The Soldier Spies

by W. E. B Griffin

  Mission 43-Special-124 was a photographic reconnaissance of the German submarine pens at Saint-Lazare, General Lorimer said. And it was being flown at Major Canidy’s request. Special-124 was a high-priority mission, he emphasized. Which meant that there was to be no delaying it or canceling it or getting around it except maybe for some overwhelming catastrophe (such as, say, the end of the world). Which meant that if Major Emmons had problems mounting it, equipment problems, say, it would be necessary to take an aircraft from another scheduled mission so that Special-124 could go.

  Major Canidy himself would come to Horsham St. Faith to personally brief the flight crew (Major Emmons was always pissed when some chair warmer showed up to tell his people how to do what they were ordered to do) and would remain at Horsham St. Faith while the mission was flown. After the mission the film magazines would be turned over to Major Canidy, who would arrange for the necessary processing.

  “Under no circumstances, Bill, is Major Canidy to be permitted to go along on the mission,” General Lorimer said finally. “You understand me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Later Major Emmons as much as said it straight out to his friend Captain Ross that Canidy was one more of the glory-hunting headquarters sonsofbitches who liked to pick up missions (twenty-five missions and you got an Air Medal and went home) by inviting themselves along as “observers.”They got in the way, and they added two hundred pounds to the gross weight, and they picked and chose the missions to observe, generally short, safe ones.

  Emmons was a little sorry that General Lorimer had this Canidy’s number. Special-124 was going to be short, but it wasn’t going to be safe. A P-38 group attempting to skip-bomb the Saint-Lazare pens had lost sixteen of twenty-nine attacking aircraft. Major Emmons would be happy to send some chair-warming sonofabitch trying to pick up a mission out on one like this.

  Major Canidy arrived at Horsham St. Faith at three o’clock in the morning, sleeping in the back seat of a Packard driven by an English woman sergeant. Major Emmons was surprised to see that the sonofabitch did have wings pinned to his tunic. But that was all. Just wings. No ribbons. The sonofabitch apparently hadn’t even been here thirty days. If he had been, he would have had the ETO (European Theater of Operations) ribbon.

  First Canidy asked for coffee and then something to eat, then promptly began to tell the crew how to fly this mission. And right in front of the WRAC sergeant, too. That pushed Emmons over the edge.

  “Excuse me, Major,” he said. “This mission is classified.”

  “I know,” Canidy said. “I classified it.” And then he understood. “Does Agnes look like a German spy to you, Major?”

  “How much B-26 time do you have Major?” Emmons flared. “If you don’t mind my asking? To tell my men how to fly this mission?”

  “Actually no B-26 time,” Canidy said.

  “But he does have several thousand hours of pilot time,” the WRAC sergeant said sweetly. “And both the American and the English DFC.”

  “Shut up, Agnes,” Canidy said.

  “And before we came here, we were with Major Douglass, who led the P-38 strike on the pens. He and Major Canidy were Flying Tigers in China.”

  “I told you to shut up,” Canidy repeated.

  “Richard,” the WRAC sergeant said, undaunted,“the major obviously believes—and, worse, is communicating his belief to these gentlemen—that you’re a… How does Jimmy put it? A candy ass.”

  “Cahn-dy Ah-ss” in the WRAC sergeant’s dignified, precise English was comical. That broke the ice a little, and both Emmons and Canidy chuckled. The B-26 pilot, a lieutenant who looked as if he belonged in high school, laughed out loud, like a boy.

  “I guess I owe you an apology, Major Canidy—” Emmons began.

  “Don’t be silly,” Canidy interrupted.

  “—but when General Lorimer said that you were not under any circumstances to go on this mission, I got the idea you were one of those guys who like to collect missions by going on the easy ones.”

  “Lorimer said what?” Canidy asked.

  “That you are not under any circumstances to go along on this mission,” Emmons said.

  “Oh, that sonofabitch!” Canidy said.

  “He meant it, too,” Emmons said. “I’m sorry.”

  “He outfoxed you, Richard,” the WRAC sergeant said, obviously pleased to learn that. “He knew very well all along that you planned to go.”

