Ustinov shrugged, then quickly slid the ham steak onto his almost-empty plate and began cutting into it.
“Charity,” Fleming said, spearing a nice-sized cut of grilled ham, “my compliments on the marvelous meals. Last night’s beef roast and potatoes was a feast for kings. And now this fine breakfast. I have to admit that when I heard we were coming out here, I envisioned we’d be enjoying, as I heard that American radio commercial say over and over, ‘two boxes of Kraft Dinner noodles for one ration point.’”
Charity’s pleasant laughter filled the room.
“If you’d like some, Ian,” she said in an accommodating tone, “we have a stockroom full of those blue boxes of macaroni and cheese. And Spam, too.”
Fleming shook his head as he chewed.
Charity smiled and said, “But thank you for the compliment. Bob Jamison here is actually the one responsible for our finer staples at Whitbey House…in fact, is responsible for everything we get here at Whitbey House.”
Fleming swallowed, then turned toward Jamison and said, “My most hearty thanks, Robert.”
“Not necessary,” Jamison replied. “I’m only following the chief’s standing orders. Dick Canidy said as long as we were here, and as long as we could procure what we needed, then that’s what we would do. Dick always says that an Army marches on its stomach, and those who are well fed are more prone to follow orders for he who feeds them.”
There were chuckles around the table.
“Well, then,” Fleming said, raising his tea cup, “here’s to Canidy.”
The swinging door to the kitchen opened and a British woman in her midthirties appeared. She was attractive, pale-skinned and sandy-haired, about five-four and 125 pounds.
“Aha,” she announced, looking at the side table. “There are the teapots!”
“Liz,” Charity said, “good morning. Come in. Please join us.”
Stevens noticed that Niven and Fleming were getting to their feet. He looked to the door, saw who it was, and also stood.
Stevens well knew the history of Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Stanfield, whose tunic bore the insignia of the Imperial General Staff and whose identity card read “Captain the Duchess Stanfield.” Whitbey House was her ancestral home.
She had been assigned as liaison officer between the Imperial General Staff and OSS Whitbey House Station. Wild Bill Donovan had been the first to say that that meant she had been sent to spy on the OSS. When Dick Canidy arrived to run the station, he had immediately crossed swords with her—and ended their first meeting by telling Her Grace that she acted as if she had a corncob up her ass.
It had taken some time to get past that friction, but the Duchess had succeeded in convincing everyone that they were indeed fighting on the same side.
“Charity,” the Duchess began, then glanced at the others. Her eyes grew wide when she saw the new faces. “Ian! How delightful to see you! And David and Peter! Now, isn’t this a frightening surprise!”
“Please, Liz,” Niven moaned. “Do you have to shout, too?”
The Duchess looked from Niven to Fleming to Charity, her eyes asking What’s that all about?
“It’s nothing personal, Liz,” Charity said, grinning. “Someone last night had a few tea-many mar-toonies.”
The Duchess smiled and looked at Niven. “I’m sure you’ll be fine, David,” she said warmly. “You always seem to land on your feet.”
Fleming went around the table and lightly kissed the Duchess Stanfield on each cheek. Niven, exhibiting great effort, followed suit.
“I’m trying to recall the last time we all were together,” the Duchess said. “Wasn’t it in the bar at Claridge’s right after Christmas?”
“It was,” Ian Fleming said. “And while I cannot speak for David, I was more or less behaving myself.” He waited for Niven to make the expected face, which Niven did, then went on: “And I’m afraid to ask, but I suppose still no word on the Duke?”
The Duchess shook her head and softly answered, “I’m afraid not. It’s been quite some time now since his plane went down. It would appear hopeless. But one never knows for sure when someone is missing, do they? So, I keep my spirits up best I can.”
Charity Hoche and Ed Stevens exchanged glances, and Charity was certain they were thinking the same thought: The whereabouts of Ann Chambers. We have to move on that, too. How, we’re not sure. But we must.
