The Fighting Agents Part 14

He took a sheet of yellow foolscap from his desk drawer and handed it to Canidy.

ROUTINE FROM OSS WASH DC FOR OSS LONDON PERSONAL BRUCE PLEASE RELAY CANIDY QUOTE CONGRATULATIONS ON DOUBLE KILL UNQUOTE STOP PRESUME HE HAD REASONS FOR BEING WHERE HE WAS STOP REGARDS STOP DONOVAN.

"Looks like he's giving me the benefit of the doubt," Canidy said. "In my experience, the Colonel is not at all subtle. That message could just as easily have read, 'Ground the sonofab.i.t.c.h.' "

Stevens chuckled, earning himself a dirty look from Bruce.

"Grounding you might make sense, Richard," Stevens said. "From this side of the desk, perceptions are a little different."

"The arguments I made are still valid," Canidy argued. "And to refresh your memory they were (a) that the Air Corps is already b.i.t.c.hing about our photorecon missions; and (b) that laying on a mission we would have had to fight over would have called unwanted attention to the Fulmar Werke."

"So are my counterarguments that you're pretty far up in the scheme of things for us to lose you if you get shot down," Bruce said. "But that's over. What you have to do now is convince me there are reasons why we should not just tell the Eighth Air Force what we need, and have them do it. Or even why it is necessary to bring Ex-Lax out by air at all. Why shouldn't they come out on a British submarine? "

"Arrogance," Canidy said.

"I beg your pardon? My arrogance, or yours?" Bruce asked.

"Mine." Canidy chuckled. "I want to take a good look at the field on Vis myself," Canidy said. "I arrogantly don't trust anybody else's enthusiastic opinion of how good it is. I don't want to lose Ex-Lax, or whoever we bring out later, at stop VII because of pilot error. I want to make that landing and takeoff by myself, so I can tell somebody else how to do it."

The look on Bruce's face, Canidy thought, was not one of acceptance, but he thought Stevens understood.

"I can also argue," Canidy continued, "that we don't want to involve the English in this operation any more than we have to. If we start demanding s.p.a.ce on their submarines, they are going to want justification."

He stopped again and looked at Bruce. After a moment, Bruce made a "give me more" gesture with his hand.

"We have the B-25," Canidy said, "already rigged for this sort of pa.s.senger-haul mission, with auxiliary fuel tanks and even seats. If we ask the Air Corps, they're going to have to modify one of their aircraft, and they will naturally ask questions."

"Unless we let them use our B-25," Bruce said.

"I was afraid you'd think of that," Canidy said. "And I'm prepared. I think we would have trouble getting it back from them. If they get their hands on it, David, they're liable to remember it's on loan. Think 'lawn mower,' as in borrowed from next-door neighbor."

Bruce shook his head.

"And for a crew?"

"I thought about asking for an Eighth Air Force volunteer, " Canidy said. "If he turns out okay, we can draft him, permanently. If he doesn't, we send him back."

"Just a copilot?" Stevens asked.

"No," Canidy said. "Before we sent him to Switzerland, I was planning to take Stanley Fine. And then, before we sent him to Australia, I was going to take Jimmy Whittaker. Now, I think Dolan."

Bruce's eyebrows rose again.

"Why Dolan?" he asked.

"He's an old pilot-" Canidy began.

"That's what I mean," Bruce interrupted reasonably.

Chief Aviation Motor Machinist's Mate-formerly, until physically disqualified, Chief Aviation Pilot-John B. Dolan, USN, had, after twenty-six years of service, retired from the Navy to go to Burma and China with the Flying Tigers as a maintenance officer. Afterward, he had managed to acquire a reserve commission in the Navy as lieutenant commander and had been sent by the Navy to England as the aviation maintenance officer for Operation Aphrodite. That was the code name for an attempt to convert worn-out B-17 aircraft into radio-controlled flying bombs, to be used against the German submarine pens at Saint-Lazare, which had proven immune to attack by conventional aerial bombardment.