  Canidy looked at the boyish B-26 pilot and shrugged his shoulders.

  “You just tell us what you want, Major,” the young pilot said. “And how you think is the best way to get it. We’ll give it the old school try.”

  Saint-Lazare was on the English side of the Brest Peninsula, 375 air miles from Horsham St. Faith. The B-26 stripped for aerial photography cruised at 325 knots. It would take a little over two hours in all for the trip. The boyish B-26 pilot broke ground at 0538, and the B-26 reappeared at Horsham St. Faith a few minutes after eight. The return trip had taken longer than the way out. The port engine had been ripped off by flak.

  A “wounded aboard” flare went up from the B-26 as it lined itself up with the runway.

  When the wheels came down, even from where they stood watching, it was clear to both Emmons and Canidy that the starboard gear had been damaged and was not going to lock in place.

  An attempt to radio the pilot to go around, pull up his gear, and belly it in failed. And in any event, there wasn’t time. It came in, in a crawl, and touched down, skidded off the runway, toward the bad gear, and spun around and around and around across the grass.

  When Canidy and Emmons, in a jeep, reached the aircraft sixty seconds ahead of the crash truck and ambulances, the air was heavy with the smell of avgas. Thirty seconds after they pulled the limp body of the boy pilot through the canopy, the gas ignited.

  But the photographers had tossed the film canisters out of the gun-and-camera ports in the fuselage the moment the plane had stopped moving, and thus MA (for Mission Accomplished) could be written in the records after Mission 43-Special-124.

  Chapter THREE

  Croydon Air Field

  London, England

  1035 Hours 6 January 1943

  As the C-54 taxied to Base Operations, Ed saw two U.S. Army buses and a limousine waiting. There were three or four full colonels aboard the C-54, and one of them was apparently important enough to be met by a limousine. Not without a little thrill, Ed saw in the limousine a couple of symbols that he was now in the war zone. Except for a narrow slit, its headlamps were painted black, and its fenders were outlined in white so the car would have more visibility in a blacked-out-against-the-enemy city.

  He waited impatiently until there was room enough in the aisle for him to stand and put on his uniform cap and overcoat and collect his luggage. Then he walked down the stairs, following the line of people toward the buses.

  Then his name was called.

  “Commander Edwin Bitter!”

  He looked around.

  There were five people in uniform (no two uniforms alike) standing in a line by the limousine. Four of them were standing at attention, and the fifth was saluting. Three of them, including the one saluting, were female. It took him a moment to place her. He had never before seen his cousin Ann Chambers in her war correspondent’s uniform.

  But he had immediately recognized the two broadly smiling American officers with her. The one in a green blouse and trousers was Dick Canidy. The one in a rather startling all-pink (trousers, shirt, and cut-down blouse) and totally illegal variation of an Air Corps captain’s “pinks and greens” was Captain James M. B. Whittaker. He had no idea who the two Englishwomen, a captain and a sergeant, were.

  The other debarking passengers were fascinated with the odd little greeting party. Most were amused, but two of the full colonels failed to see anything entertaining.

  Bitter was more than a little embarrassed as he left the line headed for the buses and walked to them.

  “The
King was tied up,” Canidy said,“so he sent the Duchess to welcome you.”

  “Damn you, Dick,” the British female captain said.

  “Commander Bitter,” Canidy said, “may I present Her Gracefulness, the Duchess of Stanfield? And Sergeant Agnes Draper? I believe you know everyone else.”

  “The commander seems a bit underwhelmed to see you, Dick,” the British captain said, as if this pleased her.

  She’s a good-looking woman, Bitter thought. Somehow aristocratic. I wonder—it wouldn’t surprise me—if she might indeed be a duchess.

  “That’s because he hasn’t been kissed, Your Gracefulness,” Canidy said.

  “Will you stop calling me that?” She laughed.

  Canidy moved quickly to Bitter, grabbed his arms at the moment Bitter grasped what he was up to, and kissed him wetly on the forehead.

  “Welcome to England, Edwin,” Canidy said loudly. “We who have preceded you, plus, of course, those who have been here all along, will be able to sleep soundly now that the Pride of the U.S. Navy has arrived.”

