“They’re overdue at Bissau,” Canidy said. “They will run out of fuel in about fifteen minutes.”
“So the backup flight is on?”
“Well, that’s being decided,” Canidy said dryly, nodding toward Colonel Stevens and the chief of station, “at the highest levels. Things are just fucked up, Jimmy.”
“Well, then, tell me what’s going on,” Whittaker said reasonably.
“I’ll start from the beginning,” Canidy said. “At seventeen hundred hours yesterday, purely as a precautionary measure, Colonel Stevens called over here and asked to speak to Commander Whatsisname. He wanted to put him on a six—as opposed to a twelve—hour alert. The flight engineer told him that Commander Whatsisname was with Captain Somebody at the moment. So Stevens, being a nice guy, said that’s all right, when he comes back, tell him he’s now on a six-hour alert, and ask him to call me for details. That’s fuckup number one.”
“How?” Whittaker asked.
“Bear with me,” Canidy said. “Then he went over to meet me at the Dorchester, where he told me that Scotland Yard is on the case of the stolen Ford, and that they expect to have the criminal behind bars in the immediate future.”
“Are you serious?”
“Dead serious,” Canidy said.
“Christ, and Elizabeth’s going to drive it back to Whitby House.”
“I’m fascinated to hear you refer to her as Elizabeth,” Canidy said. “But I thought you wanted to hear about this.”
“Go on.”
“We had a drink, and then he took me upstairs to a just-swept room, where I was, as they say, brought into the big picture. That was fuckup number two.”
“I don’t understand that.”
“I am now possessed, the London station chief feels, of such hot secrets that my capture cannot be risked, and therefore I can’t go on the backup flight.”
“So I’m to go,” Whittaker said.
“I’m not finished,” Canidy said. “After I was admitted to all the secret crap, and Stevens went back to the OSS, the duty officer told him that Commander Whatsisname—”
“Logan,” Whittaker impatiently furnished the name of the NATC aircraft pilot.
“—Logan had yet to report in. So Stevens called back out here, and the flight engineer said he had heard from him. They were in Liverpool, and Liverpool is socked in. The captain Commander Logan had gone to see was in Liverpool. That was the first time Stevens had heard that.”
“What time is Logan due here?”
“The train will get them here sometime around noon, I understand,” Canidy said. “The weather has been updated—would you like a report? I’ve been running over to the weather office every fifteen minutes or so since about one this morning, when the chief of station arrived out here. Liverpool is thick ground fog, visibility about two and a half feet, and expected to worsen. Oh yeah, and I seem to have left out that at midnight Colonel Stevens woke me up and told me it might be a good idea if I came out here.”
“What about another crew?” Whittaker said. “There ought to be a lot of people who can fly C-46s around here.”
“Not as many as everybody thought,” Canidy said. “And none we can find with a Top Secret security clearance, which the station chief has thrown into the equation. The Air Force is working on that. If they find somebody, then we have the problem of getting them here.”
“You and I could fly it,” Whittaker said. “You said the engineer is here.”
“You weren’t listening,” Canidy said. “I can’t go. I know too much.”
“So what happens now?”
Canidy nodded again toward the station chief and Colonel Stevens, who were hovering around the telephone.
“We wait for the phone to ring,” Canidy said.
“Jesus Christ,” Whittaker said.
The phone never rang. But ten minutes later, after Canidy had looked at his wristwatch yet again, a motorcycle messenger arrived outside the hangar.
“I don’t like that,” Canidy said.
“How do you know what it is?” Whittaker asked.
“If it were good news,” Canidy said, “they would have called and said something mysterious that would have let him know. Shit, they’re down. They’ve probably been down for hours.”
The chief of station took the message, read it, and handed it to Colonel Stevens. They exchanged no more than six words, and then Stevens waved Canidy and Whittaker over to them. As they approached, the station chief took the message back from Stevens.
