Fine just shook his head, then looked at the professor and motioned for him to precede him to the villa, where Monsieur Khatim waited at the door.
[THREE]
Drinking coffee from a heavy white china mug, Canidy stood looking out wooden slatted French doors that opened onto a balcony. A warm breeze blew in, lightly scented with sea salt and lilacs. The room before the war had served as the primary of two main dining areas of the Villa de Vue de Mer.
The grand, four-story Sea View Villa—a French Colonial–style mansion solidly built of masonry in the 1880s high on the lush hillside overlooking the harbor—had been let to the Office of Strategic Services for the sum of ten dollars per annum and the promise that it would be preserved and protected. Its owner was the widow of one of Wild Bill Donovan’s law school pals. Pamela Dutton—formerly of New York City, Capri, and Algiers, and now simply of Manhattan due to the war—had a line of designer women’s shoes, once manufactured in Italy, that carried her name.
Canidy was convinced that the very nice clothes he’d borrowed two weeks earlier from the vast closet off of the villa’s master bedroom—and that he now wore—had belonged to Mr. Dutton…or perhaps one of Madame Dutton’s recent suitors.
Hell if I care who they belonged to. They’re comfortable, and they help me blend in damn better than any Army uniform. And I intend to help myself to more while I’m here.
The villa’s eight bedrooms were on the two upper floors. The master had its own bath. There were shared baths for the others, one on each floor at the end of the main hall. The second floor, which actually was at street level, had the two dining areas, a kitchen, a pair of lavatories, and a large living area. The bottom floor, tucked into the hill yet with its own view of the sea, had been for entertainment, complete with a formal ballroom.
Now an OSS station, the Villa de Vue de Mer had a permanent staff of about twenty, most wearing U.S. Army tropical-worsted uniforms, some with and some without insignia. There was a transient group of another fifteen or so who wore anything but military outfits. These latter ran the training camps and came and went on irregular schedules, using the villa only as their base.
Three of the four bedrooms (including the master) on the top floor had been filled with rows of folding, wooden-framed cots. Close to the roof and the small forest of antennae newly erected there, and situated in the middle of the floor, the fourth bedroom had become the commo room. It was crammed with tables holding the wireless, two-way radios and teletypes and typewriters and chairs for the operators who encrypted and decrypted the W/T messages. Its wooden door had been reinforced with steel, a wooden beam with brackets added on the inside, and an armed guard posted outside at all times.
The third-floor bedrooms had been made into basic offices for the permanent staffers, with mismatched chairs placed in front of makeshift desks, rows of battered filing cabinets, and, on the walls, frameworks that held charts detailing the Mediterranean Theater of Operations and current and future OSS ops therein.
The first-floor ballroom had been converted into a warehouse storage area, heavy wooden shelving and stacks of crates containing everything from the necessities of an office (typewriters, typewriter papers and ribbons, safes with gold, silver, and the currencies of half a dozen countries, et cetera) to field equipment (W/T radios with their assorted parts, wooden racks holding a small armory of weapons of both American and British manufacture, crates of appropriate calibers of ammunition, Composition C-2 plastic explosive, fuses, even a large wardrobe featuring a variety of enemy uniforms taken from prisoners of war captured in North African campaigns).
With the exception of the two dining rooms doubling as conference areas, the second floor remained mostly unchanged.
Canidy looked at Fine and Rossi seated opposite each other at the room’s large, round, wooden dining table. Fine also held a china mug steaming with coffee. Professor Rossi sipped tea from a glass cup. On the table in front of Fine was a short stack of papers.
Canidy gestured toward the stack with his mug. He said, “As I wrote in my after-action report, Stan, there were three distinctive explosions, each one larger than the last. Then came a fantastic plume of fire that lit the night.”
He stopped, swallowed a swig of coffee, then added, “It was an impressive sight. Wouldn’t you agree, Professor?”
Fine studied Rossi. With the fez and its cloth wrap now on a nearby chair, he could get a good look at the fifty-five-year-old’s slender, thoughtful face.
