He felt that it behooved him to conceal from his subordinate staff the excitement he felt now that MacArthur was finally being heard from.
“Thank you, Ball,” he said, with as much savoir-faire as he could muster. “How long do you think it will take Captain Buchanan to decrypt the message?”
“About thirty minutes, Sir,” Ball said.
“Fine,” Fertig said. “I expect to be here in half an hour, when Captain Buchanan is finished.”
Forty-five minutes later, Captain Horace Buchanan handed Brigadier General Fertig the two sheets of paper on which he had neatly lettered (Signal Section, HQ, USFIP, did not possess a typewriter) the decrypted message. From the look on Buchanan’s face—disappointment and embarrassment—Fertig knew that there was little good news in the radio message.
“Thank you,” Fertig said, and read the message:
KAZ FOR MFS
ONE LT COL WENDELL W. FERTIG CORPS OF
ENGINEERS US ARMY RESERVE DETAILED INFANTRY
TWO COLONEL MARCARIO PERALTA PHILIPPINE
SCOUTS DESIGNATED MILITARY GUERRILLA CHIEF OF
TEMPORARILY OCCUPIED ENEMY TERRITORY
THREE THE ISSUANCE OF MILITARY SCRIP IS
EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN REPEAT EXPRESSLY
FORBIDDEN
FOUR COMMAND OF GUERRILLA FORCES WILL BE
EXECUTED ONLY BY OFFICERS PRESENTLY IN DIRECT
COMMAND OF SAME
FIVE THIS HEADQUARTERS WILL ENTERTAIN
REQUISITIONS FOR SMALL IN SIZE URGENTLY
NEEDED EQUIPMENT ONLY
BY COMMAND OF GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR
COMMANDER IN CHIEF SOUTHWEST PACIFIC
COMMAND
WILLOUGHBY BRIGADIER GENERAL USA
Fertig looked up and met Buchanan’s eyes.
“I took out the ‘stops’ and stuff, General,” Buchanan said.
There had been a faint hesitation, Fertig noticed, before Buchanan had called him “General.”
It wasn’t only a little bad news, it was all bad news.
As far as MacArthur was concerned, he was a reserve lieutenant colonel in the Corps of Engineers, not a brigadier general in command of U.S. forces in the Philippines.
Colonel Marcario Peralta was “military guerrilla chief of temporarily occupied enemy territory.” Fertig did know Peralta. Peralta had been a successful lawyer in Manila before the war. The last Fertig had heard, just before the surrender, Peralta had been a major. Now he was a colonel, which meant that Fertig was supposed to be subordinate to him.
That could explain why MacArthur had pointedly reminded him that he was a lowly lieutenant colonel.
There was another possibility: If he had not promoted himself, and thus offended MacArthur’s sense of the military proprieties, it was possible (now that he thought of it, even likely) that he would have been promoted to colonel and named “military guerrilla chief of temporarily occupied enemy territory.”
The really worrisome paragraph was the one about forbidding him to issue scrip. He’d been issuing the scrip, signing each one-, five-, and ten-dollar bill himself; and the crude money had been accepted by the Filipinos; they had taken him at his word that, when the war was over and the Japanese had been driven from the Philippines, it would be redeemed at face value.
And since MacArthur obviously was not about to send him gold, the scrip he was “expressly forbidden repeat expressly forbidden” to issue was the only way he had to pay the troops and to buy whatever the natives were willing to sell.
That was even more important than his rank, or Colonel Peralta’s appointment as “military guerrilla chief.” Peralta was on the island of Panay. There was little or no chance that he would try to exercise command over Fertig. Peralta was no fool; he knew that Fertig would simply ignore him.
“Captain Buchanan,” Fertig said, “I presume that no one but you has seen the contents of this message?”
“No, Sir.”
“It is herewith classified Top Secret,” Fertig said, and put a match to it. “No one else is to be made privy to its contents.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“You may tell Lieutenant Ball and whomever else you wish,” Fertig said, “that the message dealt with our reinforcement in the future.”
“Yes, Sir,” Buchanan said. “Sir, what do I call you?”