Ed Stevens cleared his throat and said, “You’re just in time, Liz.” He turned to Montagu. “Lieutentant Commander Ewen Montagu, may I present Captain the Duchess Stanfield?”
Montagu stepped forward and offered his hand. “I have heard much about you, Duchess. It is an honor. And your home in magnificent.”
“Liz, please,” she said. “And thank you. I’m grateful Whitbey House is being found to be useful.”
Stevens said, “Have you eaten, Liz?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Well, then,” Stevens went on, glancing at the table, “everyone would appear to be finished, and I think we can get into the plans of the operation.”
Montagu nodded with enthusiasm.
“I should excuse myself?” the Duchess said, looking at Stevens, then at Fleming and Niven and Charity and, finally, Montagu.
Montagu looked ambivalent but was not about to speak before those who were superior.
“I believe that considering where we are,” Fleming said, “this is one instance in which having more minds at work far outweighs any concern of too many people knowing about a certain secret operation.”
“Agreed,” Stevens put in.
“I know I’d like to have another female’s perspective, particularly when we get into the writing of the love letters,” Charity said.
The Duchess’s face was questioning.
“Now there’s no way I’m leaving,” she said. “I’m intrigued!”
“Well, then, that settles it,” Montagu said. “Welcome to Operation Mincemeat, Liz.”
She raised an eyebrow at hearing that.
“Thank you,” she said. “That is, I hope so.”
There were chuckles as Charity pushed a button on the wall behind her. A moment later, two men came through the swinging door. They quickly cleared the table of everything but silverware and the side table of everything but the coffee and tea services.
[THREE]
“Ewen,” Lieutentant Ed Stevens began, “I think it would be a good idea if you gave everyone an overview of what has been going on, what has happened up to our coming here with”—he glanced at Major David Niven—“the, ah, about-to-be-named body.”
“Very well,” the lieutenant commander said and motioned to the Duchess that she was welcome to take his seat.
The Duchess smiled her thanks, poured herself a cup of tea at the side table, then settled into Montagu’s chair as he began.
“Right now,” Montagu said, “Hitler knows two things: one, that the Allies will not stop after taking Tunisia, and, two, that we could come in through any Nazi-occupied country or any neutral country. What he does not know is that, barring any major developments, the Allied strategy is to invade the island of Sicily, then go into Italy. This, of course, comes as no real surprise to anyone—”
Fleming interrupted: “Even Winston Churchill has said that ‘anybody but a damn fool would know it is Sicily.’”
There were nods around the table.
“And it’s our job,” Montagu went on, “not to let that damn fool Hitler see that. Or at least believe it.”
There were appreciative chuckles.
Montagu continued: “As we all well know, when something is indeed planned it is hard to keep a lid on it. ‘Loose lips sink ships,’ that sort of thing. Hitler has sympathetic ears in places high and low just waiting to intercept and pass along any news of Allied intentions.”
Like the Manhattan Project, Charity thought, then glanced at Ed Stevens. When she saw him return the glance, she wondered if he had had the same thought.
“Which is why
we came up with the idea for this deception,” Montagu added.
“Deceptions, plural,” Niven said.
“Yes,” Montagu said. “David is of course correct. There are other minor ruses de guerre in play. One, for example, concerns Sir Henry Wilson. The field marshal’s army, as you know, under General Montgomery and based in Egypt, is making motions so as to look as if it is preparing to invade Greece, with the continued threat of advancing up through the Balkans. That should get Hitler’s attention.”
“In support of that,” Ed Stevens offered, “some of our agents at London Station for the last month have had their contacts not so quietly buy up all the Greek drachmas they can get their hands on. Collecting so much currency has gotten the attention of, as you put it, those with the sympathetic ears. It wouldn’t surprise me if that information is already in Berlin.”
