The Spymasters: A Men at War Novel

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

  He pulled out a bottle of the Haig & Haig Pinch Scotch Whisky and triumphantly held it above his head.

  “I need to go talk to Palasota,” he then said. “Try not to disappear again.”

  [TWO]

  Canidy had found Jimmy Skinny alone in his office. He was sitting behind his desk when Canidy had knocked on the door and immediately entered.

  Jimmy Skinny did not seem surprised that it wasn’t Vito.

  Maybe everyone does it.

  “Sorry about the interruption earlier,” Palasota said. “That Müller was getting in a pissing contest with Fiorini, the new captain of that submarine. The guy’s a really wet-behind-the-ears lieutenant.”

  “Not a problem. I solved one of my problems in the meantime.”

  Canidy brought up the bottle of scotch, and Palasota’s eyes grew.

  “Where did you get that? Even with my connections, I can’t beg, borrow, or steal good shit like that anywhere.”

  Canidy put it on the desk.

  “It’s yours—no begging, borrowing, or stealing. Friend to friend.”

  Palasota raised an eyebrow.

  “Okay, what do you want? I’m already working on the other things we discussed.”

  Canidy pointed to the Thompson and Johnson machine guns.

  “For starters, that’s my Johnny gun.”

  Palasota glanced at it, then nodded at Canidy.

  “I wondered where that came from.”

  Canidy went on: “I need to grab the SS guy, Kappler. And then I’m going to need a boat—something—to shuttle us out to our ride back to Algiers. All sometime in the next three days.”

  “You mean Müller?”

  Why are these guinea bastards always correcting me, telling me what I think I think?

  “No, goddammit!” Canidy blurted. “I mean Müller’s boss in Messina. SS-Obersturmbannführer Oskar Kappler.”

  Palasota looked at Canidy.

  “SS-Obersturmbannführer Oskar Kappler?” he parroted.

  “Yeah. I need to get to Messina yesterday.”

  “You’re shitting me. Right?”

  “What are you talking about? How can I be any clearer?”

  Skinny Jimmy Palasota then laughed out loud.

  Canidy was about to blow his cork when he heard Palasota then say: “SS-Obersturmbannführer Oskar Kappler just walked out of the hotel.”

  * * *

  “So you are the Messina Abwehr agent?” Dick Canidy said twenty minutes later to the man in the suit as they both stood in Palasota’s office in practically the same spots as they had about an hour earlier.

  Ernst Beck nodded and grinned.

  “And you’re Jupiter,” Beck replied.

  Canidy nodded and grinned.

  “This is just fucking surreal,” Canidy said.

  “Now what?” SS-Obersturmbannführer Oskar Kappler then said, somewhat anxiously.

  “Jupiter here gets you the hell out of Sicily,” Ernst Beck answered.

  “Whoa!” Canidy blurted. “Unless someone is planning on a long swim, we’re going nowhere until the sub gets here. Which will be probably in three days. Meantime—”

  “I saw the message,” Beck interrupted, “and with all due respect, it is imperative that Oskar disappear now.”

  “As far as I’m concerned,” Canidy shot back, “he can spend the next seventy-two hours polishing bedsheets with that hot hooker of his.”

  Canidy smiled knowingly at Kappler, who he immediately saw found no humor whatever in that.

  What the hell?

  “I admit to embarrassment and worse,” Kappler then said. “I was a fool.”

  “I am not passing judgment,” Canidy said. “Besides, we Americans have a quaint expression that covers that.”

  “Yes?”

  “‘A stiff prick hath no conscience.’”

  Palasota chuckled. “I should put that on a sign and make it the motto of this place.”

  Canidy then announced: “As I was saying, now that I have completed this part of the mission, I am not leaving until I have done the same with the rest of my original mission.”

  “Which is?” Beck challenged.

  Canidy looked from Beck to Kappler and declared, “You know about the Tabun. You were in charge of it.”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “Where is it?”

  “There is no nerve gas,” Kappler said. “It was lost in a cargo ship that was sunk.”

  Now is not the time to share just who exactly blew up that ship.

  And the one in the port . . .

