The Fighting Agents

by W. E. B Griffin

  Between the Margit Bridge and Batthyany Palace, they passed two more policemen, but neither of them showed any interest in the bicyclists.

  When Ferniany finally pushed his bicycle off the street and onto the sidewalk before the facade of what looked like a museum, Canidy was sweat-soaked from exertion and annoyed that Ferniany seemed immune to both fatigue and cold.

  The doorbell was just that, a handle which when pulled caused a bell somewhere inside the building to just audibly tinkle.

  By the time a small door built into the larger door opened a crack, Canidy had his breath back, but his sweat-soaked clothing had chilled, and he was shivering and his feet hurt.

  A small old man with white hair and very bright eyes exchanged a few words with Ferniany, then opened the door to let them pass.

  There were more cobblestones inside the door, and at the end of a passageway a courtyard. The little old man led them into a huge kitchen and said something to Ferniany, apparently an order to wait. The kitchen, Canidy saw, was not in use. There was a huge icebox, and each of its half-dozen doors was wedged open. More important, none of the three wood-burning stoves held a fire.

  A door opened, and a rather startling redhead came into the kitchen. Her hair, a magnificent mop of dark red, hung below her shoulders. She was wrapped in an ankle-length, somewhat bedraggled, Persian lamb coat. The hem of a woolen nightgown was exposed at the bottom, and her feet were in what Canidy at first thought were half Wellington boots, but which he saw after a moment were really sheepskin -lined jodhpurs.

  She shook Ferniany’s hand, and they had a brief exchange. Then she turned to Canidy. She spoke British-accented English.

  “I am the Countess Batthyany,” she said. “How may I be of service, Major?”

  “I’m Pharmacist,” Canidy said.

  Her eyebrows rose in genuine surprise.

  “You would be far more welcome,” she said, “if I didn’t suspect that you wouldn’t be here unless there is trouble.”

  “Have you got any brandy?” Canidy said. “I’m chilled to the bone.”

  “Yes, of course,” she said. “Forgive me.”

  She turned and motioned for them to follow her. There was a narrow, rather steep flight of stairs, and then a door. They stepped into a dimly lit room. The room was well furnished, and when Canidy glanced around, he saw that the door they had come through was cut through the paneling of the room so that it would fit in with the decor. A servants’ passageway, he decided.

  When he turned around again, there was a man in the room. Tall, aristocratic, wearing a silk dressing gown. He held a Walther Ppk .32 ACP pistol in his hand. It was pointed at the floor.

  “Was ist los?” he asked.

  “Liebchen, this is Major Canidy,” the Countess said, adding, “Pharmacist. Major, may I introduce His Excellency Brigadeführer-SS von Heurten-Mitnitz?”

  Von Heurten-Mitnitz’s expression did not change, but he spent a long moment examining Canidy before he spoke.

  “The major and his friend look frozen,” he said. “Could you ring for some brandy? Something for them to eat?”

  “Yes, of course,” the Countess said.

  Then von Heurten-Mitnitz looked at Canidy again.

  “You don’t happen to know Putzi’s son’s name, do you?”

  “I was wondering if you were going to ask,” Canidy said, then gave his part of the prearranged countersign. “Ergon.”

  Von Heurten-Mitnitz nodded coolly and managed a brief smile.

  “My next question,” he said, “obviously, would be to ask what brings you here. But I’m a little afraid to ask.”

  “Eric Fulmar and Professor Dyer are in the municipal jail in Pécs,” Canidy said. “You didn’t know?”

  “Jesus, Maria, und Josef!” the Countess breathed.

  “No,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said, “I didn’t.”

  “We’re done for,” the Countess said matter-of-factly.

  “Can you at least get Helmut and me out? Is that what you’ve come for?”

  “I came in to arrange for a site into which we can paradrop a team,” Canidy said.

  " ’Paradrop’ ?” von Heurten-Mitnitz asked. “You mean parachute?”

  Canidy nodded.

  “You’ve got to get us out!” the Countess said furiously.

  “That may not be necessary,” Canidy said. “Fulmar and the professor have been arrested as black marketeers.”

