“There’s mixed currency in each of these,” he said. “Mostly Swiss francs, some Reichsmarks, some dollars, some pounds, altogether about twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth.”
Von Heurten-Mitnitz looked at them as if they were dog droppings.
“We wanted to make sure that you had cash available in case the need arose,” Murphy said quickly. “Hence the envelope for you.”
Von Heurten-Mitnitz looked closely at Murphy.
“But you wouldn’t have blinked an eye, would you, Mr. Murphy, if I had said that wasn’t nearly enough to buy me.”
“I never believed you were for sale, Herr von Heurten-Mitnitz,” Murphy said.
“I have no choice but to take your word for that, do I?”
“You have my word,” Murphy said.
“I will give Müller one envelope,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said. “And retain the other, should I need it. Afterward I will give you a precise accounting.”
“That’s not necessary,” Murphy said.
“Yes, it is, Mr. Murphy,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said. “To me, it is necessary.”
“I was about to say I understand how you feel. But that wouldn’t be true.”
“Pray you never find yourself in my situation, Mr. Murphy,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said.
Their eyes met for a moment, then von Heurten-Mitnitz looked away.
“There was something symbolic about your twenty-five thousand pieces of assorted silver,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said. “I presume that now you will tell me just what you want from me.”
“I didn’t look at the money that way,” Murphy said.
“Perhaps because it is written in Scripture that it is more blessed to give than receive,” the German aristocrat said dryly. “I wonder how Putzi is being paid.”
“He’s not,” Murphy said. “Roosevelt, by executive order, exempted his art gallery from seizure under the Enemy Property Act.”
“I’m surprised Putzi permitted him to do that.”
Murphy didn’t reply.
“I really am curious what specifically you want from me,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said. “Presumably it has to do with the invasion of North Africa.”
“What makes you think we’re going to invade North Africa?” Murphy asked.
“Roosevelt made that clear when he abandoned the Philippine Islands. The major thrust of the American effort will first be against Germany. That leaves the question where,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said. “I doubt, despite the enormous effort being made by Roosevelt to turn Joseph Stalin into Friendly Uncle Joe, that the American people would stand for sending American troops to fight in Russia. Not the Balkans, certainly, after Churchill’s Gallipoli debacle10 in the First War. Not the Continent itself, not yet. Where, then, else?”
“Have you heard anything?” Murphy asked, poker-faced.
“Conjecture,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said. “Nothing specific. The French doubt that you are capable of attacking sovereign French soil with the forces you presently have in England even if you would dare try it. They also do not believeyou are capable of launching an invasion force across the Atlantic directly from the United States. I do.”
“Well,” Murphy said, seeing his opportunity, “since we are not, so far as I know, about to invade North Africa, where we think you could help is not connected with any such invasion.”
“Then what?” von Heurten-Mitnitz asked.
“FEG is developing a jet engine for aircraft,” Murphy said. “We have to have a set of authentic specifications and, if we can get it, an actual engine.”
“Frankly, that’s not what I expected,” von Heurten-Mitnitz replied, and then added wryly, “Fulmar Elektrische Gesellschaft, the ubiquitous young Mr. Fulmar.”
“From what he says, I don’t think he’ll be much help in this. I gather he is not the apple of his father’s eye.”
“Hardly,” von Heurten-Mitnitz agreed. “I should think that getting the plans would be virtually impossible. I can’t imagine they’d be left anywhere where anyone could get to them, and I daresay the plans for an aircraft engine would not fit in a valise.”
“We need the metallurgical and machining specifications,” Murphy said.
“I don’t see how I could get them,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said. “What about an engine itself?”
“Could you arrange for that?”
“From somewhere in the back of my mind I recall that on the Fulmar family estate near Augsburg FEG has an experimental electric smelter. I don’t know why I remember this, but I do. I was told that it simply melts everything in, say, an auto engine. They then extract the copper and other alloying material. Wouldn’t it seem likely they would send experimental aircraft engines there? Failed ones, worn-out ones?”
