W E B Griffin - Men at War 3 - The Soldier Spies

by The Soldier Spies(Lit)

  "Dyer is that important to us?"

  "Dyer can tell us about the metallurgy for the jet engines," Donovan said.

  Do I have to tell you, of all people--you burr-under-the-Air-Corps-saddle blanket--how important that is to us? " It wasn't much of a joke, but everybody laughed.

  "Why Yugoslavia?" Canidy asked.

  "Your responsibility ends when Fulmar delivers the Dyers to Budapest," Donovan said. "So that's really none of your business, Dick."

  "The only way to test a pipeline is to run something through it," Canidy said. "Is that what this is, another goddamned test? I send Fulmar in there, and he picks up the Dyers, and then we wait around to see if the pipeline works? Goddamnit!"

  "Just who do you think you're talking to?" David Bruce snapped.

  Donovan raised his hand to shut him off.

  L.

  "Fulmar is being sent in, Dick," Donovan said, "because Dyer is so important to us that Ed Stevens and I agreed it was worth the risk.

  Believe me, if I didn't think the pipeline would work, I would not send Dyer or Fulmar through it." Canidy looked at Donovan and after a moment said, almost formally, "Thank you."

  "We think it will take Fulmar's presence, his physical presence, to convince Dyer that it will be safe to leave," Stevens said. "I don't intend this as a criticism, but I thought I had made that point to you earlier." Canidy nodded.

  "That was before this Yugoslav pipeline came up," Canidy said.

  "Yugoslavia worries me."

  "Why?" Bruce asked.

  "As I understand it," Canidy said, "there are two major guerrilla operations in Yugoslavia. One is run by an ex-Royal Yugoslav Army colonel named Dragoljub Mihajlovic, and the other by a Communist who calls himself Josef Tito. Presumably, we intend to use the colonel for the pipeline, for obvious reasons. But he and Tito are fighting each other. Tito's backed by the Russians, of course. So what happens if the Dyers and Fulmar get grabbed by Tito? Or is that what we're really doing here? Seeing if that's what's going to happen? Another goddamned MacHiavellian test?"

  "I am so interested in learning how you know so much about what's going on in Yugoslavia, Canidy," Donovan said, "that I am going to pretend I didn't hear the rest of what you said."

  "I've been given disinformation' before around here," Canidy said. "Or not told things I should have been told."

  "Now, see here, Canidy--" David Bruce spluttered.

  "That has been unfortunately necessary in the past," Donovan said simply. "But I didn't do it, and that's not happening now."

  "No, sir," Canidy said. "Not by you. My mouth ran away with me, and I'm sorry. I apologize."

  "I should hope so," Bruce said.

  Donovan shut him off as he had before, by holding his hand up.

  "My question, Canidy," he said, "was the source of your expertise about Yugoslavia."

  "I've talked to the people we're dropping in," Canidy said. "They naturally presumed that as the CO of Whitbey House, I had a need to know."

  "And you pumped them!" Bruce accused.

  "Very enterprising of you," Donovan said. "I should have guessed as much." Canidy was really not sure whether it was a sarcastic reprimand or just what the words said.

  Donovan looked at Stevens, then at Canidy.

  "Obviously, Dick," Donovan said, "we are going to use Mihajlovic's forces to protect the Hungary-Yugoslav pipeline. For the moment at least, I'm confident that he can bring our people out safely. But aside from that, I'm afraid you're going to have to consider the question answered in all the detail you're going to get."

  "Fulmar is going to ask me what will happen when he brings the Dyers to Budapest, " Canidy said." Trust me' is not going to be a satisfactory answer to that question."

  "Tell him," Donovan said after a moment, "that they will be taken across the border into Croatia, pass into the hands of Mihajlovic's partisans, who will carry them through Bosnia-Herzegovina to the coast, where they will be carried by ship to the island of Vis.

  Once they get there, they will be picked up by aircraft."

