The Fighting Agents

by W. E. B Griffin

  Despite the generous proportions of the Admiral’s trunk, he could not stretch his legs without arcing his torso painfully, nor raise himself on his elbows without simultaneously lowering his head so that his chin rested on his upper chest.

  And the thick goose-down comforters and pillows that the Countess Batthyany had put into the trunk to keep him warm and serve as cushions had not been as helpful as everyone had cheerfully, almost gaily, believed. The comforter had quickly crushed down under him, so that he could feel every ridge and indentation in the trunk floor. And the comforter he had wrapped around himself for warmth, and the pillows on which he had planned to cushion his head, made things worse than nothing at all, for they retained enough bulk to get in the way when he shifted his body again and again to relieve the strain on his muscles.

  He became uneasy, nervous, worried, and he began to wonder if he had some previously unsuspected problem with claustrophobia. He reasoned that through and decided his nervousness was perfectly reasonable: He was in the dark, and nobody liked that.

  More important, it was fifty-fifty that von Heurten-Mitnitz was wrong when he said he “rather doubted they would be stopped at all, or subjected to more than the most perfunctory examination if they were.” There was a fifty-fifty chance that the trunk lid would suddenly open and he would find himself looking up at a Black Guard, a Hungarian cop, or even a Gestapo agent. If that happened, he was not going to be in a position to do much about it. The Sten submachine gun Captain Hughson had given him in Vis was now in the hands of an admiring Yugoslav partisan. Canidy was armed now only with the Fairbairn and a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson .38, neither of which would be of any real use if the car was stopped and checked. If that happened, in addition to being nearly paralyzed by the goddamned trunk, he would be blinded by the sudden light and helpless.

  There had been time to remember where he had gotten the snub-nosed .38, and that hadn’t helped his morale either. Jimmy Whittaker had given it to him just before they’d taken off on the mission to the Belgian Congo. Moments before that, Jimmy had taken it away from the flight engineer. The flight engineer had been given the pistol by the Chief, OSS London Station, together with an order that he use it on Canidy the moment it looked as if Canidy was going to fall into enemy hands.

  It was not difficult to proceed from that to the logical conclusion that if an elimination order—to keep him from failing into enemy hands—had been issued then, a similar order had doubtless also been issued to cover this circumstance. He knew now more information that the Germans shouldn’t know than he had known when he and Jimmy had flown off to the Belgian Congo.

  He wondered where Whittaker was at that moment. In Australia, more than likely, dazzling the Australian women with his good looks and all-pink uniform. Whittaker, he thought, should have been a sailor; he already had a girl in every airport.

  Ann came to mind then, and he wallowed for a moment in the memory of the smell of her, and the feel, and the touch of her hand on him, and then he forced Ann from his mind.

  And then he got a headache. He was suddenly aware of it, a real bitch of a headache behind his eyes and across the base of his skull. He realized that he had been aware of getting a headache for some time.

  “Oh, shit!” he said aloud.

  He tried to look at his wristwatch to see how long he had been in the trunk. The Hamilton chronometer with the glowing hands was now adorning the wrist of the fishing boat captain. He couldn’t even see the watch he had been given in return, much less tell what time it was.

  In that ten seconds, the headache seemed to have grown even worse.

  And then he knew why he had a headache.

  “Pull over!” Canidy shouted. “Let me out of here!”

  There was no reply. They apparently hadn’t heard him. He could hear them talking. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but he could hear them.

  He tried shouting again, and again there was no response. His voice was being muffled, he realized, by the thickly padded leather upholstery in the backseat of the Admiral; and what got through was not audible over the whistling of the wind on the convertible roof and the sound of the engine.

  Then there was a momentary wave of terror. He was going to die in this fucking trunk, be quietly asphyxiated by carbon monoxide from the exhaust. When they got to the Countess’s hunting lodge and opened the trunk, they would find him dead.

