The Saboteurs

by W. E. B Griffin

  Dick Canidy stood on the sidewalk in front of a huge stone lion that overlooked Fifth Avenue and held out his right arm, trying to flag down a taxicab. All the ones headed south zipped past him, and it was not until the Forty-second Street traffic light cycled to red that a cabbie heading north did a U-turn and pulled up in front of the library and Canidy.

  This is all going too well, he thought as he opened the cab’s back door and got in. The other shoe is bound to drop at any moment.

  “Gramercy Park Hotel,” he told the cabbie and put his heavy leather attaché case on the floor as the cab shot south toward Twenty-first Street.

  What had been going well was his luck with finding research material on Sicily.

  After getting off the phone with Eric Fulmar, he had moved on to taking care of the morning’s three s’s, and in the course of covering the latter two at once—shaving in the shower—he came up with the idea of seeing what the New York Public Library had on the shelf.

  And had was the key word, as Canidy’s bag now held what little the NYPL had held on Sicily deep in its dusty stacks.

  He hadn’t been greedy per se—where there were duplicates of a title, he took only one—but his cache contained a dozen books, including the expected Michelin Guide, and—a genuine surprise—eighteenth-century British Admiralty charts (“Produced by the Royal Hydrographic Office”) that showed the coastlines of Sicily and Italy and all of their islands, the details of their ports, as well as detailed information on such curious things as caves and the erosion of coastal areas.

  It had taken Canidy more effort to fit all of his find into his bag than it had to sneak the loot out of the library. He had not gone out past the front desk but through the janitor’s door that was ajar at the back of the building and had slipped into the stream of pedestrians coming out of Bryant Park.

  Next thing he knew, he had been in front of the lion and then in the backseat of the cab that had stopped just for him.

  Yeah. Something is going to go to hell at any moment…. The cab arrived at the Gramercy ten minutes later and Canidy paid the fare. He went in the hotel and took the elevator to the sixth floor.

  In his room, he turned on the radio and tuned in to the National Broadcasting Corporation’s Blue Network, which was playing jazz. He opened his attaché case and, feeling somewhat like a mischievous underclassman in the lower school at St. Paul’s in Cedar Rapids, brought out his “borrowed” library research and began laying it out.

  He unfolded two of the British Admiralty charts on the couch and made a small stack of the books on the coffee table, putting them next to where he had left a pair of socks and the duck call that he’d bought at Leonwood’s.

  After studying the charts for a few minutes, he thought he would have a better understanding of the islands if he had Francesco Nola take him on a tour, so to speak, explaining what was what and who was where.

  He then picked up the Michelin Guide and went to settle into the armchair. But first, he decided, he’d call room service and ask if the kitchen could put together for delivery one of those nice sliced-steak-on-a-hard-crusted-baguette sandwiches that he had had the night before at the bar and a pot of coffee.

  The person answering the room service phone said that a server would have it up to room 601 within the half hour, twelve-thirty at the latest.

  Canidy hung up the phone, wondering, Okay, wasthat an undercover Navy guy or was it a member of the mob’s union? And whichever one it was, how soon before my lunch order is passed up the intel line?

  Three hours later, as Canidy picked up the fat slice of garlic pickle from the plate on the room service cart that had held his sandwich, there came a knock at the door. He took a bite of the pickle, tossed the remainder of it on the plate, then went to the door.

  “Yeah?” he said, standing beside it.

  “It’s me,” Fulmar’s voice answered.

  Canidy smiled and quickly unlocked, then opened, the door.

  Fulmar, blond and lithe, stood there in a nicely cut dark gray J. Press two-piece suit, a white button-down-collar shirt, and a blue-and-silver rep tie. He held a brown suitcase in his right hand and a brown leather briefcase in his left.

  “Come in!” Canidy said.

  Fulmar came in and put down his bags and they embraced warmly.

  Canidy took a step back and looked him over.

  “Why do I suddenly feel like there’s going to be a meeting with the headmaster and adults?”

  Fulmar grinned.

