The Double Agents (AUDIOBOOK) (CD)

by W. E. B. Griffin

  Pierre, hanging his head with relief while staring at the sand LZ, didn’t reply.

  Canidy then heard a voice with a slight Italian accent call behind him, “We’ve been expecting you.”

  Canidy turned. He saw two men in Army fatigues without insignia coming down the stone steps at the building’s main entrance. Both had dark olive skin and close-cropped black hair and bushy black mustaches; one was about six feet tall, the other a head shorter. He recognized the short one as Max Corvo.

  “We got a heads-up from Algiers on the landline,” Corvo said, offering his hand to Canidy. “Good to see you. Max Corvo.”

  “I remember,” Canidy said, shaking his hand. “Nice to see you, too.”

  “Vincent Scamporino,” the tall man said, offering his hand.

  “Dick Canidy,” he replied, taking the hand.

  Canidy glanced at Darmstadter.

  “And you’ve met the terror of the skies here?” he said.

  Corvo turned to Darmstadter.

  “I thought we’d come to some agreement about those buzzings,” he said seriously.

  “Major Canidy here grabbed the wheel. I was just trying to get control of the aircraft back before he killed us all.”

  Corvo, a stern look on his face, studied Canidy.

  Canidy shrugged. “He said I should get a close look at the Sandbox.”

  Corvo looked at Darmstadter’s blank expression and sensed he was having his chain pulled.

  “All right,” Corvo said finally. He looked at Canidy. “Let’s go to my office and talk in private. I’ve got work to do.”

  The building construction of the old Catholic school was not unlike that of the villa that served as OSS Algiers Station. It was of a similar sturdy masonry design but more utilitarian, and certainly not as nicely furnished. Its hard surfaces amplified the softest of sounds and caused louder ones to echo.

  The room that Corvo called his office had actually been a classroom, one that the church had thoughtfully supplied with a wooden crucifix that filled the space between the top of the doorframe and the ceiling, and, on the wall near the small window, amateur artwork in charcoal of what looked to Canidy’s eye to be biblical scenes.

  And that was how Corvo had left the room set up: a teacher’s wooden desk and chairs, at the front of the room in front of the wall that held the wide blackboard, and the remainder of the room filled with two dozen wooden student desks, with hinged wooden writing surfaces, in three rows of eight desks each.

  Judging by the size of the desks, Canidy guessed the room had served to instruct boys who were ten or twelve years old.

  “Help yourselves to a seat,” Corvo said, leaning his buttocks against the front edge of the teacher’s desk. “Captain Fine said to give you whatever you ask. Tell me what I can do for you.”

  Canidy noticed that Darmstadter didn’t move toward a chair, just leaned against the wall. Then Canidy looked at Corvo and wondered if he was the one now doing the chain pulling. But when Scamporino squeezed himself into one of the student desks, Canidy realized that Corvo wasn’t.

  “I think I’ll stand,” Canidy said finally. “I’ve been sitting a lot lately.”

  “Something to drink?” Corvo said.

  “Maybe later, thank you. I’m in a hurry, so let me get right to the point.”

  “Please do.”

  “I need intel out of Palermo and I need it right now. And I need to set up a wireless team long-term,” Canidy said.

  “Okay,” Corvo replied more than a little dubiously.

  “Stan Fine says you have people, connections?” It was more a statement than a question.

  Corvo looked somewhat surprised, then said, “In Sicily? Sure I do. My family is there”—he motioned at Scamporino in the chair—“Vincent’s is. And Victor Anfuso’s. Most of the men with me do. They’re their uncles, grandparents, cousins, whatever.” He shrugged. “AFHQ told us to get ready, but until they give us the go-ahead that we can get in there we’re screwed. So we just train here with the French Resistance teams and wait.”

  Canidy snorted.

  “Not good enough,” he said.

  Corvo stiffened.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Corvo said.

  Canidy glanced at Darmstadter, who shook his head slightly.

  Yeah…I don’t need to get off on the wrong foot here, Canidy thought.

