The Spymasters: A Men at War Novel
Page 29
31MAY43 1630
FOR OSS LONDON
EYES ONLY COL BRUCE, LT COL STEVENS
FROM OSS ALGIERS
BEGIN QUOTE
DAVID,
GOOD NEWS OR BAD NEWS, YOU DECIDE. WE ALREADY HAVE AGENT IN-COUNTRY FOR ALLEN DULLES’S REQUEST.
JUPITER, UNKNOWN TO AFHQ AND AGAINST IKE’S WISHES, HAS BEEN IN SICILY ALMOST 24 HOURS. HIS MISSION: (A) LOCATE AND RESCUE MAXIMUS AND OPTIMUS (B) LOCATE AND DESTROY ANY NEW TABUN MUNITIONS (C) DETERMINE VALIDITY OF REPORTS OF UPWARD OF HALF-MILLION ENEMY TROOPERS. AND NOW, IN RECEIPT OF MY MESSAGE TODAY, (D) LOCATE AND BE PREPARED TO ELIMINATE SS-OBERSTURMBANNFUHRER OSKAR KAPPLER SOONEST BUT BY 7 JUNE.
LT COL J WARREN OWEN -- KNOWING NONE, REPEAT NONE, OF THE ABOVE -- TODAY INFORMED ME THAT AFHQ BEGINS SOFT BOMBING OF SICILY ON 17 JUNE, AFTER DIVERSIONARY SOFT BOMBING OF SARDINIA, CORSICA, AND PORT OF NAPLES ON 7 JUNE.
LASTLY, AN INTERESTING PIECE FOR OUR PUZZLE. AS A WAY TO KEEP OSS BUSY -- AND PRESUMABLY THE HELL OUT OF AFHQ’S WAY -- LT COL OWEN HAS BEEN SENDING GERMAN AND ITALIAN GENERAL OFFICERS TAKEN POW IN TUNISIA TO BE INTERROGATED BY US AT OSS DELLYS.
OUR CHIEF INTERROGATOR IS CAPT JIMBO LINDER, A NORTH CAROLINIAN FLUENT IN GERMAN WHO WAS SCHOOLED IN SWITZERLAND AND UPON GRADUATION RETURNED TO STATES AND JOINED NAVY. LINDER, AS SHARP AS THEY COME, MISSES NOTHING.
IN THE COURSE OF INTERVIEWING AFRIKA KORPS MAJ GEN HELMUT VON ECKARDT, OF THE 5TH PANZER ARMY, LINDER THOUGHT THAT HE WOULD BE CORDIAL TO THE GENERAL AND CASUALLY MENTIONED THAT CONDITIONS FOR VON ECKARDT SOON WOULD IMPROVE WHEN HE WOULD BE SENT TO BE INTERRED IN LONDON.
LINDER SAID VON ECKARDT DAMN NEAR CAME UNGLUED. HE TRIED -- AND MISERABLY FAILED -- TO CONCEAL DEEP CONCERN ABOUT THE TRANSFER. VON ECKARDT ANNOUNCED THAT HE WAS QUITE CONTENT WITH REMAINING IN DELLYS UNTIL WAR’S END, WHICH HE SUGGESTED WOULD COME SOON ENOUGH. WHEN LINDER ATTEMPTED TO FIND A REASON, VON ECKARDT GAVE UP NO CLUE.
LINDER KNEW THAT HE SMELLED A RAT, THAT IT WAS EVIDENT VON ECKARDT FEARED SOMETHING SIGNIFICANT. WHILE THE VILLA THAT VON ECKARDT SHARES WITH TWO OTHER OFFICERS, ONE GERMAN AND ONE ITALIAN, IS AS NICE AS ANY QUARTERS IN DELLYS, ALMOST ANYTHING IN LONDON WOULD BE A VAST IMPROVEMENT.
THE VILLA IS WIRED, AND WE MADE CERTAIN THAT COGNAC AND SCHNAPPS WERE IN AMPLE SUPPLY.
THE NEXT NIGHT, AFTER LINDER’S INTERROGATION OF AFRIKA KORPS COL LUDWIG MULLER, MULLER AND VON ECKARDT WERE HAVING AFTER-DINNER DRINKS. MULLER ANNOUNCED THAT HE WAS LOOKING FORWARD TO BEING TRANSFERRED TO LONDON. THEIR LOUD ANIMATED CONVERSATION THAT FOLLOWED, FUELED BY THE ALCOHOL, WAS CLEARLY RECORDED BY OUR LISTENING DEVICES.