“We can’t wait any longer,” Stevens said. “We have just been authorized to take any risk considered necessary.”
“Such as sending two fighter pilots to Africa in a C-46?” Canidy said.
“The risk, Major Canidy,” the station chief said coldly, “is that you would find yourself being interrogated by the Germans. It has been decided that the mission is worth running that risk.”
“So we go?” Canidy asked.
“Yes, Dick, as soon as you can get in the air,” Stevens said.
“I want to see you alone a moment, Whittaker,” the station chief said.
“I’ll go wake up the engineer and tell him to wind the rubber bands,” Canidy said. “Colonel, where’s the flight plan?”
“The engineer has it,” Stevens said.
Ten minutes later, Canidy called the Croydon tower and reported that NATS Four-oh-two was at the threshold of the active and requested takeoff clearance.
“NATS Four-oh-two, hold your position. I have a C-54 trying to land at this time.”
“Roger, Croydon,” Canidy said. “Four-oh-two holding on the threshold.”
Whittaker got out of his seat. “Don’t go anywhere without me,” he said.
Canidy wondered where the hell he was going, then realized that Whittaker needed to take a leak.
Whittaker came back as an Air Transport Command C-54 roared past and touched down.
“I hope the rubber bands don’t break and we have to come back,” Canidy said. “I’d hate to try to land here in this shit.”
He looked at Whittaker as he spoke.
Whittaker was extending a small snub-nosed Smith & Wesson revolver toward him.
“Put this where you won’t shoot yourself,” he said.
“Where’d you get that?”
“The station chief gave me one, and he gave the engineer one. I just took that one away from the engineer.”
“Why?”
“Because when the station chief gave me mine, he said I was to use it on you in case it looked as if you were going to fall into enemy hands, and I figured he probably told the engineer the same thing.”
Canidy looked at him incredulously.
Whittaker nodded.
“Jesus Christ,” Canidy said.
“Yeah,” Whittaker said.
“NATS Four-oh-two, you are cleared for takeoff. Maintain a heading of two-seven-zero magnetic until you reach seven thousand feet.”
Canidy looked over his shoulder at the engineer.
“Stand by to give me takeoff power,” he said into his microphone. Then he released the brakes, tapped the throttles enough to get him onto the runway, and lined up with the white line down the center.
“Give me full takeoff power,” he said to the microphone, then switched to transmit. “Understand two-seven-zero, seven thousand. Navy ATC Four-oh-two rolling.”
The C-46 began to gather speed very quickly, and he felt the controls come to life. Just as he lifted off, he saw the C-54 that had just landed taxiing toward the terminal area.
The C-54 stopped three minutes later in front of the terminal. Ground crewmen pushed steps to the door. An officer with colonel’s eagles on the epaulets of his trench coat ran through the rain from the terminal and up the stairs. It took the flight attendant longer than he expected to open the door, and he was drenched when he finally stepped inside the aircraft.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “welcome to the European Theater of Operations. We are delighted
to have so many distinguished members of the press with us. We have buses waiting for you, which will take you to the press center, where we will serve breakfast. By the time breakfast is over, we’ll have your luggage sorted out and in your rooms. I must remind you that from this moment you are subject to both censorship and military authority. Now, if there are no questions that won’t wait, gentlemen, I suggest you begin to debark the aircraft.”
The last distinguished gentleman of the press off the aircraft wore a pink skirt beneath her brand-new green tunic with the shiny WAR CORRESPONDENT brass pins. There was an official hat that went with the ensemble, but Ann Chambers thought it made her look ridiculous, and she had already “lost” it.
She carried a canvas suitcase, a typewriter, and a Leica camera that had cost her an arm and a leg in Washington just before she left.
Well, here I am, Ann Chambers thought. Now the question is, where’s Dick Canidy?
2
OVER EXETER, ENGLAND
0715 HOURS
AUGUST 19, 1942
The P-38, with flaps down to dirty it up enough to slow it to the speed of the C-46, appeared so suddenly that Canidy was a little shaken.
