Ann moved close so that she could hear both ends of the conversation.
“Liberty 6-4133,” a male voice said.
“Captain Peter Douglass, please,” Douglass said.
“May I ask who’s calling?”
“This is Major Peter Douglass, Jr.,” Doug said.
“Oh, sure, just a moment, Major, I’ll ring.”
“Captain Douglass’s office,” a female voice said.
“This is Major Douglass. May I speak with my father, please?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Major, he’s in conference. I could interrupt, but it would be better if you could call back in an hour.”
Damn! Ann thought. In an hour he’s either going to be drunk, or else in a closet somewhere with Charity, or both.
“Miss Chenowith in there with him?”
“No, she’s not.”
“Could you switch me to her?”
There were some clicking noises, and then another female voice came on the line.
“Twenty-eight,” she said.
“Cynthia, this is Doug Douglass.”
“Well, we’ve been expecting you, Major. How was the flight? I guess you need a ride. Where are you?”
“The flight was fine, thank you,” he said. “But what I need is Dick Canidy’s phone number. My dad’s holding yet another conference and won’t be free for an hour.”
“He’s not here,” Cynthia Chenowith said.
“Where is he?”
There was a perceptible hesitation before she replied.
“Actually, he’s in New Jersey.”
“Will you give me the number, please?”
There was a longer hesitation before she finally gave him the number. “When the switchboard answers, Major,” she continued, “you ask if this is the Foster residence. Got that? Foster. Otherwise, they won’t put you through.”
“Foster residence,” Douglass parroted. “Got it. Tell my father I’ll catch up with him later.”
“I will,” she said.
Douglass broke the connection with his finger, then gave the operator the number Cynthia had given him.
“Asbury 4-9301,” a male voice answered.
“Is this the Foster residence?”
“Yes, it is,” the male voice replied.
“Can I get Dick Canidy on this?”
“I’ll ring the major for you,” the man said.
Canidy came on the line, answering with his name.
“Early Bird Leader, this is Early Bird One,” Douglass said.
“Early Bird” had been their plane-to-plane call sign in China.
Canidy laughed happily.
“You bastard, where are you?”
“I am sitting here with Commander Bitter, no less, three good-looking ladies, gallons of booze, and a baby. The important question is, where the hell are you?”
“I’m sitting here up to my ass in fuel-consumption charts,” Canidy said.
Ann became aware that her heart was beating; and when she put her fingers to her cheek, she confirmed that her face was flushed.
“Where’s there?”
There was a hesitation before Canidy answered.
“On the seashore, near Lakehurst NAS,” he said.
“Well, drop whatever you’re doing, get on a train, and come here before Bitter drinks all the booze.”
“Christ, I wish I could, Doug,” Canidy said. “But it’s out of the question.”
“Why is it out of the question?”
“I’ve got the duty.”
“Over the whole goddamned Fourth of July weekend?”
“Over the whole goddamned Fourth of July weekend,” Canidy confirmed. “I’m really sorry, Doug. I just can’t.”
“Ah, shit!” Douglass said, disappointed but understanding. “It would have been fun. Well, at least say hello to the commander and the girls.”
He handed the telephone to Bitter.
“What was that ‘Early Bird’ business?” Charity asked.
“That was our call sign in China,” Douglass said.
“What’s this story I heard about Canidy being sent home for cowardice?” Ann asked.
“Bullshit is what it was,” Douglass said. “They used that story to explain why he suddenly took off to work for my father. Christ, the first time out, he attacked—by himself—nine Jap bombers and shot down five of them. He was the first ace in the AVG.”
Ann looked at Ed Bitter in triumph. Then she took the telephone from him.
“Hello, Dick, how are you? This is Ann Chambers. Remember me?”
“What’s a nice girl like you doing with those two?” Canidy replied.
“It’s all right,” she said. “We have Sarah as a chaperone.”
Sarah took that as her cue to take the telephone. Ann gave it up willingly.
