The Spymasters: A Men at War Novel

by Griffin, W. E. B. ; Butterworth IV, William E.

  Eisenhower only recently had become a cautious believer in the OSS after being impressed with intel from Corsica—an Axis-occupied French island in the upper Mediterranean Sea—that he had not expected.

  The OSS’s first covert team inside enemy-occupied Europe had established a clandestine radio station, code-named PEARL HARBOR, on the island, and on December 25, 1942, began sending almost daily messages to OSS Algiers Station. Among other things, PEARL HARBOR reported that only twenty-five thousand Italians—and almost no Germans—had taken Corsica and done so with relative ease. The Vichy government, in true French fashion, had ordered its two army battalions on the island not to resist. After waving a white flag of surrender, the battalions were demobilized and their general put under house arrest. Then the Italians, with their limited strength, concentrated their resources on only the west and east coasts, leaving most of the island undefended.

  Fine had told Canidy that it had taken some effort, but he’d finally gotten past Lieutenant Colonel J. Warren Owen to personally deliver PEARL HARBOR intel to Ike on a regular basis. Fine insisted on the hand delivery because he did not want anyone else taking credit for it—or, worse, later saying it had been “misplaced” when it in fact had been thrown away in a hotel garbage can.

  “Ike likes what I’m feeding him,” Fine told Canidy, “but he still wants to keep us on a short leash. With the next ops about to launch, he’s anxious about what we and the SOE are up to.”

  “Speaking of whom,” Canidy said. “I’m guessing we still have the same joyful relationship with our spook cousins.”

  Fine found himself chuckling. He then cleared his throat.

  “Sorry,” he said. “The last thing I should be doing is laughing. If you asked them, they would look you square in the face and say, ‘Everything is bloody brilliant. We’re all in this together, old chap!’ But the fact of the situation is that it has not improved—and is damn laughable.”

  Wild Bill Donovan had worked closely with British intelligence—particularly a navy officer by the name of Commander Ian Fleming—when he began forming what eventually would become the Office of Strategic Services. Donovan understood that the Brits were more than mere veterans at the tradecraft of espionage—they arguably were the masters. It certainly didn’t hurt that their Secret Intelligence Service had been formed in the sixteenth century.

  In 1940, Winston Churchill had spun off the SIS’s Section D, what it called its clandestine arm, to help create the Special Operations Executive. The prime minister ordered the SOE to set Axis-occupied Europe “ablaze” with guerrilla warfare.

  Donovan had patterned—some said shamelessly stolen—a great deal of the unconventional warfare tactics for the OSS’s Special Operations after the SOE, specifically its Research and Development Station IX.

  When asked why, Donovan shot back: “Because they know what they’re doing!”

  From the first day that Stan Fine had arrived at OSS Algiers Station, the understanding had been that, in the spirit of Allied Forces cooperation, the OSS agents would train with the SOE agents at the SOE’s “finishing school” at Club des Pins. The onetime swank beach resort had telegraphy and cryptography and jump schools, plus courses in the use of plastic explosives to blow up bridges, railroads, et cetera.

  It made perfect sense in theory; both were honing the same skills of irregular warfare, and of course both were fighting for the same side.

  In reality, inter-service rivalry reared its ugly head.

  Fine went on: “As you’ll recall, more and more of our guys were being turned away. And then I was told that due to a rush of incoming new SOE agents, there would be no room at all for my men.”

  “‘Thank you very much, and don’t let the doorknob hit you in the ass on the way out,’” Canidy said bitterly.

  “That pretty much was the message.”

  “Thank God you started the Sandbox.”

  The Sandbox was the code name for a deserted Catholic school that was inside a high-walled compound at Dellys, about sixty kilometers to the east. Dellys was sort of a miniature Algiers—really not much more than a very big village—with its own port and ancient casbah. Fine had taken over the school and other property in and near Dellys to create an OSS Operational Techniques School. It had all the training classes that the SOE had at its Club des Pins, plus a half-dozen fishing boats and another dozen rubber boats that they used for putting agents ashore. There also were C-47 “Gooney Bird” aircraft for the agents to practice parachuting.

