There were the sounds of footsteps on the stairs.
“Major Canidy? Everything all right in there, Major?”
It was the sentry.
He pushed her against the wall. “Ssh!” he cautioned. “Major Canidy?” the sentry asked.
“Everything’s just fine,” Canidy said.
“You’re sure, Sir? I thought I heard shouting.”
“I didn’t hear any shouting,” Canidy said innocently.
Ann started to giggle.
Canidy quickly clapped his hand over her mouth.
“Well, someone was shouting,” the sentry said firmly.
“Not me,” Canidy said. “Everything’s perfectly normal in here.”
Something was pressed painfully against Ann’s abdomen. She put her hand down to push it away, but when she realized what it was, she put her hand around it and held it tightly. She felt her heart pound. For a moment, she thought she might faint.
“Well, good night, Sir,” the sentry said. “Sorry to disturb you, Major.”
“Perfectly all right,” Canidy said. “Keep up the good work.”
When the sentry had gone down the stairs, he took his hand from her mouth.
She did not remove her hand from where she was holding him.
She heard him exhale deeply, almost as if it hurt him, and then he picked her up and carried her to the bed. She was glad that she had taken off the cutesy-poo pants, because all he had to do was push the cotton robe out of the way.
It didn’t take long to become a woman, Ann thought, and I never believed those horror stories about the pain anyway.
And when it was over, when he said, “You goddamn fool!” she heard tenderness in his voice, and was sure she had done the right thing even before he reached for her, and pulled her to him, and held her tightly against him, and said all the things she was so afraid she would never hear him say.
The second time was longer, and better, and so was the third.
3
SUMMER PLACE
DEAL, NEW JERSEY
0830 HOURS
JULY 5, 1942
When Barbara Whittaker left the table to go to the kitchen to ask for another pot of coffee, Charity Hoche smiled sweetly at Ann and said, “The tabletop is glass, so I think I should tell you that everybody can see you playing kneesie with Major Canidy.”
“Charity!” Sarah Child Bitter snapped.
Captain Stanley S. Fine had trouble swallowing his coffee, while Ann Chambers and Richard Canidy flushed and separated at the knees.
Then Ann looked at Canidy.
“I don’t mind if you don’t,” she said, and Canidy moved his knee against hers again. Ann thumbed her nose at Charity, and Fine and Sarah laughed.
This was the scene that greeted a security man and two Air Corps officers—both captains and both appearing to be in their mid-thirties—when they walked into the breakfast room: A very good-looking young woman was thumbing her nose at two other equally attractive young women and two men, one wearing an insignia-less tropical worsted uniform and the other, younger, wearing swim trunks and a battered, washed-out gray sweatshirt with cutoff sleeves. On the front of the sweatshirt was still faintly visible the legend “Massachusetts Institute of Technology.” They were all giggling and more than a little red in the face.
It was not what two officers who had volunteered for a hazardous secret mission expected to find when they reported for duty on orders conspicuously stamped Top Secret.
“These gentlemen have orders to report to you, Major,” the security man said. “I’ve verified their identity.”
Canidy took his knee away from Ann’s. She sensed it would be a long time before she felt that delightful pressure again.
“Thank you,” Canidy said, and reached out for a manila envelope the older of the two captains held in his hand.
“I’m Canidy,” he said. “That’s Captain Fine.”
He did not introduce the women. He opened the envelope, removed another envelope from inside, and broke its seal. He then read the orders, put them back in the envelope, and passed it down the table to Fine.
“Is the car ready? You put gas in it?” Canidy asked the security man.
“Yes, Sir. It’s out in front.”
“The weekend is over, I guess,” Canidy said to Ann.
“Come see us off,” Ann said as she got up.
He nodded.
“Give me a minute,” he said, and waited until the women had left the room before asking, “Have you had breakfast?”
“No, Sir,” the older of the two Air Corps officers said.
