The Spymasters: A Men at War Novel

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

  Beck made what looked to Canidy like the practiced survey of a professional seaman. Beck then made a final full inspection of the vessel’s perimeter, and unceremoniously said, “All lines free, let’s get out of here.”

  There were two groups of three levers each on the console. The forward three had black knobs, the rear group red knobs. He reached for the far left of the black knobs and pushed it forward, engaging the port engine transmission. The S-boat immediately began moving forward and away from the pier.

  Beck glanced around the perimeter of the ship, said, “Well, we didn’t bring any of the dock with us. That’s always a good sign.”

  They were thirty meters under way when Beck reached forward and pushed the other two black knobs fully forward. Canidy could feel the S-boat respond almost immediately. Its bow rose and the stern settled in a little as it moved forward faster.

  Canidy watched Beck, scanning the harbor as he made gentle turns for the mouth, then wrap his fist in an extended fashion over the group of levers with the red knobs. As soon as Beck saw ahead was nothing but open sea, he pushed the three red knobs to about three-quarter throttle.

  The triple two-thousand-horsepower Daimler-Benz diesels roared, producing a massive black exhaust cloud behind the boat.

  The noise level at the helm was considerably louder, and when Beck turned to Canidy and gestured at the console, he had to almost shout to be heard: “Any idea which of these levers works the brakes?”

  * * *

  The S-boat banged through somewhat choppy seas for two hours. Kappler had come up to the bridge and with Canidy watched Beck’s almost casual running of the vessel, working its radar and monitoring its radio. While Canidy had been duly impressed—he knew that anything that looked simple usually was exactly anything but that—Kappler became bored and crashed in the empty bunk above Tubes.

  Beck, with his face dimly lit in the green glow of the control panel lights, looked at Canidy and raised his voice to be heard above the engine noise: “Should be about another hour.”

  Canidy nodded.

  Then, ten minutes later, he saw Beck’s expression change in the green glow as he rapidly tapped the screen of the radar.

  “Shit!” he said. “We’ve got company.”

  Then the radio squawked, an urgent German voice repeating an order.

  “What’s he saying?” Canidy said.

  “For us to identify ourselves.”

  Which if we do, Canidy thought, we may get blown out of the water for having stolen the boat.

  And if we don’t, we’ll damn sure get shot at.

  “Christ!” Beck said, pointing at the radar. “There’s a hot fish in the water! We’re under fire!”

  Beck made a course correction, then reached up and threw two toggle switches. Lights above each of them glowed red.

  “May as well get rid of some weight,” Beck said casually. “Turnabout, they say, is fair play.”

  One of the lights turned green, then the other one did.

  Beck hit one toggle—and the S-boat shuddered as a torpedo fired. After a count of three, he hit the second toggle, and there was another shudder. He then made a hard turn to port, started an evasive series of zigzags, and finally straightened out and pushed the triple throttles all the way forward.

  He glanced at Canidy and grinned. The noise was now too great for anything said.

  [FOUR]

  39 degrees 01 minute North Latitude

  12 degrees 23 minutes East Longitude

  Aboard the Casabianca

  Mediterranean Sea

  2335 1 June 1943

  Commander Jean L’Herminier, chief officer of the Free French Forces submarine, stood five-foot-seven and maybe 140. The thirty-five-year-old carried himself with an easygoing, soft-spoken confidence. He approached his executive officer—a frail-looking sad-eyed Frenchman a head shorter than the commander—who for the last hour had had his eyes glued to the periscope.

  “Sir, I have visual on another S-boat,” the executive officer said.

  This made the second Kriegsmarine patrol boat they had picked up on radar in the last three hours.

  The XO added, “It’s too damn dark to make out her hull number, sir.”

  “Understood. Canidy’s message clearly stated that confirmation of our target vessel will be that it is flying France’s new colors.”

  “Yes, sir. I don’t quite understand that, but I am looking. . . .”

  After a moment, the XO exclaimed, “Sacré bleu! Those sons of whores!”

  “What?” L’Herminier said as he watched the XO step back from the scope.

  “They mock us!” the XO almost spat out, indignant.

  L’Herminier stepped to the periscope and had a look.

  The XO could not believe his eyes and ears the next moment when L’Herminier chuckled, then stepped away from the periscope and began laughing hysterically at what appeared to be a white bedsheet flying above the S-boat’s bridge.

  The memory of being under fire only six months earlier still was a fresh wound. Ignoring demands of the admiralty of Vichy France that French ships be scuttled at Toulon, L’Herminier had sailed for North Africa—saving his ship and men from surrender.

  And now L’Herminier remembered Canidy’s descriptive word for Vichy France.

  The commander turned to his XO and ordered, “Prepare to surface and make contact. Signal code word ‘chickenshits.’”

