The Fighting Agents Part 39

" 'Paradrop' ?" von Heurten-Mitnitz asked. "You mean parachute?"

Canidy nodded.

"You've got to get us out!" the Countess said furiously.

"That may not be necessary," Canidy said. "Fulmar and the professor have been arrested as black marketeers."

"How do you know that?" von Heurten-Mitnitz asked calmly.

"I was there when they were arrested," Ferniany said.

"Then there is a chance, chance," von Heurten-Mitnitz said, searched for the words, and smiled wryly, " 'that the jig is not up?' "

"There's a chance," Canidy said. "Ferniany is more confident about that than I am."

"The function of your team will be to get them out of prison?" von Heurten-Mitnitz asked.

"The team leader will have my orders, I'm sure," Canidy said. "I don't know what they will be."

Canidy saw in von Heurten-Mitnitz's eyes that he would not have to explain that his orders might be to make absolutely sure that neither Fulmar nor Professor Dyer would be available for interrogation by the SS or the Gestapo. And when he looked at the Countess Batthyany, he saw in her face that she understood, too.

"I want to try to get them out," Canidy said.

"A question of priorities, then?" von Heurten-Mitnitz said.

"Yes," Canidy said.

"And where on that list would be the priority to get out the Countess, or, for that matter, me?"

"If it comes to that," Canidy said, "we'll get you out."

"We will go out," the Countess said, "or stay, together."

Von Heurten-Mitnitz looked at her for a moment, then at his wrist.w.a.tch.

"It's too early," he said. "But later, I will call Muller and ask him to pick me up here." He saw the look on Canidy's face. "It is necessary."

After a moment, Canidy nodded.

"Just so long as he understands that I will make the decision about trying to get Fulmar and the professor out."

"I thought you implied that decision will be made by your superiors?" von Heurten-Mitnitz asked.

"I'll decide," Canidy said flatly.

5.

FERSFIELD ARMY AIR CORPS STATION BEDFORDs.h.i.+RE, ENGLAND 0410 HOURS 19 FEBRUARY 1943.

"There's no reason for you to get up," Dougla.s.s said as he sat up in the narrow bed and swung his feet out onto the floor.

Charity sat up in bed.

"I've been pretending that we're in Bala-Cynwyd . . . ," she said.

"Where?" he asked, chuckling.

"It's a suburb of Philadelphia," she said. " . . . and that the alarm clock has just gone off, and that you're going to get up and put on a suit, and that when you have had breakfast you'll kiss the children. And then I'll drive you to the station, and you'll get on the commuter train and go in to your office in Philadelphia . . . "

"What kind of an office?"

"You're a lawyer, like my father," she said.

"Why a lawyer?"

"Because when lawyers leave their loving wives and adoring children to go to their offices, they know they'll be coming home that same night, not going off to some impossible island n.o.body ever heard about. . . ."

"Stanley's a lawyer," Dougla.s.s said.

"d.a.m.n you, come back to me," Charity said.

"I'll have to, to make you an honest woman," he said.

"And to give the baby a name," Charity said.

"What baby?"

"The one I think we made last night," Charity said.

"Last night, or ten minutes ago?" he replied.

"I hope we did. Whenever," Charity said. "How do you like them apples, Colonel?"

"Hey, is this the right time to discuss something like that?" Dougla.s.s asked.

"The best time," Charity said. "If a man doesn't believe that a woman loves him after she says she wants his baby, he'll never believe it. I want you to know know it, Doug." it, Doug."

He stopped in the act of pulling his shorts on and went to the bed and sat on it.

"Me, too," he said.

"That's close," Charity said.

"I love you," he said.

"Correct," she said. "That wins you your choice of a trip to the sunny and romantic Adriatic isle of Vis, a cement bicycle, or whatever else your little heart desires. Me, for example. "

"Jesus, honey, they're waiting for me."

"I thought RHIP."

"It does," he said. "f.u.c.k 'em, let 'em wait."

" ''em? 'em?' " Charity asked.

6.

HEADQUARTERS, U.S. FORCES IN THE PHILIPPINES MISAMIS OCCIDENTAL PROVINCE, MINDANAO 19 FEBRUARY 1943.

There was now some official stationery available to Headquarters, U.S. Forces in the Philippines. It was a good-quality, twenty-four-pound watermarked bond paper, with an engraved letterhead. The letterhead read, THE DOLE CORPORATION Pineapple Plantation Three "There Are None Finer" Mindanao, Territory of the Philippine Islands Headquarters, United States Forces in the Philippines used the blank side of the paper, but only for important official doc.u.ments. After some thought, General Fertig decided that it was necessary to maintain certain files, and to use his available stock of stationery (one and one half boxes, totaling precisely 741 sheets of paper) to do so.

USFIP had acquired some other desperately needed supplies from the mountainside cottage of the manager of the Dole Corporation's Pineapple Plantation Number Three. The cottage, some miles from the plantation itself, had been the manager's private retreat. It had somehow escaped j.a.panese attention, and so it had held a dozen sets of bed linen-which USFIP converted into bandages; a Winchester single-shot, bolt-action .22-caliber rifle and three and a half boxes of .22 sh.e.l.ls; a motley collection of inexpensive tableware and pots and pans; a mixed a.s.sortment of condiments and canned delicacies (such as Planter's Peanuts, martini olives, and miniature onions); a Zenith portable radio; and a Smith-Corona "Student's" portable typewriter with a nearly new ribbon.