The “Sir” came hard, Fine thought. But if I were as old as they are, I would find it hard saying “Sir” to a guy in trunks and an MIT sweatshirt who looks as young—who is as young—as Canidy is.
“Sit down,” Canidy ordered, waving the two officers into chairs at the table.
Barbara Whittaker came back into the room with a silver coffeepot.
“Gentlemen,” Canidy said, “this is our hostess, Mrs. Barbara Whittaker.”
Uncomfortably, the two officers gave Barbara Whittaker their hands and mumbled their names.
“Would you please see about getting them some breakfast?” Canidy said. “And then detour anyone else who wants to eat?”
“I’ll have a table set on the porch,” Barbara said.
“I’ll see the girls off,” Canidy said. “Stan, hold the fort, will you?”
When they were alone, the older of the two captains said to Fine with mingled annoyance and curiosity, “He’s a little young to be a major, isn’t he?”
“He’s also a little young to be the man in charge,” Fine said. “But he’s an unusual young man. He was the first ace in the AVG.”
“This isn’t what I expected to find,” the Air Corps officer said.
“Me either,” Fine said. “A week ago I had a B-17 squadron at Chanute.”
“What the hell is this all about?”
“I think,” Fine said, “that I had better wait and let Major Canidy tell you that.”
Canidy returned to the breakfast room five minutes later. He was still wearing the battered, washed-out MIT sweatshirt and swim trunks, but Fine thought he no longer looked or sounded like a young Romeo who had just found his Juliet.
“I’ll begin with a statement of fact,” Canidy said as he poured another cup of coffee. “If either of you in any way breaches the security requirements I am about to outline for you, you will spend the duration of the war in a psychiatric hospital. It is not a threat. Simply a fact. Is that perfectly clear to both of you?”
“Yes, Sir,” the two Air Corps officers said, almost in unison.
There was no hesitation in calling him “Sir” this time, Fine thought. Was that because I had told them Canidy had been the AVG’s first ace, or did they now sense a ruthlessness in him that had not been there when they had first walked into the breakfast room?
PART NINE
1
LE RELAIS DE POINTE-NOIRE
NEAR CASABLANCA, MOROCCO
JULY 29, 1942
Le Relais de Pointe-Noire, a two-story stone building, sat on a huge granite crag thrusting into the Atlantic Ocean. The granite appeared black when surf crashed against it, hence the name Pointe-Noire. It was said that Le Relais de Pointe-Noire was the best restaurant on the Atlantic Coast of Morocco, but it was perhaps best known for its chambres séparées—there were ten—on the floor above the main restaurant.
Five of the discreet, private dining rooms—which were furnished with a table, and a chaise lounge in case the diners decided to take a little nap after eating—had large windows looking out upon the surf. The others faced inward toward the narrow road that led from the shore to the granite crag.
Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz had reserved a chambre séparée looking out on the surf for himself and Madame Jeanine Lemoine.
There was no hiding from anyone that the senior member of the Franco-German Armistice Commission for Morocco was a gues
t of the restaurant. For one thing, his Mercedes-Benz automobile was well-known. And so, he suspected, was the Peugeot sedan with the Rabat license tag he used when he wished to be more discreet. For another, he was usually accompanied by a second Mercedes, a smaller one, carrying three members of the SS-SD, the secret police branch of the SS, and one member of the Sûreté, the French Security Service, who were charged with his protection.
His best protection at this moment, von Heurten-Mitnitz had concluded, was to trust that people would imagine he had brought Jeanine Lemoine here tonight for carnal purposes. He would have been pleased if it came to that, for Jeanine was an attractive, pert-breasted female with surprisingly long legs for a Frenchwoman.
Despite the official policy of Franco-German friendship, she was held in contempt by the French in Morocco. The wife of an officer being held in a German POW camp, especially one who did not need the money, should not have become “the little friend” of von Heurten-Mitnitz, who, more than any other man in Morocco, represented the Germany that had so humiliated France.
