Baker carried both orders and an AGO card in the name of James B. Westerman. The orders had been issued by the War Department and authorized priority military air travel from the United States to “Western Task Force in the Field” in connection with activities of the Office of the Comptroller of the Army. In the “RANK” block, the AGO card said, “ASS Lt/Col.” This meant that Baker carried the assimilated rank of Lieutenant Colonel and was entitled to the privileges of that rank when it came to quarters, transportation, and so on. So far, no one else had thought “ASS Lt/Col” was at all amusing.
Baker also carried—in a safe place—a second identification card and a second set of orders. These had his correct name on them. The identification card, which came with a badge, identified him as a Special Agent of the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps, and the orders, issued in the name of the Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence, said that he was engaged in a confidential mission for the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, and any questions concerning him and his mission should be referred to that office.
While the second set of credentials was genuine—they had in fact been issued by G-2—Eldon C. Baker was not an agent of the CIC. He was in fact an employee of the State Department and was paid as an FSO-4. For more than a year, however, he had been on temporary duty with the OSS. He was listed on the OSS table of organization as “Chief, Recruitment and Training”; and it was in connection with this that he had come to Morocco. His primary mission was to recruit people, with emphasis on officers fluent in French, Italian, or German, for planned covert operations against Germany and Italy. He also intended to arrange for the parachute training of OSS agents by the U.S. Army. And he had a third mission, known only to Colonel Donovan and Captain Douglass: He was going to send a postcard.
The third mission had a higher priority than anything else that had brought Eldon C. Baker from Washington to the rooftop bar of the Hotel d’Anfa.
Baker saw Eric Fulmar before Fulmar saw him. As Baker expected, Fulmar came into the bar a little after five o’clock. The hint of a smile appeared on Baker’s lips when he saw him. Eric Fulmar was rather obviously pleased with himself and his role in the scheme of things.
He was in olive-drab uniform: a shirt, trousers, and tie. His feet were in highly polished jump boots, which went with the silver parachutist’s wings on his breast pocket just above his two ribbons. He was wearing the ETO (European Theater of Operations) ribbon with a battle star and the ribbon of the Silver Star medal. Hanging from his shoulder was a Thompson machine-pistol, a non-issue weapon.
As he sat down, he rather ostentatiously laid the weapon on the bar stool beside his and, in Arabic, ordered Scotch and water from the Moroccan barman.
He got strange looks from the other officers at the bar, who were young staff officers of one kind or another assigned to the various rear-area support services in Casablanca. Fulmar managed to remind them, Baker saw, that while they might be in uniform, they weren’t really soldiers. Fulmar, with his Silver Star and parachutist’s wings and Thompson machine-pistol, was a soldier.
Baker stood up from his table, walked to the bar, and slid onto the stool beside him.
“Wie gehts, Eric?” he asked in flawless German. “Was ist Ios?”
That got some attention from the other officers at the bar, too. It probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, Baker thought; but on the other hand, he felt sure that Fulmar would somehow already have let the others know that he spoke German.
Fulmar turned to look at him. His eyes were cold. Baker was made a little uncomfortable to be reminded that beneath the facade of self-impressed young parachutist hero, this was a very tough and self-reliant young man.
“What brings you here, Baker?” Fulmar asked. His eyes were contemptuous and wary.
“Westerman,” Baker said.
Fulmar thought that over.
“Westerman, then,” he said.
“Well, I had to come over here, and I thought I’d say hello,” Baker said. He saw the chill deepen in Fulmar’s eyes, and quickly added,“I heard about the promotion and the Silver Star. Congratulations.”
“Bullshit,” Fulmar said flatly.
“I need a word with you,” Baker said, giving up. He wondered why he had bothered trying to be friendly. It had been necessary, twice, to cause unpleasant things to happen to Eric Fulmar. And Eric Fulmar was not the sort to let bygones be bygones.
Fulmar took a sip of his Scotch, then turned to look at Baker out of his cold blue eyes.
