The Spymasters: A Men at War Novel
Page 19
4. STATION CHIEFS LONDON AND ALGERS REQUESTED TO ACKNOWLEDGE RECEIPT OF THIS AND COMPREHENSION OF CONTINGENCY PLANS.
FONDLY,
ALLEN
END QUOTE
TOP SECRET
* * *
The tall, thin Stevens, after putting the message on the coffee table, leaned back on the couch and crossed his outstretched legs.
“With Kappler’s connections in the High Command, I can understand why Allen seems anxious,” Stevens said. He then chuckled and added, “Think we should tell him the reason they can’t find Schwartz is because he’s dead?”
“Who the hell does Dulles think he is, Donovan himself?” Bruce suddenly said, coldly furious.
Ed Stevens raised his eyebrows.
“‘Station chiefs requested to acknowledge receipt’!” Bruce quoted, gesturing at the message on the table by Stevens. “‘Ops actionable within seven days’! We’re just supposed to drop everything? And he copies Donovan on the message so it in essence becomes an order, a fait accompli.”
Bruce then looked thoughtful as he sipped his coffee.
“I suggest that he’s playing to Donovan,” Bruce said.
“In what way?” Stevens said.
“Clearly Donovan also floated his idea of an ‘extra-legal’ contingency plan with Dulles.”
“Which is?”
“A code word for wholesale assassination. The elimination of Axis sympathizers, a hit list of those who would be the next Hitler. Starting with taking out the top one hundred Nazis. Summarily execute them. Donovan told us about it when he was just here. And if he told us, he certainly bounced it off Dulles, who now is running with his own version of it.”
“Okay,” Stevens said after a moment, reasonably, “I can see how that’s playing to Donovan.”
“It would not surprise me if Dulles has this industrialist Kappler, with all his connections, being groomed for something like that.”
“I suppose that has to be considered.”
“As Donovan joked—and I’m pretty sure he did not mean it seriously—‘Shoot them all and let the Lord sort them out.’ Because he then admitted that the downside of that was they wouldn’t be tried as war criminals.”
Stevens nodded, then said, “So, what do you want to do with this? We can get to Kappler’s wife and daughter reasonably easily. But it’s getting out of Germany—and especially out of Berlin—with two grown women watched by the Gestapo that’s going to be the challenge.”
Bruce nodded thoughtfully. He was about to open his mouth to speak when he heard a knock at the door.
“We are not to be disturbed!” Bruce said instead, his voice angry and impatient.
Captain Dancy’s voice came from the other side of the door: “Harrison has an Operational Immediate Eyes Only for you, Colonel.”
Bruce looked at Stevens.
“Oh, hell,” he said, “now what?”
Stevens shrugged.
Bruce raised his voice. “Bring it in!”
Dancy opened the door and held it open as Captain Tom Harrison, the five-foot-one ninety-nine-pound thirty-two-year-old chief of the commo room, purposefully marched in and stopped before the desk. He saluted crisply.
“Colonel, sir,” he said, “an Eyes Only Operational Immediate for you.”
“So I hear. Let’s see what you’ve got,” Dulles said, gesturing impatiently with his right hand Let me have it.
Harrison first extended a clipboard with a sheet titled “Receipt for Classified Document.” When Bruce had signed it, Harrison handed him a document with a TOP SECRET cover sheet on it.
“That’ll be all, Harrison, thank you,” Bruce said.
“Yes, sir, Colonel,” Harrison said, saluted, turned on his heels, and marched out. Dancy pulled the door shut.
Bruce scanned the message, made a face, then thrust the sheet at Stevens.
Stevens took it and read:
* * *
TOP SECRET
OPERATIONAL IMMEDIATE
X STATION CHIEF
FILE
COPY NO. 1
OF 1 COPY ONLY
31MAY43
OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OSS WASHINGTON
FOR OSS LONDON EYES ONLY BRUCE STEVENS
QUOTE
1. OSS LONDON DIRECTED AS HIGHEST PRIORITY TO SUPPORT WITH ALL MEANS AVAILABLE OSS BERN’S REQUESTED CONTINGENCY RESCUE PLAN.
2. RESCUE WILL BE ATTEMPTED AT EARLIEST POSSIBLE TIME AT OSS BERN’S DISCRETION.
3. OSS LONDON ALSO DIRECTED TO SUPPORT OSS ALGIERS IN WHATEVER WAY POSSIBLE WITH ITS CONTINGENCY PLAN.
4. ADDITIONAL ORDERS TO FOLLOW THIS DATE.
5. STATION CHIEF LONDON WILL ACKNOWLEDGE RECEIPT OF THIS MESSAGE.
END QUOTE
DONOVAN
TOP SECRET
* * *
David K. E. Bruce then drained his coffee, slammed his china mug on his wooden desk, and said, icily sarcastic, “Did I mention Dulles’s fait accompli?”
[TWO]
Palermo, Sicily
2050 30 May 1943
John Craig van der Ploeg, his mind foggy, felt weightless as he floated freely through a warm darkness that was absolutely peaceful.
