The tall man went to the steel door of the pilothouse, opened it, and went through it.
Canidy began to follow, but the man turned and pointed to the bow of the boat.
“You mind tending to lines?”
Canidy looked forward. “Sure,” he said.
“Come back when we’re under way.”
Under way? Where the hell are we going?
Is this godforsaken rust bucket really seaworthy?
Canidy shrugged and went back out the door, then to the bow.
He heard the sound of a motor struggling to start, then a rumble of exhaust, and he felt a vibration in his feet as a big diesel engine came to life. A moment later, there was another slow rumble, and the vibration from the deck was more pronounced.
The guy on the dock holding the bowline coiled it, shouted, “Line!” then tossed it aboard.
Canidy caught it, then recoiled it and secured it to a cleat.
The guy, after having pushed the gangplank aboard, was now at a cleat midway on the dock, untying the line there.
Canidy went toward him, stepping over the gangplank. As he got closer, the guy shouted, “Line!” and threw it.
This time, Canidy missed the rope.
It landed on the wet deck. He picked it up, and as he began to coil it he realized that this rope was markedly different from the first.
It had a cold slime on it, and it smelled of fish.
Shit! It’s the same slop that leaked from the crates!
His hands began to ache from the cold and wet.
He saw that the guy on the deck was now at the dock cleat at the back of the boat and very shortly would be throwing the line aboard. If Canidy didn’t get there first, that line was going to get slimed, too.
He quickly coiled the line in his hand, in the process slinging slop onto his pants.
Well, that’s what Lanza meant by dirty and wet….
He secured the line, then rushed toward the stern. He hit a slippery spot, started to slide, and, for one terrifying moment, thought that he would skid off of the deck and into the damned river.
He regained his traction, and, in a somewhat comic fashion, fast-walked the rest of the way.
“Line!”
Canidy got to the stern just as the rope came sailing aboard.
He secured it, then looked back and watched as the guy on the dock jumped aboard at the stern, miraculously landing solidly on the fish-slimed deck.
If I’d done that, I’d have slid all the way to New Jersey.
The guy tipped his hat to say thanks for the help, and Canidy turned for the front of the boat.
As he walked to the pilothouse, he could see the tall man inside, lit by small spots of light from the instrument panel, motioning for him to come in.
He went to the steel door and entered.
It was bare-bones inside the pilothouse—a ragged captain’s chair on a pedestal, two old wooden folding chairs against the far wall, two wooden bunks bolted one above the other on the back wall, and nothing more. A pair of Ithaca Model 37 12-gauge pump shotguns with battered stocks stood on their butts in a makeshift rack to the left of the helm.
Canidy noticed that it felt slightly warmer inside but figured that was mostly because there was no wind. The smell of fish still was strong.
The tall man was alone, standing at the helm, facing forward and scanning the river beyond the bank of windows.
“Thanks for the hand with the lines,” he said, looking at Canidy in the reflection of the window.
“No problem,” Canidy said, rubbing his hands.
“There’s a wipe rag by the door, if you want.”
Canidy looked and found a crusty, brown-stained towel hanging on a small peg.
Better than nothing, I suppose.
He got the slime off his cold hands as best he could, put the towel back, then walked toward the helm.
The tall man kept his eyes on the river, navigating the Annie past a Liberty ship that was moving toward the Brooklyn Terminal docks.
He extended his right hand to Canidy.
“Francesco Nola,” he said.
Canidy took it. The grip was firm, the hand rough. “Richard Canidy, Captain.”
“Call me Frank.”
“I’m Dick.” He looked out the window. “Mind if I ask where we’re headed?”
Canidy saw Nola grin slightly.
The captain said, “I was told you’re looking for information.” He paused. “I thought you might want to go along as we refuel a U-boat.”
Canidy stared at Nola’s face in the reflection, trying to determine if he was serious.
After a moment, Canidy said evenly, “If that’s a joke, it’s not funny.”
They were out of the East River now, entering Upper New York Bay.
Nola used the open palm of his right hand to gently bump the twin throttle controls forward. There was a slight hesitation, as if the engines had become flooded with fuel, then the rumble grew a little louder and the bow came up as the boat gained speed.
“No, it’s not funny at all,” Nola finally responded.
Canidy saw in the reflection that the captain’s face had tensed.
Nola added, “It certainly wasn’t when I was accused of it.”
He was refueling U-boats? Jesus H. Christ! I should shoot him myself!
“Do I understand you to say—”
“Your government boys impounded my boat out at Montauk last year, about six months after I bought it.”
“‘My boys’? What boys?”
“Your government bureau of investigating.”
“The FBI?”
“Yes. They said that I was using the Annie to run fuel to the German submarines.”
“You’re here now, so I assume you weren’t?”
“No,” he said coldly. “I was not.”
Canidy smelled something different in the air, then realized that it was a warm draft coming from a floor vent. The engines had warmed and were producing heat for the pilothouse. A fishy-smelling heat.
“But they still impounded your boat?”