General Fertig had his staff prepare copies for the record of the several p.r.o.nouncements he had made as Commanding General, USFIP; the commissions he had bestowed upon certain members of his staff; and memorandums of record of the money issued by the Provisional Government of Misamis Occidental Province and which he had borrowed for USFIP.

And he instructed his cryptographic officer, Capt. Horace B. Buchanan, to a.s.sume personal responsibility for the Smith-Corona and the stock of stationery, and, aside from making copies of outgoing and incoming messages, to make sure that no one used either paper or typewriter in a manner that could by any stretch of the imagination be considered profligate.

When Capt. Buchanan went to General Fertig's quarters with the two messages that had come in within five minutes of each other, the General was having his evening c.o.c.ktail. Second Lieutenant (ex-chief petty officer, USN) Ellwood Orfett, whom Fertig had placed in charge of a deserted coconut oil mill, had revealed another talent. He could convert mashed pineapple meat into alcohol, producing a lethal-smelling transparent intoxicant with the kick of a mule, but which, when mixed with pineapple juice, didn't taste half bad.

"Would you like a little taste, Buchanan?" Fertig asked as Buchanan came up the bamboo stairs of the General's quarters, shaking the whole building.

"Don't mind if I do, Sir," Buchanan said, and helped himself to a gla.s.s of the mixture. He poured it from a pottery mug in the shape of a cow's head. This was originally intended for milk, and was also salvaged from the pineapple plantation manager's cottage.

Fertig read the two messages, which were both on the same sheet of paper:

PRIORITY FROM KAZ FOR WYZB.

ATTENTION LT COL FERTIGYOUR RADIO MESSAGE OF 15 FEBRUARY 1943 FOR SECWAR WAs.h.i.+NGTON HAS COME TO THE ATTENTION OF THIS HEADQUARTERS.ALL REPEAT ALL COMMUNICATIONS FROM YOUR DETACHMENT OF WHATEVER NATURE WILL BE DIRECTED TO THIS HEADQUARTERS. NO DEVIATION FROM THIS POLICY WILL BE TOLERATED.BY COMMAND OF GENERAL MACARTHUR. WILLOUGHBY BRIG GENURGENT.

FROM JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF WASH DC.

VIA KSF FOR WYZB HQ US FORCES IN PHILIPPINESATTENTION BRIGADIER GENERAL FERTIGKEEP YOUR s.h.i.+RT ONJ. R. ELLIS CHIEF USN.

"I rather expected the first one," Fertig said. Then he read the second message.

"I rather like the sound of the second," Fertig said, "even if I haven't the faintest idea what it means."

"I'd say it's the reason General Willoughby sounds just a little p.i.s.sed," Capt. Buchanan said. "The one from Was.h.i.+ngton-from the Joint Chiefs-is addressed to 'General Fertig,' you'll notice."

"You think Willoughby knows about it?" Fertig asked.

"He knew about our message to the Secretary of War," Buchanan said. "Sure, I think he heard about it. He's probably got the whole message."

"What do you mean by that?" Fertig asked curiously.

"The signature on the message is incomplete," Buchanan said. "There had to be more to it than 'Chief USN.' Chief of something. What?"

"I thought it meant 'chief petty officer,' " Fertig said.

"Chief petty officers don't sign messages from the Joint Chiefs of Staff," Buchanan said. "Admirals and generals do that."

He remembered-and then was a little ashamed of the memory-that General Fertig, who had been a civilian eighteen months ago, knew d.a.m.ned little about the military services.

"Then what the h.e.l.l does it mean?" Fertig asked. " 'Keep your s.h.i.+rt on' doesn't sound at all military, does it?"

Buchanan filled his gla.s.s again before replying.

"I thought about that, General," he said. "It may be . . . maybe even probably is . . . a reply to your message to the Secretary of War. And it just might mean exactly what it says."

"That we should be patient, that they are sending help?"

"I wonder at what point you want something so desperately that you lose sight of reality and imagine you see what you're looking for behind every bush," Buchanan said.

"But?"

"The message is from the Joint Chiefs," Buchanan said. "And we have a 'we are p.i.s.sed' message from MacArthur. Which just might mean MacArthur has been asked to explain why no help has been sent to us. Or even that he has been ordered to get off his a.s.s and send some."

"Yes," Fertig said softly, thoughtfully. "Could be."

"And if I wanted to get a message to somebody who doesn't have any cryptographic equipment worth a d.a.m.n," Buchanan went on, "it would run through my mind to send a message in slang, in the clear, and hope that the j.a.ps wouldn't understand the slang, and would try to decode the slang."

"We have heard from MacArthur about the Secretary of War message," Fertig said, "and there was no reply to our message about VD medicine."

"That might be because it would be beneath the Generalissimo's dignity to acknowledge. n.o.body talks to MacArthur that way."

"You really think there was more to that message than what we got-specifically, a rank and a job t.i.tle?" Fertig asked.

"I think there just had to be."

"If there was a message, it seems common decency would have required MacArthur, or Willoughby, to relay it to us. To make sure we got it."

Buchanan shrugged.

" 'Common decency,' " he parroted bitterly.