The Last Heroes Page 14

  ‘‘He told you he wanted to see you,’’ he said, grabbing Canidy’s arm.

  ‘‘He knows where to find me,’’ Canidy replied, and, seeing the deep concern on Bitter’s face, he added: ‘‘I have something in the cabin I think he wants.’’

  ‘‘I don’t understand you at all,’’ Bitter said.

  ‘‘I know you don’t,’’ Canidy replied, smiling at him.

  Perry Crookshanks, white-faced and tight-lipped, showed up at the louvered door of their cabin five minutes later.

  ‘‘Perhaps you misunderstood me, Mr. Canidy,’’ Perry Crookshanks said. ‘‘I asked you to remain behind in the dining salon.’’

  ‘‘I understood you,’’ Canidy said. ‘‘But I want to clear up a small misunderstanding between us, too.’’

  ‘‘What’s that?’’

  ‘‘You’re no longer a commander in the Navy, and, more important, I’m no longer a junior grade lieutenant. I work for you, maybe, but I’m not commanded by you. There’s a big difference.’’

  ‘‘You were briefed as to what is expected of you.’’

  ‘‘I signed on to fly. That’s all. In the air, I’ll take military-type orders. On the ground, I won’t. That better be very clear between us.’’

  ‘‘You’ll take orders, or you’ll be sent home,’’ Crookshanks said.

  ‘‘In irons? Come on, Crookshanks.’’ Canidy said. ‘‘Get it through your head that neither of us is in the Navy anymore. ’’

  ‘‘I can’t tolerate—and you know I can’t—an uncooperative attitude. There has to be discipline.’’

  ‘‘Cooperation and discipline are two different things,’’ Canidy said. ‘‘Cooperation is why I came to my cabin, knowing that you were certain to come after me like a truant officer.’’

  Canidy unlocked one of his huge tin suitcases and motioned Crookshanks over to it.

  ‘‘In a spirit of cooperation, you can borrow these,’’ he said.

  Crookshanks’s eyebrows rose. He dipped his hand into the suitcase and came up with a military manual. Bitter looked at it. On the cover in red ink was stamped NOT TO BE REMOVED FROM THE LIBRARY. Right below that was printed TM-1-P40A-1.

  ‘‘There’s one copy of the A-model dash-one and two copies each for the B and C models,’’ Canidy said. ‘‘There’s also three copies of the tech manual for the Allison 710-33 engine and two for the 710-39. I wasn’t able to find out what’s in the planes we’re going to get. You can have all the duplicates, and you can borrow the single copies whenever Bitter and I aren’t reading them.’’

  ‘‘Christ knows, we need them,’’ Crookshanks said. ‘‘Where’d you get them?’’

  ‘‘I stole them from the Air Corps library at Maxwell Field,’’ Canidy said. ‘‘I figured we would need them more than they did.’’

  Crookshanks looked at him for a long moment.

  ‘‘Interesting, the way you put that,’’ he said. ‘‘ ‘We would need them,’ not ‘I would need them.’ ’’ He paused. ‘‘Perhaps you’re not entirely the wiseass you act like.’’ He nodded and scooped up the manuals. ‘‘Thank you, Canidy.’’

  ‘‘You’re welcome, Crookshanks,’’ Canidy replied.

  Canidy showed up for the first training session in the dining salon. He did not show up for the calisthenics. Bitter went, did what was required of him, and thought that Canidy was a fool. He could have made up for the friction he had caused. The dash-ones and TMs would have gotten him out of that. All he would have had to do was show up and do calisthenics with the others, and all would have been forgiven. Now he was challenging the skipper all over again, and the skipper certainly couldn’t let that pass.

  But nothing was said to Canidy, and when the others saw that, they stopped going too. By the time the ship sailed into Honolulu, only a half-dozen pilots, including Ed Bitter, and none of the ground crew, regularly met on the deck to keep their bodies in shape.

  It was early morning when they sailed into Pearl Harbor. They docked at the Navy wharfs, rather than at Honolulu, even though the Jan Suvit was a foreign-flag merchantman. Before they docked, Crookshanks joined Bitter and Canidy on the fantail, where they were watching the Navy Yard tug push them against the pier.