“Yes. I found out—much later—it was because I had had the boat in the docks at Massapequa, being worked on. When my Annie had been the Irish Lass, belonging to someone else during Prohibition, she was a rumrunner. And when these workers, the ship—what is the word?”
“Shipwrights?”
“—these shipwrights went deep into the holds, they discovered bulkheads that were not right. They removed them and found the large compartments. One had fourteen cases of vodka still in it. I was shocked. But, so what? It is legal to have liquor now. Yes?”
“Yeah.”
“But word got back to Montauk that the Annie had been a rumrunner, and that it had these special bulkheads. Then the story became that the owner of the Annie—who looked Italian and spoke the language like a native—had sympathies to Mussolini and the Germans and instead of running rum behind those bulkheads he was running diesel fuel in bladders to the U-boats. And as everything about the story was true except the part about Fascist sympathies and fuel running, it all became the truth. People believe what they want to believe, yes? And the government took my boat.”
Canidy looked off to starboard and could see in the distance the lights of the military terminal on the western shore of the bay, at Bayonne, New Jersey. Liberty ships were being loaded there, with more in the bay waiting their turn, just as at the Brooklyn Terminal.
“I do not blame them; it’s their job,” Nola went on and gestured toward the ships at Bayonne. “These U-boats are causing great damage to our efforts to win the war.”
He stopped and chuckled to himself.
“Listen to me. ‘Our’ efforts. I am doing nothing. I am not a U.S. citizen. I am only a Sicilian fisherman. And not even that now.”
He turned and looked at Canidy.
“If I could,” he added, his voice rising, “I would blow those bastards and their U-boats out of the water myself!”
Can
idy saw that there was a burning intensity in Nola’s eyes.
Is he trying to convince me of something with this little speech?
“I will tell you something,” the captain continued, his face softening somewhat. “I did not want to leave Sicily. I had to, because of that bastard Mussolini.” He paused. “It is not safe for me there. Mussolini’s men do unspeakable things. And they accused some of my uncles and cousins of being mafia and took them to the prisons on the small islands. It was only time before they accused me of the same.”
Canidy saw that Nola had tensed, his hands gripping the helm tighter.
“And I had to leave for my Annie.”
The boat…?
“You see, my wife is Jewish. I would not stay. We could not.”
Is he going to cry?
He is crying.
Nola cleared his throat. “Please excuse me. This all means so much to me. I’m not a U.S. citizen. But I want to fight those bastards. For my wife, for my uncles and cousins, for my country.”
Canidy didn’t say anything. When it was clear that the captain had finished, at least for the moment, he said, “You were talking about the Annie. How did you get your boat back?”
The captain was looking forward again, hands a little relaxed on the wheel.
“The Navy,” he said.
“The Navy got it back?”
Nola nodded. “Without my boat, I was out of work. Mr. Lanza asked me why I had stopped selling my catch at the fish market. I told him my story. He said he’d look into it. A week later, I got a call—‘Come get your boat.’ Mr. Lanza said he had the Navy get it back.”
He had Murray Gurfein get it back for you. But no need to split hairs.
Nola added, “Now, Mr. Lanza tells me that you need information for the war.” He looked in the reflection at Canidy. “I am at your service. My family of fishermen is at your service.”
What the hell am I going to do with fishermen?
Unless…they have a boat.
Canidy said, “Does your family have a boat?”
“Nothing like the Annie, of course.”
Great! Maybe it’s actually seaworthy.
“I understand. But a boat that could get men around the islands unnoticed?”
“Yes. Two.”
“Two boats?”
Nola nodded. “Two—what is the word?—fleets.”
[ TWO ]
Office of the President’s Physician
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C.
1815 6 March 1943
“That will be all for now, Charles,” the President of the United States of America said, wheeling himself through the side door into the nicely appointed office.
The valet—Charles Maples, a distinguished-looking older black man with gray hair, wearing a stiff white shirt and jacket, black slacks, and impeccably shined black leather shoes—had just put a large wooden tray holding a pitcher of ice, a selection of liquors in crystal decanters, three crystal glasses, a carafe of coffee, and three china mugs on the doctor’s spotless oak desk.
Seated in deep comfortable armchairs across the room were William J. Donovan, director of the Office of Strategic Services; and J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Both wore dark suits and ties. They stood up.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” the President said.
“Good evening, sir,” they replied almost in unison.
The valet said, “Please, let me know if I can be of further service.”
“See that we’re not disturbed,” Roosevelt replied.
“Yes, Mr. President.”
The valet went out the main door and it quietly clicked closed behind him.
Roosevelt—without a suit coat but in pants, white dress shirt, and a striped bow tie, and with a cigarette holder clenched in his teeth—rolled his wheelchair over to where Donovan and Hoover stood.
“Please, sit,” he said.
The FBI and OSS heads shared a New Year’s Day birthday, a fervent sense of patriotism, and, to varying degrees, the ear of the President—but that was it.
There was not any sort of animosity between them—in fact, they thought well of one another—but there was certainly a difference in both how they perceived their missions and how they carried them out.
