Officer promotion policies within the 23rd Fighter Group were quite simple:
16. In the case of a combat-caused vacancy, the next-senior officer will temporarily move into the vacant position. If no replacement officer of suitable rank becomes available within seven (7) days of such temporary assignment, the temporary assignment will become permanent, and the incumbent will be promoted to the rank called for by the Table of Organization & Equipment without regard to any other promotional criteria.
When Dooley assumed command of the 403rd, eleven of the pilots who had been senior to him when he had reported for duty as a second lieutenant with the 403rd had been killed or otherwise been rendered hors de combat.
At just about the time Archie became the Old Man, the United States achieved aerial superiority over the battlefield, and the 403rd didn’t have very many—almost no—aerial battles to wage. The mission became ground support and logistics interdiction. The latter translated to mean they swept low over the desert and shot at anything that moved. Locomotives were ideal targets, but single German staff cars, or Kübelwagens—for that matter, individual German soldiers caught in the open—were fair targets.
Captain Dooley had dutifully repeated to his pilots the orders from above that even one dead German soldier meant one fewer German who could shoot at the guys in the infantry. But he confessed to his pilots that he himself had very bad memories of a Kraut Mercedes staff car he’d taken out when he’d come across it as it moved alone across the desert.
“Orders are orders,” Captain Dooley told his pilots.
When things had calmed down a little, the brass had had time to consider officer assignments, putting officers where they could do the most good. Some of the replacement officers sent to the 403rd after Captain Dooley’s assumption of command were senior to him. On the other hand, back at Sidi Slimane in Morocco, there was a newly arrived squadron none of whose officers had yet flown in combat. The problem was that the 94th Fighter Squadron was flying Lockheed P-38 Lightnings, not P-51s. Captain Dooley was not qualified to fly P-38s.
A command decision was made.
“Fuck it. Dooley’s one hell of a pilot. Give him a quick transition into P- 38s and send him to command the 94th. All they’re doing back there is running escort for transports flying in from the States. He’s a quick learner. He’s proven that. And he can teach the others how to fly combat when they’re not escorting transports. They’ll pay attention to a guy with two DFCs even if he looks like a high school cheerleader.”
Aerial resupply of the North African Theatre of Operations was performed by Douglas C-54 four-engine transports. Carrying high-priority cargo ranging from fresh human blood through spare parts to critically needed personnel, they flew from East Coast airfields to Gander, Newfoundland, and after refueling, from Gander to airfields in England.
Fighter aircraft from fields in Scotland flew out over the ocean to escort them safely past German fighters flying out of France. To keep a German fighter formation from happening upon a fleet of transports, the transports flew separately.
The same protection system was put in place as the transports flew from England to North Africa. They were escorted out over the Atlantic by fighters, then flew alone far enough out to sea to avoid German interception as they flew south, until they were met by North Africa-based American fighters over the Atlantic a hundred miles at sea, then escorted to North African air bases, most often Sidi Slimane.
“Aircraft squawking on One One Seven, this is Mother Hen. How do you read?” Captain Dooley inquired. They were approximately 130 miles out over the Atlantic.
“Mother Hen, Five Oh Nine reads you loud and clear.”
“Grandma, read you five by five. I should be able to see you. Are you on the deck?”
“Actually, Mother Hen, I’m at twenty thousand. From up here, I can see what looks like a bunch of little airplanes at what’s probably ten thousand. Is that you?”
Dooley looked up, searching the sky. He saw the sun glinting off the unpainted skin of an aircraft that looked vaguely familiar, and for a moment he had a sick feeling in his stomach.
Jesus Christ, is that a Condor?
The Germans were running their long-range transport, the Condor, from fields in Spain to South America. The 94th had been ordered to “engage and destroy” any such aircraft they encountered.
Archie Dooley did not want to shoot down an unarmed transport.
Orders are orders.
Fuck it!
“Mother Hen to all Chicks. Follow me. Do not—repeat, do not—engage until I give the order.”
He pushed his throttles forward and began his climb.
Getting to twenty thousand feet didn’t take much time, but catching up with the sonofabitch took a hell of a long time.
He has to be making three hundred miles an hour! I didn’t think the Condor was anywhere near this fast.
Jesus, that’s not a Condor!
What the fuck is it?
Dooley finally pulled close enough to see that the airplane, whatever the hell it was, was American. There was a star-and-bar recognition sign on the fuselage, and when he picked up a few more feet of altitude, he saw that U.S. ARMY was painted on the wing.
He looked back at the tail to see if there was a tail number.
Tail, hell. It’s got three of them!
“Five Oh Nine, this is Mother Hen.”
“Oh, hello there, Mother Hen. I wondered how long it was going to take you to get up here.”
Dooley pulled closer and parallel to the cockpit of the huge—And beautiful! Jesus, that’s good-looking!—airplane.
The pilot waved cheerfully at him.
Dooley saw that he was not wearing an oxygen mask.
Don’t tell me it’s pressurized! It has to be. He’s at twenty thousand with no mask!
Jesus, I know what it is. It’s a Constellation! I’ve seen pictures.