  [FIVE]

  OSS London Station

  London, England

  1200 17 June 1943

  “And then they got out on a Kriegsmarine patrol boat,” Lieutentant Colonel Ed Stevens was telling Brigadier General William Donovan, “one flying the new colors of France.”

  David Bruce grunted derisively.

  As Donovan was about to say something, there was a knock at the door.

  “Come!” Bruce called.

  “Well,” Wild Bill said, “if it’s not our favorite loose cannon.”

  Dick Canidy wasn’t sure how to respond.

  “It’s a pleasure to see you again, sir. My apology for being late.”

  “I’m just damn glad you’re here,” Donovan said. “And with Kappler safe.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you.”

  “How is Ann doing?” Donovan went on.

  “I just left her. Very well. Thank you.”

  “Dick,” Ed Stevens said, “I was just telling the General about the S-boat you stole—”

  “Borrowed, Ed,” Canidy said, grinning. “I got word that Ludwig Fahr—the Abwehr agent—got it back to Palermo by dawn, then scuttled it on some rocks and literally walked back ashore. They never knew (a) that Fahr was gone or (b) that he was who’d ‘borrowed’ the boat.”

  “I was just about to describe France’s new national colors,” Stevens said, grinning and gesturing for Canidy to pick up the story. “And how you used them on the S-boat . . .”

  Canidy, with a straight face, looked at Wild Bill and said, “Surely you’ve heard about the new flag, sir?”

  Donovan shook his head, but the Irishman knew when he was having his chain yanked, and grinned. “I’m sure you’ll enlighten me, Dick.”

  “It’s a white cross superimposed on a field of white with a white star and white stripes,” Canidy said, grinning broadly. “It really stands out on a battlefield.”

  Everyone but Bruce chuckled.

  After a moment, Donovan said, “Well, judging by David’s face, we have some serious business to cover. Not that I don’t believe what you did, Dick, wasn’t serious. Damn good work.”

  I guess the ends can justify the means, Canidy thought. I’m not getting reamed for going back into Sicily.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Especially in light of the fact that Jimmy Doolittle has begun the soft bombing of Sicily today. David, bring Dick up to speed on why it was important to get Kappler out of there.”

  After five minutes of background, David Bruce then said: “And what we have just found out is that j
ust about the time that Walter Höss was escorting Bormann and von Braun into the Chemische Fabrik Frankfurt plant to meet Wolfgang Kappler, Gisevius and Kappler had cleared the border, headed for Bern. A railcar of TNT then cooked off, taking out half of the production facility and narrowly missing Bormann and von Braun. So there won’t be a full production of high explosive for a while and there won’t be any nerve gas for the foreseeable future.”

  Canidy nodded. “That means there won’t be the threat of Tabun for Husky. Oskar said there was none in Sicily; that the replacement had to be manufactured first.”

  “And now, thanks to his father, it won’t be,” Stevens said.

  “What about Oskar’s mother and sister?” Canidy said. “Where are they?”

  “We got them to Dulles,” Bruce said, looking briefly at Donovan, “and Dulles has them with Old Man Kappler in his Bern safe house. It’s an ancient estate near the River Aare. We are having our documents section produce papers to get them out, after enough time has passed, to South America by way of probably Portugal.”

  “And Gisevius?” Canidy said. “He really did us a helluva job by sending Ludwig Fahr to me.”

  “Dulles is also hiding Hans in Bern from the Gestapo,” Bruce said. He paused, and brought out the knives as he added, “That’s the same scenario Dulles had set up with Sparrow—and the Reds got Sparrow. We can only hope that this time the same mistakes won’t be made.”

  There was a long, awkward silence.

  Stevens then said, “Dick, it was Old Man Kappler who got us the V-1 specs.”

  “So the Krauts really are going to do that?”

  “Last word,” Stevens said, nodding, “is that Hitler is backing Milch’s desire to have fewer bunkers, but ones the size of the bigger bomb-proof kind—like those of the submarine pens in Brest. Hitler and Milch agree that those heavily fortified bunkers best resist our bomb attacks.”

  “Field Marshal Erhard Milch?” Canidy said.

  “Head of the Luftwaffe production program,” Stevens confirmed. “Meanwhile, Göring is going off half-cocked. For one, he told Hitler he’d have fifty thousand V-1s built a month. He’s had to settle for a hundred a month—”

  Donovan laughed. “Who among us would have wanted to be there when Göring had to tell Hitler that exciting news?”

  There followed the expected chuckles.

  Stevens went on: “That production figure would rise to five thousand per month by early next year. Göring also had to compromise on the bunkers—only four of the heavily fortified ones, along with almost a hundred smaller ones in the field, and the ones launched from He-111 bombers.”

  “More fun news to deliver to Hitler,” Donovan said lightly, then his tone turned more serious. “Still, Ike is not going to be happy hearing any of that. I bet he will come knocking on our door, especially understanding what we’ve accomplished supplying the Polish underground.”