  “How do you know that?” von Heurten-Mitnitz asked calmly.

  “I was there when they were arrested,” Ferniany said.

  “Then there is a chance,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said, searched for the words, and smiled wryly, “ ‘that the jig is not up?’ ”

  “There’s a chance,” Canidy said. “Ferniany is more confident about that than I am.”

  “The function of your team will be to get them out of prison?” von Heurten-Mitnitz asked.

  “The team leader will have my orders, I’m sure,” Canidy said. “I don’t know what they will be.”

  Canidy saw in von Heurten-Mitnitz’s eyes that he would not have to explain that his orders might be to make absolutely sure that neither Fulmar nor Professor Dyer would be available for interrogation by the SS or the Gestapo. And when he looked at the Countess Batthyany, he saw in her face that she understood, too.

  “I want to try to get them out,” Canidy said.

  “A question of priorities, then?” von Heurten-Mitnitz said.

  “Yes,” Canidy said.

  “And where on that list would be the priority to get out the Countess, or, for that matter, me?”

  “If it comes to that,” Canidy said, “we’ll get you out.”

  “We will go out,” the Countess said, “or stay, together.”

  Von Heurten-Mitnitz looked at her for a moment, then at his wristwatch.

  “It’s too early,” he said. “But later, I will call Müller and ask him to pick me up here.” He saw the look on Canidy’s face. “It is necessary.”

  After a moment, Canidy nodded.

  “Just so long as he understands that I will make the decision about trying to get Fulmar and the professor out.”

  “I thought you implied that decision will be made by your superiors?” von Heurten-Mitnitz asked.

  “I’ll decide,” Canidy said flatly.

  5

  FERSFIELD ARMY AIR CORPS STATION BEDFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND 0410 HOURS 19 FEBRUARY 1943

  “There’s no reason for you to get up,” Douglass said as he sat up in the narrow bed and swung his feet out onto the floor.

  Charity sat up in bed.

  “I’ve been pretending that we’re in Bala-Cynwyd . . . ,” she said.

  “Where?” he asked, chuckling.

  “It’s a suburb of Philadelphia,” she said. “ . . . and that the alarm clock has just gone off, and that you’re going to get up and put on a suit, and that when you have had breakfast you’ll kiss the children. And then I’ll drive you to the station, and you’ll get on the commuter train and go in to your office in Philadelphia . . . ”

  “What kind of an office?”

  “You’re a lawyer, like my father,” she said.

  “Why a lawyer?”

  “Because when lawyers leave their loving wives and adoring children to go to their offices, they know they’ll be coming home that same night, not going off to some impossible island nobody ever heard about. . . .”

  “Stanley’s a lawyer,” Douglass said.

  “Damn you, come back to me,” Charity said.

  “I’ll have to, to make you an honest woman,” he said.

  “And to give the baby a name,” Charity said.

  “What baby?”

  “The one I think we made last night,” Charity said.

  “Last night, or ten minutes ago?” he replied.

  “I hope we did. Whenever,” Charity said. “How do you like them apples, Colonel?”

  “Hey, is this the right time to discuss something like that?” Douglass asked.r />
  “The best time,” Charity said. “If a man doesn’t believe that a woman loves him after she says she wants his baby, he’ll never believe it. I want you to know it, Doug.”

  He stopped in the act of pulling his shorts on and went to the bed and sat on it.

  “Me, too,” he said.

  “That’s close,” Charity said.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “Correct,” she said. “That wins you your choice of a trip to the sunny and romantic Adriatic isle of Vis, a cement bicycle, or whatever else your little heart desires. Me, for example. ”

  “Jesus, honey, they’re waiting for me.”

  “I thought RHIP.”

  “It does,” he said. “Fuck ’em, let ’em wait.”

  “ ‘’em? ’em?’ ” Charity asked.