What the hell is it doing here?
Dooley saw that his airspeed indicator needle was flickering at 320.
“Five Oh Nine, Mother Hen. We are going to form a protective shield above and ahead and behind you and lead you in.”
“Thank you very much.”
I will be goddamned if I will ask him if that’s really a Constellation.
Dooley went almost to the deck with the Constellation, watched it touch smoothly down, then shoved his throttles forward and picked up the nose so that he—and the rest of the flight—could go around and get in the landing stack.
When Dooley’s P-38 was at the end of its landing roll, he was surprised to see that instead of at Base Ops, where he expected it to be, the Constellation was at a remote corner of the field, where maybe fifty people were hurriedly erecting camouflage netting over it.
“Mother Hen to all Chicks. Refuel, check your planes, but don’t get far from them. I was told to expect another mission when we got back.”
He switched radio frequencies from Air-to-Air Three to Air-to- Ground Two.
“Sidi Tower, Mother Hen is going to taxi to the Constellation.”
“Negative, Mother Hen. You are denied—”
Dooley turned his radios off and taxied to the Constellation.
By the time he got there, the camouflage netting was in place and the staff car of the base commander was parked at the foot of a long ladder that reached up to the fuselage of the Constellation.
The base commander glowered at Dooley.
Fuck it! What’s he going to do, send me to North Africa?
He started to shut down the Lightning.
He had to wait until someone brought a ladder so that he could climb down from the P-38 cockpit.
By the time he got close to the Constellation, two civilians were climbing down the ladder.
That guy looks just like Howard Hughes.
The guy who looked just like Howard Hughes said, “Why do I think you’re Mother Hen?” Then, without waiting for a reply, he said to the other civilian, “This is the guy who shepherded us in
here, Colonel.”
“I was very happy to see you out there, Captain,” the other civilian said, offering Dooley his hand. “Thank you. And are you going to take care of us on the way to Lisbon?”
The base commander put in: “I thought I’d wait, Colonel Graham, until you got here before I told the captain where he was going next.”
“But he is prepared to leave shortly?” Colonel Graham asked.
“Just as soon as his aircraft is refueled,” the base commander said, then looked at Dooley. “Right, Captain?”
“Yes, sir.”
The base commander looked back at Graham and added, “And he picks up the flight plan at Base Ops, of course, and confers with the C-47 crew.”
“Good,” Colonel Graham said. “We have a very narrow window of time.”
“Any questions, Captain Dooley?” the base commander asked.
“Actually, I have two, sir. Three, if I can ask this gentleman if he’s the pilot I saw when we made rendezvous.”
The tall civilian nodded.
“How long did it take you to come from England in that beautiful airplane?”
“Actually, we came by way of Belém, Brazil. It took us a little over eleven hours from Belém. That’s two questions.”
“Did anyone ever tell you you look like Howard Hughes?”
“I hear that all the time,” Howard Hughes said.
VII
[ONE]
Hotel Britania
Rua Rodrígues Sampaio 17
Lisbon, Portugal
1745 4 September 1943
The deputy director of the Office of Strategic Services for Europe cracked open the door of his suite, saw the deputy director of the Office of Strategic Services for the Western Hemisphere standing in the corridor, pulled the door fully open, and gestured for him to enter.
“Nice flight, Alex?” Allen Dulles asked as the two shook hands.
“Coming in here from Morocco on that old-fashioned Douglas DC-3 was a little crowded and bumpy. But the rest of the trip, on the Constellation, was quite comfortable,” Colonel A. F. Graham said.
Dulles chuckled.
“Howard knows how to take care of himself,” Graham added. “There’s a galley, and a couple of stewards, and bunks with sheets and pillows. And we flew so high, we were above the bad weather. What’s up?”
“Wild Bill know you’re here?” Dulles asked.
“You said don’t tell him, so I didn’t.” Graham met Dulles’s eyes, smiled, and asked, “What are we hiding from our leader?”
He took a long, thin, black cigar from a case, then remembered his manners and offered the case to Dulles, who shook his head.
“There’s been a very interesting development,” Dulles said. “What would you say, Alex, if I told you that the Germans know a great deal about the Manhattan Project?”
“You sound surprised,” Graham said.
“A very great deal, Alex,” Dulles said.
There was a battered leather briefcase on a desk. Dulles went to it, unlocked it, matter-of-factly took a yellow-bodied thermite grenade from it, set it carefully on the desk, then went back into the briefcase and came out with a stack of eight-by-ten-inch photographs, which he handed to Graham.
Graham read the photograph of the cover sheet carefully, then looked through the stack of photographs of the rest of the document.
“I have no idea what I’m looking at,” he confessed.
“You know about the Manhattan Project’s facility in Tennessee?”
“Oak Ridge?”
“Oak Ridge is Site X,” Dulles said. “What this is—these are—are photographs of the weekly progress report on the four projects they’re setting up there to separate enough weapons-grade uranium from uranium ore to make a weapon. Or weapons. Atomic bombs.”
“Where’d you get this report?”
“From the Germans. Specifically, from Fregattenkapitän Otto von und zu Waching, who is Admiral Canaris’s deputy.”