He would have made an SS officer to warm the cockles of Hitler’s heart, Baker thought. Blond-haired, blue-eyed, muscular, erect, the perfect Aryan.
“Have your word,” Fulmar said.
“Not here,” Baker said. “Can we go to your room?”
Fulmar said something to the bartender, who picked up Fulmar’s glass and pushed it into a bed of ice behind the bar. Then Fulmar picked up his machine-pistol and walked out of the bar. Baker followed him.
They rode wordlessly two floors down in an elevator and then walked down a corridor to Fulmar’s suite, a small sitting room and a much larger bedroom with a balcony. The balcony overlooked the Atlantic Ocean and a rather stunning beach.
“I don’t know if this place is secure or not,” Fulmar said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Baker said. “This isn’t going to take long.”
He took from the breast pocket of his tunic two 3×8-inch sheets of corrugated paperboard, held together by rubber bands, and then a fountain pen, a large, somewhat ungainly instrument.
“Is that German?” Fulmar asked, his curiosity aroused. Baker nodded his head.
“I used to have one something like it,” Fulmar said.
“Sit down, Eric,” Baker said, nodding toward a small writing desk as he removed the rubber bands from the sheets of cardboard.
When Fulmar had seated himself, Baker handed him a postcard and two sheets of paper cut to the same size. Fulmar examined the postcard. It was a photograph of the Kurhotel in Bad Ems.
“What’s all this?”
“I have only the one postcard,” Baker said. “So we can’t take the risk of fucking this up. What I want you to do is copy the message from the one sheet of paper onto the other sheet of paper. Copy what is written exactly.”
Fulmar looked at the piece of paper. The postcard was to be addressed to Herr Joachim Freienstall, 74-76 Beerenstrasse, Berlin/Zehlendorf. The message (in German) was “Sorry I missed you. Please give my regards to my father and Prof. Dyer. Kindest regards, Willi von K.”
“What the hell is this?” Fulmar asked. “Who’s Freienstall? For that matter, who the hell is ‘Willi von K’?”
“That has nothing to do with you,” Baker said.
“Bullshit,” Fulmar said. “Why do you need me to write it?”
“Let me put it this way,” Baker said coldly. “You don’t have the need to know, Eric.”
“Then write your own fucking postcard,” Fulmar said.
“Just do what I ask you, Eric,” Baker ordered. “This is important.”
They locked eyes for a moment.
“I’d like to know what scurvy trick this is,” Fulmar said. “And on whom.”
“At the moment, that’s impossible,” Baker said.
“Shit!” Fulmar said, but he took up the fountain pen and copied the message onto the blank sheet of paper.
When he had finished, Baker picked it up, examined it, nodded, and said, “Fine. Now do it exactly the same way on the postcard.”
As Fulmar complied, Baker took a Zippo lighter from his pocket and burned the first copy. When he had examined the final version and found it satisfactory, he burned the original message.
“Get up,” he ordered. After Fulmar complied, Baker sat down at the desk. He laid the cardboard sheets on the desk and then the postcard. Then he wet his index finger with his tongue and ran it over “Joachim Freienstall,” rendering the name illegible.
Fulmar’s eyebrows rose, but he didn’t say anything
.
Baker waited for the spit to dry, then very carefully wiped the postcard with his handkerchief, paying particular attention to the glossy side with the photograph of the Kurhotel. Next, holding it with his handkerchief, he extended the card to Fulmar, who made no move to take it.
“Now what?” Fulmar asked.
“Take the card and lay it on the cardboard,” Baker said.
“Will my index and thumb prints be enough?” Fulmar asked sarcastically. “Or should I put the rest on it, too?”
“Pass it back and forth a couple of times between your hands,” Baker said.
Fulmar did as he was told. Baker then laid the second sheet of cardboard on top of the postcard, replaced the rubber bands, and put the whole thing back in his pocket.
“You understand, of course,” he said,“that you are to mention this to no one?”