  6

  HEADQUARTERS, U.S. FORCES IN THE PHILIPPINES MISAMIS OCCIDENTAL PROVINCE, MINDANAO 19 FEBRUARY 1943

  There was now some official stationery available to Headquarters, U.S. Forces in the Philippines. It was a good-quality, twenty-four-pound watermarked bond paper, with an engraved letterhead. The letterhead read,

  THE DOLE CORPORATION Pineapple Plantation Three “There Are None Finer” Mindanao, Territory of the Philippine Islands

  Headquarters, United States Forces in the Philippines used the blank side of the paper, but only for important official documents. After some thought, General Fertig decided that it was necessary to maintain certain files, and to use his available stock of stationery (one and one half boxes, totaling precisely 741 sheets of paper) to do so.

  USFIP had acquired some other desperately needed supplies from the mountainside cottage of the manager of the Dole Corporation’s Pineapple Plantation Number Three. The cottage, some miles from the plantation itself, had been the manager’s private retreat. It had somehow escaped Japanese attention, and so it had held a dozen sets of bed linen—which USFIP converted into bandages; a Winchester single-shot, bolt-action .22-caliber rifle and three and a half boxes of .22 shells; a motley collection of inexpensive tableware and pots and pans; a mixed assortment of condiments and canned delicacies (such as Planter’s Peanuts, martini olives, and miniature onions); a Zenith portable radio; and a Smith-Corona “Student’s” portable typewriter with a nearly new ribbon.

  General Fertig had his staff prepare copies for the record of the several pronouncements he had made as Commanding General, USFIP; the commissions he had bestowed upon certain members of his staff; and memorandums of record of the money issued by the Provisional Government of Misamis Occidental Province and which he had borrowed for USFIP.

  And he instructed his cryptographic officer, Capt. Horace B. Buchanan, to assume personal responsibility for the Smith-Corona and the stock of stationery, and, aside from making copies of outgoing and incoming messages, to make sure that no one used either paper or typewriter in a manner that could by any stretch of the imagination be considered profligate.

  When Capt. Buchanan went to General Fertig’s quarters with the two messages that had come in within five minutes of each other, the General was having his evening cocktail. Second Lieutenant (ex-chief petty officer, USN) Ellwood Orfett, whom Fertig had placed in charge of a deserted coconut oil mill, had revealed another talent. He could convert mashed pineapple meat into alcohol, producing a lethal-smelling transparent intoxicant with the kick of a mule, but which, when mixed with pineapple juice, didn’t taste half bad.

  “Would you like a little taste, Buchanan?” Fertig asked as Buchanan came up the bamboo stairs of the General’s quarters, shaking the whole building.

  “Don’t mind if I do, Sir,” Buchanan said, and helped himself to a glass of the mixture. He poured it from a pottery mug in the shape of a cow’s head. This was originally intended for milk, and was also salvaged from the pineapple plantation manager’s cottage.

  Fertig read the two messages, which were both on the same sheet of paper:

  PRIORITY FROM KAZ FOR WYZB

  ATTENTION LT COL FERTIG

  YOUR RADIO MESSAGE OF 15 FEBRUARY 1943 FOR SECWAR WASHINGTON HAS COME TO THE ATTENTION OF THIS HEADQUARTERS.

  ALL REPEAT ALL COMMUNICATIONS FROM YOUR DETACHMENT OF WHATEVER NATURE WILL BE DIRECTED TO THIS HEADQUARTERS. NO DEVIATION FROM THIS POLICY WILL BE TOLERATED.

  BY COMMAND OF GENERAL MACARTHUR. WILLOUGHBY BRIG GEN

  URGENT

  FROM JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF WASH DC

  VIA KSF FOR WYZB HQ US FORCES IN PHILIPPINES

  ATTENTION BRIGADIER GENERAL FERTIG

  KEEP YOUR SHIRT ON

  J. R. ELLIS CHIEF USN

  “I rather expected the first one,” Fertig said. Then he read the second message.

  “I rather like the sound of the second,” Fertig said, “even if I haven’t the faintest idea what it means.”

  “I’d say it’s the reason General Willoughby sounds just a little pissed,” Capt. Buchanan said. “The one from Washington—from the Joint Chiefs—is addressed to ‘General Fertig,’ you’ll notice.”

  “You think Willoughby knows about it?” Fertig asked.