  “Not the Tabun that was with the howitzer rounds,” Canidy said. “The replacement Tabun.”

  Kappler shook his head.

  “It is not here. Yet. There was some scheduled to arrive in the next few weeks. It is my understanding that it has to be manufactured, then it will be shipped.”

  Canidy locked eyes with him a long moment.

  “Your understanding? Or is that exactly the situation?”

  “Both.”

  He could be lying. But why?

  He wants the hell out of here, and knows that I am his conduit to safety.

  Canidy nodded.

  “Okay, Item Two,” he then said, looking slowly between Beck and Kappler. “One of my wireless radios is under enemy control.”

  Canidy thought that he saw Kappler react to that information.

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass about the radio,” he said, looking at Kappler. “I am looking for my man who was its operator. Him and Frank Nola.” He glanced at Palasota, who nodded, then looked back at Kappler. “Nola had been running an underground cell, and now he’s missing.”

  “I think I’ve seen your radio,” Kappler said. “And I may be able to locate your operator.”

  “Just tell me who has the goddamn radio,” Canidy said evenly, “and I can handle it from there.”

  “Müller,” Kappler said.

  “Müller!” Palasota repeated, his tone one of obvious surprise. He looked at Canidy. “Dick, I had no idea about this. I’ve been trying to find Francisco, too, you know.”

  Canidy nodded.

  “You’re sure it’s Müller?” Beck then said.

  Kappler nodded. “He showed me a wireless that has its labels written in English. It’s in a locked room on the top floor of the SS field office. Müller’s scharführer was working it.”

  Absolutely no surprise there.

  John Craig has been convinced from the start that the station was compromised.

  “Did Müller say what he did with the operator?” Canidy said. “That sonofabitch has a nasty habit of summarily shooting people point-blank.”

  “He said he had him quote locked up as insurance unquote. He did not tell me where. And he did not mention the other man.”

  Then Tubes is alive!

  And if he is, maybe Nola, too.

  “Can’t you order Müller to turn him over to you, his superior?” Canidy said.

  Kappler shook his head.

  “If I did, he would ignore me, or kill your man, or possibly both.”

  “Then I go see Müller,” Canidy said.

  “If you do, then Müller will shoot him point-blank before you get past the front door.”

  Ernst Beck held up his hand, palm out.

  “I think that we can get Müller to bring him to us.”

  “Well, then, what the hell are you waiting for?” Canidy gestured impatiently with his hand. “Tell us how.”

  Beck raised his eyebrows in question as he looked at Palasota.

  Jimmy Skinny clearly nodded his agreement.

  “Müller can be coerced,” Beck said.

  “I don’t understand,” Kappler said. “You mentioned that earlier.”

  Beck studied him a moment, then said, “Jimmy and I found Müller’s Achilles’ heel. Ol’ Hans doesn’t like the girls he beats up.”

  Kappler grunted.

  “That is obvious. He’s a mean drunk. That I have seen too many times.”
/>   “Oskar, he does not like girls. Period.”

  “He’s a poofter?” Kappler blurted.

  Beck nodded. “He tries to have sex with the girls here, but it rarely happens. He gets frustrated and drunk, then humiliates them . . . and worse. It’s all a beard, because he lives in fear of having to wear a rosa winkel in a konzentrationslager.”

  That, Canidy thought, explains why Palasota was so quick to say no when I said why not just whack the bastard now.

  He’s had Müller terrified of being discovered and sent to a death camp with a pink triangle sewn to his chest.

  “Wonder if that would come as any surprise to Günther?”

  Beck grunted. “Who do you think we caught Hans with?”

  Palasota, his face furious, picked up the telephone and dialed a short number from memory.

  After a moment, he controlled his tone as he said into the phone, “Hans, something has come up. Are you busy? No? Good. See you in a moment.”

  Palasota stood, and everyone else got up at once.

  “We cannot all go,” Jimmy Skinny said. “It will spook him. Give me and Oskar twenty, thirty minutes with him, and then you can follow.”

  “I don’t like it,” Canidy said.

  “You don’t have to, Dick. But it is what has to happen.”