Now that I finally had the chance to talk to him, I couldn’t think of a damned thing to say.
But by the time everybody, including Charity, had talked to Canidy and the phone was back in its usual place, she did have something to say.
“I think I know where he is,” she said. “On the seashore, near Lakehurst.”
Douglass looked at her curiously.
“My father and Chesly Haywood Whittaker were friends. Chesly Whittaker had a big place on the shore at Deal. Summer Place. I was there once with my father,” Ann said. “I’ll bet that’s where he is.”
“That makes sense,” Douglass said. “Donovan and my father have taken over the Whittaker place here in D.C. But so what?”
“So, no matter what he’s doing, I don’t think he’ll be doing it on the Fourth. If you two wanted to see him, I mean.”
“Damn right I want to see him,” Ed Bitter said, a little thickly. The alcohol was getting to him. “Jesus, I owe him an apology.”
“Yes, I think you do,” Ann said, reinforcing that argument.
“The seashore sounds splendid to me,” Charity offered. “Anyplace but this steam bath.”
“But how would we get there?” Bitter asked reasonably. “I don’t want to take the baby on a train. And it would take forever. And we don’t know he’s where you think he is.”
“We can drive,” Douglass said.
“You need gas to drive,” Bitter said.
“The tank in your car is full,” Douglass said. “And there’s a hundred gallons’ worth of coupons in the glove compartment.”
Ed Bitter, surprising his wife, accepted the black-market gasoline and ration coupons without comment. But, as if he sensed that they really shouldn’t be going through with their plan, he offered a last objection.
“Who’s going to drive?” he asked, focusing his eyes with an effort on Douglass. “I’m a little tiddly myself, and you’re obviously in no condition to drive.”
“I’ll drive,” Ann said.
2
SUMMER PLACE
DEAL, NEW JERSEY
2230 HOURS
JULY 3, 1942
Even with a priority, there had been no airline seat available from Louisville for Eldon Baker. And he had elected not to use his priority to evict from their berths officers traveling by train from Fort Knox northward. He had consequently caught what sleep he could sitting up in a passenger car to Washington, and it had been nearly six in the evening when he finally reached Summer Place.
He was not especially pleased with what he found. First, Canidy had allowed Second Lieutenant C. Holdsworth Martin III to call his parents. Then Mrs. Chesly Haywood Whittaker had taken it upon herself to invite Mr. and Mrs. C. Holdsworth Martin, Jr., to come out of the brutal heat of Manhattan and spend the Fourth of July with their son at Summer Place.
“I said they could come,” an unrepentant Canidy told Baker after the damage was done. “Martin père came to the horn and asked me if it would be all right.”
“You should have politely told him no,” Baker said.
“I was not about to do that. From where I sit, one of Donovan’s Disciples ranks the hell out of a lowly Dilettante like myself.
And I also thought it would please the admiral.”
“And you didn’t think you should keep them away from Fulmar?” Baker demanded. At this moment, Eric Fulmar, wearing trunks and a beach robe, was sitting with the Martins and the admiral beneath one of the umbrellaed tables on the lawn.
“Again, Eldon, when Martin père asked to speak to him, I didn’t think it was my place to tell him no.”
The damage has been done, Baker decided. First thing in the morning, I will report what’s happened to Captain Douglass. In the meantime, I will do what I came here to do.
“Captain Douglass thought it would be a good idea if I sat in on the first session between you and Fine. In case the two of you don’t have everything you should have.”
“He told me to put the briefcase in Reynolds’s safe at Lakehurst and start on it fresh after the Fourth.”
“Then, inasmuch as Commander Reynolds doesn’t know me, I think that you and I had better ride out there to get it,” Baker said.
“What about waiting until after the Fourth?”
“I plan to leave here at five tomorrow afternoon,” Baker said. “So it’s either tonight or tomorrow morning.”