He turned his head to the left and had the sensation of something tickling his right ear. He turned his head the other way, and then something tickled his left ear. He turned back to the left, felt the tickle again, then right, then shook his head—and found himself suddenly awake.
And dazed.
And completely confused.
Gone was the peaceful, warm darkness. Now it was just damn dark. His whole body ached. His ears rang. And his right foot felt as if he had put it in a searing fire.
The slightest movement caused his whole body to sway.
So I’m floating?
Where am I?
He looked around and slowly began to get his bearings. There were limbs surrounding him, poking and scratching. He could smell the leaves.
Is that what was tickling my ears?
There was intense pressure—a squeezing sensation—at his upper thighs and buttocks, and it took him a moment to realize that it was being caused by the webbing of his parachute harness.
He looked up and saw his collapsed parachute, its lines all fouled in the limbs.
I landed in a tree?
Damn I hurt . . .
He looked down and around and still could see nothing in the darkness but more limbs and leaves.
Did I break my foot?
And why can’t I move?
How long have I been here?
And then he panicked.
I’ll never get found up here!
“Help!” he called out in Italian. “Up here! Someone! Help me!”
There then came a bright light in his eyes, and he immediately stopped.
The beam of light moved down to his torso, and he felt a hand yanking at his harness, then heard the metallic rattling of the harness release.
The next sensation that John Craig van der Ploeg felt was that of falling forward—and then down.
More limbs slapped at him as he fell.
“Ugh!” he grunted as he hit the ground, landing faster than he’d expected.
Then he heard a familiar voice.
“Knock off the yelling!” Dick Canidy said with more than a little disgust. “You were only five feet off the ground, for christsake.”
John Craig caught his breath, then said, “What happened?”
“What the hell do you think happened? You landed in a tree! A huge chestnut. The damn thing must be sixty feet tall.” He grunted. “You sure like hitting huge fucking targets.”
John Craig moaned, then reached for his right boot.
“You okay?” Canidy said, shining the beam back to his face.
He saw John Craig wince.
“My foot. It feels like it’s on fire.”
The flashlight beam moved to the booted foot—on the way illuminating some dried vomitus on John Craig’s black coveralls—and Canid
y knelt to get a better look, grateful the foul odor was mostly gone.
He carefully grasped the boot and slowly moved the toe of it up and down.
“That hurt?”
“A little. Some burning.”
“I don’t think it’s broken. You’d have a helluva lot more pain if it were.”
Canidy then started to slowly roll his foot side to side.
“Stop! That burns like hell!”
“Let’s see if you can put any weight on it,” Canidy said, then stood and offered his hand.
John Craig hopped up on his left leg, then tried to take a step. He screamed in pain as his ankle gave way and his right leg collapsed beneath him.
Once again on the ground, he crab-crawled over to the thick trunk and leaned against it.
Canidy looked at him.
“Well, shit! This certainly changes things. . . .”
He looked up, and then around them.
“Stay put,” Canidy said. “I need to pull together our gear and get rid of the parachutes so no one sees them.” He looked up again. “Especially yours, which is going to be a bitch getting out of there.”
John Craig, his head spinning, watched Canidy start to climb the huge chestnut tree. Then he closed his eyes.
* * *
John Craig heard fast footfalls approaching and opened his eyes wide. He had no idea how long he’d been out. He started to move—and instantly felt the burning sensation in his right foot.
He reached for his .45 and began to raise it in the direction of the sound.
Then he heard the footsteps stop.
Then Canidy’s voice: “Put that damn thing down before you cause us even more trouble.”
John Craig let out a sigh as he lowered his weapon.
“Feeling any better?” Canidy said, catching his breath.
“Not really.”
“Shit.”
“Where’s the gear?” John Craig said.
“Stashed with the parachutes in two places. Took me twenty minutes, but I found some nice rock outcrops up the hill to put it in.”
“Why?”
“So if one stash is found—which is unlikely, but you never know—they will think they hit the jackpot. And we will have a backup hidden.”
“No, why stashed?”
“Because I sure as hell cannot carry the gear and you.”
“Oh yeah. Sorry.”
“Right now our Plan B options are less than lousy. One is for you to sit tight while I go find a motorcycle, a car—something that can haul your ass into town. But if someone saw us jump, and you stayed here, then you’d literally be a sitting duck when they came. So the other option is for you and me to have a three-legged race to town, and once we get you comfortable there, I’ll come back and grab the gear.”
“Three-legged race?”
“You hold on to me and we walk together.”
Canidy started peeling off his black coveralls. Underneath he wore more of Wentworth Danfield Dutton’s tailor-made clothing.
John Craig, under his coveralls, had on brown pants and vest and a tan collarless shirt bought from a Sicilian who had been smuggled to Algiers aboard one of Frank Nola’s fishing boats.
“Get out of your coveralls,” Canidy said, “and I’ll stash them with mine.”
I wonder if the vomit soaked through, he thought.
Make that I’ll stash it near mine. . . .
John Craig struggled to stand.
He said, “We’re on the outskirts of Palermo, right?”
At OSS Algiers, Canidy had mapped out the route they would take from the Landing Zone to the port, complete with landmarks.