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, Dick Canidy and Ernst Beck entered the ornate metal doors of the SS Field Office building. Oskar Kappler was coming out of a room to the right, wiping at his uniform sleeve with a hand towel.

  There’s blood splatter on his neck, Canidy thought. And his clothes.

  Kappler saw Canidy’s expression.

  “Your man is alive. Hans told me where to find Nola—his body.”

  Shit, Canidy thought. Farewell, Frank. We have the watch.

  Kappler nodded to a stairwell in the corner of the room.

  “Follow me.”

  A flight down, Kappler led them through a heavy wooden door, then past one made of iron bars, to a space that clearly had been set up as a torture room. There were medieval racks. Rusty chains hung from bolts on the wall.

  They turned a corner and Canidy then saw Müller lying on the stained coarse stone floor. A pool of blood drained from a hole in the back of his head.

  Canidy then saw Tubes strapped to a rough-hewn wooden table. It looked vaguely familiar, and he remembered the tables Müller had used in the villa for the germ warfare experiment.

  Tubes looked gaunt. His once thick blond hair was thin, dirty, matted. There were bruises visible up and down his body, but they did not look fresh. Canidy looked at Tubes’s hands and feet and saw only crusted scabs.

  Sonofabitch!

  Palasota was undoing the leather straps at Tubes’s feet. Tubes turned his head, tried to focus, then managed to form something resembling a smile when he saw Canidy.

  “Fins!” he grunted weakly.

  “Yeah, Tubes,” Canidy said, his voice cracking. “Fins. But not anymore.”

  Palasota looked up. “Fins?”

  Canidy cleared his throat, then said, “It was our O.K. Corral code word for ‘everything’s about to go to shit so start shooting every bastard you can.’ Got said a little too late, it would appear . . .”

  “God help him,” Ernst Beck said softly.

  “You’re going to be okay, Jim,” Canidy said. “You’re going home.”

  Kappler then saw Canidy look at Müller on the stone floor.

  “The sonofabitch did the same to Mariano,” Canidy said. “And probably to Frank. Who shot him?”

  “It was a lovers’ quarrel,” Palasota automatically said, clearly fabricating the story on the spot. “Poor young Günther lost his head. Tragic.”

  “Sorry,” Kappler then said, looking somewhat guilty. “I now realize you probably were hoping to have that honor.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Actually, I was looking forward to seeing the miserable sonofabitch suffer a very slow and painful death. . . .”

  [THREE]

  Room 802

  Hotel Michelangelo

  Palermo, Sicily

  1645 1 June 1943

  Dick Canidy watched as Andrea Buda came out of the bathroom carrying another bowl of warm water to the bed where Jim “Tubes” Fuller was resting.

  Tubes remained very weak but now, after Andrea had worked with two girls for almost an hour solid, he was clean and his wounds dressed.

  The first glass of water that Andrea had given him he had immediately thrown up. But now he was able to keep down a very diluted mixture of sugar and water.

  He’s sleeping the sleep of the dead.

  Or the damn near dead.

  She’s doing the best she can—the best she knows—but this ain’t exactly the Mayo Clinic.

  I want him back to the best treatment possible, and that’s Algiers, then London when he’s ready.

  John Craig van der Ploeg, on crutches, entered the room and hobbled over to Canidy.

  “Here’s the sub’s coordinates. Neptune is under way and standing by.”

  * * *

  Three hours earlier, when they had first brought Tubes to the room, Canidy had then stood with Ernst Beck, Oskar Kappler, and Jimmy Palasota at the window. They all looked down at the port, the four men passing a single pair of binoculars between them.

  Canidy had another flashback to General Burford at Gettysburg.

  “We have the high ground,” he said, “but no plan of attack.”

  “We just can’t sit here waiting for the sub to show up, right?” Kappler said.

  Canidy glanced at Tubes. “Right. Not good enough . . . fast enough.”

  “I have an idea,” Beck said, pointing out at the harbor.

  “Hijack the U-boat?” Canidy said, incredulous.

  Beck shook his head.