  Fine grinned. “Actually, after you went out there in March and taught that ad hoc course on how the Germans run their Abwehr, we brought in some of the training material you had at Whitbey House. So they’re now referring to the Sandbox as the Dick Canidy MTO Throat Cutting and Bomb Throwing Academy. It’s everything the Brits have—and, even better, we have complete and total access to it. We wait for no one.”

  Canidy nodded. “And we damn sure shouldn’t. I’ve had it with the OSS being treated as the redheaded stepchild of this war—by our so-called Allies and by our own military.”

  He sighed.

  “Fuck it. You know what they say: Don’t worry about things you can’t control. Deal with what you can.”

  * * *

  “Getting back to Ike,” Fine said. “Every time I take him new intel, he makes a point to remind me of his order that none of our agents are to go into Sicily for fear we will blow Operation Husky.”

  Canidy grunted.

  “Never mind that we have gone in—what?—four times,” he said. “That I have twice—and destroyed nerve gas that could have been used against us. I don’t guess Ike gave the OSS an Attaboy! pat on the back for that.”

  Fine shook his head. “Don’t hold your breath waiting for that to come—even if we had told AFHQ about that.”

  “AFHQ was never told?”

  He thought that over as he sipped his coffee.

  “Well, I guess that makes sense. Ike’s people repeatedly told us that there was no indication that the Krauts had the gas in the first place. So, why would that asshole Owen and Company want to believe us when we say that (a) not only did it exist, but (b) we took it out?”

  “And, Dick, Owen would loathe being proven wrong. Which, frankly, would’ve been next to impossible for us to do without any physical evidence.”

  “Oh, there’s evidence all right. It just happens to be a thousand meters down on the ocean floor.”

  Fine added: “It just wasn’t a battle worth fighting.”

  “If Ike doesn’t want us in Sicily, what are you telling him about Tubes and Mercury Station?”

  Fine, stone-faced, looked at Canidy and said, “About who?”

  After a moment, Canidy made a face that he understood, then said: “Change of subject: Have they come up with a D-day for Husky?”

  “Which D-day?”

  “There’s more than one? How can that be?”

  “Right now, it’s next Wednesday.”

  “Next Wednesday?” Canidy repeated, his tone incredulous.

  Fine grinned and looked at John Craig van der Ploeg.

  “Tell him, son.”

  “You’ve heard,” John Craig began, “that ‘Three can keep a secret—’”

  “‘If two of them are dead,’” Canidy finished. “You probably learned that in my Throat Cutting and Bomb Throwing course.”

  John Craig nodded. “As a matter of fact, I did. I also learned that Benjamin Franklin—who knew a thing or two about spying, having been part of the Secret Committee created by the Second Continental Congress in 1775—actually said it first.”

  “Impressive,” Canidy said drily. “And this little bit of trivia of yours has what bearing on D-day?”

  “Well,” John Craig said, “the minute those proverbial three people hear the date for D-day, word spreads. To throw off the enemy, AFHQ is assigning at least four days as Husky’s D-day. The first one is Wednesday of next week. It’s what’s called ‘disinformation.’”

  “I
know what the hell disinformation is,” Canidy snapped. “As I’m sure you’ve been seeding that disinformation in your messages that we assume are being intercepted by our eager enemies. And the closer we get to Wednesday, the heavier your message traffic will become to give the illusion of a pending invasion.”

  John Craig nodded. “You have no idea. Our commo room is really busy. We’ve also been spreading rumors around Algiers that that’s the date. With any luck the Krauts will man their guns next Wednesday awaiting a beach assault—and be met with only another lovely Mediterranean sunrise. Then we’ll repeat all that with the next date that AFHQ gives us. With more luck, they’ll think the date for the real D-day is just more disinformation and not show up.”

  Canidy grunted. “Don’t hold your breath that that will happen.”

  “Dick,” Stan Fine then said, “you didn’t hear it from me: It’s early July. No hard date yet.”

