The Fighting Agents

by W. E. B Griffin

  Once the initial inertia was overcome, their help was no longer needed, and they walked back to where the captain and the civilian stood.

  Darmstadter saw Dolan finally drop through the access hatch, and then, taking a quick look around to see what was going on, begin to give directions to the pushers.

  “Commander Dolan, you say?” the British captain asked.

  “Right,” Canidy said, “and this is Lieutenant Darmstadter. ”

  The two shook Darmstadter’s hand.

  “I didn’t catch your name,” Canidy said to the civilian.

  “Ferniany,” the civilian said.

  “Yachtsman,” Canidy said, confirming his suspicion that the civilian was the OSS agent.

  “We try not to use that identification unless we have to,” Ferniany said.

  “We’re among friends, I think,” Canidy said.

  They all watched as the B-25G was turned and then rolled backward into the natural revetment. And they continued watching as the British soldiers, with a skill that could only have come from practice, unrolled the camouflage net and propped it up over the airplane with trunks of young pine trees, then covered the camouflage netting with branches.

  Then Dolan walked over to them, and there was an exchange of salutes between Dolan and the British officer. Darmstadter saw that Dolan was as surprised by the display of parade-ground military courtesy as Canidy had been.

  “This is Yachtsman,” Canidy said.

  Dolan smiled and shook Ferniany’s hand.

  “Where’s Fulmar?” Dolan asked. He chuckled. “Or what is it we’re calling him, ‘Ex-Lax’?”

  “I was about to ask,” Canidy said.

  “There is a minor problem with Fulmar,” Ferniany said. “Actually, it’s almost funny.”

  “What’s almost funny?” Canidy snapped.

  “He’s doing ninety days in the coal mine at Pécs,” Ferniany said. “For black marketing. He and the professor. The girl is here.”

  “Go over that again,” Canidy snapped. “Spare me the humor.”

  “The barge we were to travel on was boarded, just before we were supposed to leave Pécs,” Ferniany said. “That happens sometimes. They found a lot of money on Fulmar. They naturally concluded that he was a black marketeer and hauled him and the professor off.”

  Darmstadter saw that the B-25G was now well hidden from where they stood; from the air, it would be invisible. And the soldiers who had erected the netting over it were now walking down the “runway” where they had landed, sweeping the tire tracks with pine branches. Then he saw something that for a moment baffled him.

  Two of the soldiers were rolling a boulder onto the center of the “runway.” The boulder was taller than they were. There was no way that a bulldozer, much less two men, could move a boulder that size with such ease. Unless, of course, it was phony, like the boulders that careen down a mountain in the movies. That’s obviously what it had to be, Darmstadter realized, and then saw three more boulders farther down the field on the far side of the stream that cut the runway in half.

  “May I suggest, gentlemen,” Captain Hughson said, “that we go to our digs? Every once in a while, Jerry flies a Storch over for a look. It would probably arouse his curiosity to see us all standing about in this deserted meadow.”

  They followed him toward the hillside, where, hidden behind a bush, was the start of a narrow, steep path that wound its way up through the boulders and stunted trees. After they had climbed for five minutes, they came to the first of what turned out to be a series of caves in the side of the hill.

  Captain Hughson led them into one of them.

  A hissing Coleman lantern inside illuminated a small stone altar and crude paintings of people with halos on the cave walls.

  They don’t look like Jesus, Canidy thought. They must be saints.

  He thought that his father would know whom the paintings depicted, what sort of Christian had painted them on the wall here, and when. The Reverend Dr. George Crater Canidy was an expert on early Christianity. It was the first time he had thought of his father recently. Whenever he did, he thought that his father would disapprove, if he knew what his son was doing.

  The British SOE captain saw his interest.

  “Orthodox,” Hughson said. “I don’t know what orthodox, but orthodox. They tell me that they came here after training in a monastery, and they carved out these caves, and then spent the rest of their lives in silence and prayer. Communal farm, that sort of thing, but all they did otherwise was think and pray. Rather unsettling, what, to think about it?”

