“What I’m going to do, Helmut,” von Ribbentrop said, “is make you first secretary of the Embassy. You have the rank for the job, and the experience. There will be no objection from any quarter. And then you do exactly what you did in Morocco. Except that you send your thoughts directly to me. This time, they will not be ignored. I will share them with the general, and when the time is ripe, we will take them to the Führer.”
“It would make my position vis-à-vis the ambassador difficult,” von Heurten-Mitnitz protested.
“Germany’s position, von Heurten-Mitnitz, is difficult,”Kaltenbrunner said.
“Your man in Morocco, General,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said, “Standartenführer Müller, was very valuable to me there. It would be helpful—”
“He’s yours,” Kaltenbrunner said.
“Then I can only say I am flattered and humbled by the responsibility you are giving me.”
“People like ourselves,” von Ribbentrop said slowly, as if to emphasize the inarguable truth of his words,“for centuries have been called upon to assume greater responsibility for Germany.”
And then von Ribbentrop stepped on von Heurten-Mitnitz’s toe.
Startled, he looked at him.
“Sorry, my dear fellow,” von Ribbentrop said. “I was reaching for the damned call button. I didn’t want anyone in the room during that part of the conversation.”
And immediately the two handsome young SS troopers appeared, this time bearing medallions of veal in a lemon butter sauce, and potatoes Anna, and haricots verts.
When he returned to his office, he told Fräulein Schermann that he did not wish to be disturbed by anyone less important than the Reichsminister himself. Now he really needed time to think, to come out of the surreal dream.
It wasn’t only his new assignment, or the elegant meal, or the realization that as an American agent he had just been assured of the trust of the Reichsminister for Foreign Affairs and the head of the SS:
He had attended a reception at the Argentine Embassy the night before. When he had retrieved his hat and coat from the checkroom and put his hand in the pocket, there was a postcard there that hadn’t been there before he went into the embassy.
He had to wait until he reached home to have a good look at it.
It was a black-and-white drawing of a church in Budapest, specifically of St. Ann’s Church on the Vizivaros, the flatland between the river and Castle Hill in Buda.
The address was smudged and illegible, but the message was clear, even under the purple censor’s stamp:
“Hope to see you and F. and G. Here very soon. Will call. Fondly, Eric.”
It had taken a moment before he was sure what it meant. But it was really very clear. He was expected to somehow get Friedrich Dyer and his daughter Gisella from Marburg to St. Ann’s Church in Budapest. Someone would call and tell him when.
Fulmar himself? Or was “Eric” just identification?
And why did the Americans want Dyer? What did he know that justified all this effort and risk? And where would he—or Müller—find travel documents for these people?
Now, what had seemed almost impossible seemed to be impossibly easy. Both he and Müller could simply load the Dyers into Müller’s car. No one was going to stop a car carrying an SS-SD Standartenführer and the newly appointed First Secretary of the German Embassy.
He seriously considered that he was indeed dreaming, and bit his knuckle to see if he could wake himself up.
His interoffice telephone buzzed.
“Forgive me, Herr Minister,” Fräulein Schermann said, “but Herr Standartenführer Müller is here and insists on seeing you.”
“Ask the Standartenführer to please come in, Fräulein Schermann,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said.
As Müller came through the door, the air raid sirens began to wail.
Chapter FOUR
MATS Departing Passenger Terminal
Croydon Field, London
21 January 1943
When Captain the Duchess Stanfield tried to follow Captain James M. B. Whittaker past the clerk who was checking orders and travel authority, an Air Corps military police sergeant stepped in front of her.
“Sorry, ma’am,” he said,“passengers only beyond the checkpoint.”
Captain the Duchess Stanfield, her face stricken, stared at the back of Captain Whittaker as he turned a corner and disappeared from sight, then glanced over her shoulder at Dick Canidy, who stood with Ann Chambers and Agnes Draper just outside the building. They had said their good-byes to Whittaker in the car so that Jim and the Duchess could have a couple of minutes alone inside the building.