“Can you find out?”
“I will make inquiries,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said. “It may take a little time—perhaps months. I will have to wait until I can find someone who knows. My telephone calls are monitored, and I suspect my mail is being opened.”
“I’m surprised to hear about the mail,” Murphy said.
“The Bavarian corporal doesn’t trust people like me,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said dryly. “I can’t imagine why.”
2
THE HOUSE ON Q STREET, NW
1715 HOURS
AUGUST 3, 1942
When he heard the sliding door to the library open, Lieutenant Colonel Edmund T. Stevens, a tall, thin, silver-haired man in his late forties, looked up from a first-edition copy of Lee in Northern Virginia he had found on the shelves.
A young man walked in, raised his eyebrows when he saw Stevens, and said, “Good afternoon, Colonel,” then walked directly to a cabinet that contained—hid, Stevens thought; I had no idea that was there—not only an array of liquor bottles but a small refrigerator and a stock of glasses.
The young man selected a bottle of Scotch. “Can I fix you something, Colonel?” he asked.
Colonel Stevens, who was usually self-assured, was now surprisingly hesitant. He was on alien ground. He didn’t know how to behave. There was to be a “working dinner,” he had been told, with Captain Peter Douglass, and he wondered if he should appear at that with liquor on his breath.
He decided that whoever this young man was, he was probably part of the establishment—he certainly showed no uneasiness about helping himself to the hidden liquor—and that suggested that alcohol was not proscribed in a place where everything else seemed to be.
“Yes, if you’ll be so kind,” Stevens said. “Some of that Scotch and a splash of water will be fine.”
The young man did not offer his name, and Stevens did not offer his.
Cynthia Chenowith came into the room.
“They told me you were here,” she said.
“In your voice there is an implication I should have marched into your office, stood to attention, saluted, and announced my arrival formally,” the young man said.
“Colonel Stevens,” Cynthia Chenowith said, in control of herself but tight-lipped, “this is Major Canidy.”
They shook hands. Colonel Stevens had heard a good deal about Major Canidy in the past few days. He knew he was scheduled to meet him, but was surprised by the civilian clothing.
“Dinner will be at seven,” Cynthia said. “The others will be here shortly.”
“Is it a command performance?” Canidy asked. “If so, what others?”
“If by that you’re asking if you are expected to be there, Dick, the answer is yes, you are.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Canidy said. “I’ll look forward to it, Ma’am.”
She walked toward the door and had just about reached it when Canidy said, softly but loud enough for her to hear, “Nice tail, wouldn’t you say, Colonel?”
Cynthia spun around.
Canidy was stroking the tail feathers of a cast-bronze pheasant sitting on a bookcase shelf. He smiled at her benignly.
“Something else, Cynthia?” he asked innocently.
She turned around again and marched out
of the room.
Canidy looked at Colonel Stevens, his eyes mischievous.
“Sometimes, if I’m lucky,” he said, “I can get her to swear. You’d be surprised at the words that refined young woman has in her vocabulary.”
Although he wasn’t sure why, Stevens heard himself laugh. He wondered what was behind the exchange.
“She implied that you’ll be at dinner,” Canidy said.
“Yes, I will be,” Stevens said.
“Does that mean you’re one of us?”
“Yes, I suppose I am,” Stevens said. “A very new one, however.”
“I would ask what they have you doing,” Canidy said, “and what the dinner is all about, but if I do that, tight-lipped little men will suddenly leap out of the woodwork, crying, ‘Shame on you, you broke the rules,’ and confiscate the booze.”
Stevens laughed again. When he’d seen Bill Donovan, Donovan had told him not to be put off by Canidy’s irreverent attitude, and that he was where it counted a very good man. Stevens had also been told both about Canidy’s exploits in the air and that he’d completed a secret mission in Morocco.
This irreverent young man, Stevens thought, is a veteran.