  Stevens looked at Canidy and explained: “We upped the supply drops to Poland. Tripled, so far. And last week, Sausagemaker’s team took out the construction site that’s set to build the V-1s. Half of his team got the prisoners freed.”

  “Great!”

  “But there’s bad news. Mordechaj was following Stanislaw Polko—”

  Canidy nodded. “His lieutenant. One brave, ballsy bastard.”

  “—and they got trapped. He and the other half of his team . . . they were wiped out.”

  “Jesus Christ . . .” Canidy sighed. “Then we’ve barely slowed the bastards down.”

  “But we did slow them down,” Wild Bill Donovan put in. “And eventually we will stop them.”

  “‘This is the lesson . . .’” Canidy then said.

  Donovan nodded.

  “Churchill, despite occasional bad advice, does get it right.”

  After a moment, Canidy shook his head and chuckled.

  “What?” Wild Bill Donovan said.

  “I’ll always remember the last thing that Szerynski, the poor sonofabitch, said to me. ‘Two things I’ve learned, Dick. One, we make war so that we may live in peace.’ . . .”

  Everyone nodded solemnly.

  “Aristotle,” Wild Bill Donovan said.

  Canidy nodded, then finished, “. . . ‘And, two, never share a foxhole with some bastard who’s braver than you.’”

  AFTERWORD

  As Allied forces attacked occupied France in OPERATION OVERLORD on D-day, 6 June 1944, Adolf Hitler ordered Generalfeldmarschall Karl Rudolf Gerd von Rundstedt to transmit code word Rumpelkammer—junk room—alerting the regimental staff to prepare to fire the first volley of vergeltungswaffen.

  At the launch code word Eisbär—polar bear—Nazi Germany’s retaliation weapons began bombing London six days later.

  Almost ten thousand aerial torpedoes—averaging one hundred V-1s a day at the peak—were launched at England for sixteen months, until Allied forces overran the final launching site in October 1944.

  During the first two weeks, more than one hundred thousand London homes were damaged or destroyed. V-1s in those sixteen months caused more than twenty thousand casualties.

  Winston Churchill’s personal assistant, Frederick Lindemann, had mocked the V-1 bombings, declaring, “The mountain hath groaned and given forth a mouse!”

  But the First Viscount Cherwell, opinionated and arrogant, had been dead wrong in advising the prime minister that the Germans were unable to build such advanced rocket-powered weapons.

  Almost ten months earlier, Allied intelligence, using 3-D viewers on overlapping aerial reconn photographs, had pinpointed Peenemünde Army Research Center—Wernher von Braun’s rocket development facility on the northern peninsula of a small Baltic island.

  OPERATION HYDRA bombed it on the night of 17/18 August 1943, killing V-2 scientists and destroying enough of the facility to delay the V-2 rocket tests for almost two months. The V-2 was designed to have far greater capabilities than the V-1.

  Nazi Germany, undaunted, continued its V-1 and V-2 development programs at Peenemünde and deep in Poland.

  Then OPERATION CROSSBOW, the bombing of vergeltungswaffen launch sites, commenced on 5 December 1943. U.S. Ninth Air Force B-26s struck Ligescourt before bad weather stopped the sorties for nearly three weeks. Finally, on Christmas Eve, almost seven hundred B-24 and B-17 aircraft attacked twenty-four other launch sites in France with fifteen hundred tons of bombs.

  And on 8 June 1944—D-day Plus Two—Allied aircraft shot up a fuel convoy, burning three-quarters of a million liters of missile fuel, and took out Axis trains bearing additional missiles.

  As the Allies advanced in OVERLORD, launch sites were abandoned without firing a single shot.

  * * *

  The V-1 had failed to cause the destruction Adolf Hitler demanded. But for the fortunes of war, it could have. And, albeit too late to stop OVERLORD, it did succeed in terrorizing England.

  Nicknamed “Doodlebug” and “Buzz Bomb” because of the unique sound made by its pulse-jet engine, the bomb would fly to just shy of target, then the engine went quiet—and after terrifying moments of silence it would explode.

  On D-day Plus Eight, General Dwight Eisenhower ordered his deputy—Air Marshal Arthur Tedder, who had been his commander of Allied Air Forces in the Mediterrean—that the V-1 targets were “to take precedence over everything except the urgent requirements” of OVERLORD.

  The Allies used a thousand heavy and light antiaircraft guns, as well as employed fighter aircraft, to shoot them down. During daylight, some pilots would match speed with the V-1 and, going wing to wing, tip the V-1, causing it to crash after knocking out its gyroscope.

  When the Allies captured the V-1 manufacturing facilities, they found a number of variants of the Fieseler 103.

  One was a would-be kamikaze missile, with rudimentary controls designed for a suicide pilot.

  Another—assigned the military designation of Fi-103D-1—was specifically designed to carry a warhead of nerve gas.

  • • •

 
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