  ‘‘I have no authority, Canidy,’’ Crookshanks said, ‘‘to order you to remain aboard while we’re here. But I would like you and the others to remain aboard.’’

  ‘‘Loose lips lose ships?’’ Canidy replied. ‘‘Or are you concerned that we’ll come back aboard with a dose of the clap?’’

  ‘‘Both,’’ Crookshanks said with a chuckle.

  ‘‘I don’t know about the sex maniac here, Crookshanks,’’ Canidy said, glancing at Bitter. ‘‘But I can last another two weeks without getting laid. So I’ll stay aboard. I think you’re right.’’

  ‘‘OK,’’ Crookshanks said. ‘‘I’m going ashore. I have to. While I’m there, I’ll dishonestly use my old ID card and wipe the commissary out of American steaks.’’

  ‘‘You had better not come back with the clap,’’ Canidy said.

  They were in Pearl Harbor less than twenty-four hours, just time enough to take on fuel, and—from a line of Army trucks—case after heavy case. One of the cases cracked open when the boom operator missed the hold opening, and a stream of brown metal boxes spilled out of the crates and fell into the hold. Each was stamped in yellow: AMMUNITION, BROWNING MACHINE GUN CALIBER .50 IN BELTS FOUR BALL AND ONE TRACER 125.

  They broiled the steaks over coal on the fantail the afternoon they left Pearl Harbor for Manila. Crookshanks had brought cases of Schlitz beer back aboard with him. He came to Canidy and handed him one.

  ‘‘Just so we don’t misunderstand each other, Canidy,’’ he said with a smile. ‘‘If you had gone ashore in Honolulu, you would not have been allowed back on board.’’

  Canidy looked at him a moment, and then he smiled.

  ‘‘Now you tell me,’’ he said. ‘‘Now! Ten miles at sea!’’

  FIVE

  The White House Washington, D.C. July 11, 1941

  ‘‘Good morning, Mr. President, Colonel,’’ General George C. Marshall said as he walked into the Oval Office of the White House.

  ‘‘General,’’ the President said.

  ‘‘George,’’ the colonel said. The colonel was not being unduly familiar with the senior U.S. Army officer. ‘‘Colonel’’ Henry L. Stimson, as secretary of war, stood in the chain of command between Marshall and the Commander in Chief. But he had been a colonel in World War I, and liked to be reminded of the title.

  ‘‘I hope you haven’t been kept waiting. . . .’’ Marshall said.

  ‘‘Not at all,’’ the President said. ‘‘Henry just got here.’’ He paused. ‘‘Bill Donovan will be here in thirty minutes.’’

  ‘‘Oh?’’

  ‘‘I wanted to give the both of you a final look at this,’’ the President said, ‘‘before I give the original to him.’’

  He handed each of them a neatly typed sheet of paper.

  DESIGNATING A COORDINATOR OF INFORMATION

  By virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States and as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, it is ordered as follows:

  There is hereby established the position of Coordinator of Information, with authority to collect and analyze all information and data which may bear upon national security; to correlate such information and data, and to make such information and data available to the President and to such departments and officials of the Government as the President may determine; and to carry out, when requested by the President, such supplementary activities as may facilitate the securing of information important for national security not now available to the Government.

  The several departments and agencies of the Government shall make available to the Coordinator of Information all and any such information and data relating to national security as the Coordinator, with the approval of the President, may from time to time re
quest.

  The Coordinator of Information may appoint such committees, consisting of appropriate representatives of the various departments and agencies of the Government, as he may deem necessary to assist him in the performance of his functions.

  Nothing in the duties and responsibilities of the Coordinator of Information shall in any way interfere with or impair the duties and responsibilities of the regular military and naval advisers of the President as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy.

  Within the limits of such funds as may be allocated to the Coordinator of Information by the President, the Coordinator may employ necessary personnel and make provisions for the necessary supplies, facilities, and services.

  William J. Donovan is hereby designated as Coordinator of Information.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  ‘‘I notice, Mr. President, that it’s already signed,’’ General Marshall said.

  ‘‘Is that the first thing that came into your mind, George?’’ the President asked.

  ‘‘Actually, Mr. President,’’ Marshall said, ‘‘the first thing that came into my mind was that it sounds as if it was dictated by the British. By that Commander Fleming, say, or by that fellow Stevenson who seems so chummy with Edgar Hoover.’’