  He thought first of his pistol. If he fired that, they would hear it.

  But where was he to fire it? Out the top of the trunk, so there would be a bullet hole for the cops to become fascinated with? Into the trunk floor, where it would pierce the fuel tank?

  And what would firing a pistol in the confined area of the trunk do to his ears?

  He put both hands to his head and pressed inward as hard as he could against the pain of the carbon-monoxide-induced headache.

  And then he twisted around, shoving to the side the goose-down comforter under him. He felt the floor of the trunk. It was covered with some kind of padding. He found the edge, and with a great deal of effort managed to pry the edge loose. Finally, there was enough loose so that he could grip it. He gave a mighty heave and it came loose. Now there was nothing there but sheet metal.

  He balled his fist and struck the floor of the trunk with all of his strength. And then did so again, and again, and again.

  And finally, he sensed that the Admiral was slowing, and then there was the sound of gravel under the tires. The car stopped, and Canidy heard a door open. And then the trunk opened, just a crack. But the light coming through the two-inch opening was so painful that Canidy closed his eyes against it.

  “Are you all right in there?” von Heurten-Mitnitz asked.

  “I’m being asphyxiated,” Canidy said. “Is it clear? Can I get out?”

  “Asphyxiated?” von Heurten-Mitnitz asked doubtfully.

  “The goddamned muffler leaks,” Canidy said.

  “Just a moment,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said. From his tone of voice, Canidy knew that he now believed him.

  And the trunk opened wide. Canidy heard the sound of the hinges and was aware of more light through his closed eyelids.

  “Your lips are blue,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said. “Here, take my hand.”

  Canidy opened his eyes just enough to see the hand, grabbed it, and closed his eyes again. Von Heurten-Mitnitz pulled him out of the trunk and led him to the curbside door.

  “Lie on the seat,” he ordered. “Beatrice, there’s a flask in the map box. Give it to him.”

  “He’s sick?” she asked.

  “Exhaust poisoning,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said. He closed the trunk, then got behind the wheel and started off.

  Canidy felt something cold and metallic at his lips. He took the flask from the Countess and took a deep pull.

  He felt the warmth spread through his body, and then something else.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” he said.

  “Oh, please don’t,” the Countess Batthyany said practically. “You never can get that smell out of a car!”

  Canidy fought down the urge to vomit and took slow, deep breaths. The desire to vomit passed, and he was able after a while to keep his eyes open. He found himself looking into the Countess’s face.

  “You’re getting color back,” she said. “You’ll be all right now.”

  There was genuine relief on her face, Canidy saw, and then decided it almost certainly wasn’t for him.

  There was another queasy feeling in his stomach. He fought it by sitting up, and it passed, but there was a wave of sharp pain behind his eyes.

  He took another pull at the silver brandy flask and looked out the windshield. They were all alone on a narrow, curving road cut through a dense forest of mature pines.

  “Where are we?” he asked. “How long was I in the trunk?”

  “It’s another couple of hours to Pécs,” the Countess said. “We left Budapest at half past nine. You were back there about two hours.”

/>   “What’s next on the road?” Canidy asked. “Am I going to have to get back in the trunk?”

  “We just went through Dunaföldvár,” the Countess said. “There’s a couple of small towns between here and Pécs, Sioagárd and Pécsvárad, hardly more than villages. You’ll be all right in the back, I think.”

  “Do we go through Pécs itself?”

  “There’s a way around,” she said. “But it’s dirt roads, and there’s no telling how muddy they would be this time of year. And we would attract attention.”

  “I was wondering whether we could run by the jail,” Canidy said, “and then trace the route the truck takes moving the prisoners to the mine.”

  “We’ll take that road anyway,” she said. “But it would be a detour to go past Saint Gertrud’s.”

  “A conspicuous detour?” Canidy asked.

  She thought that over before replying, “No. It’s on the edge of town. But we wouldn’t be more conspicuous there than we’re going to be anyway.”