“The thing about you, Baker,” Fulmar said,“is that you’re such a truly devious bastard that I really have no idea what you’re up to.”
“In our business, Eric,” Baker said,“there are those who would take that as a first-rate compliment.”
He put out his hand.
“That’s it,” he said,“unless there’s something I could do for you in Washington? ”
Fulmar pointedly ignored the hand.
“Not a thing you could do for me,” Fulmar said. “You’ve already done enough for me. Or to me.”
“I’m really sorry you feel that way, Eric,” Baker said.
“Yeah, I’m sure you are,” Fulmar said.
Baker shrugged and walked out of the room. Fulmar looked at the closed door for a full minute, his face lost in thought. And then a look of genuine concern crossed his face.
“Christ!” he said, and hurried out of the room.
He had remembered a Red Cross girl with absolutely marvelous eyes who had said she would meet him at quarter to six in the bar.
Chapter FOUR
The Wardman Park Hotel
Washington, D.C
16 December 1942
Major Peter “Doug” Douglass, Jr., who was short for a pilot and looked even younger than his twenty-five years, wanted to say good-bye to his father before he took off for Europe. The easiest way to do that would have been simply to land his P-38 in Washington. But Peter Douglass, Sr., was a captain in the United States Navy, and Doug Douglass did not want the “good-bye” to turn into a fatherly lecture on the hazards to an officer’s career of flouting regulations forbidding “diversions en route to the aerial port of departure.” The other easy alternative, declaring engine trouble over Washington, was just too much of a convenient coincidence.
Between Alabama and North Carolina, however, Doug Douglass found his answer. He had a good executive officer who could lead the rest of the group to Westover. And he really didn’t think anyone would ask questions about carburetor trouble near Baltimore making a “precautionary” landing there necessary. So he used the in-flight communications system to relay a spurious message to his father:“Replacement package will arrive Baltimore 1330 hours.” He was confident his father would know what it meant.
Charity Hoche was waiting for him with an OSS station wagon. He knew Charity fairly well. He had, in fact, rather casually made the beast with two backs with her on one of the few times he’d been able to make it to Washington. Charity worked for the OSS—that is to say, for his father—as sort of a housekeeper for the turn-of-the-century mansion the OSS operated on Q Street near Rock Creek Park.
She came out of the same very upper-echelon set as Donovan and Jimmy Whittaker and Cynthia Chenowith and Ed Bitter and his wife. A bright girl with a dim look, she had picked up from friends (most of them OSS types) and at parties more than she should have picked up about the OSS. So it was decided that the best way to keep an eye on her was to give her a job.
And she looked damn good, too, when he saw her. Marvelous breasts, long blond hair, and a pronounced nasal manner of speech he found enticingly erotic. But he had come to see his father, not for a casual roll in the hay.
“My dad’s tied up?” he asked.
Charity told him that his father was indeed “tied up” but that he hoped Doug could wait until eight, at which time he might be free.
On the other hand, since my father is tied up, maybe a casual roll in the hay would steady my nerves for the arduous duty I am about to face.
So they went for a beer, except he didn’t drink because he was going to have to fly, and Charity drank some concoction with fruit juice and a cherry and gin. It tended to make her emotional. By four o’clock, Doug had decided he would not fly on to Westover until tomorrow. Every hour on the hour, Charity called to see if his father had any word for them.
Then they had dinner someplace, but he didn’t pay much attention to what they had to eat. They had started playing kneesy under the table pretty soon after their arrival, and that was more interesting than food. Around dessert or coffee or some damn thing, she leaned over to say something to him and rested her magnificent breast on his hand.
Finally, it was out in the open, although there was some imaginative use of euphemisms: They could not go to Charity’s place for a “nap”—the euphemism here being that if he was going to fly to England the next morning, he would need his rest—because she lived at the house on Q Street, and people might get the wrong idea.
Anyplace but Washington, a hotel would have worked; but there were no hotel rooms to be had in Washington. (They spent a dollar and a half in nickels confirming that by telephone.)