The entire rear wall of the chambre séparée was a black mirror. Von Heurten-Mitnitz had wondered idly whether it had been designed that way simply because it made the room appear to be larger, or whether it was intended to reflect whatever might transpire on the wide, softly upholstered chaise lounge pushed against it, to cater to some odd French sexual hunger.
We make an attractive couple, von Heurten-Mitnitz thought as he saw their reflection in the mirror. It’s really a shame she’s not what people believe, and that we’re not here for an illicit liaison. Or at least not an illicit sexual liaison.
Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz was a tall, sharp-featured, very erect Pomeranian, thirty-five years old and blond-haired. He was an aristocrat who, like half a dozen younger sons of the Grafs von Heurten-Mitnitz before him, had entered the diplomatic service of his sovereign. Karl-Heinz von Heurten-Mitnitz, his paternal uncle, had witnessed the German humiliation at Compiègne in 1918. And the current Graf von Heurten-Mitnitz, his elder brother, resplendent in his black honorary Standartenführer-SS’s uniform, had been part of Hitler’s entourage at Compiègne in 1940, when humiliation had been turned into revenge.
An odd combination, von Heurten-Mitnitz thought, a whore who is not a whore, and a patriot about to turn traitor.
Two minutes after von Heurten-Mitnitz and Jeanine Lemoine entered the chambre séparée, a third man joined them. The presence of Robert Murphy, consul general of the United States to the French Republic’s Protectorate of Morocco, at the Relais de Pointe-Noire could not be concealed any more than von Heurten-Mitnitz’s. His official Buick was trailed everywhere by a Sûreté Peugeot or Citroën whose ostensible purpose was to provide him with the protection his rank was entitled to but whose real purpose was to keep an eye on him.
He had to hope that whoever noticed that the head American and the head German in Morocco were simultaneously at the Relais de Pointe-Noire would call it simply coincidence. That was in fact plausible. If they wanted to meet secretly, it was unlikely they would do so in a place where their presence would be so conspicuous.
The two men shook hands but did not speak.
Murphy nodded his head—conceivably it could be construed to be a bow—at Mme. Jeanine Lemoine, and said, “Madame.”
“Monsieur,” she replied.
Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz opened a bottle of wine, poured three glasses, and passed one each to Murphy and Madame Lemoine.
“A toast would be a little awkward,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said, “don’t you think?”
“Better times,” Murphy said
Madame Lemoine and von Heurten-Mitnitz smiled and raised their glasses.
Then Murphy reached into the pocket of his suit jacket and took from it an envelope, which he handed to von Heurten-Mitnitz. The German took it, sat down at the table, opened it, and took from it half a dozen sheets of crisp white stationery.
“The White House,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said. “I didn’t know Roosevelt was fluent in German.”
“He’s not,” Murphy said. “That’s from Putzi von Hanfstaengel.”
“Really?” von Heurten-Mitnitz said, surprised.
THE WHITE HOUSE
Washington
20 July 1942
My dear Helmut:
By the very reading of this you will, according to the laws of the Third Reich, be committing treason. I mention this because when Franklin Roosevelt asked me to write to you, I was forced to consider what that word really meant. Before, I was able to rationalize my own status: Heinrich Himmler had tried to kill me, and it was only by the grace of God that I was able to leave Germany, so therefore I could be anything I chose to be, and I chose to think of myself as an escapee, or a refugee, anything but a traitor.
I now realize that is dishonest. I am legally a traitor. I am consorting with my country’s enemies, and doing whatever I can to help them cause my country to lose the war, including writing this letter.
But when I ask myself what I am being a traitor to, I am able to believe that I am really acting in Germany’s best interests.
Roosevelt has unquestioned proof, some of it from the Vatican, of what unspeakable barbarities the Austrian maniac and his cohorts are inflicting, not only upon Jews, but Gypsies, ordinary Polish and Russian peasants, and on Germans as well.
