The Fighting Agents Part 50

There were men behind the truck, Hungarian civilians with pistols; and the two Keystone Kops on the motorcycle who trailed the truck were on the ground, spread-eagled. As Fulmar watched, the driver and his a.s.sistant were brought to the rear of the truck and forced onto the ground beside the cops.

One of the men with pistols motioned the prisoners into a line, and then into two lines, then three, prodding the slow ones with the barrel of his pistol. And then another man came down the line and rudely jerked people out of line by grabbing their shoulders.

If I wasn't so afraid, this would be funny.

The man reached him, jerked Fulmar out of line, and marched him toward the front of the truck. Fulmar saw what had stopped the truck. A tree lay across the road. At first he thought it had been sawed, but then he saw that it had been taken down by somebody who knew how to use Primacord.

Standing near the cab of the truck were more Hungarians. One of them, in a large soft black woolen hat, looked somehow familiar.

"You do not recognize me," Canidy ordered quietly when Fulmar was dragged before him.

Fulmar shook his head in wonderment and smiled, but said nothing.

"We don't have much time," Canidy said. "Just tell me which of the others would escape if they had half a chance?"

Fulmar looked confused.

"You heard me," Canidy said. "I need to know who are the serious criminals."

Fulmar was as much confused by the question as he was surprised to see Canidy. But he finally understood that the question was important for reasons he could not imagine.

"These guys are petty criminals," Fulmar said. "If they weren't in jail, they'd probably starve. No real criminals, if that's what you're asking."

"d.a.m.n," Canidy said. "Now, is Professor Dyer one of the people we pulled out of there?"

Fulmar looked.

"Second from the end," he said, "with the gla.s.ses."

Canidy waved another of the Hungarians over and spoke softly to him in English.

"No gangsters," he said. "We'll just have to take half a dozen of them with us, that's all there is to it. You saw Dyer?"

"Yeah, but I don't think he recognized me."

"Let's try to keep it that way for the time being," Canidy said. "You go ahead and get them to uncover the plane."

"The plane?" Fulmar blurted. "You've got an airplane? airplane?"

"Take Loudmouth here with you," Canidy said. "He insists on talking English."

There was a sharp cracking noise, followed a moment later by a creaking, tearing noise, and finally a great cras.h.i.+ng sound.

Fulmar realized that another tree, its trunk severed by Primacord, had been dropped across the road.

"Let's go, Lieutenant," the man Canidy had spoken to said softly, and Fulmar followed him off the road and into the forest.

It was a long way across steep, heavily forested hills from where the prison truck had been stopped to the meadow; and when they got there, Fulmar was sweat-soaked and panting from the exertion.

He didn't see an airplane. All he saw was a Hungarian standing at the far end of the meadow beside two of the largest horses he had ever seen. The horses wore whatever horses used so they could pull a wagon or a plow, but there was nothing around for them to pull.

And then, as they crossed the meadow, he saw a round red light sticking out of a snow-covered mound. And he understood that he was looking at the top of an aircraft vertical stabilizer.

An American pilot wearing a leather A-2 jacket and with a Thompson submachine gun in his hands came out of the woods.

"This is Fulmar," Ferniany told Darmstadter. "Canidy's bringing the other one."

Darmstadter looked with unabashed curiosity at Fulmar.

This young guy in blue work clothes was the purpose of this whole operation?

"h.e.l.lo," Fulmar said.

That shocked Darmstadter into action.

He looked around for someplace to put the Thompson down and finally hung it from a bra.s.s horn on the harness of one of the horses. Ferniany watched him, then shrugged and put his pistol in his pocket and went to the mound of snow-covered brush.

When the branches were off the tail section, Alois. .h.i.tched a stout rope to the tail wheel and the huge horses pulled the C-47 far enough out of the forest to turn the airplane around.

It took half an hour to remove all the branches from the C-47. Some of them had frozen to the wings and fuselage, and small branches had wedged into the openings of the movable control surfaces.

Darmstadter started the engines, to make sure they would start. The engines started without difficulty, but when he tried to run the controls through their operating range, he found that snow had melted and then frozen the controls cables.

He let the engines run until they had reached operating temperature, then shut them down. Then he went after the ice in the ailerons and other movable control surfaces while Fulmar and Ferniany hammered at the ice on the wings. They quickly learned the best way to get it off was to stamp on it with their feet or slam it with their fists. The aluminum would then flex enough to free the ice, which could then be pushed or kicked out of the way.

They were still working on the airplane when the team, the Hungarian underground, Canidy, Dyer, and six wholly confused and terrified petty criminals from St. Gertrud's prison arrived.

"Wind it up," Canidy ordered. "We're going. Get those people aboard."

"We're taking them?" Fulmar asked incredulously.

"Instant immigration," Canidy said. "Get them aboard."

Canidy stood by the door of the airplane as the Hungarians and the team and Professor Dyer got aboard. He collected the weapons and pa.s.sed them to the Hungarians. Darmstadter started one engine and then the other.

"Get on, Eric," Canidy ordered.

Ferniany and Canidy looked at each other a moment, wordlessly.

"You aren't really such a horse's a.s.s after all," Canidy finally said. "Take care."

"You are," Ferniany said with a smile. "A horse's a.s.s, I mean."

Then he slapped Canidy on the back and ran to get out of the prop blast.

Canidy climbed into the Gooney Bird. As he closed the door, Darmstadter started to taxi to the absolute end of the meadow.

Canidy slid into the copilot's seat as Darmstadter turned the Gooney Bird around.

Darmstadter locked the brakes, checked the mags, and then ran both engines up to takeoff power. The Gooney Bird trembled and bounced. He took the brakes off, and the airplane began to roll, first with maddening slowness, and then picking up speed. But not quite enough to get it off the ground.