  The President smiled broadly, which could mean that he was either genuinely amused or that he was furious.

  ‘‘What I thought, George,’’ the President said, ‘‘when I read it, was that it sounded like me. Or as if it had been written by someone who had studied the carefully ambiguous phrase at Columbia Law.’’

  Marshall and Stimson smiled stiffly. Franklin D. Roosevelt and William J. Donovan had been law-school class-mates at Columbia.

  ‘‘But I also learned there that no contract cannot be improved, ’’ the President said. ‘‘I agree with both of you that Bill was taking a bit much.’’

  ‘‘Sir?’’

  ‘‘In Donovan’s original draft, there was a paragraph that went, as I say, a bit far. I knew it would anger you. So I deleted it.’’ The President smiled. ‘‘I wouldn’t want you to get the idea I was carrying the old-boy network too far.’’

  He handed Stimson a sheet of paper, on which was typed a single paragraph.

  4. The Coordinator of Information shall perform these duties and responsibilities, which include those of a military character, under the direction and supervision of the President as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.

  Stimson read it and handed it to Marshall without comment.

  ‘‘Admit it, George,’’ the President said pleasantly, ‘‘isn’t that what stuck in your craw?’’

  ‘‘If I may speak freely, Mr. President,’’ General Marshall said, ‘‘the whole thing sticks in my craw. The military and naval intelligence services are perfectly capable of handling intelligence for the nation. We do not need another bureau-cracy—especially one that’s openly in bed with the British.’’

  ‘‘We’ve already discussed that,’’ Roosevelt said flatly ‘‘I have concluded we need what I have provided for. If this makes you feel any better, I quite seriously considered turning the whole thing over to J. Edgar Hoover, who isn’t going to be any more pleased about this than you are. I decided against that because Bill Donovan will do what I tell him, while Edgar sometimes tends to follow his own lights. And Bill—Colonel Donovan—with a few exceptions, gets along with the military and understands its problems.’’

  ‘‘As you say, Mr. President, you have made your decision, ’’ General Marshall said.

  ‘‘If you’re not otherwise tied up, General,’’ the President said, ‘‘I hope that you will be able to find the time to stay here until Donovan arrives and I make this official. I’d like you to be here for that.’’

  ‘‘I am at your orders, Mr. President,’’ General Marshall said.

  ‘‘Good,’’ the President said, flashing another wide and toothy smile. ‘‘The secretary of the Navy, and chief of naval operations, and the director of the FBI seem to be tied up elsewhere. Or so they say.’’

  Paris, France August 12, 1941

  Before the Wehrmacht entered Paris fourteen months before, on June 14, 1940, and marched triumphantly around the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile and down the Champs-Élysées, Eldon C. Baker had been one of a dozen nicely dressed, softly spoken young men attached to the American embassy as consular officers. Baker had been specifically assigned to the office charged with the issuance and renewal of passports, the issue of visas, and similar administrative tasks.

  While it was commonly acknowledged within and without the embassy that many of the consular officers carried on the rolls as agricultural attachés and visa officers spent much of their time gathering intelligence information for transmission to Washington, it was generally believed that Eldon C. Baker was nothing but what he was officially announced to be. Most of his peers thought he was stuffy and more than a little boring.

  When the fall of Paris became inevitable, the French government had moved to Vichy, and the neutral embassies, which of course included the United States embassy, had followed it. Few people on the embassy staff had been surprised when Eldon C. Baker was left behind, as officer-in-charge of the deserted embassy building. To them, Eldon C. Baker was the type of man who could be spared for care-taking chores while his brighter associates went about the important business of diplomacy.

  Actually, Eldon C. Baker was an intelligence officer. He had been left behind because, to an extraordinary degree, he enjoyed the confidence of his superiors, both in the upper echelons of the embassy hierarchy (where only two people besides the ambassador knew of his intelligence role) and within the State Department’s intelligence system itself.

  The first time Eldon C. Baker saw Eric Fulmar was in Fouquet’s restaurant on the Champs-Élysées. Baker had been taking dinner there with an amiable German counterpart, Frederick Ferdinand ‘‘Freddie’’ Dietz, a junior Foreign Ministry officer assigned to the office of the military governor of Paris.