Canidy walked quickly to her. When he saw Whittaker disappear from sight, his eyes teared and a painful tightness caught his throat.
“What’s the trouble, Sergeant?” Canidy said, his voice unnaturally high-pitched.
“Passengers only in the waiting room, sir,” the MP said.
Canidy reached into the pocket of his tunic and came out with a small leather wallet. He showed it to the sergeant.
“It’ll be all right for the captain to go into the waiting room,” he said.
The MP sergeant had been shown samples of OSS credentials, but he had never actually seen the real thing. He was impressed, but not enough.
“I’m sorry, Major,” he said, “but that won’t pass you or the captain past here.”
“Well, then, goddammit, Sergeant, you just take your pistol out and shoot us in the back. We’re going in there,” Canidy said, taking the Duchess’s arm and pushing past the sergeant.
The sergeant’s face flushed with anger. He didn’t draw his pistol, nor try to physically restrain either the major with the OSS credentials or the English woman captain. He trotted across the room to find the terminal officer to tell him what had happened.
The two of them walked quickly into the room where the departing passengers milled around while the passenger manifest was typed. That was the last step before the aircraft would be loaded, the final sorting of priorities to determine who would go and who would have to wait for the next flight.
When the terminal officer found them, the OSS major and the English woman captain were standing with an Air Corps captain and two RAF officers, one of them an air vice marshal, and a group commander. The terminal officer laid a hand on the MP sergeant’s arm. An air vice marshal was the British equivalent of a lieutenant general. It was better not to make waves when three stars were involved.
“Forgive me, Your Grace,” the air vice marshal said, “but I flatter myself to think of the Duke as an old friend. Has there been word?”
“No,” Captain the Duchess Stanfield said, “not a thing, I’m sorry to say.”
“He’ll turn up,” the air vice marshal said. “You’ll see. Stout fellow, the Duke. Resourceful.”
“Yes,” Captain the Duchess Stanfield said, looking at Captain James M. B. Whittaker.
The subject of a husband missing in action was a bit awkward. The air vice marshal changed the subject.
“I gather you’re not going with us, Major?” he said to Canidy.
“No,” Canidy said, somewhat curtly.
“And how far are you going, Captain—Whittaker, was it?”
“All the way to Brisbane,” Whittaker said.
“Well, we’ll be with you as far as New Delhi,” the air vice marshal said.
“That’ll be nice,” Whittaker said, looking into the Duchess’s eyes. “Maybe we can play cards or something.”
“Let me have your attention, please,” the clerk at the manifest desk said into a public address system microphone. “We are about to load the aircraft. The way the manifest is made up is by priority, not by rank, so pay attention, please. When I call your name, call out, pick up your hand luggage, go to the door, check the manifest to see that we’ve got the name, rank, and serial number right, and then go get on the aircraft.”
“It would seem,” the air vice marshal said,“that we are, in that charming American p
hrase, about to ‘get the show on the road.’”
“Whittaker, James M. B., Captain, Army Air Corps,” the public address speaker boomed.
“Yo!” Whittaker called out.
He looked at Canidy and then at Captain the Duchess Stanfield.
“God go with you, Captain Whittaker,” Captain the Duchess Stanfield said, offering her hand.
“Thank you for seeing me off,” Captain Whittaker said as he shook her hand.
“Don’t be silly, Captain,” the Duchess Stanfield said. “And let us hear from you.”
“Of course,” Whittaker said, and finally let her hand go. Captain the Duchess Stanfield came to almost a position of attention, her face rigid.
“Well, Dick—” Whittaker said. His voice sounded very strained.
Canidy said, “Try not to fly into a rock-filled cloud,” and then he put his arms around Whittaker and hugged him, and whispered, “If anyone even looks cockeyed at her, I’ll slice his balls off.”
Whittaker broke the embrace.