  “I mean,” Canidy went on in a calm, reasonable tone, “that I can’t wait for that.”

  “I have to for all kinds of reasons, not just AFHQ,” Corvo said, feeling the need to explain. “Look, I could bring only ten recruits from the States; that’s Vincent and Victor and eight others. We’re assembling teams, and training them, as best we can. We found some Sicilians among the prisoners of war that were liberated here and are trying to integrate them.”

  “Are they good?” Canidy said.

  “They’re taking a lot of work,” Scamporino offered. “But I can tell you that they’re motivated. And a couple are quite ruthless. I don’t know who they hate more, Hitler or Mussolini.”

  “Have you been able to tell if any of them, maybe these ones you call ruthless, are connected with the Mafia?”

  “No,” Corvo immediately replied. It was as if he had been expecting the question. “I can’t work with the Mafia.”

  Canidy looked at him. “Can’t or won’t?”

  Corvo crossed his arms on his chest.

  “I made it clear back in Washington,” he said emphatically, “that anyone with connections to the Mafia cannot be trusted, and that the Sicilians we do have—our relatives, their extended family, and others—are.”

  Canidy nodded as he considered that.

  He profoundly believes that, he thought. Maybe he’s right. But I can’t rely on it, and it’s not worth arguing now. Somehow, I don’t think he’d be too impressed right now if I shared with him my letter of introduction from Luciano….

  “Do you have any teams close to being ready to go?” Canidy said.

  Scamporino shook his head.

  “Not even close,” Corvo added. “But we have plenty of time.”

  Canidy grunted.

  “Maybe you do,” Canidy said.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I told you, I’m in a hurry. I don’t have the luxury of time.” He thought for a moment. “At the risk of this next question annoying you, too, I’ll say it, anyway.”

  Canidy noticed that Corvo was practically glaring at him.

  “What are the odds,” Canidy went on, “that one of these former POWs of yours is a V-männer?”

  “A what?” Scamporino said.

  “That’s what the Germans call their spies—” Canidy began to explain.

  “Not a damn one!” Corvo interrupted.

  “—It’s short for Vertrauensmänner,” Canidy went on evenly, his attention still on Scamporino. “It means ‘trustworthy men.’”

  Canidy looked at Corvo. “Not one? That’s too bad.”

  Corvo looked as if he could not believe his ears.

  “Why in hell would you say that?” he said.

  “Because he might make a good CEA.”

  Corvo glanced at Scamporino as he thought about that a moment, then said, “A double agent?”

  Canidy nodded.

  “I believe the OSS likes to use the term Controlled Enemy Agent,” Canidy said, then added, “You might take another hard look. Just to make sure.”

  Corvo looked like he was about to explode.

  Canidy held up his hand, palm out.

  “Before you fly off the handle,” he said, “consider your source. That they were in the POW camps during Operation Torch could mean they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and simply got swept up with the real bad guys. Or…it could mean that there’s one or more who were in a Nest, that they’d been pins on the map when we came through, and now, oh so conveniently, denounce the Nazis and Italians.”

  “Pins on a map?” Scamporino said.

&nbs
p; Canidy noticed that even Darmstadter now was looking curiously.

  “Max,” Canidy said, “does Pins on the Map Syndrome mean anything to you?”

  He shook his head. “Sorry, Major.”

  “You can call me Dick,” Canidy replied.

  The look on Corvo’s face showed that he appreciated the gesture.

  “It’s the first I’ve heard of it, Dick,” he said. “The syndrome, that is. Keep in mind I’m new to all this.”

  Canidy knew that when he had been recruited for the OSS, Corvo had worn the stripe of an Army private on his uniform.

  “In many ways, me, too, Max,” Canidy said, then, after a moment, added, “I gather that Nests and Asts are unfamiliar terms also?”

  Corvo nodded. Scamporino shrugged slightly.

  “About how many men do you have, Max?” Canidy said.

  “Everyone included,” Corvo said, “about thirty.”

  “How soon can you round them up?”

  Corvo looked at Scamporino and raised an eyebrow, passing the question.