VON ECKARDT TOLD MULLER THAT THEY QUOTE DON’T WANT TO BE ANYWHERE NEAR LONDON WHEN WERNHER VON BRAUN’S VERGELTUNGSWAFFE BEGIN FALLING UNQUOTE.
VON ECKARDT DESCRIBED THE V-1 AND V-2 AERIAL TORPEDOES AS BEING ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO STOP, AND COMPLETELY DEVASTATING, SUCCEEDING WHERE THE BLITZ ON LONDON HAD FAILED. VON ECKARDT WENT SO FAR AS TO SAY TO MULLER THAT HE WOULD TAKE HIS OWN LIFE BEFORE BEING SENT TO LONDON.
LINDER IS NOW WORKING ON A METHOD TO FIND OUT WHAT EXACTLY VON ECKARDT KNOWS ABOUT BOMBS, INCLUDING CURRENTLY INTERVIEWING HIM ABOUT PREVIOUS COMMANDS THAT MAY INDIRECTLY POINT TO HIS INVOLVEMENT WITH SAME.
WILL KEEP YOU POSTED ON ALL THE ABOVE. AND LET ME KNOW WHAT WILD BILL WANTS JUPITER TO DO WITH KAPPLER.
END QUOTE
FINE
TOP SECRET
* * *
Bruce passed the message to Stevens and angrily said, “That damn Canidy is back in Sicily! What does he think he’s doing?”
Stevens read it, then said, “Dick has his hands full, that’s for sure. I know you don’t like what he tends to do, but you have to admit he gets the job done—”
“But at what cost? He’s risking not just his life.”
“—and if he can quickly get to Oskar Kappler in such a way that old man Kappler believes Bormann made good on his threat to harm his family, then the old man will really work to help us.”
Bruce looked at him a long moment.
“Let’s leave that to Stan,” he said, then tapped his writing pad. “We have Kappler’s wife and daughter to deal with.”
Stevens nodded, then looked back at Fine’s message.
“At least Ike having Jimmy Doolittle’s bombers strike farther north will keep Hitler guessing—convince him we are softening them up and bypassing Sicily entirely. And maybe keep attention off Canidy.”
“What do you think about that general? That’s really the first word we’ve heard about the aerial torpedoes that’s not been fed to us or been pure propaganda. Short of von Braun, it’s right from the horse’s mouth.”
“Well, I’ve known Jimbo—call sign ‘Limbo’—since he flew off-the-book ONI missions out of Miami,” Stevens said. “He is a damn good guy. And damn bright. Stan is right that he misses absolutely nothing. I wonder what we can find out about this von Eckardt for him?”
“I don’t know. But we have to try. It certainly looks like von Eckardt knows something that we needed to know yesterday. When Ike hears about this, we damn well better have some answers.”
[TWO]
Palermo, Sicily
1320 31 May 1943
“No more screams, sí?” Dick Canidy said to Andrea Buda as they stopped before the faded yellow door of the house. He put his index finger to his lips.
“Sí,” she said, nodding. To make it clear, she put her hand over her mouth.
Good. I wish I’d put my hand over your mouth in Palasota’s office, Canidy thought as he pushed open the door and called out, “Apollo!”
* * *
“Andrea, calm down!” Jimmy Palasota had yelled in Sicilian over her screaming. “It’s all right!”
It had taken some time to get her quiet enough so that Canidy could release her wrists and she would talk instead of scream. And then she had rattled off something in Sicilian as she waved her hands wildly.
“Jesus, Jimmy,” Canidy said when she stopped and stood there catching her breath. “What did she say? All I recognized in that tirade was Frank and Tubes’s names.”
She glared at Canidy as Palasota translated.
“That she doesn’t know where they are,” Jimmy Skinny said. “And something about every time she sees you, someone in her family winds up missing.”
“What the hell does that mean? I haven’t done a thing to her family.”
“Well, she made the point that Francisco is missing—”
“And so is Tubes!” Canidy interrupted. “They were working together, for christsake.”
“—And, she said, they were with you shortly before you disappeared and then they did.”
“If anyone is to be suspect here, it’s her. She was with them—certainly with Tubes—long after I left here.”
The last time that Canidy had seen Andrea Buda was when Frank Nola had brought her to Mariano’s house, where Tubes Fuller had first set up MERCURY STATION. Nola had found her blocks away in Professor Arturo Rossi’s home—disguised in Rossi’s clothes—hiding from the SS, and convinced her she’d be better off at Mariano’s. They learned that the SS was hunting her father, Luigi, because his fishing boat had left port the night that Canidy had blown up the cargo ship thought to hold the nerve gas. Shortly thereafter, with Rossi being smuggled to safety in Algiers, Müller had ordered two random fishermen tortured for the sabotage, and their bodies hung in the port by the burned pier.