When the Second World War had started, Stevens himself had been a civilian. And his somewhat sad judgment at the time was that he would not serve at all. Even if they scraped him from the bottom of the barrel and put him back in uniform, they’d make him a troop morale officer, or some such, at a remote training camp in Arkansas or South Dakota. He had made inquiries in 1940, and it had been made quite clear to him that he was persona non grata at the War Department.
In 1937, after sixteen years of commissioned service following his graduation from the Military Academy at West Point with the class of 1921, Edmund T. Stevens resigned from the Army. He had risen only, in a decade and a half, to captain in the Coast Artillery Corps.
From the beginning, his wife never liked the service, and there had been constant pressure from her, from her family, and from his own family for him to give it up. Clearly he was not destined for high rank or important command. The pay was very low, and the environment not right for the children. Subtly and bluntly they put it to him that he was no longer a child; and, as it says in the Bible, it was time for him “to put away childish things.”
Bitterly disappointed when he did not find his name on the majors list in the spring of 1937, he submitted his resignation. He took his family from Fort Bliss, Texas, to New York, where a place was quickly found for him in his wife’s father’s business, the importing of European canned goods and wines.
By the fall of 1938, by dint of hard work, and, he joked, because his wife had inherited controlling interest in the firm, he had been elected vice president for European operations and sent to London. The Stevenses had a splendid year before the war started. The boys loved their school despite the absurd hats and customs, which left Debbie and him alone together in London on what was almost a second honeymoon. On their first, there hadn’t been much they could afford on his second lieutenant’s pay.
When war came to England, they sadly boarded the Queen Mary for New York.
Shortly before Pearl Harbor, Edmund T. Stevens ran into William J. Donovan in the bar at the Baltusrol Country Club in New Jersey. Donovan asked him how he planned to spend the war, and Stevens, somewhat stiffly, told Donovan that he thought he could qualify for a commission in the Quartermaster Corps.
“You’re going back in the Army?” Donovan asked, surprised.
“If they’ll have me,” Stevens confessed. “It’s been made rather clear to me that I have let the side down. I don’t think I could get a commission in artillery again, but perhaps, if there’s a war, maybe in the Quartermaster Corps. I now know a good deal about how to store canned goods.”
“Don’t be surprised if I get in touch,” Donovan said, and then something happened to interrupt the conversation.
By the time war came, Stevens managed to get a reserve commission as a captain, QMC. This was based more on his canned-goods experience than on his West Point diploma and previous service, but there had been no telegram ordering Captain Stevens of the Quartermaster Corps (Reserve) to arrange his affairs so that he could enter upon extended active service. Disappointed but not really surprised, he put military service from his mind, forgot the Baltusrol Golf Club conversation he had had with Colonel Wild Bill Donovan, and went back to the family business.
And then one day, wearing a look of utter confusion on her face, his secretary put her head in the door and said there was an Army officer on the telephone, asking for Colonel Stevens.
“This is Edmund Stevens,” he said when he had picked up the telephone.
“Hold on, please, Colonel, for Colonel Donovan,” a woman on the line said.
“Ed,” Donovan asked without preliminaries, “how soon can you get down here? I need you right now.”
Despite a surprisingly emotional reaction—Pavlovian drooling at the sound of a military trumpet, he told himself—Stevens could not, as Donovan wanted, catch the next Congressional Limited for Washington. Stevens wasn’t able to get to Washington until eleven-thirty the next morning.
His wife was furious: He was simply too old to go running off the moment Bill Donovan blew his bugle. He considered his wife’s arguments on the ride to Washington. They were reinforced by his uncomfortable awareness that he was wearing a uniform that no longer fit.
It was worse in Washington. As he walked across the waiting room at Union Station, a military policeman stopped him and informed him that the leather Sam Browne belt he was wearing had been proscribed for more than a year. He was sorry, he said, but he had his orders, and would have to issue Stevens a citation for being out of uniform. He then asked for Stevens’s ID card, and of course Stevens didn’t have one.