The FBI head saw things in black and white, while the OSS chief acknowledged the many shades of gray.
Hoover, forty-eight years old, had been head of the bureau for just shy of nineteen years. He devoutly believed that the law was the law—period—and ran the FBI with an iron fist.
There was no questioning his competence and his success. The FBI under his leadership had become an extremely efficient law enforcement agency.
The most efficient one, the brash Hoover would be first to say. And he unapologetically corrected anyone who thought otherwise.
The FBI director had the habit of seeking out the limelight in the interest of making himself—which was to say the bureau, since Hoover was the FBI—look better.
In the 1930s, he had made a name for himself and the bureau by going after the mob—“the despicable thugs who threaten our law and order and, in turn, our very civilization,” he declared.
He assigned special agents to spend whatever was necessary—months, years, and who knew how much money—to hunt down such vicious gangsters as “Pretty Boy” Floyd and “Machine Gun” Kelly.
When the agents found a mobster, Hoover swooped in on the night of the bust, and was there, front and center, when the press’s camera bulbs popped.
It actually was brilliant PR—at which Hoover proved to be a very clever player—because the better his FBI looked in the eyes of the public, the more it helped to get money and other considerations from his connections on Capitol Hill and Roosevelt’s inner circle at the White House.
And Hoover had his ways to get what he wanted.
Among other things, he kept secret dossiers on anyone he thought to be (a) suspicious and possibly dangerous—subversive or worse—to the United States, and (b) possibly dangerous—now or in the future—to Hoover and the FBI.
The head of the FBI enjoyed his high profile and power and let nothing threaten it. If he had to go public with information—for the good of the country of course—he did so.
And if just the threat of going public served the same purpose, so much the better.
Conversely, as fast as Hoover ran to the klieg lights—in the process making grandstanding an indelible hallmark of the FBI—Donovan went to the safety of the shadows.
Donovan, twelve years Hoover’s senior, had long worked quietly—and extremely effectively—behind the scenes for Roosevelt.
After Donovan had returned from the First World War a hero and then run a successful Wall Street law firm, Roosevelt, who was serving as assistant secretary of the Navy, secretly attached him to the Office of Naval Intelligence. Thus began Donovan’s long and secret service of quietly gathering intel at Roosevelt’s request.
As this was happening, it came time to clean up what had become a corrupt Bureau of Information—what in 1935 would become the Federal Bureau of Investigation—and heading the list of candidates was one William Joseph Donovan.
But Donovan, still the soldier spy in the shadows and wanting to stay there, quietly campaigned for a young Justice Department lawyer named John Edgar Hoover to get the job.
Donovan’s behind-the-scenes hand in Hoover landing the position was not lost on Hoover. He was grateful, and came to consider him a friend and mentor.
Which only served to make matters worse when Hoover got word that the President was considering a new secret organization. This agency would be above all others, collecting intelligence worldwide, as well as conducting counterintelligence operations and more. And Wild Bill Donovan—whom Roosevelt had asked to draft its plans—was to head it up.
Hoover knew he had to put out this potential inferno—a real threat to the power of his FBI—fast.
Using every bit of his finely honed political skills, he tried to impress upon the President that what this new organization did was indeed exactly what the FBI already did, simply on a larger scale, and that any such organization should be—must be, to optimize its efficiency—under the purview of Hoover.
Roosevelt, graciously and with masterful maneuvering, let the FBI director know that he valued his counsel and insight, but said that he had made up his mind. As a bone, he threw Hoover the oversight of all of North, South, and Central America.
Thus, in 1941, William J. Donovan, a civilian, was made Roosevelt’s coordinator of information, at a pay rate of one dollar per annum. And in 1942, when COI evolved into the Office of Strategic Services, he was recalled to active duty as Colonel Donovan and made its director.
Donovan noticed that Roosevelt looked more tired than usual.
Behind the frameless round spectacles clipped to the bridge of the President’s nose, there were dark sacs under his eyes. His thinning hair showed more gray working its way up from his temples. And he seemed somewhat slumped in his chair.
Not surprising, Donovan thought, not with war being waged on damned near every continent. And he’d never admit a weakness, but that polio is sapping his strength.
It was then that Donovan answered two unasked questions in his mind—where Roosevelt had just come from, and why they were meeting in the physician’s office.
The President clearly had been in his secret War Room, which was here on the ground floor of the White House, between the Diplomatic Reception Room and his physician’s office. He spent more time in there than he would ever acknowledge, though records of who came and went—and when—were, of course, meticulously kept.
That answered question one.
Donovan was one of very few who knew of the War Room’s existence. Aside from the three shifts of officers from the Army and Navy who staffed it round the clock, the only ones who knew about it were presidential advisor Harry Hopkins, Admiral William Leahy, General George Marshall, and British prime minister Winston Churchill.
It had been Churchill’s visit in December 1941 that caused it to be built. The prime minister had brought a portable version of his own War Room that he had in underground London. The traveling model was complete with reduced maps that pinpointed key information on the war.
The Saboteurs Page 19
