W E B Griffin - Men at War 4 - The Fighting Agents

by The Fighting Agents(Lit)

  Charity was brought into it, again with Franklin Roosevelt's specific permission, for the simple reason that this operation's in-house administration cannot be conducted through our normal channels, as secure as we believe them to be. Pete and I needed, in other words, a clerk-typist and file clerk with not only a Top Secret--Presidential clearance, but on with the intellectual ability to comprehend the implications of the project, and to deal with the people involved.

  It was only, frankly, after I pointed out to the President that none of the other people he proposed, in particular one Navy captain of our mutual acquaintance, to assume responsibility for in-house administration and liaison for this project could type or file, and that adding the Navy captain to the cleared list would leave us no better off than we then were, that he approved adding Charity to the list of those cleared for the project.

  That situation has now changed, as a result of growth in the project. We now have the Havy captain, and he has an administrative staff of two. And as both the project, and your operations, have grown, so has the possibility that you will undertake something that could get in the way, and that it would somehow slip past Ed Stevens's attention.

  We cannot take that risk. My recommended solution to the problem was what I thought to be the obvious one, to add your name to the list. Unfortunately, I made it hours after the President bad become aware that, on his own, one individual on the list had made his deputy privy to some details of the project.

  Roosevelt was enraged... at the time I didn't know why... at my suggestion that we add "every Tom, Dick, and Harry" to the list, and, at my persuasive best, when I told him what I considered to be the risk of something slipping past Ed Stevens in London, all I could get from him was permission to send someone already on the list over there to keep that from happening.

  That boiled down to one of the Havy captain's men, a coinniissioned warrant officer, absolutely trustworthy, but a sailor to the core, or Charity.

  My decision is to send you Charity. On my authority, she has the presumed Need-to-Know anything concerned with any of your projects, to the same degree as Ed Stevens. I have instructed her, should something come to her attention that she feels has missed Ed's, to first bring it to his attention, and then to yours, and finally, if it comes to this, to communicate directly with Pete Douglass or me.

  How you arrange for this is of course up to you, and I

  don't think I have to tell you this project review function of hers is to go no further than you or Ed.

  I am, of course, David, uncomfortable with keeping you in the dark, and can only hope that you will forgo judgment until the time when I can tell you what's been going on; when, I really believe, you will understand why all this has been necessary.

  You may have noticed the strikeovers and other symptoms of amateur typing. This is because neither Miss Broyle, nor even the ever-faithful Chief Ellis, are in on this either, and this has been writ by hand by

  Your old friend,

  David Bruce recognized that, despite Wild Bill Donovan's liberally dispensed soft soap, his reaction to learning that the President of the United States, an old friend, had decided there were some secrets "with which he could not be trusted was mixed hurt and anger.

  And he realized he was hurt and angered by learning that Ed Stevens, of whom he was very fond and whom he considered a true friend, had been involved in a months-long deception.

  And he realized that he was humiliated to learn that while he couldn't be trusted with this great goddamned secret, whatever it was, the longhaired blonde who had crossed the Atlantic with Top Secret--Personal--Eyes Only documents in her girdle enjoyed the confidence of the President. And Donovan Bruce was a man of great will. He forced the anger and humiliation down, succeeding after a long moment in convincing himself that the President must have his reasons, and that it was his duty not to question his judgment.

  Capt. Helene Dancy entered the office with three cups of coffee and coffee accoutrements on a tray.

  "Miss Hoche," David Bruce said, "I presume you are familiar with the Eyes Only that deals with you?"

  "In general terms, Sir," Charity Hoche said.

  "I haven't read it. I've read the other two."

  "I think you should read it," Bruce said, and handed it to her. He heard the sound of his voice, and told himself to be careful. He was still acting emotionally.

  He looked at Helene Dancy and saw in her eyes that she sensed that something extraordinary was going on. He looked again at Charity Hoche as she read Donovan's letter. Twice, her eyebrows went up, apparently in surprise.

  Then she looked at him, and met his eyes.

  "Captain Dancy," Bruce said, "would you ask Colonel Stevens to come in, please?"

  "Yes, Sir," Helene Dancy said.

  "Would you like me to log those Eyes Onlys in?"

  Meaning, of course, Bruce thought, that your curiosity is aroused and that you'll get a quick look at them between here and the safe.

  "You can take these two, Helene," Bruce said, looking at Charity Hoche.

  "I'm not sure about the third."

  "I don't mean to be forward, Sir," Charity Hoche said, "but I think it would be better if Captain Dancy saw that letter."

  Bruce handed it over. He saw that Charity Hoche was watching Helene Dancy's face as carefully as he was for her reaction. And they were both disappointed.

  Her face showed no reaction. She did look at Charity, however, as she folded the letter and stuffed it back into the envelope.

  "May I make a suggestion?" Capt. Dancy asked.