“The explosions were as the major says,” he said evenly, his English thick with a Sicilian accent. “The inferno had to have totally consumed the vessel.”
“Including the Tabun?” Fine asked.
Canidy said, “I would think so, Stan—”
“Including the T83,” Rossi interrupted. “However, the burning would not necessarily have rendered the agent ineffective. In fact…”
His voice trailed off. He took a sip of his tea.
“In fact what, Professor?” Fine pursued. “I know you’ve been through all this with Major Canidy, and it’s in his report, but I’d like to hear it again. From you. You might think of something you forgot before.”
Rossi nodded.
“My area of expertise is metallurgy, I believe you know, Captain,” the professor went on conversationally. “Not chemicals, per se. But it is commonly understood that a cloud created by such a fire would serve as a method of dispersal, a rather rapid one, in effect carrying the T83 across everything in the near distance…and farther, depending on winds and the size of the cloud.”
“Jesus,” Fine said softly.
Fine exchanged glances with Canidy—who appeared somewhat saddened when he raised his eyebrows in a Yeah, I know look—then turned back to Rossi.
“And it would have been effective in that state?” Fine asked. It was more a statement than a question; Fine already had read in Canidy’s report that that was the case.
Rossi nodded again.
“Not as much had the nerve agent been delivered undiluted from a munitions shell,” he said. “But, yes, people, as well as animals, would have suffered the severe effects—would be suffering its effects.”
Everyone was silent a moment.
“And if it did not burn?” Fine then said.
“I really don’t think that this could be the case,” the professor replied. “There could not have been anything left of the ship’s contents.”
“But, hypothetically,” Fine pursued, “if the shells maintained their integrity in the fires and simply went down with the ship?”
Rossi shrugged.
“Very well,” he replied. “Hypothetically, if it went to the sea bottom the salt water would corrode the metal of the shells. Eventually—probably years but possibly sooner—the shells’ seal would fail. Then the T83 would leach into the water, then to the surface, possibly in such volume as to poison the harbor and anyone close to it.”
He paused.
“Incidentally, it is a fact—not a well-kept one and not at all hypothetical—that the shells themselves are prone to leakage. Great care must be taken in their transport…and in their salvage, if your thinking is that they could be retrieved intact from the harbor bottom.”
Fine and Canidy exchanged a long look. The instability of the shells was something that they had not known.
“And,” Rossi said finally, “this was only the first shipment. I heard that more was coming from Messina, possibly already en route.”
Fine glanced again at Canidy, then turned to Rossi and said, “Would you mind excusing us for a moment, Professor?”
Rossi nodded, then suddenly yawned, covering his mouth with his right hand.
“This has been quite exhausting,” he said. “I’d actually like to lie down. Would that be possible?”
“Of course,” Fine said, then raised his voice: “Monsieur Khatim!”
When the tough old man almost immediately appeared in the arched doorway, Canidy realized he had been standing a silent g
uard outside the door.
Khatim leaned slightly forward in a bow that conveyed At your service.
Captain Stanley Fine said, “Monsieur Khatim, please show our guest to his room.” He turned to Rossi, and added, “You’ll please forgive the accommodations. When we got here, the beds were all infested. Now we have no more than cots.”
“That will be fine,” Rossi said, standing and putting down his teacup. “My alternative right now would be to be back in Palermo.”
[FOUR]
“I know what you’re going to say, Stan,” Major Richard M. Canidy said after Professor Arturo Rossi had been made comfortable and Canidy had refilled their coffee mugs.
“You do?” Captain Stanley S. Fine said. “Then you’re way ahead of me, Dick, because I don’t know what the hell to say right now.”
He sipped at his mug, watching Canidy return to the French doors, then look out in silence, his back toward Fine.
“There was no option, Stan,” Canidy said finally. “I had to blow up the Tabun; I couldn’t leave it for the Germans. Deadly cloud or not. It was a split-second decision, and—”
“And one that I agree with.”