  "Whose aircraft?"

  "The British have a fairly substantial force, more than a hundred men, on Vis," Donovan said. "Two of our people are with them.

  They have furnished us with the airfield dimensions. Have a look at them, then tell Stevens if you think your B-25 has the necessary range and can use the airfield on Vis. If it doesn't, we have been offered space on a British submarine." Canidy's face registered surprise.

  "We also have people with Mihajlovic and Tito," Donovan said. "It wasn't considered necessary that you know, Dick."

  "I need one more piece of information," Canidy said. "Now that Fulmar has committed to memory a map of Leeuwarden, Holland, he's going to Budapest. Where in Budapest?" Donovan chuckled.

  "Stevens has that, too," he said. "Will you have any trouble getting it to von Heurten-Mitnitz?"

  "It takes five days to put a piece of paper in his hand," Canidy said.

  "Overnight to Sweden, and then four days from Stockholm to Berlin."

  "We don't want to cut it too close," Donovan said. "Better set that moving, Ed."

  "Yes, sir," Stevens said.

  "That's it," Donovan said, rising. "I've got a plane to catch. I can sense Chief Ellis growing nervous downstairs." He went to each man to shake hands, and then he walked out of the sitting room. The chief of station and Colonel Stevens walked after him.

  "I have just had an inspiration," Canidy said. "Let's find Jimmy and Fulmar, and go to some pub full of soldiers and get drunk. Maybe with a little bit of luck we can get in a fight."

  "I'm going to surprise you," Fine said. "I'm going with you." [FEVEL Th-Dorchqst-r Rol-l Be Loudou, ED gland ZOIO Sourn Captain James M. B. Whittaker, Lieutenant Eric Fulmar, and Captain the Duchess Stanfield, WRAC, were sitting in the Dorchester bar where Canidy had expected to find them, at a table against the wall.

  "We were wondering where you were," Whittaker said as Canidy sat down and inspected the bottles in paper bags. He was looking for Scotch.

  "We were with the Boss," Canidy said.

  "I thought he was with you at High Wycombe," Whittaker said.

  "The Boss," Canidy said.

  "There was a rumor he's in town," Whittaker said. "Got any interesting gossip?" As a matter of fact, buddy, you're going to go back to the Philippines.

  "Nothing important," Canidy said.

  "And how was High Wycombe?" the Duchess asked.

  "The less said about it the better, Your Gracefulness," Canidy said.

  "Even the Boss felt sorry for us." "We ate," Whittaker said. "We didn't know when, or if, you were coming."

  "No problem," Canidy said. "Stan and I came to take the third man here over to drink with the Air Corps anyway. Joe Kennedy's over there talking them out of aircraft parts. They have a pretty good kitchen in the O Club."

  "The third man?" the Duchess asked.

  "Another quaint Americanism, Your Gracefulness," Canidy said.

  "Two's company, three's a crowd." She blushed, then quickly said, "We're not going back to Whitbey House tonight?" "No," he said.

  "Both Jimmy and I have to see Stevens in the morning." And Stevens will tell him to pack his things, his services are needed in the Philippines The Great Romance will be put on hold.

  Canidy sipped at his liquor. And wished that Ann were here. It would have been nice to spend what was certain to be Jimmy's last night on the town with the four of them together.

  And then his eyebrows went up and he smiled mischievously.

  "Stanley," he said, "there is a damsel yonder trying desperately to attract your attention." "I know," Fine said. "I'm doing my best to pretend I don't see her."

  "You don't want to be nice to the damsel, Stan?" Canidy asked.

  "For God's sake, ignore her," Fine said.

  Canidy raised his hand over his head and waved.

  The woman across the room was a tall, slender woman with silver-gray hair combed upward under her Red Cr
oss uniform cap. She pointed, signifying she was trying to attract Fine's attention. Canidy nodded and beamed happily at her and pushed Fine's shoulder.