They were over the soup, and the early-morning sun made the thick layer of clouds beneath them look like an endless layer of cotton batting.
Canidy reached forward, took the cans from the throttle quadrant, and held one to his ear.
“Good morning, big fat Navy lady,” the cheerful voice of the fighter pilot said.
“Good morning,” Canidy replied.
“There seems to be some doubt that big fat Navy lady could find the ocean by its lonesome,” the fighter pilot said. “We have been sent up to lead you to it.”
Whittaker grabbed his microphone.
“This is Admiral Wellington,” he said. “Not only are you fifteen minutes late to the rendezvous point, but you have an intolerable notion of proper radio procedure. I recommend that you take up a position five hundred yards above and in front of this aircraft, and maintain radio silence until directed otherwise.”
The flaps went up, the P-38 moved ahead, and the fighter pilot came back on the air.
“Tangerine, this is Tangerine Leader. Form on me in a V formation,” he said, considerably less cheerful.
There were six P-38s in Tangerine, and they quickly formed a V five hundred yards above and ahead of the C-46.
Whittaker went back on the radio.
“Tangerine Leader, drop back to the rear of the formation,” he ordered.
Very slowly, the other aircraft in the flight passed the P-38 that had been the point of the V. When the leader was trailing the formation, Whittaker went back on the radio again.
“Tangerine Six,” he ordered, “wiggle your wings.”
The wings of the last P-38 on the right of the V dutifully dipped to the left and then to the right.
“Tangerine Leader,” Whittaker went on, “exercising due caution, move up behind Tangerine Six, until such time as you have your nose up his ass.”
Tangerine Leader’s P-38, which had begun obediently to ease up behind Tangerine Six, now moved to the center of the V, and then back to the point.
“Let that be a lesson to you, Tangerine Leader,” Whittaker said. “Never try to fuck with a couple of old fighter pilots.”
“Score one for the Navy,” Tangerine Leader said, chuckling. “We have enough benzene to stick with you for maybe two hours. We were already up here when they sent us looking for you. Hope that helps.”
“We’re glad to have you,” Canidy said, meaning it. German fighter aircraft from fields in Normandy and Brittany patrolled the Atlantic off the western coast of England.
“What are a couple of old fighter pilots doing flying that thing?”
“One of us stole a car,” Canidy said, “and we are being punished.”
The P-38s left them over the Atlantic when they were about halfway between Brest and Cape Finister on the western coast of Spain. Two and a half hours later, without incident, Canidy put the C-46 down at Lisbon.
3
ARRECIFE FIELD
LANZAROTE, CANARY ISLANDS
1800 HOURS
AUGUST 19, 1942
Fine, Wilson, and Nembly had been taken in the back of one of the trucks to an ancient stone barracks on Lanzarote, and held in a sparsely furnished basement room long enough for Wilson and Nembly to conclude that whatever Fine was up to, it wasn’t going to work. They were going to be interned for God alone knew how long.
There was no breeze in the room and the air was hot and humid. They were fed, three times, on speckled blue porcelain-over-tin plates. The first meal was sausage and peppers, a chunk of bread, and coffee. The second meal was ground meat and peppers, a chunk of bread, and coffee. The third meal was identical to the first.
When the door to their basement room opened again, Wilson cracked, “Gee, I hope they serve peppers for a change.”
But this wasn’t another meal. It was a tall, aristocratic-looking officer in a well-cut uniform, who announced that he was Colonel di Fortini. Di Fortini went to each of them in turn, formally and expansively shook their hands, and told them, in vaguely British-accented English, that he was very happy indeed to have the pleasure of meeting them.
Then he politely asked if he could have a word in private with Stanley S. Fine, took him to a corner of the room, and, whispering confidentially, said that he was sure Fine was aware of the arrangement made between certain mutual friends of theirs.