Eisenhower, his patience with Air Corps-Navy squabbling exhausted, had turned Project Aphrodite over to the OSS. Dolan had been delighted. Canidy had been put in charge of the project, and he had known Canidy at the Pensacola, Florida, Naval Air Station when they had both been in the American Volunteer Group. Dolan had correctly guessed that Canidy would not watch his every move the way the Air and Navy bra.s.s had been doing.

"We intrepid birdmen have a saying," Canidy said. " 'There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.' "

"Very interesting," David Bruce said.

Colonel Stevens gave in to the temptation. "And where, Richard, would you say that profound observation leaves you?" he asked innocently.

"Why, I thought you knew, Colonel," Canidy said, smiling broadly, "that I intend to be a very old pilot."

"Not the way you're going, you're not," Stevens said. "But, okay, Richard, you have . . . just barely . . . made your point."

"I presume Commander Dolan is physically up to it?" Bruce asked. "Specifically, that he's had a recent flight physical?"

"It's in his records," Canidy said. "Look for yourself."

"I just might," Bruce said.

There was a Report of Physical Examination (Flight) in Lt. Commander Dolan's records. Canidy did not think that David Bruce would notice the astonis.h.i.+ng similarity between the handwriting of Commander A. J. Franklin, Medical Corps, USNR, who had signed the examination, and that of Lt. Commander John B. Dolan, USNR.

Canidy intended to see that the old sailor didn't overexert himself on the flight. But he really wanted the old "Flying Chief" with his eight-thousand-plus hours in the air with him, heart condition or not. Experience was far more valuable than youth and health on a flight like this.

"It just makes sense for me to go," Canidy argued. "It accomplishes what has to be done with the least fuss."

Bruce studied him thoughtfully for a moment, then asked, "Ed?"

"You will take good care of Commander Dolan, won't you, d.i.c.k?" Stevens asked, and when Canidy looked at him, Canidy knew that he knew who had signed Dolan's flight physical.

"It'll be the other way around, Colonel," Canidy said.

"I think we should defer to d.i.c.k's judgment," Stevens said.

"So be it," Bruce said resignedly.

Canidy thanked Stevens with a slight nod of his head. Stevens responded with a slight shrug of his shoulders. The message was clear. He had meant what he had said about deferring to Canidy's judgment.

Canidy stopped by Capt. Dancy's desk on his way out.

"Would you ask the Air Corps to furnish us with short-and long-term weather forecasts for from here to Casablanca, and from Casa to Malta, and from Malta to the Adriatic, starting right now?" he asked.

"I was afraid you'd talk him into it," she said. "You want them here, or do you want me to send them out to Whitbey House with the courier?"

"Send them to Dolan," Canidy said.

"Will he know what they're for?"

"He will after I tell him," Canidy said. "I'm going out there now."

"I thought you would be staying in London," she said.

"No reason for me to do that," Canidy said.

"Yes, there is," Capt. Dancy said. "She's back. She called earlier."

"You didn't tell me," Canidy said. It was more of a question than a reprimand.

"She said that she would be at Broadcast House until half past five, and after that at her apartment, if I happened to see you," Capt. Dancy said.

Sometimes, Capt. Dancy realized, she was just a little jealous of Ann Chambers, for being young and pretty, and for being able to light up d.i.c.k Canidy's eyes at the mere mention of her. And sometimes, like now, she felt like Canidy's sister, or for that matter like his mother, happy that he had a nice, decent girl.

"You will call in when you decide where you're going to spend the night?" Capt. Dancy asked.

"Yeah, sure," Canidy said. Then he suddenly leaned across Capt. Dancy's desk and kissed her on the forehead.

"Major Canidy," Capt. Dancy said. "You're impossible."

5.

WOBURN MANSIONS, WOBURN SQUARE LONDON, ENGLAND 5 FEBRUARY 1943.

Before the war, the private park in the center of Woburn Square had been an area of manicured lawns and flower beds and curving walks beneath ancient trees, all surrounded by a neat fence. Now, only the fence and the trees were left. A bomb shelter had been excavated, and several corrugated sheds had been erected by the Fire Protection Service to store firefighting equipment.

It had been needed. There were ugly gaps in the rows of limestone-faced houses where German bombs had landed. There had been twenty-four entrances on all four sides of Woburn Square in 1940. Now there were fourteen.