  “Well, at least they left us their bomb shelters,” Canidy said, and then looked for Ferniany. When he had his attention, he went on, “Who carried Fulmar off where?”

  “The Black Guard and some local police,” Ferniany said. “To the municipal jail in Pécs. That happens all the time, with legitimate black marketeers, I mean . . . how about that? A ‘legitimate’ black marketeer . . . ”

  “Hey!” Canidy said sharply. “I’ve had about all of your scintillating wit I can handle.”

  “Just who the hell do you think you are?” Ferniany said.

  “My name is Canidy. I’m both the action officer and your control, okay?”

  “I thought you said Commander Dolan was the aircraft commander,” Ferniany said, half accusingly.

  “I did,” Canidy said. “He is the aircraft commander.”

  “Major,” Ferniany said, “I’m really sorry. It never entered my mind that you would show up here.”

  “A lot of things apparently ‘never entered your mind,’ ”Canidy said. “Now, what the hell happened, one step at a time?”

  “The cops in Hungary are like the cops in Hamtramck, Michigan, Major,” Ferniany said. “They have their hands out. They want a slice of the pie, and then they look the other way. So far as they’re concerned, if a Hungarian farmer sells a ham or a couple of salamis to a ‘tourist,’ instead of selling it to the state, that’s his business, providing they get their cut. They make sure that everybody understands the rules by picking people up every once in a while and putting them in jail. Like the cops raid the whorehouses in Cicero on a scheduled basis. You understand? ”

  “And Fulmar got picked up . . . on a schedule?”

  “The Black Guard had a good day with him,” Ferniany said. “I saw them counting the money they took away from him. How much did he have, anyway?”

  Canidy ignored the question.

  “How come they didn’t pick you up?” he asked. “And you said the Dyer girl’s here?”

  “I’m not making my point,” Ferniany said. “And it’s important that I do.”

  “So make it,” Canidy said.

  “They didn’t pick me up, or anybody else on the barge, because that would be killing the goose that lays the golden egg. They picked up Fulmar because he hadn’t paid the toll.”

  “You mean beforehand?” Canidy asked. Ferniany nodded. “Well, if you knew about this system, why didn’t you pay whatever had to be paid?”

  “I had a decision to make,” Ferniany said. “I decided it would be worth the risk . . . the word I got, presumably from you, Major . . . was to keep this operation as quiet as possible. I decided the best way to do that was to try to slip them through without paying off the cops.”

  “You should have paid the cops,” Canidy said.

  “When you pay the cops, it’s for a round-trip,” Ferniany said. “They would have been curious when these people didn’t head back to Vienna with suitcases full of salami and ham.”

  “Your orders, Captain,” Canidy said icily, “were to see that under no circumstances were Fulmar and Professor Dyer to fall into German hands.”

  “You mean, I was supposed to ‘eliminate’ them?” Ferniany asked. “The thing is, Major, I’m new at this. I’m not used to the euphemisms: ‘eliminate’ for ‘kill,’ specifically. So far, it hasn’t been necessary for me to kill people on our side. I don’t know, frankly, what I would have done if I ha
d thought they were going to be turned over to the Sicherheitsdienst or the Gestapo.”

  Canidy, his face rigid, looked at Ferniany a long time before he spoke.

  “I don’t know if I could have done it, either,” he said finally, softly. “It’s easier to order people to do something like that than it is to do it yourself.”

  “Major, it’s five-to-one that long before their ninety days is up, they’ll be turned loose. They’re not making any money for the cops in the coal mines. The coal mines are a lesson, you understand?”

  “I know what you’re trying to tell me,” Canidy said. “But there’s more to this than you understand.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like there was a very good reason for the elimination order,” Canidy said.

  “Are we back to that?”

  Canidy didn’t reply. He walked away from the others for a few moments, thinking. Then he came back to the group and turned to Captain Hughson.

  “There is avgas here? Nothing ‘almost funny’ has happened to that?”

