The Soldier Spies Page 6

  She did not, Stevens saw, take umbrage.

  “Thank you, no, Major,” she said. “It’s a bit early for me.”

  “And, inspired by the example of our leader, I’m for a hot bath myself,” Whittaker announced.

  “The next thing you know, he’ll be changing his underwear more than once a week,” Canidy said.

  The Duchess shook her head and walked down the corridor toward the offices. Canidy led Stevens and Fine down the opposite corridor toward the Officers’ Club, and Whittaker climbed the stairs to the second floor.

  Whittaker walked down a wide parquet-floored corridor to a sturdy, paneled door, unlocked it, and went in. Before the OSS had taken possession of Whitbey House, this suite of three rooms had been the apartment of the Duchess. It was now his quarters. Canidy had assigned the Duchess to less impressive rooms.

  He tossed his cap and jacket on the bed and walked into the bathroom. He turned on the tap, and water began to gurgle into a huge, black marble bathtub. When there was an inch or so of water on the bottom, a smile of pleasure crossed his face, a Eureka smile, as though a smashing insight had flashed into his brain. He walked out of the bathroom and returned naked several minutes later. His flesh was not as seamless as you might have expected from his flawlessly handsome face. He had been twice wounded in the Philippines, and there were more than a dozen scars where insect and leech bites had become infected.

  In one hand Whittaker held a glass and the neck of a Scotch bottle and in the other a square tin of Pear’s Finest Bubble Bath Crystals. He set the glass and the Scotch carefully on the tub rim, and then started shaking bubble-bath crystals into the now-about-half-full tub of water.

  Some bubbles formed, but not enough to satisfy him. He added more salts, and finally shook the tin over the water to empty it. Then he somewhat delicately tested the water with his toe, withdrawing it quickly because it was hotter than he expected. He turned on the cold tap, and the combined hot and cold flow was sufficient to start bubbles forming. Once they had started, there seemed to be no end of them.

  Whittaker’s face took on a look of almost pure pleasure. He tested the water again and again until it was the right temperature, then climbed into the tub. The bubbles concealed all of him but his head. A hand appeared, grabbed the Scotch bottle, and poured whisky into the glass. He leaned back against the end of the tub, and his other hand appeared, this time to sweep bubbles away from his face.

  Someone came into the bathroom.

  “Odd, you don’t look like the bubble-bath type.”

  “Nothing is too good for the well-born,” Whittaker said.

  “Someone like yourself?” his visitor asked, mocking.

  “Kind, cheerful, obedient, reverent, et cetera,” Whittaker said solemnly. “I have all the aristocratic virtues, I just can’t remember them at the moment. ”

  His visitor giggled and then thought of something.

  “Where did you find the bubble bath?”

  “Where do you think?” he replied.

  “You bastard,” Her Grace the Duchess Stanfield said, and then she walked to the tub and picked up the tin. “You triple bastard! That was my entire supply!”

  “Well, I guess there’s only one thing that can be done about that,” Whittaker said.

  “Don’t tell me,” she said, genuinely annoyed. “You’ll have some air-freighted from the States.”

  “What I meant was that you should take advantage of it while there’s still some left.”

  “You mean, climb in there with you? You’re insane!”

  “Don’t knock it till you try it,” Whittaker said. “Have you ever been diddled under the bubbles?”

  “No!” she said.

  He smiled wickedly at her.

  “My God, what if somebody should come in!” she said softly.

  “There’s probably room for another couple,” Whittaker said. “Whom did you have in mind?”

  “That’s not what I meant!” She stopped, knowing that he had tripped her again.

  “Lock the door,” he said.

  She wet her lips, turned, and locked the door.

  Then she turned and faced him, and met his eyes, and then very slowly and deliberately undressed. She knew that he liked to watch her remove her clothes, and letting him watch did something to her, too. She felt light-headed and excited by the time she walked across the tiles to slip into the tub with him.

  She tried to snuggle in next to him, but he forced his knee between hers and she found herself straddling him.

