The Soldier Spies

by W. E. B Griffin

  “What admiral?” Bitter repeated.

  “The Deputy Commander for Air, Naval Element, SHAEF,” Canidy said, “called Colonel Stevens first thing this morning. He told the colonel he deeply regretted not having been on hand to properly welcome you to the European Theater of Operations. Translated, that means he wants to remind you of your naval heritage, and why you have been sent here.”

  “If I have to say this, Dick,” Bitter said,“I consider that I work for you. Period. ”

  Canidy nodded.

  “He asked Colonel Stevens if there was any way you could possibly find time in your busy schedule to give him a few minutes of your time. When Stevens told him he thought that might be difficult, the admiral sweetened his offer. He announced that he is an old friend of General Lorimer and would be happy to introduce the two of you.”

  “You’re losing me, Dick,” Bitter said.

  “Bear with me, Commander,” Canidy said. “Now, as a trade-school graduate himself, Colonel Stevens is well aware of the hoary military adage: ‘Beware of admirals bearing gifts.’ So he did not tell the admiral that we had already discussed you with General Lorimer and had in fact planned to send you over there this morning for a little chat. He decided that it might well be in our interest to see what the admiral has in mind. So he thanked the admiral profusely for his interest and suggested that you meet him there at noon.”

  “Where’s ‘there’? and for the third time, who is General Lorimer?”

  " ’There’is London. Brigadier General Kenneth Lorimer, of the Eighth Air Force Headquarters at High Wycombe, is what the Eighth Air Force chooses to call the ‘cognizant officer’ for the Project Aphrodite,” Canidy said.

  “Okay,” Bitter said.

  “The admiral’s concern for your welfare apparently goes beyond introducing you to the old boy network,” Canidy said. “He volunteered to provide you with a car and driver. Now, that really made Colonel Stevens suspicious, as cars and drivers are about as scarce as fifteen-year-old English virgins.”

  “Thank you very much, Dick,” the Duchess Stanfield said.

  “No offense, Your Gracefulness,” Canidy said,“but please don’t interrupt your commanding officer when he is speaking.”

  “I don’t understand,” Bitter said.

  “Dick suspects, Commander,” the duchess said, “that the car will come with a driver.”

  “And we don’t need a sailor spy around here,” Jimmy Whittaker said. “We have our hands full as it is with French and German spies. And English ones.”

  “The pair of you can go to hell!” the duchess said.

  “Present company excepted, of course,” Whittaker said.

  “I have the feeling, I can’t imagine how, that my leg is being pulled,” Bitter said.

  “No, it’s not,” Canidy said. “We spend so much time spying on each other that it’s a bloody miracle we have any time left to spy on the Germans.”

  “It’s unfortunately true, Commander,” the duchess said.

  “In order to forestall you finding yourself in debt to the admiral, or the Navy generally, Her Gracefulness suggested, and I agreed, that the thing to do is send you to London, and then High Wycombe and Fersfield, in my personal Packard. With the faithful Agnes at the wheel, of course, to lend a final touch of class.”

  “Your ‘personal Packard’?”

  “You don’t want to hear about that,” the duchess said.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “It is a matter of some delicacy,” Canidy said. “But what the hell, Your Gracefulness, we either trust him or we don’t.”

  The duchess shrugged.

  “Lieutenant Jamison was prowling the premises, Commander, and came across a door in the stables, hidden behind hay bales. Curious chap that he is, he moved the hay bales and opened the door, and lo and behold, there was a Packard automobile up on blocks and otherwise preserved for the duration and six months. Somehow, Her Gracefulness had simply forgotten about it when His Majesty’s Government came around requisitioning motorcars. ”

  The duchess, Bitter saw, was embarrassed.

  “Once the car surfaced, however,” Canidy said, “she was of course anxious to put it to work in the war effort. And who was the most deserving person we could think of?”

  Bitter chuckled.

  "So we painted ’U.S. Army’ on the doors, and Whittaker’s serial number on the hood.”

