a German submarine base.

  Lord Sopwith hesitated before entering the Air Ministry building. He turned around and looked at the Rolls, troubled-like. I knocked on the glass divider.

  “Step on it!” I said. As Duncan pulled away from the curb, I added, “Sir.” I was the low man on the totem pole at the Sopwith residence, and boy, did I know it.

  “Yes, me lord,” said Duncan. When I looked into the rear-view mirror he winked.

  We were stuck in traffic, which was making me fidgety. I was looking forward to this weekend with my brother. Jack was so busy fight Nazis I hardly got to see him. We had big plans: after lunch at the Eagle Club, he was taking me to see the Crowned Jewels, which they kept in the Tower of London. St. Edward’s crown alone contained 444 precious stones and had emeralds the size of Milk Duds. They also had the 105-karat Koh-i-Noor diamond, which had come from India. It was the size of a marshmallow Easter egg, the kind with sugar stuck to it. The Koh-i-Noor diamond came with a curse, which worked only on men—every fella who ever owned it met with disaster. Queen Victoria, on the other hand, was able to wear the rock and go on to become the longest reigning queen since Cleopatra—make that the Queen of Sheba. The curse now applied to King George VI, whose older brother would’ve been king if he hadn’t ditched the throne to marry a twice divorced Yank. The curse: maybe that explained the war. If someone didn’t take that diamond off King George’s hands, the next monarch would be King Adolf. My fingers started twitching.

  Finally, the Rolls pulled up in front of the Eagle Club on Charring Cross Road and I let myself out, tipping my tweed cap to Duncan. I looked around for Jack and didn’t see him, so I started toward the front door where a pack of American airmen were smoking cigarettes and boasting to each other. One bragged: “I was flying so close to his tail, could smell the sauerkraut on his breath—“

  “Excuse me,” I said interrupting them, because I knew this sort of one-upping could go on until Miami froze over. “Have you seen my brother, Jack Mooney?”

  “Eagle Squadron, right?” said a gunner. “Heard their leaves got canceled. Heard it from Reade Tilley’s girl, who was just here looking for him.”

  “You mean that woman you just tried to make a date with?” asked an airman, “Ain’t right, nosing in on another feller’s gal.”

  “Mind your own business, Bill, if you know what’s good for you,” said the gunner.

  You could tell they were itching for a fistfight. They had that look that tough guys get right before they throw a punch—shifting their weight from one foot to the other, clinching their jaws and widening their eyes so the white showed around the eyeballs. I was scared just being in the vicinity. Innocent bystanders end up with black-eyes exactly this way.

  Just then Daphne—Jack’s British fiancée, my future sister-in-law—ran up, out of breath. Her cheeks were pink from the exertion, her hair wild and wind-tossed. Like the cover of an Action Comic. Gee, was she a knockout. “Thank goodness,” she said to me. “I was afraid I’d missed you. Jack’s leave has been canceled, worse luck.”

  I looked down at my sneakers and kicked the ground, “We were going to see the Crowned Jewels in the Tower of London.”

  “Well, you would have been disappointed in any event, because the jewels were moved to a hidden location in ‘39. Can’t let Hitler’s girlfriend, Eva Braun, get her hands on them.”

  “But—we could’ve at least seen where Henry VIII’s wife, Anne Boleyn, had her head chopped off. They’ve got the actual block with her dried blood on it. And I know you won’t take me, because you faint at the sight of blood.”

  “Hey, doll,” said the gunner, interrupting and making googly eyes at Daphne. “How’s about you and me go for a hot-toddy?”

  Daphne sneered like a Doberman. Bill grabbed the gunner by the shoulder, spun him around and socked him in the nose. “That’s Jack Mooney’s fiancée,” he said. The gunner was flat out on the pavement, blood gushing from his left nostril.

  “Thanks, William, but you needn’t have,” said Daphne, pulling me back. “I’m capable of defending myself.”

  When, really—she was about to faint.

  “My pleasure, miss,” said Bill, clutching his aching knuckles.

  Daphne wrapped her arm around mine, so�
�s she wouldn’t fall down. “See here,” she said, “let’s go back to my place. I’ve already rung Lady Sopwith and you have her permission to stay the week’s end with me. And you don’t have to look like such a sourpuss. If the Luftwaffe takes a break, Jack might be able squeeze in lunch tomorrow—a sandwich on the airfield with one eye on his Spitfire. We’ll take the train and cross our fingers the whole way. Mum’s got a nice wicker picnic basket and then there’s the tartan blanket we can sit on.” She stopped short, took a little notebook from her coat pocket and added to a list she’d already started. “Do you like vegetable pasties? Mine you, they’ll have to be eaten cold,” she said. “But we shouldn’t get our hopes up, because he might be flying.” Her face fell, like she’d just said the saddest thing imaginable.

  The airmen were now on top of each other, landing fists left and right and yelling out nasty names. Daphne put her hands over my ears. Even so, I was pretty sure I’d heard a jaw crack.

  “My goodness,” she said, “why do we need the Germans, anyway?”

  I heard a whistle blow and saw a cop—the kind wearing one of them foot-tall hats—rush up swinging a night-stick. I wanted to stick around, but Daphne grabbed my hand and pulled me in the direction of a subway station.

  “Boys will be boys,” she said, shaking her head.

  CHAPTER TWO

  IN LONDON, THE SUBWAY is called The Tube. Stations double as bomb shelters, with canteens and bunk-beds built into the walls. So while the Germans drop bombs, English folks go on drinking tea, playing cricket, and having a good night’s sleep.

  Our train was at the bottom of a flight of stairs that took you so deep underground, it was amazing there was still oxygen. Daphne walked down the slow way—one step at a time—but I used the railing. Gaining uncontrollable speed, I let out a scream. A lady—carrying a shopping bag marked Harrods—jumped in fright, tripping a stair but with enough time to grab my passing body. Posh she was, with a fox stole around her neck, complete with beady eyes and razor teeth. The two of them glared at me.