“Yeah,” he said, “the LZ’s a little more than a mile west of the port. I saw the road as we landed. It’s not far.”
“Oh yeah,” John Craig remembered. “So did I.”
“Hurry up. We need to get moving. We’ve already been in one place way too damn long.”
* * *
John Craig van der Ploeg had his right hand on Dick Canidy’s left shoulder. Canidy had his left hand on John Craig’s right shoulder.
“Inside foot first . . . and go!” Canidy said, and stepped forward with his left.
John Craig, putting weight on Canidy’s shoulder, swung out his right boot. As he eased pressure onto the hurt foot, he grunted with pain.
“Good?” Canidy said.
“Just keep going.”
They took another step. John Craig immediately fell forward.
Canidy tried to catch them before they both went down. He failed.
They were lying on the ground when Canidy heard John Craig moan—and then chuckle.
“That hurt,” John Craig said, then chuckled again. “But that was pretty damn ridiculous.”
Canidy couldn’t help himself. He chuckled, too.
Then he said, “What the hell else can go wrong?”
“Don’t ask,” John Craig said. “With my luck anything is possible.”
Then they both chuckled, and that turned into hearty laughter.
After a moment, they composed themselves.
They got up, shakily.
“Okay,” Canidy said once they had regained their balance, “let’s try it again . . . and go!”
* * *
Progress over the uneven ground was slow. Finding a comfortable rhythm seemed impossible, even as they quietly counted out a cadence—“One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . and one . . . two . . . three . . . four . . .”
They pressed on, more or less stumbling forward, and almost a half hour later came to the narrow road. They turned to follow it downhill. The smooth surface made finding a rhythm a little easier. They were making better time despite John Craig moaning that the pain was becoming worse.
They heard a dog barking ahead.
Then John Craig suddenly exclaimed: “Damn it! Stop! I need to stop!”
They shuffled to the side of the road.
“It just hurts too much,” John Craig said. “Just leave me.”
He moaned as he collapsed under a squat tree.
Now what? Canidy thought, and inhaled deeply.
He noticed that the tree had a strong, familiar smell. He reached up to one of the limbs, felt an equally familiar shape growing there, and plucked it.
Lemon, he thought, then remembered the landmarks he had marked on his map. This is part of that citrus farm.
The dog barked again.
“There’s a farmhouse just down the road,” Canidy said. “I wasn’t sure if it was inhabited, but that dog means it probably is. I’m going to go have a look. You should be fine. We’re far enough away from the LZ. And there’s been no sign that someone has seen us, or at least is coming after us.”
“Go,” John Craig said, curling up in a fetal position.
Nice, Canidy thought. This just keeps getting fucking better . . .
* * *
Canidy shook John Craig’s shoulder fifteen minutes later.
“Wake up!” he said. “You can sleep when we get to town.”
“What? How do we get there?”
“Let’s go,” Canidy said, then put his hand under John Craig’s right arm and pulled him to his feet. Then, with great effort, he got him to the road.
* * *
“A bicycle?” John Craig said. “I can’t pedal with this bad foot.”
“You’re not going to. Just sit on the seat.”
It took another great effort to get John Craig on the bike seat and balanced. Canidy found that the real challenge came next, when he mounted the bike just in front of John Craig.
“Put your hands on my shoulders,” Canidy instructed.
John Craig did so.
Canidy, his left foot on one pedal, then started pushing the bicycle forward with his right. When he went to get that foot on its pedal, he found that their combined weight made the bike terribly unbalanced, causing the front tire to wobble wildly.
Canidy was convinced they were about to go down—and hard.
Behind him, he heard John Craig begin to chuckle.
“Don’t you dare fucking start with that now!” Canidy said, but he chuckled when he said it.
He managed to get in a couple strong rotations of the pedals, and with more speed the wobbling tire evened out and the bicycle became more stable.
Just like a damn airplane, Canidy thought as he stood somewhat triumphantly and steered along the dark road.
They coasted downhill, picking up speed, and after a couple minutes passed the farmhouse.
John Craig noticed that there had been no barking.
Is that because the dog didn’t hear us?
Or because Dick had to do something so he could steal this bike?
Then he felt sick at that mental image. And then guilty.
Damn it! None of this would’ve happened if I hadn’t landed in that tree and screwed up my foot.
Thinking it would ease his conscience, he was about to ask Canidy about the dog, then decided that it was a really long shot that Canidy would even answer the question—and, if then, answer truthfully—and John Craig decided he really didn’t want to hear his fear confirmed.
[THREE]
Schutzstaffel Field Office
Palermo, Sicily
1830 30 May 1943
This is the last place I want to be right now, SS-Obersturmbannführer Oskar Kappler thought as the driver turned off the engine, but at least I’m out of Messina. And I’m ready to get out of this goddamn car.
Starting before noon, Kappler had been almost desperate for an excuse to leave the SS headquarters. He knew painfully well that he was disturbed by the contents of the letter from his father, and feared that his distraction was apparent to anyone and everyone—and particularly obvious to SS-Standartenführer Julius Schrader.