“Something about her,” the Duchess interrupted, looking at Charity. “Something vain that she feels she must deny.”
The Duchess looked at the ceiling a moment, then wrote on:
* * *
The Manor House
Ogbourne St. George
Marlborough, Wiltshire
Telephone:
Ogbourne St. George 242
Sunday, 18th
I do think, dearest, that seeing people like you off at railway stations is one of the poorer forms of sport. A train going out can leave a howling great gap in one’s life & one has to try madly—& quite in vain—to fill it with all the things one used to enjoy a whole five weeks ago.
That lovely golden day we spent together—oh! I know it has been said before, but if only time could sometimes stand still just for a minute for us!
But that line of thought is too pointless. Pull your socks up, Pam, & don’t be a silly little fool.
Your letter made me feel slightly better—but I shall get horribly conceited if you go on saying things like that about me—they’re utterly unlike me, as I’m afraid you’ll soon find out.
Here I am for the weekend in this divine place with Mummy & Jane being too sweet & understanding the whole time, bored beyond words & panting for Monday so that I can get back to the old grindstone again. What an idiotic waste!
Bill darling, do let me know as soon as you get fixed & can make some more plans, & please don’t let them send you off into the blue the horrible way they do nowadays—
Now that we’ve found each other out of the whole world, I don’t think I could bear it—
All my love,
PAM
* * *
When the Duchess finished that, Charity said, “Very nice, Liz.”
“Thank you. What about winding it up with some frantic words about their future?”
“Or possible loss of one,” Charity heard herself say automatically.
As the Duchess began to write, Charity’s throat constricted. She forced down some tea, as a mental image of Lieutenant Colonel Doug Douglass, completely out of uniform—as well as any other garment—came to mind.
Loss of a future with Doug is exactly my fear.
“There,” the Duchess said, turning the page so Charity could better read it, “how’s that?”
Charity looked at the paper.
Oh, God. That’s too close.
I’m think I’m going to cry.
When she was sure of her voice, she said: “Perfect.”
The letter was passed around the table. Everyone approved.
“Now we need another,” Montagu said, “one written from her job.”
He reached into the box and produced a short stack of blank typewriter stock he had taken from a typing pool at the Admiralty. He slid it to the Duchess.
“So she’s now at the office,” Montagu said. “Date it the twenty-first. She’s bored out of her mind.”
“I think it would be wise to pick up on what Charity so brilliantly suggested for the first letter,” Fleming put in. “Have her make reference to a letter the major has written to her in which he talks of being sent on a hush-hush mission.”
Niven added, “You could have her say something that violates a confidence. That is, she won’t violate a confidence, the way women tend to do.”
Charity and the Duchess immediately shot him daggers with their stares.
“I don’t mean that in a vicious way, mind you,” Niven said, trying to save face. “You know how women can be—proud of what their man is doing, trying to one-up their buddies in the course of conversation.”
The Duchess looked away.
“Perhaps,” she said. “But you just gave me an idea for an opening.”
She studied the far wall a moment, then began writing:
* * *
Office.
Wednesday, 21st
The Bloodhound has left the kennel for half an hour so here I am scribbling nonsense to you again.
Your letter came this morning just as I was dashing out—madly late as usual! You do write such heavenly ones. But what are these horrible dark hints you’re throwing out about being sent off somewhere—of course I won’t say a word to anyone—I never do when you tell me things, but it’s not abroad is it?
Because I won’t have it, I won’t. Tell them so from me.
Darling, why did we go and meet in the middle of the war, such a silly thing for anybody to do—if it weren’t for the war, we might have been nearly married by now, going round together choosing curtains etc.
And I wouldn’t be sitting in a dreary Government office typing idiotic minutes all day long—I know the futile sort of work I do doesn’t make the war one minute shorter—
I’m going to a rather dreary dance tonight with Jock & Hazel. I think they’ve got some other man coming. You know what their friends always turn out to be like
* * *
“Bloodhound!” Niven said, feigning indignation.
“Works for me,” Fleming said, grinning.
“Okay, let’s have her discuss how she spends her free time,” Montagu said.
“Maybe going to the pub?” Charity said.
“No,” the Duchess said, “that would not be proper for her to do, or, if she did, to share in a letter.” She thought a moment. “To a dance! With friends!”
“A dreary dance with ghastly friends!” Charity added.
The Duchess smiled and nodded. She mentally composed it for a second, then started writing:
The Dutchess stopped, then looked to Charity for help.
Charity made a small frown, then looked across the table, and her face lit up. She giggled.
The Duchess looked to where Charity had looked—at Niven.
The Duchess grinned, then wrote:
* * *
he’ll be like that David we met—he’ll have the sweetest little Adam’s apple & the shiniest bald head!