“That would seem, Captain Buchanan,” Fertig said, looking at him, “to be entirely up to you.”
There was a just-perceptible hesitation before Buchanan spoke. Then he said, “Will there be a reply, General Fertig?”
“No, no reply,” Fertig said. “That will be all, Captain, thank you.”
“Permission to withdraw, General?”
“Granted,” Fertig said. Then, suddenly, “Yes, there will be a reply, Captain.” Fifteen minutes later, MFS went on the air:
MFS FOR KAZ
PERSONAL FOR GENERAL MACARTHUR
REFERENCE PARA FIVE YOUR VALENTINES DAY
MESSAGE STOP URGENTLY REQUEST VIA FIRST
AVAILABLE TRANSPORTATION NECESSARY DRUGS
TREAT VENEREAL DISEASE CONTRACTED BY KEY
PERSONNEL STOP FERTIG
4
CROYDON AIRFIELD LONDON, ENGLAND 14 FEBRUARY 1943—ST. VALENTINE’S DAY
“I think the thing to do with Charity Hoche, Helene,” Lt. Colonel Stevens had said to Helene Dancy earlier that morning, “is for you to meet her at the airport, run her past the officer’s sales store, get her into uniform, and take her out to Whitbey House. She is a young lady who attracts a great deal of attention, and to the extent we can, I think we ought to keep her out of sight.”
Colonel Stevens had then decided that it would be best to put Charity Hoche into the uniform of a WAC first lieutenant.
“We’ll think about actually getting her a commission,” Stevens had said. “In the long run, that might be the thing to do. But for the short run, anyway, I think it makes more sense than putting her into a civilian specialist’s uniform. That attracts attention.”
The first impression Capt. Helene B. Dancy had of Miss Charity Hoche was not particularly favorable.
Miss Hoche descended the stairway from the door of the ATC C-54, “the Washington Courier,” wearing the uniform of a War Department civilian, with the uniform cap perched perkily atop a mass of long golden hair. Neither Capt. Dancy nor Colonel Stevens had expected that Miss Charity Hoche would arrive in England in a civilian specialist’s uniform.
She also managed to display a good deal of shapely thigh and lace-hemmed black petticoat as she came daintily down the stairs. She wore the gabardine uniform topcoat over her shoulders.
Two officers (one of them, in Capt. Dancy’s opinion, old enough to know better) hovered solicitously around her. They were rewarded for their efforts with a radiant display of perfect white teeth between lips that Capt. Dancy thought had entirely too much lipstick of a too dazzling shade.
A double-decker London bus had been driven onto the field to transport the arriving passengers to SHAEF Billeting. There they would be given a two-hour orientation lecture, known as the “Be Kind to Our English Cousins speech.” The trouble with Americans, in the opinion of many Englishmen, was that they were “overpaid, oversexed, and over here.”
The purpose of the orientation lecture was to remind the newly arrived Americans that England had been at war for more than three years; that there was a “ration scheme” for practically everything the English needed to live; and that the British quite naturally resented the relative luxury in which the American taxpayer was supporting its citizens in the United Kingdom.
The lecture, Capt. Dancy decided, seemed to have been prepared with Miss Charity Hoche in mind. But she would not hear it.
Capt. Dancy showed her identification card to the guard and walked out of the terminal building and intercepted Charity Hoche as she was being escorted to the bus.
“Miss Hoche?” she said. “I’m Capt. Dancy. Will you come with me, please?”
The pudgy lieute
nant colonel who was carrying Charity’s makeup kit looked crushed.
Capt. Dancy happened to meet Charity Hoche’s eyes and found herself being examined very carefully by very intelligent eyes.
“My luggage?” Charity asked.
“It’ll be taken care of,” Capt. Dancy said.
Charity said good-bye to the two officers and followed Capt. Dancy into the terminal, then to the Ford staff car.
“Where are we going?” Charity asked when she was in the car, and then, without waiting for a reply, “Is it hard to drive one of our cars on the wrong side of the road?”
“The ‘other’ side of the road is the way I think of it,” Capt. Dancy said. “And the answer is ‘no, you have to be careful, but you soon get used to it.’ ”
“How did I get off on the wrong foot with you so soon, Captain?” Charity challenged.