“Tonight, then,” Canidy said. “Tomorrow we’re going to have a clambake on the beach. I wouldn’t want anything to interfere with that.”
“Let’s go, then,” Baker said.
“You realize we’ll have to make the trip twice? Once to get it, and once to put it back?”
“Unless you elect to sleep with it handcuffed to your wrist,” Baker said.
When they returned from Lakehurst, Canidy politely asked Admiral de Verbey if he might use his war room.
He then collected Fine, who had been sitting on the porch with Mrs. Whittaker, and led him up to it.
“In the somewhat changed circumstances,” Baker said, “I think the best thing to do is run briefly through the whole mission. If either of you have questions, interrupt me. It may not be necessary to remind both of you, but I will: The classification of this operation is Top Secret Cabinet Level. And the cabinet’s access is on a need-to-know basis. For your general information, the President has decided that the Vice President does not have the need to know.”
“We’re impressed, Eldon,” Canidy said. “Can we move on now?”
Baker opened the briefcase, made note of the lock-open sequence count, and took out a large-scale map. He spread the map out on the table so that it was right side up in front of Canidy.
“If you will look, you can see, halfway down the leg of Africa near the Portuguese Angola, Rhodesia, and Belgian Congo borders, a town called Kolwezi,” Baker said. “It’s in the Mitumba mountain chain in Katanga Province.”
Canidy found it and pointed. Lindbergh’s guess had been off by no more than two or three hundred miles.
Baker next handed him a sheaf of photographs: brand-new ten-inch-square aerial photographs, some eight-by-ten-inch prints, which were also new, and some other photographs that appeared to have been blown up from old snapshots.
These showed a small town of frame buildings with several huge excavations around it. The excavations were so huge that roads leading to the bottoms of the pits had been carved into its sides. There were also smelters and mountains of smelter and mine tailings. There was an airfield, which looked unpaved except perhaps with mine or smelter tailings, which were often used for that purpose. The “tower” was about ten feet off the ground, and none of the airplanes on the parking ramp was multiengined.
“What we have to do, in absolute secrecy,” Baker said as Canidy worked his way through the pictures, “is remove from Kolwezi ten thousand pounds of a very special cargo and bring it here.”
“What kind of cargo?” Canidy asked.
“An ore,” Baker said. “Please do not ask any further questions about the ore. All you have to know is that it is a dry, nonexplosive substance. Some of it has the characteristics of ordinary dirt, and some of it is what they call spillings, which means with rocks in it. The rest of it is in the form of smelter residue. It will all be packed in canvas bags, each weighing approximately ninety pounds.”
Canidy nodded. “That’s a lot of weight,” he said. “But it’s within the weight/range limitations of several of the flight plans Colonel Lindbergh laid out.”
“What did you say, Dick?” Stanley Fine asked, shocked.
“I don’t think you should talk about that,” Baker said.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Canidy flared. “Stan, the transport expert who laid most of this on was Colonel Charles Lindbergh. But don’t say anything. The President thinks he’s a Nazi sympathizer.”
Fine shook his head in disbelief.
“The departure point will be Newark Airport,” Baker resumed. “You will fly the bomber stream to Ireland, via Gander Field, Newfoundland, and from Ireland to Portugal and then down the west coast of Africa, stopping here, and here, and here. To Kolwezi. There will be a crew of three. We have recruited a pilot and copilot from the Air Transport Command. They were both formerly Pan American pilots who have flown to South Africa before. Not, it is germane to note, in land aircraft. They flew Sikorsky seaplanes.
“But they have received transition training, so they are C- 46 qualified, and they will transition both of you into the C- 46, so that if it becomes necessary you can fly the aircraft. Coming out of Kolwezi, there will be a passenger.”
“Who?” Canidy asked.
“Grunier,” Baker said.
“Grunier?” Canidy asked. “Oh, Christ! Again?”
“We hope to have his family in England within two weeks,” Baker said, again ignoring him. “That was his price for his cooperation in this, and we met it.”