Fine gave him forty thousand dollars. Colonel di Fortini very politely said he understood the figure agreed upon was fifty thousand dollars. Fine told him he had given the other ten thousand dollars to the officer who had met them on landing. Colonel di Fortini said that whatever Fine had given anyone else was between them, the figure that he had agreed to was fifty thousand dollars.
There was something unreal, almost comical, about the conversation.
All he has to do, Fine thought as he took another ten-thousand-dollar stack of bills from his money belt and handed it to di Fortini, is help himself. I couldn’t do a damned thing if he did.
As Fine stuffed his shirt over the remaining forty thousand dollars in his money belt, di Fortini carefully distributed his five ten-thousand-dollar stacks of currency in his tunic pockets, then shook Fine’s hand again.
Then he gestured dramatically toward the door. Fine told him that it would be necessary to work on the engine, and that he would be most grateful if the colonel could arrange for a ladder to do so.
“Your mechanical irregularity has been detected and corrected,” di Fortini said, “by our very best workmen. It was a loose oil line.”
Fine said that he would like to have a look at the engine anyway, just to be sure there was nothing else wrong.
“That will be unnecessary,” di Fortini said. “You have my personal assurance that there is no longer any sort of mechanical irregularity.”
Fine decided not to press the point. If the leak had not been repaired, that would be evident when they started the engine. To insist on checking would have been an insult to Spanish pride, and they were in no position to insult anything Spanish.
There was a little smoke when Wilson cranked the engine, but that was residual lost oil, and it disappeared before they had taxied back down the runway and turned around to take off.
Wilson was flying. He didn’t say so, but it was clear that he thought the runway much too short. He ran the engines to full takeoff power before releasing the brakes, and they were within a hundred yards of the end of the runway before he could get it in the air.
There was nothing to worry about now, Fine thought, as they passed through 8,000 on their way to their cruising altitude of 9,000 feet, but two “small” problems.
First, there was the very real possibility that the charming Colonel di Fortini had contacted his German friends in Morocco.
Second, they were now going to arrive at Bissau before daybreak. Arrangements had been made
for them to land there at night, and the runway lights would be on to accommodate them. Now they were long behind schedule. Bissau would naturally have assumed that they had gone down in the drink, and there would be no one available to turn on the landing-field lights.
Thankfully, there were no Germans, but there was another problem. As they reached 10,000 feet, Nembly began to complain of cramps. By the time they had climbed to 20,000 feet, his cramps had turned to diarrhea. With a portable oxygen mask clamped to his face, he had gone into the cabin to deal as best he could with the situation on the makeshift toilet.
4
AEROPORT DE BISSAU
PORTUGUESE GUINEA
0225 HOURS
AUGUST 20, 1942
There was a radio direction transmitter at Bissau, a weak one. And when the CAT aircraft reached the area, they spotted a rotating beacon. But aside from a few faint lights—which could have been streetlights or anything—the beacon was the only aviation light. There were no runway lights. And there was no answer when Fine tried to reach the tower on the air-to-ground radio.
There was an hour-thirty fuel aboard. Sunrise was at 0455, twenty-five minutes after they would run out of fuel. There was no alternative airport.
They were flying two-minute circles around the flashing beacon, when all of a sudden approach lights and runway lights flickered, blinked, and then stayed on, and a voice came over the air.
“Aircraft in vicinity Bissau aerodrome, this is Bissau tower.”
The runway was rough, narrow, short, and—when they finally slowed down enough in the landing roll—they saw that it was paved with some sort of shell.
When they went into the cabin, Nembly was sitting on the makeshift toilet, hunched under a blanket. He was obviously quite ill.
“Fucking Spaniards and their fucking peppers,” Nembly said.
One man was both tower operator and airport manager. He was plump and olive-skinned and he wore a loosely woven shirt with square tails outside his trousers.
The Secret Warriors Page 34