  “I probably shouldn’t tell you this,” she said,“but I missed you.”

  And then she gave a little animal yelp as he entered her.

  She moved on him, and then happened to glance beyond him. There was a mirror. She could see nothing of him but the back of his head. But she could see herself: wanton, she thought, jiggling up and down the way she was.

  She looked down at him. His eyes were closed. He is very young, she thought. She felt incredible tenderness for him. He was young, twenty-four, twenty-five; and she was thirty-six and married and nothing could ever come of this affair.

  But that doesn’t change anything. The absurd truth is, l love him. Even though I’m just a convenient roll in the hay for him.

  “I love you,” she said.

  He stopped moving under her and opened his eyes and looked at her.

  For a moment she thought that he was going to reply, but he didn’t. And then, very slowly and deliberately, he started moving into her again.

  III

  Chapter ONE

  Whitbey House, Kent

  6 December 1942

  Canidy was sitting at an ancient desk he often thought should be in a museum, working his way through the ten-inch-high stack of paper that had accumulated while he’d flown to North Africa.

  With the command of OSS Whitbey House station came a mind-boggling bureaucratic responsibility: The paperwork involved in simply housing and clothing and feeding the OSS personnel there would in more normal times have occupied the services of half a dozen secretaries.

  As he signed his name for the fiftieth or sixtieth time over the signature block (RICHARD M. CANIDY, Major, USAAC Commanding), he thought again about how the responsibility for Whitbey House had dropped down upon him. The appointment had been as inevitable as it was surprising. And frustrating.

  Canidy had been recruited as an agent for the OSS when it was still the Office of the Coordinator of Information. Not because he had any espionage skills or relevant experience—for he hadn’t—but because he was an old friend of Eric Fulmar’s and they wanted to recruit Fulmar. The way to do that had been to find an old pal who could sing “Auld Lang Syne” while waving the flag in Eric’s face.

  He had been so naive then that he had believed that his association with international espionage would end when that operation was over.

  But then it had been made clear to him that since he was possessed of certain highly classified information—concerning not only the Fulmar operation but the workings of the COI itself—it would not be possible for him to just quit. So they had found something useful for him to do.

  Despite the uniform he wore and the thousand times he had written his signature above the “Major, USAAC” signature block, he was not a major of the Army Air Corps. In June of 1941 he had been discharged from the Navy (as a Lieutenant, Junior Grade) and had gone off to Burma to fly P-40s for the American Volunteer Group. Which meant that he had been a civilian when he was hired on as a “Technical Consultant” for the COI.

  Later it had been decided that military status was important for the Fulmar operation. So the Adjutant General’s office had handed him an AGO card that made him a major. And “Major” he had remained. He was still paid as a “Technical Consultant,” however, and had apparently been promoted, because the monthly checks were now over fifty dollars more than a major on flight pay with his length of service would be paid.

  He didn’t call attention to this peculiarity, becaus
e he suspected they would give him a bona-fide commission if he did. And he would continue what he was doing for several dollars less a month.

  Whitbey House was not his first “command.” “Major” Canidy had also commanded the COI “safe house” at Deal, New Jersey. Chesley Haywood Whittaker’s oceanfront estate had been turned over to Donovan and the COI by Chesty’s widow. And the COI had stashed there Vice Admiral de Escadre de Verbey of the French Navy until the time the admiral would be used against the Germans and/or General Charles de Gaulle, the difficult-to-deal -with head of the Free French.

  Since it was felt the Admiral would be more comfortable with a military host than a civilian, it had been “Major” Canidy at Deal. And Major Canidy had recruited bona-fide Captain and B-17 Squadron Commander Stanley S. Fine for the Fulmar Operation.

  Fine had fully expected to be returned to the Air Corps after the COI no longer needed his services. But the COI was just as reluctant to lose him as it was to lose Canidy. Since Canidy and Fine were already on the COI roster— and pilots—they had been given the “fly the magic dirt for the Norden bombsight out of the Belgian Congo” mission.