  "Certainly," Bruce said.

  "If you were to tell Lieutenant Jamison that Miss... or Lieutenant, which would probably be better... that Lieutenant Hoche will be devoting half of her time to dealing with female personnel at Whithey House for me, there would be no reason not to go ahead and send her out there as originally planned."

  "Good idea," Bruce said after a moment.

  "We'll just have to get Jamison some other help."

  "I would say that it would take her two or three days to read the files here," Dancy said.

  "In the meantime, she can stay with me."

  "That's very kind," Charity said.

  "Not at all," Captain Dancy said.

  "I'm going to run you by the bar in the Dorchester. Maybe I can latch on to one of your rejects."

  Charity laughed with delight. They smiled at each other.

  Womanly smiles, Bruce thought. Even girlish.

  But there was more to both of them than that. He reminded himself that another of his weaknesses was underestimating the female animal.

  "I'll go fetch Colonel Stevens, Sir," Capt. Dancy said.

  [SIX]

  Pearl Harbor U.S. Naval Base

  Commander Edwin R. Lennox, wearing the trousers and shirt of a tropical worsted uniform--the blouse hung from a protruding bolt on the Drum's conning tower--watched as the last of the fresh food was carried aboard. An hour before, an officer courier had delivered his sailing orders. They were in two sealed envelopes, numbered "I" and" 2."

  The first order, by authority of COMSUBFORPAC, directed Lennox to take the Drum to sea at 0600 16 February 1943. He was to sail to coordinates that would put him two hundred miles south-southwest of Pearl. Upon arrival there, he was directed to open envelope "2." The second envelope would define the area the Drum was to patrol, engaging enemy naval forces and shipping "until such time as the expenditure of torpedoes, fuel and victuals, in your sole judgment, dictates your return to Pearl Harbor."

  As soon as the last of the fresh food was stowed aboard, it was Lennox's intention to go ashore, mail his last letter to his wife, and then go to the officers' club for a steak and as many drinks of Kentucky sour mash bourbon as he could handle and still make it back to the Drum under his own power by midnight.

  A Navy gray Plymouth sedan came onto the wharf and stopped beside the ton-and-a-half rations truck. A white hat jumped out from behind the wheel, opening the rear door and then
standing to attention as a full commander in a crisp white uniform got out and walked to the center of three gangplanks laid from the wharf to the deck of the Drum. The thick golden rope of an aide to a flag officer hung from the shoulder of the crisp white uniform.

  The admiral's aide walked down the gangplank, stopped, and crisply saluted the officer of the deck, who was wearing, shorts, a T-shirt, an incredibly dirty brimmed cap he thought was a lucky piece, and a.45 in a holster slung low on his hip like a gunfighter's.

  "Request permission to come aboard. Sir," the admiral's aide said in the prescribed nautical manner.

  "Permission granted," the officer of the deck said, returning the salute far more casually than it had been rendered. There was in it faint overtones of the scorn felt by submarine officers about to go back on patrol for officers who walked around Pearl Harbor in crisp white uniforms dog-robbing for an admiral.

  The admiral's aide saluted the colors and stepped onto the deck.

  "I wish to see the captain, Sir," the aide said.

  "Ask the commander to come up," Lennox called down. He didn't want to go into the hull. It was hot down there, and he was freshly showered and in a fresh uniform.

  Very carefully, so as not to soil his uniform, the admiral's aide climbed the ladder welded to the side of the conning tower.

  "What can I do for you, Commander?" Lennox asked.

  "I have two documents for you, Captain," the admiral's aide said.

  "Your operational order has been revised. May I suggest we go to your cabin?"

  "Yes, Sir," Lennox said.

  "You want the original back?"

  "Please," the admiral's aide said.

  "Watch yourself," Commander Lennox said as he entered the conning tower.

  "It's pretty greasy in here."

  They made their way to the captain's cabin, which was the size of a small closet. Lennox worked the combination of the safe and exchanged envelope "2" in it for an identical envelope handed him by the admiral's aide.

  "Can I lock it?" Lennox asked.

  "You said "two documents'?"

  "You can lock it," the admiral's aide said, and, when Lennox had closed the safe and twirled the dial, handed him a second envelope.

  Lennox opened it and looked at it incredulously.

  MR. AND MRS. H. FREDERICK DENNISON

  request THE honor OF THE presence OF

  It. Gmvrwider fdurn K. lewwx" US/

  at cocktails AND dinner 5:30/3.m, Fabfwuy, 15, 7943 411 ocean drive, waikiki

  "What the hell is this?" Lennox blurted.

  "Beautiful place," the admiral's aide said.

  "Mr. Dennison owns most of the movie theaters in Hawaii. And some other things, like maybe half of downtown Honolulu."

  "Well, would you please express my regrets to Mr. Dennison?" Lennox said.

  "I have other plans."