  “Too big. Too difficult. The other one I can run single-handedly, more or less. I was in the Kriegsmarine.” He looked at Canidy and added, “And you were in the U.S. Navy, yes?”

  “Yeah, but as an aviator,” Canidy said, mimicked an airplane with his left hand, then looked back at the port. “So, you’re going to steal that S-boat?”

  He shook his head again. “Borrow it. I’ll bring it back.”

  Canidy chuckled and said, “I knew I liked you for a reason.”

  He then said: “Serious question: How the hell are we going to approach the Casabianca with a fucking enemy S-boat?”

  “Serious answer?” Beck said. “Carefully. Very fucking carefully.”

  He looked at his watch.

  “The S-boat has a complement of twenty-four. After they refuel and provision the S-boat for its nightly mission—which will happen anytime now—the crew will then come ashore to dine, leaving maybe one or two sailors aboard on watch.” Beck paused as he looked to see if there were any questions. There were none, and he went on: “Then the U-boat crew will be flooding in here as usual right after six o’clock—which is in an hour and fifteen minutes.”

  “What about her captain?” Canidy said. “He’s not going to Jimmy’s brothel.”

  Palasota, tapping his fingertips to his chest, said, “Leave that to me. He will be my guest as we celebrate the new command of Lieutenant Mario Fiorini of the Regia Marina.”

  Canidy considered that, then said, “How do we get Tubes aboard?”

  They all gave that a moment’s thought.

  Then Palasota said: “Easy. Same way we got him up here. But this time we cover him up on a gurney and have two of my men carry the passed-out drunken sailor back to his U-boat. At that point, we’ll get the S-boat sailors to lend a hand—and take over their vessel.”

  “Simple enough,” Canidy said. “And how are we going to get Gimpy here aboard? Same way?”

  “You’re not going to,” John Craig said.

  “What?” Canidy said.

  “All things being equal, Dick, I’d just as well not get on the sub. Do I have to remind you how well I did on Hank’s Gooney Bird?”
>
  Canidy looked at him a long moment.

  “Dick, I’m staying behind.”

  “Are you crazy?” Canidy said, then noticed Andrea Buda was watching John Craig with a keen interest.

  And there’s something in her eyes . . . do they have something going?

  “I can keep the station going,” John Craig said. “We never had a resistance built; now we can, with Jimmy Skinny. ‘This is the lesson . . .’ remember?”

  John Craig saw Canidy looking at Andrea.

  “Look,” he then said, “there’s not been a good time to get into this. Andrea said Tubes never touched her.”

  “What?”

  “All that he sent me in the messages was boasting—but it was about a hooker. He was coming here instead, and it’s probably how the SS caught him.”

  Canidy looked to Palasota, who nodded and said, “Makes sense. He was here . . . then he wasn’t.”

  Canidy exhaled audibly, then looked at John Craig.

  “Go get back on the radio with Neptune. Message back: quote We have commandeered S-boat. Do not repeat do not let loose any fish. Vessel is number S-323. If you miss vessel number, look for the colors. We will be flying France’s new national flag. Signed Jupiter unquote.”

  “Got it. What’s this about a French flag?”

  “Just do it.”

  “Aye-aye, sir,” John Craig said, then exchanged smiles with Andrea as he hobbled out the door.

  * * *

  When Canidy entered the S-boat’s bridge, the man in the Kriegsmarine uniform at the helm startled him. But when he turned and looked at Canidy, he suddenly looked familiar.

  “Welcome aboard. Oberleutnant zur See Ludwig Fahr at your service,” Ernst Beck said, making a motion that somewhat resembled a salute.

  “No shit,” Canidy said. “Where did you get the uniform?”

  Beck smiled and pointed up toward the Hotel Michelangelo.

  “Right now, or very shortly,” he said, “there is a rather embarrassed—and buck naked—Kriegsmarine leutnant asking a hooker if she has perhaps seen his uniform.”

  Canidy smiled, then looked aft. He saw that Tubes Fuller was in one of two bunks on the back wall of the bridge. He was out cold.

  “Where’s Kappler?” Canidy said.

  “Down below, staying out of sight until we’re under way.”