  When that operation was over, Fine had become for all intents and purposes Colonel Stevens’s deputy. And Canidy was given command of Whitbey House station. It was Canidy’s opinion that—with the single, if very important, exception that they were “cleared” for OSS duty—his and Fine’s current jobs had nothing to do with their qualifications but rather with their availability as more or less round pegs in the round holes of the OSS manning chart. There were dozens of empty holes; the OSS was growing almost miraculously.

  Canidy was amused and a little disconcerted to be regarded now by OSS recruits as a grizzled and legendary veteran.

  There were perks, of course. He was commanding Whitbey House station, which meant—most important—that he didn’t have to deal with a commanding officer. Stevens left him pretty much alone. And he had a car and a driver: If he wanted to go into London, he didn’t have to ask permission. And he was the Lord of the Manor and had established himself in the ducal apartment of Whitbey House: three large rooms, museum-quality furniture, an enormous bathroom, and even room service when he wanted it.

  There was a loud knock at his door.

  “Come!” Canidy called. It was more than likely Jamison come to lead him through the paperwork jungle. Jamison was the very bright lieutenant who did much of the administrative work for Canidy.

  It was not Jamison.

  “Am I interrupting anything, Dick?” Colonel Wild Bill Donovan asked as he walked into the room.

  Canidy quickly stood up.

  “Not a thing,” Canidy said. “I was just sitting here letting this crap drive me out of my mind.” He gestured at the paper-submerged desk.

  Donovan chuckled sympathetically.

  “You ought to see what Pete Douglass has waiting for me when I get back to the office,” he said.

  "Jamison is a lot of help,” Canidy said. "Actually, he’s perfectly capable of running this place all by himself.”

  “Jimmy about?” Donovan asked.

  “Jimmy’s spreading pollen,”Canidy said.“Would you like me to find him?”

  Donovan laughed.

  “We’ll send for him after a bit, and for Stevens and Fine,” he said. “I want a private word with you first.”

  Canidy nodded.

  “I’m tempted to ask about Ann Chambers,” Donovan said. “Did I detect a little sour grapes about Jimmy’s ‘pollen spreading’?”

  “Ann’s in the North of England,” Canidy said. “I finally got her on the phone about twenty minutes ago.”

  Ann Chambers was a war correspondent for the Chambers News Service. Her father was Chairman of the Board of the Chambers Publishing Corporation, of which the Chambers News Service was a wholly owned subsidiary. She was in England because Dick Canidy was in England, and she was in love with Dick Canidy. Between her bona-fide skills as a journalist and her father’s influence, Ann got pretty much what she wanted.

  “Give her my best regards when you see her,” Donovan said.

  Canidy chuckled.

  Ann Chambers posed a continuing problem for Donovan and the OSS. Other curious journalists could be dealt with by suggesting quietly to their superiors that national security required their return to the States. More seriously curious journalists could be hospitalized for psychiatric evaluation. Brandon Chambers, however, would demand to know precisely how his daughter had endangered the national security and would then make his own judgment about that.

  And if Brandon Chambers’s daughter was put into a psychiatric hospital for evaluation—which had been the Attorney General’s solution to the problem of habeas corpus—Brandon Chambers’s eight newspapers, five radio stations, and the Chambers News Service could be counted on to put the admittedly constitutionally questionable practice before the American public until the Supreme Court dealt with its legality.

  "Certainly,” Canidy said, smiling. “I’ll even tell her you want her for an exclusive, long, candlelit tête-à-tête maybe?”

  Donovan had to laugh. "Okay,” he said. “I confess I sometimes yearn for the days when the men went to war, and the women stayed home and knitted sweaters for them.”

  And then Donovan was suddenly all business.

  “I’m curious about your reaction, your gut reaction, about putting Fulmar back into Morocco,” he said.

  “‘Gut reaction’?” Canidy parroted. “Okay. When Fulmar jumped out of the B-25, I felt a little sick to my stomach.”