  “We’re invading Sicily in six, seven weeks?”

  Fine nodded.

  “What about Corkscrew?” Canidy said. “It has to be right about now.”

  The primary objective of OPERATION CORKSCREW was the destruction of Pantelleria’s airfields and radar installations considered a threat to the invasion of Sicily. Pantelleria, a thirty-two-square-mile island that was thirty miles east of Tunisia and sixty miles southwest of Sicily, had a normal population of about three thousand. Italian soldiers had quadrupled that.

  CORKSCREW’s secondary objective was to gauge just how many bombs would be required to take the island—information that could then be used in the plans for taking Sicily.

  “The heavy pounding starts Wednesday of next week,” Fine said.

  “No shit? Or is that another bogus date?”

  “It’s actual,” Fine said.

  John Craig offered: “That makes the other disinformation not seem intentional. They will think they just misread or misinterpreted what we sent. Right date, wrong island.”

  Canidy looked at John Craig.

  “Believe it or not, I do know how that works,” Canidy said, then sighed. “Jesus! All this changes everything with Mercury Station.”

  [THREE]

  Aboard the Sequoia

  On the Potomac River near Mount Vernon, Virginia

  1703 30 May 1943

  “You might want to check your line there, General,” the President of the United States said casually to the director of the Office of Strategic Services, gesturing with his silver-tipped cigarette holder at the fishing rod that had just barely flexed.

  It was a warm, cloudless spring afternoon. William Joseph Donovan and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, sipping gin and tonic cocktails from squat fine crystal glasses, were seated in heavily varnished mahogany fishing chairs on the stern of the 104-foot-long Sequoia. The wooden motor vessel recently had been replaced as the Presidential Yacht by the 165-foot all-steel U.S.S. Potomac and passed to the secretary of the Navy on the condition that FDR, as he did now, could on occasion borrow her to conduct quiet meetings.

  “For fishing expeditions,” FDR had explained to Navy Secretary Frank Knox, adding with a conspiratorial grin, “maybe even ones that actually involve a rod and reel.”

  The Sequoia—running on only one of her twin diesel engines in order to slowly troll the fishing lures—made her way upriver after having cruised down to where the Potomac River flowed into Chesapeake Bay.

  The sixty-one-year-old President, looking gaunt and a little tired, wore a long-sleeved white shirt, its cuffs rolled up to his elbows, and khakis, both starched but well wrinkled. A wide-brimmed floppy canvas hat shielded his pale face and scalp from the sun.

  Roosevelt held up his glass in the direction of Mount Vernon, now visible on the southern bank.

  “A toast to our first commander in chief,” the present commander in chief announced, “and spymaster. I trust you’re aware that George Washington set up the Continental Army’s first intelligence command.”

  Donovan, a stocky, ruddy-faced, silver-haired Irishman of sixty, was similarly clothed but with a dark blue button-down shirt and no hat.

  He smiled and raised his glass toward Washington’s estate and said, “Indeed. Knowlton’s Rangers, in 1776. Here’s to General Washington, who declared, ‘The necessity of procuring good intelligence is apparent and need not be further urged.’”

  Not lost on Donovan was the connection that Roosevelt was making between FDR and George Washington.

  Two years earlier, FDR had asked Donovan to take leave of his successful New York City law firm and become head of the United States’ new intelligence organization. It had the innocuous name of the Office of Coordinator of Information, but the Top Secret COI was anything but innocent or harmless.

  As its spy chief, Donovan had been a civilian using the title of “colonel,” which he’d been in the First World War. But two months ago, in late March 1943, FDR had given Donovan his new commission. COI had become the Office of Strategic Services, and its director was now Brigadier General William Joseph Donovan, USA, a rank more appropriate for America’s spymaster.

  * * *

  Roosevelt, whose long history with Donovan dated back to their days as classmates at Columbia Law School, knew that “Wild Bill” was one helluva soldier. The rare kind of leader who men faithfully followed without question. That had been proven without question on the battlefields of France in World War One. Donovan had been with the “Fighting 69th,” the National Guard regiment from New York City.