“You do that, Major, sir,” he said. And then he picked up his bags and proceeded to board the aircraft.
Canidy took Captain the Duchess Stanfield’s arm, and they marched in almost a military manner out of the passenger terminal.
Sergeant Agnes Draper, WRAC, when she saw them coming, opened the rear door of the Packard.
“I’ll drive, Agnes,” Canidy said, motioning with his head for her to move to the back with the Duchess. He got behind the wheel and threw the lever that raised the glass divider. Ann Chambers slipped in beside him.
“Rough?” she asked.
“There was an old buddy of the Duke’s in there,” Canidy said. “What they got to do was shake hands.”
“Oh, God!” Ann said.
“Stiff upper lip and all that crap,” Canidy said.
“Why don’t we take her someplace? Would that help?”
“I have other plans,” Canidy said.
“Oh, really?”Ann snapped.
Canidy looked over at her.
“I’m now going to find Fulmar,” he said, “and tell him what interesting things we have planned to keep him from getting bored.”
“Like what?”Ann asked. And then she understood. She reached over and took his hand. “I guess I’m a selfish bitch, after all,” she said. “I was just thinking, better him than you.”
XIII
Chapter ONE
OSS London Station
Berkeley Square
2100 Hours 21 January 1943
David Bruce was forced to admit that Dick Canidy’s grasp of problems and his imaginative solutions to them were on a par with his own. Yet Canidy allowed emotion to enter into decisions, and he was prone to make them on his own authority, almost impulsively.
Canidy, for instance, had just now told Bruce that he had taken it upon himself to tell Fulmar all the details of the Dyer operation.
Fulmar should have been told no more than he had to know. What he needed to know was that he was about to be put inside Germany. What he was to do there was to be explained later.
Bruce could only guess what Canidy had actually said to Fulmar, but according to Canidy himself, he had told Fulmar that for reasons he himself did not know, it was important to bring Professor Friedrich Dyer out of Germany, via Hungary and Yugoslavia, that Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz and Müller were involved, and that when they reached the island of Vis, he would be there with the B-25 to pick them all up.
In an operational sense, the worst thing Canidy had done was tell Fulmar that he would be given a Q pill in case things went wrong. The Q pill was actually a tiny glass vial containing cyanide. It caused almost instant death when crushed between the teeth.
The Q pill was absolutely the last thing on an agent’s checklist. Agents wondered enough about getting caught without being reminded that the OSS was obligingly providing a Q pill just in case. Fulmar would now have a full ten days to dwell on the subject.
And until he actually crossed the German border, Fulmar had the unspoken right to change his mind. Someone else would be sent in, of course, but it would take at least two weeks—and very probably much longer—to recruit and train him. And he would not be as qualified as Fulmar, obviously; and besides, the schedule of events in Germany, Budapest, and Yugoslavia could not be put on hold.
“For God’s sake, Dick,” Bruce asked, trying to keep his temper under control,“why did you get into the Q pill with him?”
“Maybe, David,” Canidy said, unrepentant, "I was hoping he would tell us to go fuck ourselves,” Canidy said.
“He still may,” Bruce said. “Presumably you’ve thought of that?”
“He’ll go,” Canidy said. “Ol’ Wild Bill is very good at recruiting people who will put their head in the lion’s mouth for God, Mother, and Apple Pie.”
Bruce stilled his reply at the last moment. Canidy was one of those who’d had his head in the lion’s mouth.
“Where is he now?” Bruce asked.
“He went to see his mother,” Canidy said.
"He did what?” Bruce asked, incredulously.
“He went to see his mother,” Canidy repeated.
“I don’t think that was a very good idea,” Bruce said, aware that it was a marvel of understatement.
“Neither do I,” Canidy said. “But he decided that he wanted to see her, and I decided that it wasn’t any of my business, our business.”
“From his dossier,” David Bruce said, “I would have thought—God, she has treated him like dirt from the moment he was born—I would have thought he would never want to see her.”