  “I don’t know. We’d have to have done something significant to require one these days. The government pays us to do things we used to get in trouble for.”

  Canidy smiled as he grabbed the suitcase. He carried it to the far corner of the room.

  “The couch folds out into a bed,” he said. “Have you had lunch?”

  Fulmar shook his head. “Looks like you have.”

  “How about a steak sandwich? The ones they make here are first-class.” He gestured toward the plate on the room service cart. “That was my second one.”

  “Today?”

  “No, I had the first one in the bar last night.”

  “Yeah, that’d be great. Thanks.”

  Canidy nodded and went to the phone and dialed room service.

  “Hello? That sandwich you sent up to six-oh-one?—

  “Yes, it was fine—

  “No, really. I’d like another sent up, please. Yes. What?”

  Canidy looked at Fulmar, pointed at the coffee cup and raised an eyebrow.

  Fulmar nodded.

  “Yes,” Canidy said into the receiver, “and another pot of coffee. Thank you.”

  As he put the receiver back in its cradle, he saw that Fulmar was looking over a British Admiralty chart and the library books.

  “Those,” Canidy said with a smile, “are part of what brought back feelings of our dear ol’ boarding school days.”

  Fulmar picked up the duck call and held it up to Canidy, who shrugged sheepishly.

  “It was on sale….”

  Fulmar put it to his lips and blew. The reed vibrated a miserable quaaack sound.

  “Sounds like that duck deserves to be shot,” Canidy said, “put out of its misery.”

  Fulmar chuckled, then put the duck call back on the coffee table and picked up one of the dusty books and opened it.

  He saw that inside the front cover there was glued a tan-colored pouch. It held a stiff card five inches tall and three wide with NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY printed at the top and typewritten just below that the book’s title—“Of Wine and Roses: A Lover’s Tour of Sicily”—and then the author—“Sir Barry Brown”—and then a list of a dozen or so borrowers’ names with chronological due dates that had been made by an adjustable rubber stamp, the most recent entry being MAR 04 38. And in long-faded red ink, stamped at least three times on the first four pages and the inside back cover: PROPERTY OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY SYSTEM.

  He picked up the next book in the stack, opened the front cover, and saw that it also had a similar card still in its tan pouch.

  “Lose your library card, did you?”

  Canidy shrugged.

  “Like at St. Paul’s, I intend on returning them.” He paused. “Eventually, anyway.”

  “Well, now I don’t have to guess where you’re going.”

  Canidy raised his eyebrows. “And now I can honestly say that I didn’t tell you.”

  “Sicily? What the hell, Dick?”

  “Boss’s orders.”

  Fulmar sighed. “Yeah, I’ve got mine, too.”

  They looked at each other a long moment.

  Fulmar broke the silence.

  “So, you said you needed some help?”

  “I wanted to ask Donovan to let you work with me.”

  “I would—and maybe can—but not until I get a handle on these Abwehr bombings…or the FBI does.”

  “These bombings in the States?”

  Fulmar nodded.

  “Jesus. That must
make Hoover happy.”

  Fulmar shrugged.

  “All I know,” he said, “is that Roosevelt told Donovan to take care of it quote quickly and quietly unquote. And here I am.”

  “You said you had a lead to follow?”

  “In the files the FBI gave me—the ones that Donovan and Douglass told me quote not to take at face value unquote because they were nothing more than what Hoover wanted the OSS to have—”

  “No surprise, with you encroaching on Hoover’s territory.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, in there was information suggesting Fritz Kuhn and his American Nazi Party may be connected with the agents. The FBI gave them a once-over, came up with nothing. But I’m going to shake that tree, too, and see what falls out. Midnight tonight I have a date—more like a meeting—over on the Upper East Side. Remember Ingrid Müller?”

  Canidy’s face brightened considerably.

  “Who the hell could forget her?” he said, grinning.