Andrea’s father and her twin brothers had avoided Müller’s wrath—for the time being.
Palasota then said: “She also mentioned something about you letting the Germans machine-gun one of Francisco’s crews.”
Canidy’s eyes darted between Jimmy Skinny and Andrea.
What the hell?
I knew Nola would repeat that story—but I didn’t think that I’d turn out to be the bad guy in it.
“That is pure bullshit!” Canidy blurted. “What happened was we were under way, coming here, when we happened across an S-boat stopping one of Nola’s fishing boats. The goddamn Krauts
had the crew already lined up when we first saw them, and in almost the next moment they mowed down the crew. There was not one damn thing we could do but save ourselves.” He turned to look at Andrea. “Frank saw that and knew that we later did sink an S-boat, maybe the same one.”
Canidy looked back at Palasota. “Tell her that.”
He did, and then Andrea studied Canidy for a long time.
Palasota then added something, ending it with, “Capiche?”
She then looked between Palasota and Canidy, and nodded.
“What did you just say, Jimmy?”
“What Francisco told me about you risking your life for our family and country. That you’re doing it right now.”
Canidy nodded.
“What was the cousin’s name?” Palasota said.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Palasota looked at Andrea and said what he wanted. All Canidy understood was “Nazi SS.”
“Mariano?” she then said softly, looking at Canidy. Tears suddenly flowed down her cheeks. “I go.”
“You really shouldn’t,” Canidy heard himself say. “Let Antonio or—”
“I go!” she repeated, this time angrily.
That is one tough young broad.
“Your English . . . it is getting better.”
She nodded. “Tube teach me.”
Yeah, I bet he taught you a thing or two.
* * *
Canidy led Andrea into Mariano’s house, their feet crunching on the broken glass and plates. Andrea gasped at all the damage. Canidy closed the door then motioned for Andrea to wait in the kitchen. She nodded, then saw a straw whisk in the corner and started sweeping up small piles of debris.
There had been no response to Canidy’s calling out, “Apollo!”
He looked around. The bicycle was where he’d left it. He listened carefully for a moment, then stepped around the bicycle, pulling out his .45 as he went.
“Apollo!” he called out again as he pounded up the wooden stairs.
He approached the top, turned to look toward the window—and saw John Craig van der Ploeg, still sitting on the floor, was bent over the makeshift radio table. The Sten and the empty K-ration box were on the floor beside him.
Canidy quickly scanned the room, noticed nothing unusual, then quickly crossed the floor.
He saw John Craig’s torso slowly rising and falling, then heard his soft snores.
He’s out cold.
Canidy put his .45 back in his waistband, then walked over, grasped John Craig’s shoulder, and gently shook him.
John Craig awoke startled, groping around for the submachine gun as he sat bolt upright.
Then he realized it was Canidy.
“Damn it! You scared the crap out of me!”
“Welcome to my world. Hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.”
John Craig exhaled audibly.
“Actually,” he then said, rubbing his eyes, “I’m glad you did wake me. I was having this really bad dream about that Luftwaffe transport. But instead of me shooting it down, it shot us up. Then I bailed out and as I popped my chute, the Giant circled back and came right at me. The last thing I saw was the pilot—who looked just like Mariano—screaming bloody murder. Then you woke me . . .”
Canidy grunted. “Either your bum foot must be making you delirious or you need to lay off those Peter Paul Choclettos.”
“You find anything?”
“Yeah,” Canidy said. “Jimmy Skinny’s Whorehouse Hotel.”
“What?”
After Canidy explained the connection, he looked over at the wireless.
“How about you? How goes it with the radio?”
“Good. On my third try, I got a hit on Mercury,” he said, reaching into his coat and pulling out what Canidy recognized as a decrypted message. “But it was a new hand.”
“You hadn’t heard it before?”
John Craig shook his head. “Not this one. It wasn’t so much heavy-handed keying but sloppy. Like they were new to messaging. Really like they’d just learned.”
“What did the message say?”
“Next to nothing besides saying that they need more ‘supplies.’ I sent that we were just making contact, checking in, and that we’d have questions later. The signal was really strong and clear, and I wanted to wait till we got the RDF for when they’re on the air longer.”