Stevens looked at Charity and Jamison, and added, “Some of our agents here soon will be training to work with the Greek Resistance. We’ll send them in to help increase operations to draw the Germans’ attention from Operation Husky. That’s so that when the Germans swallow Mincemeat and they begin shifting, say, armored divisions to Greece, we’ll blow railroads and highways, forcing them to move more slowly with the tanks under their own power.”
Montagu nodded.
“All pieces of the larger puzzle,” he said. “And our piece of deceit is the biggest, the one we devoutly hope will convince Hitler and his planners beyond any doubt, causing them not to reinforce the defense of Sicily.”
“We’re going to accomplish that with a frozen cadaver?” Bob Jamison said, incredulously.
The Duchess was sipping tea. She almost dropped her cup when she heard that. She turned quickly to look at Jamison, then at Montagu.
“I suppose it’s too late for me to excuse myself?” she said lightly.
Montagu had not missed her reaction.
“We have preserved in a sealed steel case in the basement,” he said to her,“the body of a man who we will outfit with certain papers that—again, we devoutly hope—will deceive the Germans.”
“My home is now a morgue,” she said wistfully before taking another sip of tea.
“I would not put it that way,” Montagu said carefully. “What we will do with the body here is create the appropriate cover—papers, uniform, and other accoutrements—then a week or so from now, take it to sea.”
“Interesting,” the Duchess said, nodding.
“But I’m getting quite ahead of myself.” He reached down to the table for his cup of tea, took a sip, then returned the cup to its saucer and went on: “Our ultimate mission is to have, quote, most secret, unquote, information—disinformation—on the true plans for Operation Husky fall into the hands of those sympathetic to Hitler. It will then find its way to the German High Command, where it will be judged credible and acted upon.”
He paused, then added, “And how do we do that?”
Montagu looked around the room while tapping his temple with his forefinger.
“By second-guessing the German mind,” Montagu went on. “We have to consider not what we necessarily know to be true but, rather, what we believe is the German perception of what we know. If they think, for example, that we are inclined to take Greece—even though we know that we aren’t—then it is easier to convince them that that is indeed what’s going to happen.”
“They already believe it,” Charity said, nodding her understanding. “They’re just looking for confirmation.”
“Yes,” Montagu said.
“Frankly,” Fleming added wryly, “we’re finding that second-guessing the German mind is not nearly as difficult as persuading our own superiors. And I’m not even including those in SOE!”
Ed Stevens made an exaggerated look of shock. “You mean to say you have trouble with your brass? And the exalted SOE!”
There were chuckles.
“I’m terribly afraid so,” Montagu said. “And it often has been for the reasons opposite those concerning perception. To use the same example, our people knew we weren’t invading Greece and then the Balkans, so this knowledge made it harder for them to believe our deception was solid.”
“Also, when we first ran the idea up,” Fleming explained, “everyone felt that they knew the German mind better than we did. It seemed that every part of our plan was questioned at one level or another. If it wasn’t for the mastiff-like tenacity of Ewen here, Mincemeat would have died a long time ago.”
Montagu looked at Fleming and appeared to take a quiet pride in the praise.
Montagu then turned to the others and went on: “We had made sure we had it pretty well worked out before we took it higher, to the head of British Naval Intelligence, then on up to Prime Minister Churchill, who ultimately approved it.”
He went to the side table and refreshed his cup of tea.
Niven signaled for Ustinov to do the same for everyone at the table and the batman nodded, got up, retrieved a teapot, and began pouring.
Montagu went on:
“For example, our first idea—feeding information through a doubled agent using a wireless—we dismissed almost as quickly as we first thought it. Too obvious. If the disinformation we sent was not quickly dismissed at a low level—such being the nature of mistrust in a double agent—then it would be dismissed—or even lost outright—somewhere along the chain long before it reached the High Command. And we simply did not have the time to wait and see if that worked.”