  Ingrid Müller—tall, tanned, and white blonde—had been a sixteen-year-old sex kitten when she appeared in Monkeying Around, a 1933 comedy that starred Fulmar’s mother, Monica Carlisle. Every red-blooded American male—and certainly the boys of St. Paul’s Episcopal Preparatory School, Cedar Rapids, Iowa—went ape-shit over Ingrid. Fulmar and Canidy had tried every way they thought possible to get her to visit Iowa, including sending letter after letter to Fulmar’s mother that contained everything from promises that sensible people would see as impossible to keep to outright begging.

  Months passed without a single response—not at all unusual behavior for the “childless” Monica Carlisle—and the boys had given up.

  Then the star’s legal counsel—a young Hollywood hotshot in his twenties by the name of Stanley S. Fine, Esquire—showed up.

  Fulmar and Canidy were convinced that Fulmar’s mother had again sent him to put out yet another fire (if nothing else, to make them cease and desist from writing annoying letters to her) when they noticed a familiar female in his company.

  It was indeed the teen starlet Miss Müller. She had been scouting locations for background on her next movie—one set at a boarding school for boys—and she said that Mr. Fine, Esq., had suggested St. Paul’s (“simply as an idea, something to use as a reference without having to fly all the way to the East Coast”), and, as student escorts, he thought that one Dick Canidy, son of the headmaster, and one Eric Fulmar would serve her well.

  Fine ensured, despite the best attempts of Canidy and Fulmar during her two-day visit, that neither had an opportunity to get in any trouble with Miss Ingrid Müller.

  Thus, the short-term result had been that the boys were instant heroes among their classmates. And, long term, Fulmar had found himself exchanging an occasional letter with her—his being far more frequent than hers.

  “I vowed never to forget her,” Fulmar said.

  “I remember. I also remember that you vowed to bag her. So you’re batting .500.”

  “Maybe my luck changes tonight. She will be very pleased to know that I am seriously considering joining the American Nazi Party—”

  “Of which I presume she is a member?”

  Fulmar nodded.

  “That’s what she tells me in her letters.” He paused. “And she’ll be pleased I am considering joining her and the party because I believe, as a Good German, that we must win this war in any way possible. Oh, and how could I go about contributing to these German agents that the newspapers say are bombing the States?”

  Canidy smiled.

  “Subtle. Is this before or after you try to get in her pants?”

  “Before. No, after…Hell, whatever it takes.”

  “You wouldn’t consider trading missions, would you?”

  Fulmar raised an eyebrow in question. “Certainly not with what I know so far about yours.”

  “It’s pretty straightforward. You’ve done it before. There’s another scientist to pull out before the Germans get him.”

  “That’s it?”

  “And something bigger that, according to Donovan, I’ll find when I get there. I’m going to need help with that and running the underground.”

  “I think I’ll stick with trying to bag Ingrid and shoot saboteurs.”

  He looked at the charts.

  “But that explains your looting of the library.”

  Canidy nodded.

  “Oh, it gets better. I’m now officially involved with the King of the Looters.”

  Fulmar looked at him, and shook his head.

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Charlie Lucky,” Canidy offered.

  Fulmar shook his head again.

  “Murder, Inc., ring a bell?” Canidy asked.

  Fulmar’s eyes widened at the realization.

  “No shit?” Fulmar said. “The mob?”

  “No shit. The connection goes back to when Murray Gurfein…”

  “…So Luciano,” Fulmar said finally, “is serving time, but, as boss of all bosses, is running the rackets from prison?”

  “Exactly. And has pretty much made good on every request we—the U.S.—has made of him.”

  “Amazing. But, then again, there’s no end to what people will do for the promise of freedom.” He paused. “It’s what this damned war is all about, no?”

  Canidy nodded. “True. For some. Can’t forget, though, that for others it is an opportunistic time…”

  The phone rang and Canidy reached for the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  Fulmar went back to the charts and studied them.

  “Frank,” Canidy said, “how are you?

  “Tonight is fine—

  “Okay, got it. Six o’clock at Sammy’s, at the fish market. I’ll be bringing my partner, okay?”

  He looked at Fulmar, who nodded his agreement.

  Canidy said into the phone, “Okay, then. Thanks, Frank.”