  “Fifteen minutes?” Scamporino answered.

  Canidy nodded as he considered that. He looked at this wristwatch.

  “You mind if I speak with them as a group?” Canidy said.

  “Captain Fine said to give you what you want.”

  “Get ’em in here,” Canidy said. “I can do this quickly, especially if I only have to do it once.”

  Canidy looked at Darmstadter.

  “This will be good for your education, too, Hank. You might want to take advantage of picking out a good seat before the rest arrive.”

  [FOUR]

  OSS Whitbey House Station Kent, England 1630 2 April 1943

  The three-vehicle caravan wound down the rain-slick narrow country road that cut through dense forest. Lieutenant Colonel Ed Stevens’s olive drab 1941 Ford staff car was in the lead. Behind it was a British Humber light ambulance—a large red cross within a white square painted on its side panels and its back doors—and trailing the ambulance was another U.S. Army ’41 Ford.

  As they approached the grounds of Whitbey House, Stevens noticed the faded cardboard signs nailed to trees and affixed to stakes driven in the ground. These the Brits had placed every twenty meters around the perimeter of the lands of Whitbey House. They bore the now barely legible legend GOVERNMENT ESTABLISHMENT ENTRY PROHIBITED and the seal of the Crown.

  The procession came to an unmarked gap in the trees that was an ancient lane which wound into the forest.

  Stevens’s driver steered the Ford through the gap and began winding up the lane, and the trailing vehicles followed.

  Stevens smiled.

  Before the war, when he’d been living with his family in London, he liked to take his wife and sons on Sunday drives to admire the countryside. And now, despite the war—Or maybe in spite of the damn thing, because it’s refreshing to get out of that dreary London—he discovered that he enjoyed the trip all the more. He found Whitbey House, and its storied history, to be absolutely magnificent.

  Whitbey House—the ancestral seat of the Duchy of Stanfield—consisted of some twenty-six thousand acres. This included the eighty-four-room Whitbey House itself and its various outbuildings (garages, stables, et cetera), the village of Whitbey on Naer (population: 607), the ruins of the Roman Catholic abbey of St. William the Martyr, St. Timothy’s Anglican Church, a ten-year-old, forty-six-hundred-foot gravel runway with an aircraft hangar, plus various other real property that had come into the hands of the first Duke of Stanfield circa 1213.

  Like most of England’s “stately homes,” Whitbey House had been requisitioned for the duration of the war by His Majesty’s government. The government’s need for space had been bad enough—damn near insatiable—but when the United States entered the war, it quickly became unbelievably worse. U.S. air, ground, and naval forces arrived in the British Isles, and all of these people—and the supply depots they brought with them—required their own places.

  Once requisitioned, Whitbey House had passed from the control of His Majesty’s Office of Properties to the War Office, then to the Special Operations Executive, then to the Office of Strategic Services.

  Shamelessly copying the Research and Development Station IX of their counterparts in the British Special Operations Executive—“Because they know what they’re doing,” Wild Bill Donovan had said, only half in jest—the OSS set up the facility as a safe house and, as the Operational Techniques School, a training base for agents.

  What Dick Canidy more accurately called the Throat-Cutting and Bomb-Throwing Academy.

  There had been “improvements” to the property, beyond the Brits’ cardboard warning signs that hung faded and limp on the perimeter.

  A kilometer up the ancient lane, a shoulder had been added to either side of the road, one wide enough for vehicles to be able to turn around. A low stone wall crossed the shoulder, from the trees to a gatehouse, and served as a barrier. The Kent Constabulary supplied constables to man the gatehouse around the clock. The constable’s job was to serve as the first level of security, passing those with proper clearance while turning back the casual visitors curious about the estate.

  Stevens saw that after the constable—this one a rather portly fellow stretching his uniform buttons to the point of popping—had checked their identification and cleared the caravan to pass onto the estate, the constable cranked a U.S. Army EE-8 field telephone. He then reported to the sergeant of the U.S. Army Guard at the next barrier that he had just passed three authorized vehicles, the first carrying an American lieutenant colonel.