  “Then please tell Herr von Heurten-Mitnitz how to get there,” Canidy said. “I want a look.”

  At quarter to two, the tires leaving a path across previously unbroken snow, the Opel Admiral pulled up before the hunting lodge. It was a long, low wooden building with elaborate scrollwork, now covered with dripping icicles, along the roofline. There was a chimney at each end and a much larger one in the middle. Smoke rose from one of the end chimneys, and as Canidy got out of the car, he could smell wood smoke.

  “I think it would be better if you spoke German,” the Countess said.

  “Who’s in the house?” Canidy asked.

  “The caretaker and his wife,” she said. “And there are foresters in small houses behind the lodge.”

  “And they can’t be trusted?” Canidy asked.

  “Of course they can be trusted,” she said. “They have been with my family for hundreds of years. But if the Black Guard comes here, I don’t want to ask them to lie any more than necessary. They don’t speak German, but they recognize it. I want them to be able to report they saw me with two German-speaking men.”

  “They’re going to know what’s going on,” Canidy said.

  “They will do what I ask them to do,” the Countess said, “and then, because I ask them to, they will forget having done it.”

  Canidy’s disbelief showed on his face.

  “My father was active in the Independent Hungary movement,” the Countess said. “Crown Prince Rudolf used to come here secretly. If my people could forget that he was here, they can forget you.”

  The look on his face confused her.

  “Crown Prince Rudolf was the . . . ,” she started to explain.

  “Heir apparent to the Austro-Hungarian throne,” Canidy filled in. “The one who shot his girlfriend, and then himself. At Mayerling.”

  “Like Standartenführer Müller,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said, “the Countess seems to have underestimated you, Canidy.”

  “And not you?”

  “A good diplomat never underestimates anyone,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said.

  As they approached the hunting lodge, the door was opened by a hefty, large-bosomed woman with jet-black hair. The hair was parted in the middle and done up in elaborate braids.

  She curtsied to the Countess, then to the men.

  “She says,” the Countess said, “that if she had known we were coming, her husband would have of course been here, and there would be a meal prepared. As it is, all there is is simple boar gulyás. Paprika gulyás.”

  After they had eaten, Canidy was outfitted, from a wide selection, with a green loden cloth coat and lace-up boots, which were, he suspected, older than he was. Laughing, the Countess added a black cap of heavy wool.

  “A real Magyar!” she said.

  The caretaker showed up as the Countess was lacing up her boots. With him was a man Canidy’s age, with a double -barreled shotgun hanging upside down on a woven leather strap from his shoulder.

  “This is Alois, the chief hunter,” the Countess explained. “His great-grandfather was my great-grandfather’s chief hunter. We will take him with us to the meadow. If there is anything that has to be done, he will see that it is done, and then he will forget that he ever saw you.”

  “How big a place do you have, Countess?” Canidy asked. “In other words, how about the neighbors?”

  “This estate is roughly an oblong,” she replied matter-of -factly. “It is twenty-three kilometers long and about fourteen wide. There are no neighbors, and the local authorities are my tenants. If I do not wish them to see me, or anything else, they will not see me, or anything else.”

  “You sound very confident of that,” Canidy said.

  “I am,” she said.

  A ten-minute walk over light snow brought them to the meadow. It did not meet any of the criteria for a drop zone. It was far too small, and it was surrounded on three sides by a mature pine forest, into which anybody who missed the drop zone would land.

  But trees had been harvested at one end of the meadow, where the land dropped precipitously off toward a stream.

  When Ferniany arrived with the radios and the panels, tomorrow or the next day, Canidy would arrange the panels either at the edge of the meadow by the forest or at the stream, depending on the wind. With a little bit of luck, they would be able to put three or four of the five parachutists down in the meadow. The others would have to take their chances on landing on his just-cut-over steep land at the end of the meadow.