  In one particularly bloody engagement, Donovan, his troops taking great casualties and himself badly wounded by machine-gun fire, continually had exposed himself to enemy bullets as he moved among his men. He reorganized the battered platoons, then led them in assault after assault on the enemy. Refusing to be evacuated for his wounds, Donovan continued fighting until confident that his men could withdraw to a less exposed position.

  That had earned him the Medal of Honor—America’s highest award for valor.

  Despite their many differences—FDR was the product of moneyed privilege, while scrappy Donovan’s wealth was self-made—Roosevelt recognized that he and Wild Bill shared more than a few qualities, chief among them being tough, intelligent, shrewd sonsofbitches.

  This wasn’t lost on Donovan, either, but being a tough, intelligent, shrewd sonofabitch, he understood that their relationship, based on genuine mutual respect, was far more professional than an actual close friendship. While they did call themselves pals, Donovan knew that FDR used people—indeed was an unapologetic Machiavellian who took great pleasure in quietly playing people against one another—and was careful not to confuse FDR’s attention as anything more than FDR working to get what FDR wanted.

  And what FDR always wanted—whether for professional or personal reasons, or both—was solid, truthful information.

  In 1920, Roosevelt, then serving as assistant secretary of the Navy, attached Wild Bill to the Office of Naval Intelligence and sent him to collect intelligence in Siberia. Donovan, long the world traveler as he managed the interests of his law firm’s international clients, found that he enjoyed being FDR’s envoy.

  Wild Bill had found a new calling—and Roosevelt had found a source he could trust.

  In his first term as President, FDR sent Donovan to get him the facts on Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia. (Donovan reported back that the helpless Africans were being slaughtered in the one-sided “war.”) And then, in 1940, Donovan was sent by FDR to do the same as another charismatic European leader—this one the chancellor of Germany—was spreading the evil of Fascism.

  Adolf Hitler threatened all of Europe—and, Roosevelt feared, maybe beyond.

  After a quick trip to England to answer FDR’s question—“Can our cousins beat back that bastard Hitler?”—Donovan said the British could not take on the Nazis alone, but for the present they should be able to protect themselves—if aided by the United States.

  That wasn’t the good news that Roosevelt wanted to hear. But the
n that was why he had sent Donovan: to get the facts and deliver them unadulterated.

  Roosevelt immediately sent Donovan on a longer trip to gather intelligence in the Mediterranean and the Baltics. Three months later, Donovan’s report found FDR, now in his third term as President, calculating how a neutral America could help stop the spreading of Fascism and Communism.

  He knew only one thing for sure: It would be anything but easy.

  FDR solemnly believed in the oath of defending the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Yet in order to protect the U.S.—as well as effectively deal with America’s isolationists who vehemently opposed the U.S. getting involved in another world war—he needed not just more intelligence but more solid intelligence.

  He was up to his ears in the former. It came from the vast U.S. government agencies—starting with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and its director, the relentless J. Edgar Hoover—set up to collect exactly that. But when combined with intel provided by others, such as the Office of Naval Intelligence and the Military Intelligence Division, a perfectly clear picture rarely came into focus.

  The reason for this was because of each organization’s first priority: self-preservation. Intelligence provided to the President, they deeply believed, should always shine a favorable light on the agency and, conversely, should never ever make said agency look bad. And the way to do that was to provide the President with what he wanted to hear—thus making the agency appear brilliant—and squash anything that didn’t.

  Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who from time to time admitted having an ego, thought it remotely possible that he might, key word might, suffer some failing—but being a naive fool certainly wasn’t one. He understood what was going on, and what he needed, and who could get it for him.

  Thus, in July of 1941, using his presidential emergency unvouchered funds, he created the secret new office of Coordinator of Information, and named Wild Bill Donovan its chief. He then quietly announced to the heads of the various intelligence agencies that Donovan’s office would collect all national security information from them, analyze it, and deliver his findings directly to the President.