Stevens had resigned himself to arrest for impersonating an officer when a man walked up, asked if he was Edmund T. Stevens, and then flashed some sort of identity card. The MP backed off immediately.
“I’m Chief Ellis, Colonel,” the man said. “Captain Douglass sent me to fetch you. I must have missed you on the platform.”
“It’s Captain Stevens,” Stevens insisted.
“Yes, Sir, whatever you say, Sir,” Ellis said.
He then took Stevens to the dining room in the Wardman Park Hotel, where Colonel Donovan and Captain Peter Douglass were about to take luncheon.
That afternoon was the first Stevens heard of the Office of Strategic Services. Over broiled scrod Donovan told him that he wanted Stevens to go to London for that organization and serve as sort of secretary-treasurer of the office he had established there. What was needed over there right away, Donovan said, was someone with enough military experience to deal with the military from whom OSS was drawing ninety percent of its logistical support, as well as someone familiar with the idiosyncrasies of the “natives.” Since Stevens obviously met both criteria, Donovan felt certain he would accept the job. Stevens of course agreed.
“Buy yourself some silver leaves, Colonel,” Donovan said, handing him a War Department general order, four consecutive paragraphs of which promoted Captain Stevens, Quartermaster Corps, U.S. Army Reserve, to lieutenant colonel; ordered Lieutenant Colonel Stevens to extended active duty for the duration of the war plus six months; detailed him to the General Staff Corps for duty with the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and further reassigned him to the Office of Strategic Services.
Stevens spent the next several days in briefing, most of which he didn’t understand, and, honor-bound, told Captain Peter Douglass about it.
“Once you get over there, it will all fall in place,” Douglass had said. “And tomorrow night there will be a working dinner, and things should be a lot clearer after that. If you’d like, you could take the day off and go home. Just be back here by, say, half past five tomorrow afternoon.”
“I will have some sort of leave before I actually go to London, won’t I?”
“I don’t think that will be po
ssible right now,” Douglass said. “But you’ll be coming back and forth, I’m sure, and we’ll work something out then.”
His wife was furious and heartsick when he announced he was leaving for overseas practically immediately. But his private reaction—though he was careful not to show it—was exultation, as if he had been pardoned from prison.
As Canidy made himself—Stevens politely declined—a second drink, a muscular young first lieutenant in Class-A uniform—pink trousers and green blouse and glossy jump boots—arrived, soon after followed by a somewhat better-looking young man also wearing pinks and greens, but with no insignia except for parachutist’s wings on the breast.
“What’s he dressed for, Martin?” Canidy asked.
“His commission came through, Sir,” Martin said.
“Where’s his insignia?”
“He hasn’t been sworn in yet, Sir,” Martin said. “I thought it best to wait for that before pinning on his insignia.”
“If I didn’t know better, Martin,” Canidy said, “I would mistake you for a West Pointer.”
Martin, Colonel Stevens thought, isn’t sure if he has been complimented or insulted. And Major Canidy, come to think of it, certainly wouldn’t have made that crack if he suspected that this middle-aged retread warrior marched in the Long Gray Line.
“Do those little silver wings mean what I think they do?” Canidy asked. “That you have willingly been jumping out of airplanes?”
“Why don’t you lay off me, Dick?” the handsome young man snapped.
“Eric, if you are going to be an officer and a gentleman, you will have to learn to treat your superior officers with much greater respect.”
The man glared at him but said nothing.
“Is Captain Whittaker with you?” Canidy asked.
“Yes, Sir,” Martin said. “He went to say hello to Miss Chenowith.”
“I don’t think saying hello is exactly what he had in mind,” Canidy said. “Oh, excuse me, Colonel. These gentlemen are Lieutenant Martin and about-to-be-Lieutenant Fulmar. They jump out of airplanes.”
The Secret Warriors Page 26