And then Charity found a way: They would go to Ed and Sarah Bitter’s suite in the Wardman Park Hotel. Not only could they call from there to see if there was word about his father, but Charity remembered hearing that Ed Bitter (who was a bit dense about such things) was out of town on duty.
Sarah was much more likely to understand how important it was for Doug to get that nap, and she would probably even displace her child Joe from his room so that Doug’s nap would be both private and without interruption.
Sarah Child Bitter was indeed delighted to see Major Peter “Doug” Douglass, Jr., Army Air Corps. For Sarah’s husband, Lieutenant Commander Bitter, was for a number of reasons particularly fond of Major Douglass.
In the days before the war, Ed Bitter and Doug Douglass had been “Flying Tigers” together. Right after the war started, Doug had saved Ed’s life at considerable risk to his own neck. Wounded by ground fire while strafing a Japanese air base, Ed had managed to land his crippled plane in a dry riverbed. And then, defying the laws of aerodynamics, Doug had landed his P-40, loaded Ed into it, and taken off again with Ed on his lap. If Doug hadn’t done that, Ed would have either died from loss of blood or fallen into the hands of the Japanese who regarded the “Flying Tigers” as bandits and beheaded the ones they caught.
Doug Douglass was welcome to Little Joe’s room anytime he wanted it.
But not for the purpose Charity obviously had in mind. Sarah took her into the butler’s pantry and told her so.
"I don’t mean to be nasty about this, Charity,” she said. “But if you insist on acting like a woman who goes to hotels with men, go to a hotel.”
“If there were any vacant hotel rooms in Washington, and there are not, they would not rent one to an aviator and his blonde,” Charity argued. “They demand marriage licenses.”
“Then you are just going to have to restrain your impulses until you can arrange something,” Sarah said. She giggled and added,“Either a marriage license or your own apartment.”
“Unfortunately, there’s no time to do that,” Charity said.
“Unless you get to roll around with him tonight, you’ll go blind, right, or grow hair on your palms?”
“This time tomorrow night, he’ll be in his little airplane somewhere over the Atlantic,” Charity said.
“Did he tell you that?” Sarah asked.
“No, and I don’t want him to know I know,” Charity said.
“If it’s a secret, why are you tel
ling me?”
“What are you going to do, phone Hitler? The only reason I’m telling you is that I want you to know how important this is to me.”
“Charity, I love you, but I know you. If I ever found out…”
“The reason I know is that Captain Douglass told me to get reports from the Navy on the progress of a flight of P-38s from Westover Field in Massachusetts tomorrow afternoon. They’re flying via Newfoundland to Scotland. Doug told me he’s going to Westover. I didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to put two and two together.”
“My God, if Ed found out, he’d kill me,” Sarah said, weakening.
“He won’t be home until Tuesday,” Charity argued conclusively. “You told me that yourself. And if you don’t tell him, I certainly won’t.”
“I’m going to take Joe for a walk,” Sarah said finally, feeling very much the sophisticated woman of the world. “Do what you think is right.”
And Sarah took Little Joe for a walk, although he didn’t need one. What happened between Doug and Charity while she was gone was none of her business.
But she hadn’t imagined they wouldn’t be finished when she came back. Or that they would keep it up for hours.
She concluded that the best way to handle the situation was to just go to bed and say nothing until after Doug left in the morning. Then she would really give Charity a piece of her mind.
It was a lucky thing Ed wasn’t home. Ed would have had a fit. But Ed had told her—with certainty—that his duty as aide-de-camp to Vice Admiral Enoch Hawley, USN, Chief Aviation Matériel Assignments Branch, BUAIR, would keep him out of town for at least the weekend and probably into Tuesday.
Lieutenant Commander Edwin Ward Bitter, USN, returned home three hours later, just before midnight.
When he found the baby’s crib in their bedroom, his curiosity was aroused. “Who’s here?” he asked when he crawled into bed beside Sarah.
The Soldier Spies Page 8