As Montagu took a sip of his tea, Fleming said:
“Likewise, another idea was to insert in occupied France an agent, similar to our man downstairs, but by parachute. He would carry a W/T, which we would expect the enemy to capture. They would then operate the radio as if the agent had in fact survived. This in essence would have been the equivalent of their running a double agent. They would act as if they were the agent, and we would play along, sending both genuine factual information—harmless intelligence that they could authenticate—with disinformation supporting the deception.”
“The first obstacle we found with that idea,” Montagu said, “was making the dead body look as if it had died during the parachuting—not before. The obvious solution was to rig the parachute so that it opened only partially. Such an impact with the ground would of course kill any man. Unfortunately, it also would very likely cause the destruction of the W/T.”
“And operation over,” Fleming added.
“But even if the radio survived,” Jamison said, “say, the chute snagged in a treetop, there would be another even bigger hole with that scenario. Agents don’t carry their codes, and so whoever captured the W/T would find it about as useful as a rock.”
“True,” Fleming put in. “Agents are not supposed to carry their codes. We looked for a plausible reason around that, to have what might be a, quote, careless and absentminded, unquote, agent carrying only his code, or even thinking himself somewhat clever by burying the real code in a list of fictitious ones. But, not surprisingly, we failed in that miserably. It would be considered suspicious immediately. So we’d have a situation where we could send all the telegraphy messages we wanted and they could decode them as best they could using their usual means. But if they didn’t have the unique code of the double agent, there would be no way for them to continue ‘his’ part of the conversation. So this idea also was dismissed with haste.”
“After much back-and-forth over months with everyone between us and the prime minister,” Montagu said, “we finally worked out a framework that was approved by all.”
“What about AFHQ?” Charity said. “I assume General Eisenhower has signed off on it.”
Montagu looked to Fleming, then to Stevens, for guidance.
Stevens and Fleming exchanged glances and seemed to have the same thought: Innocence out of the mouths of babes….
“Did I say something wrong?” Charity said.
There was no way that either Fleming or Stevens could get into the real reasons why Operation Mincemeat had devel
oped in the manner that it had. For that matter, damn near no one could—not unless they were privy to the personal communications between the President of the United States and the British Prime Minister.
Churchill was spending a great deal of time and effort trying to influence FDR—some said “manipulate the great manipulator”—trying to keep his focus on the war in Europe. There was more than a little reasonable fear in London that if the Americans accelerated the moving of assets to fight the growing war in the Pacific, the impact on Britain would be great—prolonging the war with Hitler perhaps to the point of losing it.
Thus, Churchill considered success in Sicily critical on a number of levels and was going to do whatever was necessary to see that Mincemeat was successful.
Including keeping Mincemeat hidden from that Yank commander at AFHQ.
What Stevens and Fleming did know was that Wild Bill Donovan had approved of this later-rather-than-sooner business of getting Ike’s approval—going so far as to repeat what he’d personally told FDR: “It’s hard to blow your nose anywhere near AFHQ without his explicit permission.” The OSS director well understood that more often than not that was how things had to be done in their business—that secret services worked best in the shadows. And Donovan—who was privy to the fact that Churchill was working Roosevelt because Roosevelt had confided in him—believed in the soundness and necessity of the operation regardless of the political play at the top.
“Nothing wrong at all, Charity,” Stevens said. “We are—how shall I put this?—in the due process of accomplishing that. Until we do, we want to keep it quiet. Which gets back to why we came out here in the first place.”
Charity nodded her understanding.
“We are confident that we will get General Eisenhower’s approval,” Montagu said as he walked back over the side table, under which was a leather briefcase. He bent over, picked the case up, then put it on the table.
“Due to the complexity of what we have so far done,” he went on, opening the case’s clasps, “and what we are doing now, it will be easier to sell it not exactly as a fait accompli—but as close to one as possible. As Prime Minister Churchill says, time taken to cancel is quite shorter than time needed to plan.”
The Double Agents Page 18