* * *
The lead of the pencil snapped when the Duchess added the exclamation point. She and Charity started to giggle again as they looked at Niven.
Niven got up and walked around the table to see what they had written about him.
“My head is not bald and shiny!” he announced.
Charity and the Duchess laughed aloud.
Then the Duchess added:
* * *
How beastly & ungrateful of me, but it isn’t really that—you know—don’t you?
* * *
“Perfect,” Charity said.
Niven sighed.
“Not quite, but I suppose it’ll do,” he said.
“How about saying something about her engagement ring?” Fleming said.
“Good idea,” Montagu added. “She’ll be with friends and the ring would be a boasting point.”
Then the Duchess added:
* * *
Dearest Bill, I’m so thrilled with my ring—scandalously extravagant—you know how I adore diamonds—I simply can’t stop looking at it.
* * *
“Good,” Charity said.
“Okay, let’s wrap it up,” Montagu said.
“Say the boss has come back a little early or something,” Fleming suggested, “and that she has to finish quickly.”
“She should try to make some plans to see him,” Charity said, “even if they’re futile.”
Like I do with Doug, Charity thought.
Now, that, gentlemen, was my personal thought—and you didn’t even have to pay for it.
“Easter is coming,” Fleming offered.
The Duchess nodded and wrote:
* * *
Look, darling, I’ve got next Sunday & Monday off for Easter. I shall go home for it, of course, but do come too if you possibly can, or, even if you can’t get away from London, I’ll dash up and we’ll have an evening of gaiety. (By the way, Aunt Maria said to bring you to dinner next time I was up, but I think that might wait?)
Oh! Here comes the Bloodhound—back sooner
than he’d said—
Masses of kisses and love—
your
PAM
* * *
“Aunt Maria?” Charity said after reading the final passage.
The Duchess nodded.
“Everyone’s got an aunt who never had a daughter and lives though the niece vicariously.”
“That sounds rather clinical,” Charity said, grinning. “Or should I say cynical?”
The Duchess laughed.
“I couldn’t say. I just made it up.”
“You two are finding much too much humor in this,” Niven said with mock disgust.
“You’d like us to stop, David?” the Duchess said, smiling.
“No, no,” Montagu put in. “This is going well.”
“I would like for us to stop for lunch,” Niven said reasonably. “Won’t do Major Martin much good if we were to die of starvation in the course of our task here.”
“I can always eat,” Charity said.
“Indeed,” Montagu said. “I think we could all use a bit of a break.”
“Then we can move on to the more serious letters,” Fleming said.
[FOUR]
38 degrees 13 minutes 14 seconds North Latitude 13 degrees 21 minutes 10 seconds East Longitude Gulf of Palermo, Sicily Aboard the Casabianca 2355 4 April 1943
Dick Canidy, Frank Nola, and Jim “Tubes” Fuller were with Jean L’Herminier, all squeezed in the submarine captain’s dimly lit drab-gray office. Each was seated in a metal-framed chair except Tubes, who stood.
“Dick, I’m sorry we could not get a better look at the harbor,” L’Herminier said.
“Me, too,” Canidy replied. “But we cannot risk going in any closer. One close call is enough.”
“Agreed.”
There were knowing glances among the men.
Only two days had passed since the Casabianca encountered the Kriegsmarine patrol boat, and the memory felt like a fresh wound.
It had been just after midnight on their second night en route to Palermo.
The Casabianca was preparing to run on the surface, recharging her batteries for the electric motors while covering distance more quickly under the power of her diesel engines.
An hour earlier, L’Herminier had made the order for a slower speed and an adjustment in the planes so that the submarine would make an easy angle of ascent.
Now the boat had come to a stop, neutrally buoyant at periscope depth. For the last half hour, he had time and again raised the scope and carefully scanned the immediate area and seen nothing.
“Huh,” L’Herminier now said.
“What is it?” his executive officer, a frail-looking, sad-eyed Frenchman a head shorter than the commander, said.
“There’s a fishing boat that’s dead in the water,” L’Herminier said, still looking through the scope.
Nola said, “What could be the chance it’s one of mine?”
He looked at Canidy and added hopefully, “We could ask them what they know about Palermo.”
Canidy raised an eyebrow.
“Right,” he said skeptically. “That’d be nice. But it’s some long shot.”
Two minutes later, L’Herminier added, “This is not good.”
“What?” Nola said.
“A German patrol boat is coming alongside it,” L’Herminier said.
The distinct profile of the Kriegsmarine fast-attack S-boat was unmistakable.
The advanced vessel was built in slightly different design variants, but all were essentially similar watercraft, all about a hundred feet long. It was their massive engines that earned them their name Schnellboot—the literal translation being “fast boat.” One variant packed three Daimler-Benz twenty-cylinder, two-thousand-horsepower diesel engines that pushed the heavy wooden-hulled vessel almost forty-five knots.