  Fulmar was with two very pretty girls and a dark-skinned young man, an Arab of some kind. Baker’s attention had been split between the pretty girls and the Arab, between personal and professional curiosity. At a table across from the one with the two young men and the pretty girls sat three men, drinking coffee. One of them was black, a huge man whose flesh spilled over the collar of his shirt and whose belly pressed against the table. He was Senegalese, Baker decided, and he was certainly not in Fouquet’s league socially. Not if the two Frenchmen he sat with were doing what he thought they were doing.

  Baker knew one of them by sight, not by name. He was a member of the Sûreté, the French security service, and he was normally assigned to the Colonial Office. All three of them, rather obviously, were assigned to protect the Moroccan, or Algerian, or Tunisian, whatever he was, sitting at the table with the pretty girls and the handsome young man.

  ‘‘Now, there’s a nice pair,’’ Baker said to his dinner partner.

  ‘‘Which pair?’’ Freddie Dietz had quipped. ‘‘Or, you mean both of them.’’

  ‘‘Yes.’’

  ‘‘The one on the left is the daughter of Generalmajor von Handleman-Bitburg. She’s in town with her mother for a short holiday with her father.’’

  ‘‘And the other?’’

  ‘‘Don’t know. I wish I did.’’

  ‘‘Who’s the Arab?’’

  The first word that came to Baker’s mind, looking at the Arab, was ‘‘arrogant.’’ He was tall, thin, and very well tailored, in a dinner jacket with an old-fashioned high collar. He was sharp-featured, hawk-eyed, and had long-fingered, sensitive hands. When he shook his cuffs, Baker saw heavy jeweled gold cuff links, and both a bracelet and a heavy gold watchband. He had a ring with a stone Baker couldn’t identify on the pinkie of his right hand, and there was a large diamond—worth a fortune, Baker thought, presuming it to be real—in a heavy gold setting on what Westerners consider the wedding-ring finger.

 
As Baker watched, he snapped his fingers impatiently for someone to pour wine, and then a moment later, putting a cigarette to his lips, looked around impatiently for the lackey he obviously expected to provide an instant light.

  ‘‘I haven’t the foggiest, but the fellow is Eric Fulmar.’’

  Eric Fulmar was blond, blue-eyed, lithe and tanned. He was wearing a dinner jacket, not nearly as well tailored as the Arab’s and with simple back studs in a modern, rolled-collar shirt. Baker felt enormous energy coming from this good-looking young man. Not nerves. Not craziness. Power. There was purpose to his gestures and self-assurance he had only rarely met in a kid so young.

  ‘‘Who’s he?’’

  ‘‘Fulmar Elektrische Gesellschaft,’’ Freddie Dietz said. ‘‘He was at Marburg with my brother.’’

  Fulmar Elektrische Gesellschaft, FEG, was a medium-sized electrical equipment manufacturing concern in Frankfurt am Main. That explained why the young German, who looked like a recruiting poster for the Waffen-SS, was not in uniform. Baker noticed a tendency on the part of the Germans to excuse the sons of industrialists, particularly those who had early on supported the National Socialists, from military service.

  As they left the restaurant, they had passed the other table. Dietz had spoken to Fulmar, and introductions had been made all around. Fulmar introduced the Arab as ‘‘His Excellency, Sheikh Sidi Hassan el Ferruch’’ and the other girl as a Fräulein Somebody.

  In their cab on the way to the Left Bank, Freddie Dietz further identified the Arab.

  ‘‘I recognize him now. He’s the son of a Moroccan pasha, ’’ he said. ‘‘He was at Marburg with my brother and Fulmar.’’

  ‘‘What’s he doing in Paris?’’

  ‘‘Causing trouble.’’ Dietz laughed.

  ‘‘How?’’

  ‘‘He’s buying racehorses, in direct competition with some very highly placed people. There are, you know, some people who had hoped to take advantage of the . . . shall I say ‘depressed market’? . . . to improve their stables. Fulmar’s friend has destroyed many happy dreams. He has annoyed some very important people, one very important Hungarian in particular, but mostly Germans. I’ve also heard he’s into other things—of doubtful legality. But the word is out to leave him alone. The Foreign Ministry doesn’t want trouble with his father.’’