  “There are twenty-five fifty-five-gallon drums of aviation gasoline, Major,” the British officer said. “Twelve, thirteen hundred American gallons.”

  “And some kind of a pump?” Canidy pursued.

  “Hand pumps,” Ferniany said. “Three of them.”

  “Are we sure it’s clean gas?” Dolan said.

  “The tanks are sealed,” Ferniany said. “And there’s both metallic filters and chamois.”

  “You better get on the refueling right away, John,” Canidy said. “At first light tomorrow, after you put Darmstadter through a couple of touch-and-gos, I want you to make for Cairo.”

  Dolan accepted the order without question, with a nod of his head. But he was curious:

  “Why Cairo? And aren’t you coming with us?”

  “Cairo because we have a pretty good radio link with our station chief there, and no, I can’t go back with you.”

  “We have radio contact with London, Major,” the SOE captain said.

  Canidy ignored him.

  “While you’re fueling the plane,” he went on, “I’ll start encrypting a message for London. You give it, personally, to the station chief. His name is Wilkins, Ernest J. Wilkins, and he’s a lot more competent than he looks. Tell him to get it right out, and then you wait there for further orders.”

  Dolan nodded.

  “You’ll take the Dyer girl with you,” Canidy said. “If the decision is for you to go on to London, take her with you. If it isn’t, turn her over to Wilkins, and have her put on ice. His ice. Make damned sure he understands that. She is not a prisoner, but I don’t want her talking to anybody but you and the station chief.”

  Dolan nodded again. “Daylight will be at 0513,” he said. “Say twenty minutes to shoot two or three touch-and-gos, another half an hour to land, top off the tanks, and put the girl aboard. That’ll get us out of here at no more than quarter past six.”

  “Fifteen minutes to shoot two touch-and-gos, and you’ll be on your way at half past five. It’s fifteen hundred miles, give or take a hundred, from here to Cairo. Presuming no bad head wind, that’d put you into Cairo in six hours, say noon Cairo time.”

  “Two other presumptions,” Dolan said dryly. “That you have your reasons for taking a passenger while Darmstadter’s shooting touch-and-gos, and that you have your reasons for us not to make a refueling stop at Malta.”

  “There are reasons, John,” Canidy said, “but none you can’t figure out yourself.”

  “Right,” Dolan said.

  Canidy turned to Captain Hughson.

  “How do you cook your meat here, Captain?” he asked.

  The British officer’s eyebrows went up.

  “Actually, there are two methods,” he said. “We usually heat the tins in boiling water. But sometimes, if the meat is your Spam, we take it from the tins and fry it for a treat.”

  “Could you rig up some sort of a spit over a fire?” Canidy asked.

  “I’m sure you have a reason for asking,” Captain Hughson said.

  “There’s four hundred pounds of Four-in-One beef on the plane,” Canidy said. “I thought perhaps SOE might like to entertain its visitors with the roast beef of Merry Old England.” Four-in-One was boned beef packed for the U.S. Army Quartermasters Corps, prepared so that it could be roasted whole, cut into steaks, chunked for stew, or ground.

  For the first time, Captain Hughson smiled.

  “Well, we’ll give it a bloody good try, Major,” he said.

  “There’s also some vegetables, but God only knows if they survived the cold,” Canidy said. “You stick around, Ferniany,” he ordered, “while I do the paperwork.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Ferniany said.

  It took Canidy longer than he thought it would to get what details he needed from Ferniany, then to write his report, then to edit it down to as short a version as possible for encryption, and then for the encryption itself.

  He carried with him simple transposition codes on water -soluble tissue paper, one for each day, each five-letter code block representing a word or a phrase he and the OSS cryptographic officer had thought might be useful. But they had not considered the possibility that Fulmar and Professor Dyer would be locked up in a Hungarian municipal prison as petty criminals, so coming up with paraphrases for that situation from the available words and phrases was difficult. He had to laboriously build a second code from the code he had available, and by the time he had finally transferred the message Dolan would carry to Cairo for transmission, and had burned his notes and that day’s code, a lot of time had passed. It was dark when they walked out of the cave.