  “What are you doing here?” Bitter asked.

  “We came to fetch you, obviously,” Jimmy Whittaker said. “To spare you the two hours of ‘How to Behave Now That You’re in England’ lectures you’ll be given if you get on one of those buses.”

  "How’s Joe, Eddie?” Ann Chambers asked.

  “They’re going to Palm Beach,” Ed Bitter said.

  “War is hell, isn’t it?” Canidy said dryly.

  “You seem to be having a good time,” Bitter said. “How did you know when I was coming?”

  “I’m omniscient,” Canidy said.

  “You’re what?”

  “I’m omniscient,” Canidy repeated. “Tell him, Your Gracefulness, that I’m omniscient.”

  The captain put out her hand to Bitter.

  “How do you do, Commander?” she said. “My name is Stanfield.”

  "How do you do?” Bitter said.

  “On your knees, you uncouth swabbie,” Canidy said. “That’s a duchess you’re talking to.”

  Bitter looked in confusion at the captain and saw in her face, and then in a nod of her head, that she was indeed a duchess. He looked at the sergeant and was convinced he saw in her eyes sympathy for his discomfort.

  It was just like Canidy to embarrass him in front of an enlisted man. Woman.

  He looked away from the sergeant, but not before he had noticed that despite the ill-fitting uniform, she was as good-looking as the captain, toward the buses. An Army officer with a clipboard was looking at him impatiently.

  “I’d better get on my bus,” Bitter said.

  “You weren’t listening to Captain Whittaker, Commander,” Canidy said. “If you do that, they will carry you into hours of durance vile, or some damned thing like that: Following the short-arm inspection, there will be bullshit lectures on how you’re supposed to treat the natives. Tell him you’re going with us.”

  “Natives, indeed!” Captain the Duchess Stanfield said.

  "What’s a short-arm inspection?” Ann Chambers asked.

  “I’ll show you later,” Canidy said, grinning at Whittaker.

  "I’d better follow the SOP,” Bitter said. “Where are you going to be later?”

  “You don’t have to go, Eddie,” Canidy said.

  “I can’t just go AWOL,” Bitter protested.

  “What are they going to do, send you overseas?” Canidy replied.

  “Where are you going to be later?”

  “God, you are a stuffed shirt,” Ann Chambers said.

  “We’re going to drink our lunch at the Savoy Grill,” Jimmy Whittaker said. “Then we’ll be in the bar at the Dorchester from about five. Can you remember that, or should I write it down for you?”

  “I’ll do what I can to be there,” Bitter said. He turned to Captain Stanfield: “I’m happy to have met you, Your Grace.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  "Dick! ” Ann Chambers protested as Bitter picked up his bags and started to walk to the buses. “Don’t let him go!”

  “I told him he didn’t have to go,” Canidy said. “But he’s in one of his Commander Don Winslow of the Navy moods. You can’t argue with him when he gets that way.”

  As he hurried toward the buses, Ed heard Whittaker laugh. Then the duchess asked,“Commander Winslow?”

  Canidy told her of Commander Don Winslow, the dauntless, perfect, true-blue hero of a daily radio program for children. Just before he boarded the bus, Ed heard the duchess laugh.

  The bus carried the C-54 passengers to a hotel requisitioned as a billet for newly arrived officers. He was given a small room that was furnished with a cot and a chair. Before long a bored major delivered an hourlong lecture extolling the ancient virtues of the British people and their culture. He made it quite clear that being assigned to England, where one would have the opportunity to actually mingle with these people, was a great privilege. The major was followed by a bored medical captain who delivered another hourlong lecture, enlivened with color slides, of typical genital lesions one could expect if one became too friendly with English ladies.

  When the lectures were over, a sergeant found him and sent him off to Naval Element, SHAEF. A bus ran on a thirty-minute schedule between the transient hotel and Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force. The sergeant told him he’d better take his luggage with him, since the Navy had their own officers’ quarters.