  “Whittaker’s serial number?”

  “We haven’t figured out how to get the proper papers for it yet,” Whittaker said. “We are trusting in the hunch that very few MPs are going to demand the trip ticket of a U.S. Army Packard driven by an English lady sergeant.”

  "Stevens has chosen to look the other way,” Canidy said. “But I suppose there are those who would consider my personal Packard violates some petty regulation or other.”

  “So be careful, Ed,” Whittaker said.

  “There’s a moral in this tale, Edwin,” Canidy said.

  “I’d love to know what it is.”

  “If you hadn’t been nosy and asked questions, you would not now possess potentially damaging information. If you should now encounter an overzealous policeman, you can no longer honestly proclaim innocence.”

  “What am I supposed to say if I get stopped?” Bitter asked.

  “Don’t get stopped,” Canidy said. “That would be easier.”

  "Jesus! ” Bitter said.

  “When Jamison and I stole the Ford,” Whittaker said, “and Colonel Stevens caught us, Dick told him it was part of the agent training program. I don’t think we could get away with that one again.”

  “Normally, I would deliver a lecture reminding you to tell the admiral nothing you don’t absolutely have to,” Canidy said. “The only reason you’re not getting it is that you haven’t been here long enough to learn anything.”

  Bitter looked at Whittaker.

  “Welcome to the other side of the looking glass, Ed,” Whittaker said.

  “I’ll be damned,” Bitter said.

  “Are you going to tell him about our agent-in-place at Fersfield?” Whittaker asked.

  Canidy smiled.

  “I don’t think so,” Canidy said. “Let’s see if he can guess.”

  Shaved and in a freshly pressed uniform, Bitter stood an hour later in the entrance foyer of Whitbey House. He had still not quite made up his mind whether his leg was being pulled, either about illegal Packards or stolen Fords, or whether or not Canidy—and by contagion the others—was a little paranoid about being spied upon by the French and the English as well as the Germans.

  But there was undoubtedly a Packard, a custom-bodied, right-hand-drive, 1939 Packard. The driver’s compartment was canvas-roofed, and the front fenders held spare tires. It was the kind of car that belonged at a mansion like Whitbey House, and it now seemed credible that the duchess had hidden it, that Jamison had found it, and that Canidy had appropriated it for his own use.

  U.S.ARMY was lettered on the passenger compartment door, and numbers that probably were indeed Whittaker’s serial number were neatly lettered on the hood. A strip of white paint edged the lower fenders, and the headlights were blacked out except for a one-inch strip. People grudgingly conceded Whittaker’s contention that neither a British policeman nor an American MP was likely to stop this car and demand its papers.

  Sergeant Agnes Draper stepped out from behind the wheel and walked up the shallow stairs to the door.

  “Good morning, Commander,” she said. “Let me have your bag, sir.”

  “I can handle the bag, thank you,” Bitter said.

  She walked ahead of him to the car and opened the door for him. He wondered if she knew that the car was illegal. He put his small bag on the thickly carpeted floor and stepped in. She closed the door, then got behind the wheel.

  On the way to London, Sergeant Draper told him that High Wycombe had been a girls’ school before requisitioning. Then she delivered sort of a travelogue on the villages they passed through.
>
  Bitter was having trouble dealing with Sergeant Draper. He had always had trouble dealing with enlisted men on a personal basis, and it was worse when the enlisted man was a woman. He remembered the soft warmth of her hip against his in the Dorchester bar. And, he thought a little bitterly, Canidy’s refusal to treat her as an officer is supposed to treat an enlisted man/woman made things even more difficult.

  To put her at ease, he asked the ritual questions: Where was she from? And did she like the service?

  She told him that she was from the country—“actually not far from Whitbey House”—and that she “rather liked the service now” but that “before Elizabeth arranged to have me transferred, it was bloody rotten.”

  After a moment, Bitter realized that Sergeant Draper was referring to Captain the Duchess Stanfield by her first name.

  “You customarily refer to the captain by her first name, do you?” he blurted without thinking.