  “He knew about our message to the Secretary of War,” Buchanan said. “Sure, I think he heard about it. He’s probably got the whole message.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Fertig asked curiously.

  “The signature on the message is incomplete,” Buchanan said. “There had to be more to it than ‘Chief USN.’ Chief of something. What?”

  “I thought it meant ‘chief petty officer,’ ” Fertig said.

  “Chief petty officers don’t sign messages from the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” Buchanan said. “Admirals and generals do that.”

  He remembered—and then was a little ashamed of the memory—that General Fertig, who had been a civilian eighteen months ago, knew damned little about the military services.

  “Then what the hell does it mean?” Fertig asked. “ ‘Keep your shirt on’ doesn’t sound at all military, does it?”

  Buchanan filled his glass again before replying.

  “I thought about that, General,” he said. “It may be . . . maybe even probably is . . . a reply to your message to the Secretary of War. And it just might mean exactly what it says.”

  “That we should be patient, that they are sending help?”

  “I wonder at what point you want something so desperately that you lose sight of reality and imagine you see what you’re looking for behind every bush,” Buchanan said.

  “But?”

  “The message is from the Joint Chiefs,” Buchanan said. “And we have a ‘we are pissed’ message from MacArthur. Which just might mean MacArthur has been asked to explain why no help has been sent to us. Or even that he has been ordered to get off his ass and send some.”

  “Yes,” Fertig said softly, thoughtfully. “Could be.”

  “And if I wanted to get a message to somebody who doesn’t have any cryptographic equipment worth a damn,” Buchanan went on, “it would run through my mind to send a message in slang, in the clear, and hope that the Japs wouldn’t understand the slang, and would try to decode the slang.”

  “We have heard from MacArthur about the Secretary of War message,” Fertig said, “and there was no reply to our message about VD medicine.”

  “That might be because it would be beneath the Generalissimo’s dignity to acknowledge. Nobody talks to MacArthur that way.”

  “You really think there was more to that message than what we got—specifically, a rank and a job title?” Fertig asked.

  “I think there just had to be.”

  “If there was a message, it seems common decency would have required MacArthur, or Willoughby, to relay it to us. To make sure we got it.”

  Buchanan shrugged.

  “ ‘Common decency,’ ” he parroted bitterly.

  “The last time I saw the Generalissimo,” Fertig said, “was in the Manila Club. There was a buffet. MacArthur, of course, and his queen and the crown prince didn’t stand in the line. But I went through it with
my wife. And as we walked to our table, we had to squeeze around their table. He was in a planter’s white suit. I had a large bowl of shrimp bisque. I will regret for the rest of my life not having had an accident with it.”

  Buchanan laughed.

  “It may be, Buchanan,” Fertig said, “that help is on the way. But I think it more likely that you and I are sitting here with five ounces of Orfett’s pineapple white lightning in us, seeing things we want to see behind bushes that just aren’t there. I don’t want any of this to go any further than you or me.”

  “No, Sir,” Buchanan said. And then he blurted, “But sooner or later, Christ, they’re going to have to do something, aren’t they?”

  “Sooner or later,” Fertig said.

  7

  BATTHYANY PALACE BUDAPEST, HUNGARY 0820 HOURS 20 FEBRUARY 1943

  Standartenführer SS-SD Johann Müller came into the sitting room of the Countess’s apartment in Batthyany Palace and quickly glanced around the room, taking in Canidy and Ferniany, who were sitting on a couch before a gilt coffee table.

  There was no expression on his face.

  “’Tag,” he said, then started to unbutton his black leather overcoat. He hung it carefully on the back of a Louis XIV chair and then moved the chair to a position near one of the two white porcelain stoves. Then he moved the chair a foot farther away.

  “If you get it too close, it cracks and dries the leather,” he explained.

  And then he looked at Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz, his eyebrows raised in question.

  “Johann,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said in German, “this is Major Canidy of the United States Army. ‘Pharmacist.’ ”

  Müller examined Canidy carefully, then did the same thing to Ferniany. He was subjected to the same kind of an examination by the Americans.