  There would be time to talk to the plane. Darmstadter had dropped parachutists before. He would know how to drop them here, once he had been told of the conditions by radio.

  Canidy thought of the emergency backup procedures. There was always that in the planning. Here, in the case of radio failure or if there were no opportunity to put the signal panels in place, it was a smoky fire at the point in the drop zone that would indicate where the first parachutist in the string was supposed to land.

  However, it didn’t seem to make a hell of a lot of sense to bother about that particular backup. For one thing, there would be a chance to put the panels out and talk with the plane by radio. For another, unless the drop could be discussed with the plane, there would be no point in making the jump; it would be too risky.

  But in the end, Canidy asked the Countess to have her chief hunter arrange for a five-foot-high stack of pine boughs at both ends of the drop zone. He showed, with his hands, how large the piles should be.

  “And two cans of kerosene, preferably, or else gasoline, by each stack,” he said.

  She translated that for him.

  And then, as if they were two old friends out for a walk in the woods, she took his arm and they walked back to the hunting lodge.

  2

  CAIRO, EGYPT 1715 HOURS 20 FEBRUARY 1943

  The first thing Freddy János realized when he saw that the bomb-bay doors of the B-25 in the hangar were not functional was that he was going to have a hell of a hard time dropping out of the crew-access door when the time came.

  Then he measured the access door with his hands and realized that there was no way any of the team could exit the aircraft wearing all their equipment.

  “Something wrong, János?” Lt. Colonel Douglass asked him.

  “That hatch isn’t big enough,” János said. “There’s no way we can drop through that little hole.”

  “We’ve dropped people through that hole before,” Douglass said.

  “Only Fulmar,” Capt. Stanley S. Fine said, entering the conversation. “The others went out the bomb bay. Before Canidy removed the racks and the door-opening mechanism. And Fulmar jumped in with a British chute. No spare. And it took him a long time to get through the door. If we could get them through the door, it would take so long they would land all over Hungary.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Douglass said furiously. “What the hell do we do now? How come this is the first time anybody thought about this?”

  “The B-17 can’t land on Vis,�
�� Fine said, answering that question before it was asked.

  “What’s Vis?” Freddy János asked.

  Fine and Douglass looked at each other before Fine answered, “An island in the Adriatic. Where we will pick you up when this operation is over.”

  “Pick us up? We’re not going to stay?”

  “No,” Fine said. “It has been decided to bring you out right away.”

  “Can I ask why?”

  “You can ask, but I can’t tell you,” Fine said.

  “I must be out of my mind,” János said. “But that sort of pisses me off.”

  “Jesus, that’s all we need, a hero,” Douglass said.

  János felt his face turn warm with anger. With an effort, he fought it down by telling himself that Douglass, by any criterion, was a hero, and thus had the right to mock the word.

  “I guess that sounded pretty dumb,” he said.

  “Yes, it did,” Douglass said, not backing off. “I just hope you can restrain your heroic impulses when you do get in there, and that you do just what you’re told, and nothing more.”

  They locked eyes for a moment. János, for the first time, saw that Douglass could have very cold and calculating eyes. And he sensed suddenly that Douglass was judging him, and that if Douglass found him wanting—if Douglass concluded that there was a risk he would foolishly take once he was in Hungary—there was a good chance he would be left behind.

  “Can a Gooney Bird land on this island?” János asked.

  There was no response from Douglass. He continued to look at János with cold, calculating eyes.

  “What the hell,” Douglass said finally. There was even the flicker of a smile. “When all the clever ideas fail, be desperate. Go by the book. Use a parachutist-dropping airplane to drop parachutists.”

  “Can we get our hands on a C-47?” János asked.

  “Yes,” Fine said, almost impatiently. He had seen a dozen of the twin-engine transports sitting on the field. There would probably be one they could have simply by asking for it. And if there was a problem, one would have to be “diverted from other missions.” The OSS had the ultimate priority. “But does a C-47 have the range?”