Canidy turned. He looked at Fine for some time, took a sip of coffee, then nodded thoughtfully. His eyes showed some relief.
“Thanks, Stan. I appreciate that. I hope we’re not alone in holding that opinion.”
He sighed.
“You know, all the way back on the sub, after Rossi told me about the deadly cloud, I was sickened at the thought…”
He stopped himself, then suddenly looked back out at the sea.
Jesus! What the hell is the matter with me?
I’m babbling.
Yeah, I’m sickened at the thought of all those people in Palermo in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But why does that bother me?
This is war. And I didn’t put the goddamn gas there.
So why then am I suddenly concerned about innocent…
Oh, shit!
Ann!
Canidy heard Stan Fine’s comforting voice behind him.
“Dick, you didn’t know,” Fine said loyally.
Canidy turned, and, as he looked at Fine, he said softly, “Ann?”
The look on Fine’s face was shock, then anger.
“Dammit!” he said, and thrust his right hand into his tunic. “I’m sorry, Dick. I’d forgotten—”
“It’s okay. Obviously, so had I.”
Ann Chambers was more than Canidy’s sweetheart. She was the one woman who had made him look hard in the mirror and consider that by God there might be something to having a relationship that lasted longer than a half rotation of the earth.
But three weeks earlier, Canidy had gone to her London flat and found that, while he had been in the States, it and most of her street had been demolished by a Luftwaffe bombing—and that she had gone missing.
Fine produced a sheet of folded paper and held it out to Canidy.
“From London Station. I put it in my jacket to keep it separate of this stack.” He gestured at the table. “I didn’t want to forget it. Lot of good that did.”
Canidy took the sheet and unfolded it.
“It’s basically good news,” Fine went on, “don’t you think? Not everything we’d like, of course….”
Canidy read it, swallowed with some effort, then said, “So they still haven’t found her, or any trace.”
“Dick, that strikes me as positive. Otherwise, they’d be reporting that her body was found in the rubble of her flat. And they are making every effort to locate her.”
He’s right, Canidy thought. Ann is smart as hell, more than able to take care of herself.
But my memory of her bombed street—and the thought of her being an innocent casualty in this damn war—no wonder I feel bad for those sorry bastards in Sicily.
“You’re right, of course, Stan,” he said, folding the paper and putting it in his pocket. “Thank you.”
“I wish I could do more,” Fine said.
“Me, too.”
Canidy glanced out the doors at the harbor, out to the sea, and said, “You know, Donovan didn’t tell me what I was looking for in Sicily besides Rossi, only to keep my eyes open, that I’d know it when I found it.”
“And you did.”
“But I thought that it was the villa with the yellow-fever lab…. And then, as we were leaving the dock, Rossi told me about the Tabun…and I just blew it up.”
He turned and looked at Fine and said, “You know, maybe David Bruce is more right than I want to admit. I am a loose cannon, in way over my head.”
Colonel David Kirkpatrick Este Bruce was the distinguished, high-level diplomat currently serving as the OSS London chief of station. At forty-five, he had more than twenty years—and a wealth of experience—over Canidy. And he was not hesitant to let him know that.
Fine made a face of frustration.
“Dammit, Dick. You know better than that. You’re not going to get any false sympathy out of me. You had your orders and you followed your orders, and you did it damn well.”
Canidy didn’t respond to that. Instead, after a moment, he went on, his tone matter-of-fact, “I thought and rethought it on the sub and about the only thing that I came up with that was positive about the gas was the fact that the sea was flat calm that night. Not even a bit of a breeze.”
“So if the Tabun did go up,” Fine finished, “the cloud didn’t go far.”
Canidy nodded.
“Right,” Canidy said. “We were sitting there on the fishing boat—the Stefania—waiting for the sub, about twelve klicks northwest of the explosion. Which was why we had such a good view of the show…”
“And the Casabianca got there right after that?”