  She turned and smiled at him.

  “Only among friends, of course,” she said.

  She had a very nice smile. And really nice boobs.

  Goddamn it, he thought, I wish she was an enlisted man. I could damned well tell an enlisted man that enlisted men don’t call officers by their first names, and that friendship—of the kind she meant—between officers and enlisted men is against the customs of the service.

  VIII

  Chapter ONE

  Supreme Headquarters

  Allied Expeditionary Force

  Grosvenor Square, London

  1115 Hours 9 January 1943

  The Packard rolled grandly up Grosvenor Square, and Sergeant Agnes Draper signaled her intention to turn into the curb before the main entrance to the redbrick building. An English policeman, his gas mask slung over his shoulder, took a quick look and decided that a Packard with a WRAC sergeant at the wheel was entitled to use the front entrance. He signaled for her to turn.

  There was not much room in front of the building. People had to be gotten out of and into their staff cars quickly or there would be a traffic jam. Only Eisenhower’s Packard Clipper was given a parking space (on the sidewalk) in front of the place. Everybody else’s car had to be parked either across the street or in a basement parking lot.

  An American MP, tall and natty, wearing white gloves and leggings and a white crown on his brimmed cap, walked quickly and militarily across the sidewalk to open the door. When he had it open, he saluted crisply as Bitter got out.

  Bitter returned the salute and walked toward the door. His second visit to SHAEF in less than twenty-four hours was more than a little different from his first. The first time he had arrived by bus at the back door, staggering under the weight of his luggage.

  Inside the building, a WAC receptionist called Admiral Foster’s office and then reported that the admiral’s aide would come to get him.

  The aide, a lieutenant, startled him by calling him by his first name. It took a moment to recall his face from Annapolis.

  “I don’t know what went wrong,” the aide said as he led him down long corridors to Admiral Foster’s office. “I’d planned to pick you up at Croydon and get you through initial processing without the standard lectures. But we never got confirmation of your ETA.”

  “No problem,” Bitter said. He thought: Canidy knew what plane I would be on.

  Admiral Foster, who had an office overlooking the snow-covered park, greeted him warmly, and a sailor quickly produced coffee.

  “So far the schedule’s fine,” the admiral said. “Ken Lorimer can’t see us until half past three or four, so we’ll have time for a quick tour of this place, a little lunch, and for the trip to High Wycombe.”

  “Yes, sir,” Bitter said. “Admiral, I’m brand-new. I’m concerned about my driver getting her lunch.”

  “Her lunch?”

  “Yes, sir. She’s a British Army sergeant.”

  “You and Eisenhower,” Admiral Foster said.

  “Sir?”

  “General Eisenhower also has an English female sergeant for a driver,” Foster said. “Damned good-looking woman.”

  “So is this one,” Bitter said.

  Foster told his aide to “make sure Commander Bitter’s driver gets her lunch,” and then he gave Bitter a tour of the Naval Element, SHAEF, introducing him to senior officers as “the man DCNO has sent off to represent the Navy in that ‘delicate project.’”

  It was clear that in his eyes Bitter was the round peg in the round hole, someone who not only had a “distinguished combat record” but was also a career naval officer who “understood the situation” better than someone else might. Bitter was no fool: He realized he was being given the treatment.

  After lunch, when Sergeant Agnes Draper brought the Packard to the door, Admiral Foster suggested they take it to High Wycombe. His aide followed them in his car.

  As soon as they were out of London, Foster asked if the divider could be raised, then got down to business.

  “Damned good luck that you and this Canidy fellow are old friends, Bitter, ” the admiral said.

  “Admiral,” Bitter said, “when I reported into Berkeley Square, Colonel Stevens made a point of telling me that Canidy is under orders to send me home the minute he suspects I’m reporting to the Navy.”

  “You don’t think your friend Canidy’d really do that to you, do you?”

  “Yes, sir, I think—I know—he would.”