  As he hung up the receiver, there was a knock at the door.

  “That must be your lunch,” he said, and saw that Fulmar had the duck call back in his hand.

  Fulmar grinned and blew a soft quaaack…quaaaaaack.

  Canidy reached the door and raised an eyebrow that asked, What?

  Fulmar shrugged.

  “You’re dealing with Murder, Inc.,” he said solemnly. “Just wondering when the dust settles who’s going to be the real dead ducks….”

  [ FOUR ]

  Fulton Fish Market

  New York City, New York

  1750 7 March 1943

  The cab carrying Dick Canidy and Eric Fulmar, both now in casual clothes, turned south off of Beekman Street and slowly rolled up in front of the market. The long, two-story white building of concrete and brick had a series of street-level doorways that served as the entrance to the individual fish resellers. Signs were affixed above the wide doorways, each advertising the business therein: FAIR FISH CO. INC., S&R SEAFOOD, MANHATTAN FISH CO., and more than a dozen others.

  Heavily clothed workers were moving about busily, carrying boxes and pushing two-wheel dollies. Trucks, both local delivery and over-the-road tractor trailers, were being steadily loaded.

  “There it is,” Canidy said, pointing to a doorway five businesses down. The sign above it read: SAMMY’S WHOLESALE SEAFOOD CO.

  A forklift carrying a pallet with a four-foot-tall wooden bin piled high with iced-down fish was moving quickly into Sammy’s. The cab dodged it and pulled up outside the doorway, its brakes squealing to a stop.

  Canidy paid the fare, and they got out and started toward the doorway. Canidy carried his attaché case with the Sicily books and charts.

  Fulmar sniffed and made a face. “Rather rank, huh?”

  Canidy inhaled deeply—but didn’t gag, which surprised Fulmar.

  “This?” Canidy said. “This is nothing. You should go around back, where the boats come in. It’s really raw there.”

  They walked through the large doorway and stepped around the back of the forklift that now was putting down its load beside a wo
oden table thirty feet long and topped with a sheet of dented, bloodstained galvanized tin.

  Behind the table stood four men with long, thin-bladed filet knives. They began to methodically pull fish from the just-delivered box, and, with surgical skill—remarkable both for their spare efficient motions and for their ability to completely remove all useful flesh—began to separate tissue from bone.

  The large filets were then slid down the tin tabletop, where another worker put them in a twenty-gallon scoop that hung by chain below an enormous scale suspended from a steel ceiling beam.

  When the scale’s long black needle rotated on the dial face to the number 20, the worker then packed the fish filets with shaved ice into smaller boxes, these made of heavy waxed cardboard and imprinted with: PERISHABLE FRESH SEAFOOD—20 LBS.—SAMMY’S WHOLESALE SEAFOOD CO. NYC.

  The full boxes were then stacked on a new pallet, which, when full, the forklift would carry out to one of the delivery trucks.

  All around the open-air facility, workers moved fish in various states of processing—from full carcasses to just head and bones—by spiking them with handheld two-foot-long gaffs (cold steel hooks on short shafts). Occasionally, a couple of workers would wheel around dollies carrying forty-gallon galvanized tubs of squid and octopus.

  The forklift driver—a fat, squat, rough-looking Italian with coal black eyes set deep in a weathered face—put the lift in reverse, inched it backward, and, when the forks were clear of the pallet of fish, raced the engine and manipulated a lever that very noisily brought the forks a foot off the ground. Then he very quickly backed the lift outside, where he switched off the engine and jumped free as it slowed and then came to a stop all by itself.

  He walked back inside the large doors and looked at Canidy and Fulmar.

  “Help you guys?” he asked agreeably.

  “Looking for Frank Nola,” Canidy said.

  The coal black eyes studied Canidy a moment.

  “The name’s Canidy,” he added. “Nola knows we’re coming.”

  “Upstairs.”

  Canidy followed the squat Italian’s eyes upward. There he saw a bare steel framework of beams supported by steel poles, painted red and rising from the concrete first floor. Above the framework was a wooden tongue-and-groove floor.