The primary purpose of the S-boat was the rapid delivery of torpedoes on target. It would lie in wait in the dark, locate an enemy sub or ship—then hit and run. It carried 53.3cm torpedoes. Because of its methods, it rarely carried more “fish” than the ones in its tubes. The very nature of a fast attack—and a faster departure—did not allow time for the reloading of the tubes. And the extra weight of the extra fish affected the agility of the craft.
S-boats carried other weapons on board—among them light machine guns, 4cm Bofors, highly efficient and effective four-barrel, 2cm Flaks—and these were for defending the boat.
L’Herminier recognized that this S-boat certainly was not operating in a fast-attack mode. He also saw that it did not appear to being using its deck guns defensively on this fishing boat.
The crew of the hulking patrol boat clearly had an aggressive stance.
“Looks to be a harassment stop,” L’Herminier said.
He stepped back from the scope and looked at Nola.
“Can you tell if this fishing boat is one of yours?” he asked quietly.
Nola placed his face up to the periscope. It took him some moments to get his bearings, then to dial in the scope. When he finally did, he did not like what he saw.
It was a mostly moonless night but clear, and the sky full of brilliant stars cast a soft light on the water, putting the two boats on the surface in silhouette.
Nola had a reasonably unobstructed view of both vessels, their bows pointed more or less in the direction of the sub. He could see that the fishing boat, at about fifty feet in length, was not unlike the Stefania. The German patrol boat, sitting a couple meters off her port side, was about twice its length.
On the fishing boat, there were ten men standing on the port gunnel—most likely, the entire crew—looking up to face the sailors on the S-boat.
“I cannot tell,” Nola said, his voice quavering. “But it very easily could be mine, or one of someone I know.”
Suddenly, he saw the night erupt in flames. It was the muzzle flash from the S-boat’s light machine guns laying a line of fire from bow to stern.
The fisherman were cut down where they stood, some falling into the boat, others into the sea. Dead.
“Great Holy Mother of God!” Frank Nola exclaimed, then turned away from the periscope.
L’Herminier grabbed the scope handles, stuck his eyes to the viewing glass—then immediately retracted the periscope.
“Dive! Dive!” the sub commander called. “Flood all tanks!”
“Dive!” the sad-eyed XO repeated to the helmsman. “All tanks flooded!”
“No!” Francisco Nola shouted to L’Herminier. “You must torpedo those bastards!”
L’Herminier turned to Canidy.
“Get him the hell out of here, Major!”
Canidy had never heard L’Herminier use that tone of voice.
But he recognized that L’Herminier was, in fact, right.
Canidy took Nola by the sleeve of his jacket and attempted to gently push him toward the compartment hatch.
“Let’s go, Frank.”
Nola tried to hold his ground.
“Now, goddammit!” Canidy said, and much more forcefully used his body to push Nola.
Nola stared shuffling toward the hatch.
“They just gunned them down in cold blood.” He began crying. “We must do something.”
They reached the hatch as the angle of the deck began to change.
“We can’t, Frank,” Canidy said, looking back over his shoulder at L’Herminier. “If we do, then our mission is compromised.”
L’Herminier, still with a stern face, returned the look with a nod.
“Give me a depth of one hundred meters,” L’Herminier then ordered his XO. “Then steer a course of zero-one-zero degrees. Full speed, if we can get it.”
“Depth of one hundred meters,” the executive officer repeated, “course of one-zero. Full speed.”
The bow of the boat dropped dramatically. As the angle grew greater, mugs and papers and anything else not secured slid from tables.
Not ten minutes later, with the Casabianca passing through a depth of fifty meters,
there came a thunderous boom from far above. It reverberated through the sub.
Canidy had Nola seated on his bunk. Canidy looked at him. His eyes—bright red and wet from crying—were now huge.
“That fishing boat just saved our lives, Frank. They diverted the attention of that patrol boat.”
“This day, I vow, I never will forget,” Nola had said.
In L’Herminier’s office, Canidy said, “Our purpose here, then, is to clarify what happens next—in the next three days, and maybe in the next three months.”
He looked at each man, then went on:
“One. Our main mission is to find out about the nerve gas. Was it on the boat? Did it do the damage we suspect? I think those questions will very quickly answer themselves.
“Two. Find out what happened with the villa and the yellow fever.
“Three. Assuming we get to three, then we set up Frank and Tubes to stay behind and send intel to OSS Algiers.
“And four. If we can progress to this point, we expand the team and begin building a resistance, the underground. Then sabotage teams from Dellys can come in.”
He looked around the room.
“Okay? Any questions?”
“What if nerve gas was there?” Tubes said, his tone more serious than Canidy had ever heard it. “What do we do?”
The Double Agents (AUDIOBOOK) (CD) Page 22