  “What the Navy expects you to do, Commander, is to do what you can to make sure the Navy comes out of this—by this I mean all operations in the European Theater, not just the submarine pen project—looking neither foolish nor like poor relations. And what you can do is let me know what the Army is up to that they’ve chosen not to tell the Navy about. From everything I’ve heard, the OSS has its nose in everybody’s tent.”

  I’ll be damned, Bitter thought. Canidy was right.

  “Admiral,” Bitter said, “do you know what the OSS does to people they suspect can’t be trusted to keep what classified information they have been made privy to?”

  “No, I don’t,” the admiral said. “And for God’s sake, Commander, we’re talking about the United States Navy.”

  “In the States, they send them to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital for psychiatric evaluation.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “And over here, they have a similar facility in Richodan, Scotland.” Admiral Foster looked at him incredulously.

  “Apparently, sir, the principle of habeas corpus does not apply to persons undergoing psychiatric examination,” Bitter said.

  “Commander, I don’t know where you heard that, but I wouldn’t pay much attention to it. For one thing, it’s illegal. Let me put it another way: If you should wind up in a psychiatric hospital, in possession of your faculties, the Navy will get you out. Do I make my point?”

  “Yes, sir,” Bitter said. “That’s encouraging to hear, sir.”

  It was Canidy who had told Bitter about St. Elizabeth’s hospital and the Richodan, Scotland, facility. And Bitter knew that Canidy had not been pulling his leg about either place.

  All his good feeling about his assignment now vanished. For political reasons having nothing to do with the prosecution of the war, he had been asked by a two-star admiral to spy on the OSS. He knew that he could not do that, even though his failure to do so would be regarded by the Navy as disloyalty.

  He suddenly understood that the OSS could have been given its extraordinary authority only by someone of extraordinary authority within the government. And that would not have happened if there was not some extraordinary reason for it. A reason that transcended matters as unimportant as the Navy looking foolish or like poor relations.

  When Stanley Fine gave him OSS identification, he had thought it a bit amusing, a touch of schoolboy melodrama. It no longer seemed that way. The truth was that without realizing it, he had just left the Navy again, just as he had left it when he went off to the Flying Tigers.

  Well, not quite. I volunteered for
the Flying Tigers, and I damned sure didn’t volunteer for this.

  Chapter TWO

  At Headquarters, Eighth Air Force, at High Wycombe, they paid the ritual courtesy call on the senior officer present. The lieutenant general was formally correct, managing to convey the impression—without, of course, ever openly stating it—that giving the sub-pen-busting mission to the OSS was a lousy idea, but that, as a dutiful soldier, he would comply with his orders to cooperate fully.

  Then they went to meet Admiral Foster’s friend, the Eighth Air Force officer charged specifically with supporting the project. Kenneth Lorimer turned out to be a very youthful brigadier general, who was wearing the same spectacular all-pink uniform Whittaker had been wearing at Croydon.

  Foster introduced Bitter as the Navy man who would be dealing with Project Aphrodite on a day-to-day basis. He did not fail to mention that Bitter was Annapolis, ’38.

  It was pretty clear that Foster was suggesting to Lorimer that the ring knockers, the graduates of the service academies, join ranks to repel the temporary warriors who were intruding in the real business of warfare.

  General Lorimer looked a little uncomfortable.

  “G.G.,” he said,“I’m sort of on a spot with you.”

  “I don’t understand,” Admiral Foster said.

  “I hate to say I’m pressed for time, but I am,” Lorimer said. “And, as embarrassing as it is for me to say this to you, G.G., you don’t have the need-to-know what Commander Bitter and I are going to talk about.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Ken, I’m the Chief, Naval Aviation Element, SHAEF.”

  “But you’re not on Canidy’s list, I’m sorry to say.”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “It’s the list of those people authorized access to Project Aphrodite operational information,” General Lorimer said." ’Canidy’s List,’ because Canidy drew it up.”

  “We’re in a pretty fucked-up condition when a rear admiral is told to butt out,” the admiral flared,“by a major.”