16, Woburn Mansions had not been hit, although the limestone facade had been darkened by the furious fires that had raged down the street on both sides; and there was plywood nailed over what once had been beveled gla.s.s windows in the entrance door.

But inside, it was much as it had always been, a quietly elegant building holding five large, floor-size apartments. The bas.e.m.e.nt apartment and the one on the top floor were smaller than the three main apartments, but they all had large, high-ceilinged rooms and central heating, which was an uncommon luxury.

The first-floor flat, which would have been the second-floor flat in America, was occupied by Miss Ann Chambers. Technically, it was a.s.signed to the Chambers News Service and intended to house all Chambers News Service female employees in London. The SHAEF billeting officer had been informed that the Chambers News Service ultimately planned to have six to eight female employees with correspondent status stationed in London. That would effectively fill the three bedrooms with the regulation two officer -equivalent persons per room.

The SHAEF billeting officer had not been told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, which was that the Chambers News Service had no plans at all to station any additional female correspondents in London. Brandon Chambers, Chairman of the Board of the Chambers Publis.h.i.+ng Company, did not believe that women should go to war as correspondents or anything else. The rule was bent only in the case of his daughter, and that was not really nepotism. Rather, Brandon Chambers had believed his daughter when she told him that either he send her to London as a war correspondent, or she would go to work for Gardiner Cowles-the publisher of, among other things, Look Look magazine-with whom he had carried on a running feud for twenty years, and who was just the kind of a sonofab.i.t.c.h to give Ann a job just because he knew it would annoy her father. magazine-with whom he had carried on a running feud for twenty years, and who was just the kind of a sonofab.i.t.c.h to give Ann a job just because he knew it would annoy her father.

Ann Chambers had had the London bureau chief tell the billeting officer the story of the five to seven soon-to-arrive female accredited correspondents not because she was the spoiled daughter of a very rich man who considered herself ent.i.tled to private quarters (in fact, the other two bedrooms were more often than not occupied by roomless journalists of both s.e.xes), but because Ann intended to share her own bed, whenever possible, with Richard Canidy, and she didn't want anybody around when that might happen.

If she had a permanent roommate, or roommates, it would not have been possible, for example, to do what she and Richard Canidy were doing now, which was recovering from an enthusiastic, wholly satisfying roll in the hay (actually a roll on a dozen large pillows covered with Chinese silk) at quarter to six in the evening before the fire-place in the sitting room.

"I don't suppose," Ann said, her face against his chest, "that I will have to ask if you have been a good boy while I was gone, will I?"

"If you don't ask, I won't have to lie about it," Canidy said.

"You b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" she said, and jerked a hair from his chest.

"Two can play at that game," he warned.

"And you would, too," she said, s.h.i.+fting her midsection to avoid his searching hand. She failed.

"You've heard the expression 'by the short hairs'?" he asked.

"Let go," she said. "I'll be good."

"Who wants good?" he asked.

"Wicked?" she asked.

"You got it," he said, and let her go.

She got to her feet and walked out of the room, with an exaggerated shake of her tail. In a moment she was back. She tossed him a dressing gown and shrugged into a sheepskin high-alt.i.tude flyer's jacket. It was far too large for her, but it was warm.

"You look like you should be painted on the fuselage of a B-17," Canidy said. " 'd.i.c.k's Delight' or something like that."

"Is that a compliment or a complaint?" she asked.

"Compliment," he said.

"You like me to wear it because when I bend over you can see my f.a.n.n.y," she said.

"And everything else," he said. "That's why you wear it, to excite me."

"So what else is new?" Ann said.

"You're about to get a roommate," he said.

"You'll be spending some time in London?"

"No," he said. "As a matter of fact, I've got a little trip to make. I'll be gone a week or ten days."

"Where are you going?" she asked quickly, softly.

"You're not curious about your roommate?" he asked, ignoring the question.

"Where are you going, d.i.c.k?" she insisted.

"Come on, Annie," he said. "You know the rules."

"To h.e.l.l with the rules, and don't call me 'Annie,' " she said.

"Yes, Ma'am."

"After Fulmar?" Ann asked.

"Who?"