I will not dwell on this, other than to give you my word that I have proof of what the bearer of this will tell you in detail. No matter what horrors he relates, I suspect that his memory will prove unable to store and recall the full obscenity of it.
That alone would be sufficient cause to overthrow Hitler and his associates.
But I will give you, if you need one, another argument why that must be done, and why you must help:
Germany will inevitably lose this war!
The genius of Germany’s generals and the courage of her soldiers will never prevail against the industrial might of America. You have lived here, you know what I’m talking about.
Roosevelt tells me that he believes “as much as forty percent” of the American gross national product may be necessary to support this war. “Total war,” as Goebbels and Speer envision it for Germany, is not even being considered by the Americans.
I will not dwell upon this.
Germany will lose the war. The degree of destruction of our cities, the number of millions of our countrymen who will be killed, is directly related to how quickly Germany loses it. There will be no armistice this time. Powerful people at Roosevelt’s side are already demanding unconditional surrender.
Few know Adolph Hitler better than I do. (God forgive me, when he knew he was going to Landshut prison after Munich, and tried to kill himself, I stopped him!) You must believe me, my dear Helmut, when I tell you Unser Führer will see Germany in rubble, her fields sown with salt, and her people extinguished from the face of the earth before he surrenders his mad dream.
It is therefore, Helmut, perfectly evident to me that it is the duty of people like you and me, whose families have guided Germany for centuries, to do our duty, at whatever cost, to see this temporary insane leadership of our country destroyed. If, after the war is lost, this will see us put in leadership positions by the victorious allies, that would probably be a good thing, but that isn’t the point.
The point is that we must do our duty as we see it. Our beloved Germany cries out to you to do this.
May God give you courage and be with you, until better times.
Putzi i Han
P.S. I am guarded by an American Army sergeant in my hotel. He is equipped with a rifle and a steel helmet, and wears a baggy denim work uniform on duty. But I am as proud of Sergeant von Hanfstaengel in his baggy U.S. Army uniform as my father was of me when I went to the front in the first war, and as convinced that truly, Gott Mit Uns.
VHan
Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz read the letter carefully twice, then took a gold Dunhill lighter from his jacket pocket and burned the letter—one shee
t at a time—over the ashtray. Only when he finished did he speak.
“You are aware, of course, what was in that,” he said to Murphy.
“How do you know?”
“The ‘better times’ toast,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said.
“It was sent to me unsealed,” Murphy admitted. “There are no copies. I read it and then sealed it.”
“That wasn’t a very gentlemanly thing to do,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said.
“No,” Murphy admitted. “I don’t suppose it was.”
“He writes a very stirring letter,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said. “If you see him, please don’t hurt his feelings by letting him know I had already reached very much the same conclusions he has.”
“I’m pleased to hear that,” Murphy said. “But I still suppose it is expected of me to relate what we have learned about the extermination camps and the special SS squads.”
“I probably know more about that than you do,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said. “It was a factor in my decision.”
“We have been led to believe that, outside of the circle of those actually involved, it is pretty much of a secret in Germany.”
“Müller has a friend, wounded in Russia, who came here on recuperative leave. He got drunk and told Müller—and he knew about everything, not just the extermination detachments at the front. Müller had me to dinner, got him drunk again, and had him tell me all over again. I had heard whispers, and now there was proof. Müller’s friend is a Leica—what’s the word?—snapshot photographer.”
“Why do you think Müller did that?”
“Because I tell him things I think he should know, and he does the same.”
“Was he morally outraged?”
“He’s a policeman,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said. “Nothing shocks him.”
“Motivate, then,” Murphy said. “What would it take to motivate him?”
“Money,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said. “A good deal of money.”
“That’s been thought of,” Murphy said. He took two envelopes from his jacket pocket.
The Secret Warriors Page 25