  Repacking and claiming his luggage made Ed miss the first bus to Grosvenor Square. And it was ten past two—and he hadn’t had any lunch— when he finally found Naval Element-SHAEF. A captain there told him that he had been placed on further TDY with the Office of Strategic Services, which was a supersecret outfit located on Berkeley Square. He could wait for a car if he wished, but it was only a couple of blocks away.

  A London bus splashed gritty slush over his overcoat as he walked to Berkeley Square, and he had to stand for several minutes outside a firmly closed door before he was finally permitted inside.

  But the things turned immediately and vastly better.

  A Lieutenant Colonel Stevens greeted him. A good-looking, older officer. He was wearing a West Point ring. Ed was among his own.

  “We’ve been expecting you, Commander Bitter,” Stevens said. “Let me welcome you.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  "I wonder what happened to Canidy,” Lt. Colonel Stevens said.

  “Sir?”

  “He borrowed our limousine to meet you at Croydon and spare you the ‘Be Kind to Our British Cousins’ lectures,” Colonel Stevens said. And then before Bitter could frame a reply, he raised his voice and asked, “Has Major Canidy checked in?”

  "Sir,” a man’s voice, somehow familiar, called back,“he said when you’re through with Commander Bitter to send him over to the Dorchester.”

  "He must have gotten tied up at SHAEF” Colonel Stevens explained. And then he added, “Eighth Air Force did a photo recon of the Saint-Lazare sub pens yesterday. Canidy wanted to see what, if anything, they got.”

  “Yes, sir,” Bitter said.

  “Commander, I believe I’m supposed to brief you, but I would imagine that you’re pretty well briefed on the problem itself already. As well as its ramifications. I think I should tell you this, however: Despite what the DCNO thinks—he had a talk with Colonel Donovan—OSS was given this mission because Ike thought it was the sensible thing to do. It is not a conspiracy to make the Navy look foolish.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Dick said he proposes to send you to see your friend Douglass, who has unfortunately become the expert on the target and its defenses. And then you’ll go see how the Aphrodite project is coming along at Fersfield. How does that sound?”

  “‘Aphrodite project’?” Bitter asked.

  Stevens chuckled. “The drone aircraft,” he explained. “Dick Canidy is apparently well read in mythology. Aphrodite, he informed us, is not only the goddess of love, she is the protectress of sa
ilors. He further suggested that when they heard that name, as they certainly will, the Germans would be prone to associate Aphrodite with the WAC, who use her as their lapel insignia. We were all so dazzled that no one could think of an objection. The Aphrodite Project it is.”

  “Canidy is full of surprises,” Bitter said.

  “Dick speaks very highly of you, Commander,” Lt. Colonel Stevens said. “Despite the motive behind your assignment to us, he thinks you’ll be very useful.”

  Stevens watched Bitter’s face for a reaction. When he could detect none, he went on, as if he was doing something reluctantly that had to be done,"Commander, I think I should tell you that Canidy has been ordered to keep a close eye on you. The first time he suspects your primary loyalty is not to the Aphrodite Project—bluntly, that you consider yourself under a greater obligation to the Navy—he is to send you back to the United States on the next available aircraft. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” Bitter said.

  “Captain Fine has an identity card for you, Commander, and a set of orders that will permit you to move freely around without many questions being asked. Once you have those, there’s nothing else for you to do here. You’ll work out of Whitbey House.”

  “Yes, sir,” Bitter said.

  “Can you come in, Stan?” Stevens called. A moment later, Captain Stanley S. Fine came into his office.

  “You know Commander Bitter, Stan?” Stevens asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Fine said. “Good to see you, Commander. Welcome to the lunatic asylum.”

  “Take care of the paperwork, will you, Stan? And then take the Commander over to the Dorchester.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And, Stan, I want the Princess back.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  On the way to the Dorchester, Bitter was given the answer to the question he dared not ask. The Princess was the Austin Princess limousine Canidy had had at the airport.

  The entrance to the Dorchester Hotel was protected by sandbags stacked high around the revolving door, and the plate-glass windows that looked out onto Park Lane and Hyde Park were painted black and crisscrossed with tape to keep glass shards from flying if a bomb struck nearby.