“Uh-huh. Like clockwork.”
“And another—what?—half hour for you to get out of the boat and into the sub?”
“Just shy of that, maybe twenty minutes from the moment it surfaced to the order to dive. L’Herminier’s a real pro. So we weren’t endangered by the Tabun. Trust me, I had the sub’s doc keep a close eye on Rossi and me for symptoms. But I’m not sure where the Stefania went after dropping us. She was supposed to come here.”
“After your messages en route,” Fine said, “I had some discreet questions asked down at the commercial docks.”
“And?”
“The Stefania is en route to here, fishing on the way, of course, as both a cover and a genuine source of income. She’s due in tomorrow or the next day, though that does not mean anything. They said she’s often late, especially if there’s a mechanical problem.”
“Like a bullet to the engine block?” Canidy suggested. “After the cargo is looted by a German patrol boat?”
Fine grunted.
“They didn’t say that,” he said, “but I could see it as being problematic.”
“I understand that that’s a common occurrence,” Canidy went on, “particularly for captains hesitant to surrender their tuna…and/or whatever they might be smuggling.”
“Well, so far there is no word from her—which can be read pretty much any way anyone wants to read it. Bottom line: They were not too concerned.”
Canidy shook his head in resignation. “If they went back into the port for any reason…”
“But why would they? A ship had just blown up. Who’d go into an inferno?”
Canidy shrugged.
“Changing the subject somewhat,” Fine said, “what about the villa with the yellow fever?”
Canidy raised his hands, palms upward, and shrugged again.
“Hell if I know, Stan. Rossi had two assistants who had access and who he said he trusted completely. I gave them the C-2 and then taught a very basic demolitions course—where to place it for best effect, how much to use, et cetera. But we did not stay offshore long enough to see the villa blow. Which, now that we know what we do about what happens when nerve gas burns, I can’t say I’m disappointed.”
“But we
don’t know if the villa went up.”
Canidy frowned.
“No, Stan, we don’t.”
“And we don’t know, really, if there was gas and if it burned, and if it did burn what damage it caused.”
“No, and no, and no.”
“So small wonder that my new friend Lieutenant Colonel Owen says no one on Eisenhower’s staff believes any of this.”
“They don’t think that we found the nerve gas,” Canidy asked, “or they don’t believe that it exists?”
“Both, as best I can tell,” Fine said. “I’m having a little trouble discerning exactly what to them is worse: one, that they don’t know about it or, two, that we, you, do. Regardless, it’s clearly caused some concern at AFHQ, enough to merit our personal visit from this pompous Owen.”
“Does that mean they’re actually going to act?”
Fine grunted derisively.
“Hardly. That, again as best I can tell, was the purpose of the visit. By definition, not to mention by Ike’s supreme order, AFHQ speaks for all Allied Forces here, the Brits included. And AFHQ’s position is that they have the situation under control, thank you very much for your concern. Or, as Owen put it, ‘Ike asked me personally to thank you for your input.’ Which, basically, was a smack at the OSS, translation being: ‘How could you new kids on the block possibly have anything over the British who’ve been playing the spy game for centuries?’”
Canidy shook his head. He knew that the early beginnings of what would become the British Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6, could be traced back to when Henry VIII sent agents slinking around Europe.
“Christ!” Canidy flared. “Ed Stevens warned me about that sonofabitch. Said he was glad Owen wasn’t nosing around London Station anymore. Now I know why. I despise aides who love reminding you at every opportunity who they work for—worse, who they speak for, therefore their words carry the same power as their boss’s.”
Lieutenant Colonel Edmund T. Stevens was David Bruce’s number two at OSS London Station. A West Pointer—not a diplomat with an assimilated military rank—Stevens understood Canidy as an operative and thus held a far higher opinion of him than did Bruce. Fine was acutely aware of the dynamics of all this, as he had served as Stevens’s deputy prior to being sent to OSS Algiers.
The Double Agents (AUDIOBOOK) (CD) Page 6