  "I think she wants to say hello to you, Stan," Canidy said innocently.

  "You sonofabitch," Fine said, and turned toward the woman. "Oh, my God," he said. "Here she comes." Fulmar and Canidy laughed.

  "You'll stop laughing, Eric," Fine said, aw hen she sinks her fangs into you." It had been inevitable that Stanley S. Fine would become a regular at the Dorchester bar. He had been temporarily housed at the hotel on his arrival in London, and when quarters were found, they were shabby and a long Underground ride across London. With a good deal less embarrassment than he had expected, he took over the apartment Continental Motion Picture Studios maintained in London for traveling stars and executives. It was at Park Lane and Aldford Street, two blocks from the Dorchester.

  He found that he missed the people he knew in the motion picture industry, and it was at the Dorchester that people in the industry were billeted when they came to London.

  Another Dorchester bar regular was the woman now marching across the room. Fine privately thought of Eleanor Redmon as' the Scorpion." She was a Red Cross girl, although that description was not precise.

  Eleanor Redmon was some sort of executive within the Red Cross organization, holding a position too exalted to require her personally to pass out coffee and doughnuts to the boys. For another, the Scorpion was no longer a girl.

  She was, in fact, forty. She was from Duluth, Minnesota, where she had been left widowed, childless, and well-off shortly after the war began.

  Volunteering for the Red Cross seemed to be just the thing.

  Her position carried with it enough assimilated rank for her to have a room at the Dorchester, and she spread enough cash around so that the room became a suite. She quickly got in the habit of dropping into the bar at cocktail time or after dinner with one or more of the prettier young Red Cross girls. They naturally attracted the handsome and dashing young pilots.

  Eleanor Redmon had decided to cultivate Stanley S. Fine when she noticed the warm affection people had for him--people whom she had only previously seen on the silver screen.

  It wasn't difficult. All she had had to do was save a place for him at her table. And the results had been more than worth the effort, Soon, the Scorpion was able to write home that Major David Niven and Private Peter Ustinov had sat at' her" table in the Dorchester bar at the same time, and that her new friend, Captain Stanley S. Fine, who had been a vice president of Continental Studios, had had to lend them the money to pay their bill.

  For his part, Stanley S. Fine watched with morbid fascination the Scorpion arrange her nightly intrigues in the bar. Young officers who came to the Scorpion's table wondering how they would separate the blonde from the old broad frequently woke up the next morning with the old broad beside them in the old broad's bed.

  To Fine, whom she regarded as a decadent (and thus understanding) "movie person," she frankly admitted that she found boys who wore officer's uniforms and pilot's wings--boys who were not old enough to vote-irresistible He saw, too, how skillfully she charmed the middle-aged senior officers who frequented the Dorchester bar. To a man, they stoutly defended her when it was hinted that her interest in peach skinned young officers was more than motherliness.

  As the Scorpion, smiling broadly, reached the table, Fine saw that she was on her fifth or sixth Scotch, and thus likely to be both horny and bitchy.

  With a little bit of luck, he thought, she might go after Canidy.

  "Hello, Stanley!" she cried. "Introduce me to your friends!" By friends, Fine understood, she meant Fulmar. Whittaker was obviously taken, and Canidy, wearing the uniform of a field-grade officer assigned to SHAEF and looking very tired, did not appear boyish.

  Fulmar, on the other hand, with his parachutist's wings and shiny boots and Silver Star, did.

  "Captain Stanfield, Major Canidy, Captain Whittaker, Lieutenant Fulmag may I present Miss Redmon?"

  "I'm very happy to meet you all," the Scorpion said.

  "Are you really going to sink your fangs into him?" Canidy asked.

  "Jesus Christ!" Fine said.

  "I beg your pardon?" she asked.

  "Stanley said you were going to sink your fangs into Eric," Canidy said.

  "I've been wondering what he meant."