  "The Admiral thought you might," the admiral's aide said.

  "That's why he sent me to deliver the invitation. It is the Admiral's desire, Commander, that you accept Mr. Dennison's invitation."

  "I'm sailing at 0600," Lennox said.

  "The Admiral is aware of that, Commander," the aide said.

  "He's going to be there?" Lennox asked.

  "Oh, yes," the admiral's aide said.

  "The Dennisons really know how to throw a party. Ever been to a luau, Commander? I mean a real one?"

  "Oh, what the hell!" Lennox said.

  "But why me?"

  "The Dennisons like to do what they can for the fleet," the admiral's aide said.

  "I don't suppose you've got whites, do you?"

  "No, I don't," Lennox said.

  "Pity," the admiral's aide said.

  "You about ready to go?"

  VIII

  lONE]

  "Rolling Waves" Waihihi Beach, Oahu, Territory of Hawaii

  It was a forty-nive-minute drive from Pearl Harbor to the Dennison estate on the beach at Waikiki. The party was well under way by the time Lennox got there. The red-brick curved driveway before the long, low house was packed with cars, more than half of them military and naval staff cars. Lennox saw that many of the service cars had what looked like a second license plate covered with a canvas sleeve. He knew what they concealed: the starred plates identiiying the passengers as admirals and generals.

  Lennox realized that not only was he going to be out of place in his tropical worsted uniform but outranked by a platoon of brass hats and their entourages.

  This was no place for a simple submarine sailor to be.

  And when they were inside, and a houseboy had led them to a two bartender bar set up by a large swimming pool, he saw two movie stars. Floating around in the pool with sort of inner tubes under their arms and drinks in their hands were Lana Turner and one of those too-handsome, too-perfect actors.

  It took him a minute to place the guy as Greg Hammer.

  How does a large, splendid physical specimen like that avoid his draft board?

  He realized there must be two hundred people in the Dennison mansion. One in five was female. For woman-scarce Hawaii, that was an unusual percentage of females. Some of them were wives, but many were unattached.

  Why am I surprised" Where did I expect the pretty girls to be, in downtown Honolulu trying to pick up sailors?

  He saw COMSUBFORPAC, which wasn't surprising, and CINCPAC, which was. He wondered why the hell COMSUBFORPAC had wanted him at the party. Probably, he thought somewhat bitterly, to give the condemned man a last hearty meal.

  COMSUBFORPAC saw him, nodded, and gave him a quick smile, but made it clear by quickly looking away that Lennox was not expected to pay his respects to him in person at that time.

  And then the Admiral's aide disappeared, and Lennox was left alone. He finished his first drink, had the bartender make him another, and then wandered around until he came to the buffet.

  What he would do, he decided, was eat. They weren't serving the steak he had been looking forward to, but it was beyond reasonable argument a hearty, luxurious meal. There were roast pigs, "steamboat" restaurant rounds of roast beef, fish, and chicken. He tried to remember where he had seen a more luxuriant display of food, but nothing came to him.

  He carried his tray outside the building and sat on a low brick wall beyond which was the white sand beach and the ocean. The food turned out to taste as good as it appeared, and he ate everything he had heaped on his plate.

  Lennox had just lit a cigar when the Admiral's aide came for him.

  "I wondered what had happened to you," the aide said.

  "I was about to come looking for you, Commander," Lennox said.

  "I've got to think about getting back to Pearl."

  "We'll get you back to the Drum," the aide said.

  "But right now, will you come with me, please?"

  "Where are we going?"

  The aide did not reply. Lennox followed him around the pool, then through a long, high-ceilinged living room, and then down a corridor. The aide stopped before a door and knocked.

  "Come!" a male voice said.

  It was a den, a private office.

  Inside were CINCPAC, COMSUBFORPAC, CINCPAC's aide, a very good-looking young woman, an Air Corps captain, and movie star Greg Hammer in the uniform of a first lieutenant of the Army's Signal Corps.

  Lennox was a little embarrassed about what he had imagined when he saw Hammer floating around in the pool. He was clearly not a draft dodger. But not too embarrassed. He'd heard about Hollywood movie stars going into the services.

  There was a Marine aviation squadron with Macdonald Carey and Tyrone Power in it, conveniently stationed in Diego, where they had rented a hotel so they wouldn't be forced to put up with the discomfits of a BOQ. dark Gable had been commissioned a lieutenant in the Air Corps. Ronald Reagan was making training films in Hollywood as a first lieutenant. It was therefore not surprising to find Greg Hammer in an officer's uniform.

  "Miss Chenowith," CINCPAC said, "may I present Commander Len
nox, captain of the Drum?"

  Cynthia Chenowith gave him her hand and said she was glad to meet him.

  Her hand was the first female hand Lennox had touched in a year, and it was warm and soft, and he unkindly wondered who was privileged to jump Miss Chenowith.