  “Fear or outrage?” Donovan asked conversationally.

  “A little of both,” Canidy said. “Was making him the bait really necessary? ”

  “Yes,” Donovan said simply. “And it paid off. We are now reasonably sure von Heurten-Mitnitz is everything he claims to be.”

  “Well,” Canidy said,“I suppose that’s important.”

  “It’s most important,” Donovan said. And then when Canidy didn’t reply, “You’re not going to ask me why?”

  “I think if you want to tell me, you will,” Canidy said, smiling. “Otherwise…”

  “You’re learning, Dick,” Donovan said, smiling back at him.

  “Are you going to tell me?” Canidy asked.

  “How much of a briefing about German jet aircraft did you and Ed Stevens get from the Air Corps? And how much specifically did they tell you about jet aircraft engines?”

  “Not much,” Canidy said. “Just that the Germans have, in the flight-test stage, aircraft powered by jet engines. The Air Corps feels that it’s very unlikely that these will ever become operational.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “I’m a fighter pilot,” Canidy said. Then he paused. “An ex-fighter pilot? Anyway, from that position of ignorance, it seems to me that a fighter which can make five hundred knots and fire twenty-mm cannon well out of range of a B-17’s or a B-24’s .50-calibers is going to shoot down a lot of bombers.”

  “To the point,” Donovan said, very seriously,“where the entire Air Corps strategy of bombardment of German industry may well have to be scrapped.”

  “The Air Corps brass didn’t seem to be all that worried,” Canidy said.

  “If the Luftwaffe can come up with half a dozen squadrons of jet fighters, ” Donovan said, “our losses would be unacceptable. And it would be as much a public relations as a logistical disaster. In other words, if the Germans get those aircraft into production, the course of the war in Europe will be drastically changed. It may not mean we would lose the war, but it could bring on an unsatisfactory armistice.”

  “Jesus!” Canidy said.

  “And there’s something you haven’t been told, Dick, because it’s brand-new information. The Germans have begun testing—we still don’t know where—at least one jet-propelled flying bomb. Or pilotless aircraft. You’re an aeronautical engineer, think about that: Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pilotless aircraft, faster than any fighter we have, each carr
ying five hundred pounds of high explosive, aimed at London or Manchester. Or, for that matter, launched from submarines and aimed at New York City.”

  Canidy thought aloud,“How would they be controlled?”

  “I’m not an aeronautical engineer,” Donovan said. “I thought maybe you could tell me.”

  “I have a degree as an AE,” Canidy said. “That’s all.”

  “Modesty becomes you, Richard,” Donovan said, teasing him. “But I’ve heard you’re pretty good. You really have no idea how they could be controlled? ”

  “Navigation wouldn’t have to be that precise,” Canidy said. “All you’d have to do would be to maintain a known heading. Over five hundred miles, you could put something like that within, say, ten miles of where you wanted it. London is a lot wider than ten miles. And if you knew the cruising speed, a simple timer could shut off the fuel when it was over the target. ”

  He looked at Donovan, who nodded.

  “That’s just about the same answer I got from Professor Pritchard,” Donovan said,“who sends his regards.”

  Matthew Pritchard had been one of Canidy’s teachers at MIT. More than a teacher, almost a collaborator in Canidy’s thesis.

  “It’s frightening,” Canidy said. “The more you think about it, the more frightening it gets. And without having to worry about pilot safety, they could stamp them out like cookies. No landing gear, no communications equipment, a rudimentary stabilization system… Just an engine and a load of explosive.”

  “Matt Pritchard told me that the engine is the only weak point he could think of,” Donovan said. “As it is with the jet-powered fighters.”

  “I don’t understand,” Canidy said. “I agree, of course, that the engine is the most important component, but I don’t see how that helps us.”

  “We keep them from building engines,” Donovan said.

  “How are we going to do that?” Canidy asked.

  “I should have said, ‘we delay, we interfere with,’ the production of engines, ” Donovan said. “I think we can do that. How effectively remains to be seen.”