“You can kick dogs, David,” Canidy said,“and a lot of the time they keep coming back, hoping maybe this time you’ll scratch their ears.”
“Where is this touching reunion to take place?” Bruce asked after a moment.
“Her troupe is doing a show at Wincanton. I sent him up there—with Fine—in the Packard. Fine knows her. He’ll be able to handle anything that might come up.”
“You hope,” Bruce said.
“‘Hope springs eternal in the human breast,’ ” Canidy quoted. “You ever hear that, David?”
“I think that will be all, Dick,” David Bruce said. “If anything unusual comes up, I’ll expect you to let me know.”
Chapter TWO
Wincanton Air Corps Base
Kent, England
2330 Hours 21 January 1943
Captain Stanley S. Fine and Lieutenant Eric Fulmar got lost on the way to Wincanton, despite a map Fine had the OSS Motor Officer make up for him.
So it was late, nearly half past eleven, when they finally made it to the Wincanton Air Base Officers’ Club, an old stone barn jammed full of the drunken aviators who had come to be entertained by the fifteen or twenty young women in Monica Sinclair’s USO troupe.
As they made their way to where Monica was whooping it up with a handful of the base’s brass, Eric attracted her attention. His pink and green uniform, with the paratrooper patch sewn on his overseas cap, stood out from the way most of the Air Corps men were dressed, in leather flight jackets.
And then Fine saw in her eyes and in her smile that she was more than a little drunk, and knew there was going to be trouble.
Stanley S. Fine had never liked Monica Sinclair. Some of the dislike sprang from the way she had treated Eric—storing him out of sight like a piece of furniture that didn’t fit in with her present décor but couldn’t be thrown out with the trash because it was a gift from someone important.
But as Fine gazed at her now, and she looked at him with recognition dawning in her eyes, he realized that his dislike wasn’t based just on principle: He despised her personally. The phrase in the industry was that she believed her own press releases. But that was too simple. She wasn’t the only one guilty of that, certainly. But Monica Sinclair not only believed she was truly “America’s Sweetheart,” she was convinced that anyone who didn’t believe it was her enemy.
That belief meant tha
t “America’s Sweetheart” deserved to have her every wish indulged. Shooting schedules never called for her to appear before half past nine in the morning. She was not at her best before that. Her dressing-room trailer was a Taj Mahal on wheels. And she checked other dressing-room trailers to make sure no lesser star had a better one than she did.
Max Liebermann had not officially given her cast control, but everyone knew she could be counted on to come down with an incapacitating migraine if she found on the set another actress who did not look at least five years older than she did.
When neither fans nor motion picture columnists were around, “America’s Sweetheart” had a mouth like a sewer. That, too, was not unusual. Max Liebermann theorized that actresses used foul language the way infants used crying. But Monica Sinclair’s foul tongue was legendary.
“Look who the fucking cat drug in!” Monica Sinclair exclaimed when she was sure it was indeed Stanley S. Fine swimming across the room in her direction.
She shrugged free of some arm that was around her shoulder and took two steps toward Fine.
“You were supposed to meet me in London, you asshole!” she said.
Some officer who had been looking down the front of her USO uniform now directed his somewhat drunken attention to Fine.
“Duty called, Monica,” Fine said. “I came as soon as I could get away.”
“Bet your sweet ass you did,” Monica said. Then she put her hands on his neck, pulled his face down to hers, and kissed him wetly, loudly, and with a tongue probing in his mouth.
Her eyes then fell on Eric. And they lit up. For a moment, Fine thought there was recognition. But then, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, he knew that what had made her eyes bright was not maternal affection.
“And did Stanley bring you for me?” she asked.
Eric nodded.
“Fine, you prick,” Monica Sinclair said, “all is forgiven.” She snaked her arms around Eric’s neck, pulled his face to hers, and kissed him open-mouthed. Then she rubbed her body lasciviously against him. It took a moment before Eric was able to push her away, his face showing shock and revulsion.
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