“Good, but getting our gear won’t happen until dark,” Canidy said, then motioned at the message. “What else do you have?”
“We got another from Neptune.”
“An update? They said that when they were under way—”
“But they’re not under way,” John Craig interrupted, shaking his head. “The update is that they now expect a thirty-six- or forty-eight-hour delay.”
“Damn it! They were going to be on station tomorrow and the second. Now it’s on the third and fourth?” He sighed. “It’s two hundred and fifty miles from Corsica to here, which will take at least two, three days. So that puts arrival here on the seventh or eighth. That should make our life interesting . . . assuming we survive.”
“What if it’s longer?”
Canidy grunted again. “How’s your backstroke these days?”
John Craig chuckled nervously, then said, “What about Hermes?”
Canidy shook his head. “It’s one thing for Hank to drop us from those black birds at night, but it would be suicidal to land in daylight. We need stealth, and that’s what boats, especially subs, offer.”
John Craig nodded.
“Algiers sent two messages,” he went on. “The first was short, and said that the Sandbox interview of the latest group that Nola’s fishing boat smuggled out knows nothing of the whereabouts of Nola or Tubes.”
“Shit. No surprise, though.”
John Craig finally held out the handwritten decrypted message.
“And, saving the best for last, this one is interesting.”
Canidy took the sheet and his eyes fell to it:
* * *
31MAY 1145
To Jupiter
From Caesar
Wild Bill’s orders. Your priority now is to locate immediately—and be prepared to extricate or terminate, if so ordered—SS Lt Col Oskar Kappler, deputy officer in Messina SS HQ.
Absolutely critical this mission accomplished no later than seven (7) days from this date.
If ordered to terminate subject, important but not imperative to cause death to appear as if an SS or OVA murder.
Wild Bill demands that you confirm receipt and your understanding of this order.
* * *
Canidy said, “What the hell?”
And then his mind raced.
I thought that this Kappler guy was okay. That he wanted the war to end.
Hell, he was the one who tried hiding that Tabun here.
Amazing how fast the rules change in this game.
How the hell am I going to get to Kappler in Messina and take him out? By—what?—June sixth?
Maybe if I go through Müller?
Yeah! I could get them both at once, maybe with some C-2.
Or make it look as if Müller got Kappler, right before Kappler shot him.
Everyone hates that sonofabitch.
“Message back: Wild Bill’s orders received and understood—”
There suddenly came from downstairs the unmistakable sound of a young woman screaming.
Again?
But now she sounds terrified, not angry. . . .
John Craig stared at Canidy, who was pulling out his .45 again as he explained, “Andrea. I left her in the kitchen.”
Then they could tell that Andrea’s screams were getting louder and closer—and that she was running up the stairs.
Canidy pushed the Sten within John Craig’s reach, then aimed his pistol toward the top of the stairs. As he strained to discern how many pairs of feet were pounding on the steps—sounds like it’s just her—he stuffed the decrypted me
ssage into his pants pocket.
Andrea then appeared, alone, at the top, wide-eyed and tears flowing.
“Are you okay, Andrea?” Canidy said.
“It is Mariano!” she cried.
Well, that’s what you get for not staying in the kitchen like I told you.
So much for being a tough girl.
She ran to Canidy, then buried her face in his shoulder and began sobbing.
Canidy looked at John Craig, who stared at Andrea.
“I think I’m dreaming again,” John Craig said. “My God, she is more beautiful than Tubes said.”
Andrea, her ample chest heaving, turned her head and dabbed her sleeve at her tears.
Then she seemed to notice John Craig for the first time.
She must have heard him mention Tubes.
“Andrea,” Canidy said, “this is John Craig, a friend of Tubes.”
“Ciao,” John Craig said, and made a half-attempt to get up, then winced with pain.
As she started to make a weak smile in reply, her face suddenly showed great concern.
“Is bad!” she said, and quickly went to John Craig and knelt beside his deeply bruised and swollen foot.
* * *
Andrea Buda tried for what to Canidy felt like an hour to get him to understand what she clearly insisted was to happen next. All he knew for certain was that it had something to do with John Craig’s foot—she pointed to it and repeatedly said, “Is bad!”—and that she wanted it done somewhere else but in Mariano’s house.
Finally, she grabbed Canidy’s hand and led him across the room. As she started to pull him down the stairs, Canidy called back to John Craig, “Sit tight, Gimpy. I’ll get this figured out.”
Canidy then guessed that Andrea was going to have him do something with Mariano. But then she led him, not to the living room, but to the kitchen, and then out the front door.