  "I can't believe Stanley would say anything like that," she said.

  "That's what he said," Fulmar said.

  The Scorpion's eyes flashed with rage, but she elected to stay and pretend everyone was being very clever.

  She sat down.

  "Are you stationed in London, Major?" she asked as she took a cigarette from her purse and indicated she wanted a light from Fulmar.

  "No," Canidy said.

  "And you must be with the Eighty-second Airborne," she said to Eric.

  "No," Eric said.

  "Then you must be involved in whatever Stanley is doing," she said, "that no one's supposed to talk about," she added significantly.

  "I thought Stan was with the SHAEF movie branch," Canidy said.

  "I am," Fine said quickly.

  "All right, then," the Scorpion said. "We won't talk about that." Her appetite, Fine saw, was whetted by her belief that the horny young hero was involved in intelligence.

  "We're assigned to the 32nd Bomber Group," Canidy said. "I'm an engineering officer, and Eric has the parachute-rigging detachment." "Oh," she said, more than a little disappointed. "Then you just met Stanley?" "Oh, no," Canidy said, "we're old pals. From Hollywood." The Scorpion brightened considerably.

  "You're in the industry?" she asked. Canidy nodded. She smiled at Fulmar. "I should have guessed. You carry yourself like an actor." "I'm not an actor, sorry," Fulmar said sharply.

  "But you were in the industry?" she insisted.

  "Stuntman," Canidy said. "He did all of Errol Flynn's stunts.

  Alan Ladd's, too." "Really?" she asked. "How fascinating!" She beamed at Fulmar and sat down next to him.

  Fulmar rose to the occasion. He told her that Errol Flynn had a phobia about horses, and that in his stocking feet Alan Ladd was five feet one and had to stand on a platform beside his leading ladies.

  And then a full colonel, wearing a SHAEF patch and Chemical Warfare Service insignia, came to the table and asked the Scorpion to dance.

  She hesitated, and then got to her feet.

  "Let's get the hell out of here while she's gone," Canidy said, standing.

  Fulmar and Fine quickly followed him into the lobby.

  "You don't have to come with us, Eric," Canidy said. "You could pursue the Red Cross lady. She seemed fascinated with you."

  "Don't laugh," Fulmar said. "As she stood up to dance with the colonel, that kindly old gray-haired lady grabbed me on the cock."

  "Well, you can't say Stanley didn't warn you," Canidy said, laughing.

  "I didn't believe him," Fulmar said.

  The Packard was outside, but the driver was a tall, thin WRAC corporal.

  Which meant, Canidy thought, that Agnes was off somewhere with Bitter.

  "We'll take the car," Canidy said. "I don't think that Jimmy and Her Gracefulness are going out anywhere." On the way to meet Joe Kennedy and John Dolan at the Air Corps Officers' Club, Eric said, "Before we get schnockered, what should I do about my mother? See her or not?"

  "That's up to you, pal," Canidy said. "She's not my mother."

  "I've been thinking about it," he said. "What the hell, she is my mother."

  "If you're asking if there is any reason you shouldn't see her, some OSS reason," Canidy said, "the answer is the OSS doesn't give a damn, one way or the other."

  "I wonder where she is, how I could find her?" / g Take care of that little detail for the lieutenant, Stanley, will you?" Canidy said.

  "Sure," Fine said.

  "Thanks," Eric Fulmar said, emotionally.

  Xll [ONE] The Surhotel llgarburg an der Lahn, or many 1T Janua
ry After Peis brought Gisella and some trollop into the restaurant, it was a little awkward between Muller and Gisella. Stiff and formal.

  Which was understandable. Gisella was embarrassed. Every one would think she, too, was a whore Peis was serving up to him.

  Gisella is not a whore, Muller thought. She did what she did because she had no control of it. A whore is a whore because she wants to be a whore, because it is easier. Gisella was forced to sleep with other men because Peis is an asshole.