  They stood in the dark for a minute, until their eyes adjusted to the darkness, and then they followed their noses farther up the hill to the cave from which came the smell of roasting beef.

  2

  OSS STATION WHITBEY HOUSE KENT, ENGLAND 1905 HOURS 16 FEBRUARY 1943

  Captain the Duchess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Stanfield, WRAC, liaison officer of His Majesty’s Imperial General Staff to OSS Station Whitbey House, liked First Lieutenant Charity Hoche, WAC, newly appointed assistant adjutant, from the moment she had first seen her getting out of the Ford staff car in front of Whitbey House.

  Why she liked her, she could not explain. There were some women the Duchess liked at first sight, and some she didn’t. But by and large, her snap-judgment first impressions were proven correct. Maybe in this case it was because Charity Hoche, although she looked up and somewhat shyly smiled at the Duchess and Lieutenant Bob Jamison as they started down the wide shallow stairs toward her, she did not ask for help, hauled her luggage from the backseat, and, staggering under the weight, started to carry it up the stairs herself. And then with a look of chagrin on her face—and an “Ooops!”—Charity Hoche put down the right suitcase and saluted.

  The Duchess returned the salute.

  “Welcome to Whitbey House,” the Duchess said. “And thank you for the salute, but we do rather little of that around here.”

  “I’m Bob Jamison,” Jamison said. “Let me give you a hand with your bags.”

  “What a marvelous house,” Charity said, reaching to take the Duchess’s extended hand.

  “Small and unpretentious,” Jamison said dryly, “but comfy. Sometime, when you have a free week or ten days, I’ll show you around.”

  The Duchess liked Charity’s smile and peal of laughter.

  “My name is Elizabeth Stanfield,” the Duchess said.

  “Charity Hoche,” Charity said. “How do you do?”

  “Have you eaten?” the Duchess asked.

  “Colonel Stevens took me by the Savoy Grill,” Charity said, “for a final lecture on the conduct expected of me as an officer and a gentlewoman.”

  “Well, I think, under the circumstances, you’re doing quite well,” the Duchess said as they entered the foyer.

  Jamison had been informed, and he had informed the Duchess, of the decision to put Charity into an officer
’s uniform.

  The Duchess found Charity’s eyes on hers and saw in them both gratitude and appraisal. This was a highly intelligent woman, the Duchess decided. She wondered what her real role at Whitbey House was to be. There was a reason for the decision to put her into an officer’s uniform, and it had nothing to do with the one offered: “that it would make things a little easier when she’s dealing with the female personnel.”

  Charity laughed again, a pleasant peal of laughter, when she saw the signpost erected at the foot of the main staircase. It was ten feet tall and festooned with lettered arrows, and it gave the direction and miles to Washington, Berlin, Tokyo, Moscow, as well as to the mess, the club, and the officers’ and billeting areas within the huge mansion.

  “Don’t laugh,” Jamison said. “You’ll need it. We have three bloodhounds who do nothing but search for people who get lost on the premises.”

  Jamison set Charity’s suitcases down in the corridor outside his office and motioned Charity inside.

  “Before we go through the paperwork,” Jamison said, “let me make it official. On behalf of our beloved commanding officer, Major Richard Canidy, who is regrettably not available at the moment, let me welcome you to Whitbey House.”

  “Thank you very much.” Charity smiled.

  The Duchess saw on Charity’s face that Charity had known that Canidy would not be here. And then she had the sure feeling that Charity knew why Canidy wasn’t here, and very probably where he was and what he was doing.

  There were documents for Charity to sign, and Jamison handed her an identity card overprinted with diagonal red stripes and sealed in plastic.

  “The red stripes are what we call ‘anyplace, anytime’ stripes,” Jamison explained, “meaning you go anywhere on the station whenever you wish. You’ll probably be asked for the card a lot, until the security people get to know you, and you will be asked for it whenever you leave the inner and outer perimeters.”