“He’s in the Belgian Congo?” Canidy asked.
“He will be,” Baker replied. “That’s one of the things holding us up. We have to put him in and then make sure he’s in place before we send the airplane.”
“What’s he going to be doing there?” Canidy asked.
“He’s going to make sure that the bags contain what we’re paying for,” Baker said. “We’re going to send a substantial sum of money into the Belgian Congo with him to pay for all this. An even more substantial amount will be paid after you pick it up.”
“How much is ‘substantial’?” Canidy asked.
Baker thought it over before he replied.
“The deposit was a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of Swiss francs, gold coins. The payment due on delivery is four hundred thousand.”
“And why do we trust Grunier? Not only with a hundred thousand dollars, but after what we’ve already done to him?”
“Because we told him that it would be even easier to send his family back to France than it was to sneak them out,” Baker said matter-of-factly. “And because he has been told that if he does what we want him to, his family will be brought here and he will be given a job in Colorado.”
“And he believes you?”
“Well, for one thing, it’s true,” Baker said. “And for another, people believe what they want to believe.”
“What the hell is this stuff?”
“I’ve told you, you’re not to ask that sort of question,” Baker said. “Now, about the aircraft. If I’m wrong about anything, Canidy, please interrupt.”
He was looking through the papers on the table when there was a knock at the door. Baker looked at it impatiently.
“Yeah?” Canidy called.
“I think you had better come downstairs, Mr. Canidy,” a voice said. Canidy recognized it as the security duty officer’s.
“Won’t it wait?” Canidy replied. “We’re almost through in here.”
“I think you had better come right down, Mr. Canidy,” the ex-FBI agent said doggedly.
“Duty apparently calls, Eldon,” Canidy said. “What would you suggest I do?”
“Let’s wind this up,” Fine said. “If all we’re going to do is talk about the airplane, I’d really prefer to look at it myself.”
Baker
thought that over a moment and then nodded. He started folding the map.
“Be down in a minute,” Canidy called to the security man.
When Baker had the documents back inside the briefcase, he locked it and handed it to Fine.
“You’d better use the handcuff, Captain,” he said.
“Christ, yes, Stanley. For all we know, Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Göring are downstairs upsetting the guards,” Canidy said.
“I hope it’s something as simple as that. From the security guy’s tone of voice, I am more than a little afraid he’s going to tell me the admiral has had a heart attack.”
They went quickly down the wide stairway to the foyer. There, surrounded by both COI security guards and rifle-armed sailors, were Lieutenant Commander Edwin Bitter, USN; Major Peter Douglass, Jr., USAAC; and three women, one of them with a baby in her arms.
“I’m really embarrassed about this, Major Canidy,” the crew-cut young lieutenant (j.g.) in charge of the Navy guard detail said. “My sentry at the gate passed them into the compound. Because one of them was a naval officer, he said, and because they said they were here with your permission.”
“Oh, Christ!” Canidy said in exasperation, and then he laughed.
He had taken a close look at Douglass. Not only was his face smeared with lipstick, but somehow the buttons on his fly did not match the holes.
“You two need keepers,” he said to Douglass and Bitter.
“Who are these people?” Baker snapped.
“The one with the lipstick on his face is Peter Douglass, Jr.,” Canidy said. “Doug, say hello to Eldon Baker. He works for your father.”
“What are they doing here?” Baker demanded icily.
“I guess they came for the clambake,” Canidy said. He turned to the young Navy officer of the guard. “I can’t say there’s no harm done,” he said. “But they’re not dangerous. You can let the white hats go.”
“None of these people are to leave the grounds without my specific permission,” Baker said.
“Until I’m relieved, Eldon—and you don’t have the authority to do that—I’m in charge. Which means you issue orders through me,” Canidy said. Then he looked at the others. “But he’s right. I’m sorry; now that you’re here, you’ll have to stay here until they decide what to do with you.”
The Secret Warriors Page 21