“Meaning the Germans have a spy—spies—in Oak Ridge?” Graham asked incredulously. “That’s bad news. You haven’t told Donovan?”
“No, I haven’t told Donovan.”
“Why not?”
“The Germans don’t have spies in Oak Ridge. The Russians do. The Germans apparently have people in the Kremlin. According to von und zu Waching, that’s where those photos came from.”
“How long have you known about this?” Graham asked.
“Since two o’clock this afternoon. Canaris got word to me that he thought it would be to our mutual interest if we got together with von und zu Waching—”
“ ‘We’?” Graham interrupted.
“You and me. He asked for you by name. So I sent you the ‘come to Portugal very quietly’ message. Canaris doesn’t play games, for one thing, and for another, I really didn’t want to deal with whatever this was by myself.”
“What the hell is it all about?”
“What comes immediately to mind, obviously, is that it is not in the best interests of the German Reich for the Soviets to have an atomic bomb. Stealing the knowledge of how to make one from us is a quick way for them to get one.”
Graham nodded his agreement.
“This is all you got from this guy? What’s his name?”
“Fregattenkapitän Otto von und zu Waching. That’s all. He asked if you were coming, and when I told him you were, he ‘suggested’ we wait until you got here before we got into anything else.”
“Where is he now?”
“In his room, waiting for me to call him.”
“Call him,” Graham said.
[TWO]
“Good evening,” Fregattenkapitän Otto von und zu Waching said five minutes later, with a bob of his head.
He was in civilian clothing, a gray-striped woolen suit that looked a little too large for him, a once-white shirt—which instantly brought to Graham’s mind the advertising campaign that tried to convince American housewives that the use of a certain soap powder would absolutely protect their husbands’ white shirts from turning “tattletale gray” and thus suggesting they were failing to properly care for the family breadwinner—and worn-out shoes.
The Germans are running short of soap. And material for suits. And shoes.
It’s as simple as that.
“My name is Graham,” Graham said, offering his hand.
“Your reputation precedes you, Colonel,” von und zu Waching said. “I am, as I’m sure Mr. Dulles has told you, Otto von und zu Waching, and I have the honor of being Vizeadmiral Canaris’s deputy. Thank you for coming. I am sure you will feel the effort was worthwhile.”
His English was fluent, with a strong upper-class British accent.
“Let’s hope so,” Graham said.
“Would either of you be offended if I outlined my position here? Our positions here? I suggest that would be useful.”
“By all means,” Dulles said.
“I am a serving officer. Our nations are at war. I have, as has Admiral Canaris, come to the conclusion that Adolf Hitler, and most of the senior officials and military officers around him, must, in the interests of Germany, be removed from power.
“This is an internal matter. While on its face it is treason, that treason is limited to removing the National Socialist government—the Nazis—from power. Neither Admiral Canaris, nor myself, nor any of those associated with us are willing to betray our soldiers, airmen, or seamen by taking any action, or providing to you or anyone else any intelligence which could affect their combat efficiency and therefore place their lives in danger.
“Is that your understanding of the situation?”
“Frankly, Captain . . .” Graham replied, so quickly that Dulles looked at him with what could have been surprise or alarm or both. “. . . is that what I call you, ‘Captain’?”
“If it pleases you,” von und zu Waching said.
Graham went on: “You’re aware, I’m sure, Captain, that we are both serving officers in the naval service of
our respective nations; that the U.S. Marine Corps is part of the U.S. Navy?”
“So I understand.”
“Well, in the United States Navy, we have a saying, and I would be surprised if there isn’t a similar saying in the Kriegsmarine.”
“And that saying is?” von und zu Waching asked with a smile.
Graham switched to German and said, rather unpleasantly, “Why don’t we cut the bullshit and get down to business?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“There are two cold facts coloring this conversation,” Graham said pointedly. “One is that you’ve lost the war, and you know it, and the second is that you want something from us. So why don’t we stop splitting hairs about what constitutes treason and get down to what you want from us?”
Von und zu Waching’s face turned white.
“Captain,” Graham said, “I came a very long way at considerable inconvenience because I thought that Admiral Canaris had something important to say, not to listen to crap like you just mouthed.”
Von und zu Waching looked at Dulles.
Graham snapped: “Don’t look to Dulles to bring me up short, Captain. I don’t work for him, and he can’t order me to give you whatever it is you want from me. And you wouldn’t have asked him to get me here if you could get what you want from him.”
Von und zu Waching said nothing.
Neither did Dulles.
“Okay, getting to the bottom line, Captain,” Graham said, coldly reasonable, “why don’t you tell me what it is you want from me, and what you’re willing to offer in exchange?”
“Has Mr. Dulles shown you the material from Oak Ridge?”
“He showed me what you purport to be material from Oak Ridge,” Graham said.
“The Russians have spies in Oak Ridge and elsewhere within your Manhattan Project. I am prepared to identify them to you.”
“Come on, Captain. If you work for Canaris, you didn’t get into the intelligence business last week.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” von und zu Waching said.
The Honor of Spies Page 22