  This next barrier, far out of sight of the roads bordering the estate and the first barrier, was protected by tall coils of concertina, a razor-sharp barbed wire. Plywood signs hung from the concertina at intervals of fifteen meters. These bore a representation of a skull and crossbones with the legend: PERSONS TRESPASSING BEYOND THIS LINE WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT.

  Stevens was quite aware that the skull and crossbones and rolls of concertina were American, and that the guard was U.S. Army infantry.

  That was because, just outside of the barbed wire, there was an American infantry battalion housed in a tent-and-hut encampment. While the OSS station did not need the twelve hundred men of a battalion, the soldiers had been stationed there anyway, the reasoning being that the battalion had to be stationed somewhere, so why the hell not show the British that the Yanks were serious about keeping safe the secrets of their new OSS.

  The officers of the battalion had been told that Whitbey House housed a highly classified organization and that its mission was to select bombardment targets for the Eighth Air Force. The officers had no reason to doubt that, but it wasn’t uncommon for them to wonder among themselves—“My God, George, eighteen hundred men? What the hell else is in that old house?”—if this wasn’t a bit of bureaucratic overkill to guard one lousy facility.

  The battalion’s four companies were on rotation. As three companies carried on routine training (keeping themselves available as needed), the fourth provided the guard force between the concertina and a third barrier.

  This third barrier enclosed just over three acres around Whitbey House itself. It consisted of an eight-foot-high fence of barbed wire, with concertina laid on either side of the fence. Atop poles planted every thirty meters were floodlights, three to a pole.

  Past this point, the forest became manicured, and Stevens marveled at the two-kilometer-long path they followed. He knew that it had been carved out centuries before, designed not as the quickest route from Point A to Point B but, in order to accommodate the aristocracy’s heavy carriages, as a route that was as level as possible up to the house.

  They emerged from the forest, and there, at the end of a wide, curving entrance drive, was Whitbey House itself. Stevens smiled. The structure was so impressively large—three stories of brick and sandstone—that he could not take it all in without moving his head.

  At the final U.S. Army guard post, the officer of the guard che
cked ID cards against a list of authorized personnel. Beyond him, Stevens saw Canidy’s Packard parked in front of the front door of Whitbey House.

  It was a custom-bodied 1939 Packard. It had a right-hand drive. The driver’s compartment bore a canvas roof, and the front fenders held spare tires. It was just the type of car that belonged at a mansion like Whitbey House.

  After the OSS had moved in, the Packard had been discovered behind hay bales in the stables. It hadn’t been there by accident. It had, in fact, been hidden, put up on blocks and otherwise preserved from the war for the duration and six months.

  Canidy had appropriated it for his own use, lettering U.S. ARMY on its doors and adding numbers on its hood. For protection at night, a strip of white paint edged the lower fenders, and the headlights were blacked out except for a one-inch strip. And he’d assigned a stunning English lady sergeant as its driver.

  Only Canidy would be so bold as to declare that no British bobby or American MP would have the nerve to stop such an impressive automobile and ask for its papers. And, accordingly, only Canidy could get away with that.

  Stevens grinned, then, as he got out of the car and glanced at the ambulance—which, for some reason, was now blowing its horn—he thought, with some concern, I wonder how in hell Dick is doing?

  [ONE]

  The Sandbox OSS Dellys Station Dellys, Algeria 1720 30 March 1943

  A crowd of men streamed into Max Corvo’s “office,” the first ones filling the wooden school desks that were empty and the rest collecting at the back of the room. Canidy saw their eyes on him, all of them studying the stranger in civilian clothing standing at the front of the room.

  Canidy scanned the crowd and was impressed at the wide range of men who were willing to fight—and die—opposing the Germans and Italians. Some of them—like Pierre, the parachutist, whom he saw seated in the middle of the crowd—were well-educated men, men of some wealth. You could see it in their eyes that they were thoughtful, intelligent. Others were of more modest means and schooling, many of them tradesmen, hardworking men not afraid to get their hands dirty, even if that meant slitting Nazi throats.