As they reached the end of the meadow, Darmstadter pulled it into the air. There was not enough velocity to maintain flight, and it started to stall. Darmstadter pushed the nose down, getting it out of the incipient stall; and the Gooney Bird now followed the contour of the cut-over hillside down toward the stream. It was flying, but only barely.

And then he pulled back on the wheel again, and this time, having picked up just enough speed, the Gooney Bird was willing to fly for real.

"Very impressive," Canidy's voice came over the earphones. Thinking it was sarcasm, Darmstadter snapped his head toward him.

Canidy was beaming and making an "OK" sign of approval with his left hand.

And then Canidy's face registered genuine surprise, and the "OK" sign changed into a finger pointing out the winds.h.i.+eld. Darmstadter followed it.

There were sixteen B-17 aircraft flying in five staggered Vs at what was probably eight thousand feet. Their bomb bays were open, and as Darmstadter and Canidy watched, streams of 500-pound bombs began to drop.

"They're bombing Pecs," Darmstadter said. "What the h.e.l.l is there in Pecs worth bombing with a squadron of B- 17s?"

Canidy didn't respond to that.

"I think you had better get back on the deck," he said. "Steer one nine zero."

3.

OSS LONDON STATION BERKELEY SQUARE LONDON, ENGLAND 1630 HOURS 22 FEBRUARY 1943.

Lieutenant Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., came into David Bruce's office. Kennedy looked, Colonel Wild Bill Donovan thought, not unlike his father as a young man.

"h.e.l.lo, Joe," Donovan said. "How are you?"

"Not very cheerful, Colonel," Kennedy said, raising a package in his hand. "Dolan's personal items. I didn't know what to do with them."

"I'll take them, Mr. Kennedy," Chief Ellis said. "I'll see that they get to his next of kin."

"Does he have any?" Kennedy asked. "I never heard him talk about a family."

"I'm sure there's a brother or a sister or somebody," Donovan said.

"And what do I do about Darmstadter?" Kennedy said. "Write the letter myself, or let his old outfit do it? He was on TDY to the composite squadron, officially."

He was, Donovan thought, approvingly, already a.s.suming the responsibilities of command.

"You write it, Joe," Donovan ordered. "Be vague. But let them know he went in as a volunteer doing something important. " He thought about saying something else, realized that he shouldn't, but said it anyway: "I wish we could report them KIA. Until we have positive word, of course, they'll have to be carried as MIA. But I don't think there's any real hope."

"Yes, Sir," Kennedy said.

Donovan had been avoiding making the decision what to do about taking the necessary action about d.i.c.k Canidy and Ferniany. At the very least, they were missing in action. It might even be better to hope that they were dead. Just before it went off the air, interrupting a code block, the OSS radio station had sent the code for "Station discovered, in immediate danger of being captured."

It was reasonable to presume that Ferniany had been captured in Budapest. If that was true, and he was lucky, he would be dead. If that was true, and he was unlucky, he was alive and in the hands of the SS; and it might be some time before they were through with him and shot him. Or hanged him with a length of piano wire.

If they had caught him alive, it had to be presumed that he had given them Canidy's location and told them what he knew. No matter how little that was, it was certain to be damaging to von Heurten-Mitnitz, the Countess Batthyany, and the whole Hungarian pipeline.

There seemed to be little doubt that Fulmar and Professor Dyer were dead. The last B-17 had carried photographers, and there was proof beyond question that St. Gertrud's prison and three square blocks around it had been bombed into rubble.

Canidy, to be sure, might still be alive, on the run somewhere in the forests near Pecs. He had as many lives as a cat.

It was the particularly obscene nature of this business, Donovan thought, that I am forced to hope that he is dead. If he is dead, what he knows will not become known to the Germans.

He had decided that when he made up his mind to do it, he would personally write to the Reverend Doctor George Crater Canidy. He knew that it would be important, that Canidy would really want his father to believe he had died saving lives, not taking them. In a sense that was true, and maybe, Donovan decided, he would be able to make that point.

A more immediate problem was telling Ann Chambers. She had no legal right to know, of course. But legality had nothing to do with it. Donovan wanted her to hear it from him, and that meant he would have to tell her in the next couple of hours, before he got on the Was.h.i.+ngton plane.

"Joe," he said, "you understand, of course, that Operation Aphrodite is now your responsibility?"

"Yes, Sir."

"When Stan Fine gets back, he will fill the role Canidy had. You will report to him."

"Yes, Sir."

"There's more to it than the sub pens at Saint-Lazare," Donovan said.

"I a.s.sumed there was," Kennedy said matter-of-factly.

Donovan's eyebrows rose.

"I'll have Colonel Stevens fill you in," Donovan said.

"Yes, Sir."

"We have to expect setbacks, Joe," Donovan said, wondering if he was talking as much to himself as he was to Kennedy. "And not everything has gone wrong. Just before you came, there was word that Jimmy Whittaker is safely ash.o.r.e in the Philippines."

"Sir?" Kennedy asked, confused.

I am more emotionally upset by all this than I like to think I am; there was no reason for me to tell Kennedy that, and I should have known that he didn't know what was planned for Whittaker.

"That's out of school, Joe," Donovan said. "You don't have the Need-to-Know."

"You sent Jimmy back back to the Philippines?" Kennedy asked incredulously. to the Philippines?" Kennedy asked incredulously.

"He volunteered to go," Donovan said.

That's pretty lame, Donovan, and you know it. You did indeed send Jimmy back, knowing full well the risks.

The door opened. Capt. Helene Dancy walked in.