Because you’re young and spectacularly beautiful and look and act as if a serious thought and a cold drink of water would kill you.
“If I gave that impression, Miss Hoche, I’m sorry,” Capt. Dancy said. “Where we’re going is to my billet. There, we’re going to put your hair up, take some of that makeup off, and do whatever else is necessary to make you credible as a WAC officer.”
Charity Hoche seemed oblivious to the reproof.
“Captain Douglass thought you might want to put me in a WAC uniform, but he wasn’t sure. I’ve got the insignia and AGO card of a first lieutenant in my purse.”
Dancy looked at her in surprise.
“So, all we’ll have to do, then,” Charity said sweetly, “is pin on the insignia, put my hair up, and take some of the makeup off, right?”
She gave Capt. Dancy a dazzling smile.
“But before we do that,” Charity went on, just as sweetly, “I think we should go by Berkeley Square. Not only do I have three ‘Eyes Only’ for Mr. Bruce, but I have crossed the Atlantic with a Colt ‘Banker’s Special’ hanging from my bra strap. It hurts like hell, and I want to get rid of it.”
“I’ll be damned,” Capt. Helene Dancy said.
“Won’t we all be, sooner or later?” Charity asked.
“Apparently, I was wrong about you,” Capt. Dancy said.
“I don’t know about that,” Charity said, “but you were wrong about Colonel Stevens. You should have known he wouldn’t have let me come over here if I was a complete fool.”
5
OSS LONDON STATION BERKELEY SQUARE LONDON, ENGLAND 1610 HOURS 14 FEBRUARY 1943
David Bruce, Chief of London Station, was surprised to sense his office door being quietly opened, and when he looked up, to see the face of Capt. Helene Dancy waiting to catch his attention.
“Sorry to disturb you, Sir,” Capt. Dancy said.
Bruce’s eyebrows rose in question.
“Miss Hoche is here,” Capt. Dancy said.
Bruce frowned. He didn’t want to see Charity Hoche. He wanted, in fact, to nip in the bud any idea of hers that she would enjoy with him the same close personal relationship she was supposed to have with Bill Donovan.
He had directed that Helene Dancy pick the girl up at Croydon and take her directly to Whitbey House in one of the station’s 1941 olive-drab Ford staff cars. En route, Helene was supposed to relay his orders to her to make herself useful wherever Lieutenant Robert Jamison felt she would fit in.
Jamison was Adjutant of Whitbey House Station. His job had been to relieve Canidy of as much of the administrative burden as he could. He had done a good job, but not only was he admittedly unhappy with what he called his chief clerk’s role, but he was also qualified, in Bruce’s opinion, to assume greater operational responsibility.
Jamison wanted to go operational, which was different from assuming greater operational responsibility.
Bruce had already decided that was out of the question, not because Jamison couldn’t do it but because he knew too much for the OSS to risk having him captured. With Canidy the exception that proved the rule, OSS personnel privy to OSS plans and intentions in more than one—their own—case were not permitted to go operational.
No attempt had been made to brief Jamison on any particular operation, but he did the paperwork, and he was as bright as a new dime. There was no question in David Bruce’s mind that Jamison knew far too much about too many things to send him off somewhere where he was likely to find himself being interrogated by the Sicherheitsdienst.
But Bruce had always thought there were areas where Jamison’s intelligence and other talents could be put to better use than requisitioning sheets and towels and keeping abreast of the paperwork. Canidy had been giving him jobs of greater importance than these. And he had accomplished them admirably.
Jamison had handled, for example, and handled well, a project in connection with “Operation Aphrodite”:
There was only one way to test the practicality of the drone bomber project, and that was by setting up a target and trying to blow it up with an explosives-laden, radio-controlled B-17. This, of course, had to be done with as much secrecy as possible, so when they finally flew the flying bombs against the German submarine pens, they would have the necessary element of surprise.
Jamison had scoured the maps of the United Kingdom until he found a lonely bay in Scotland that could be used as a target range. It had required coordination with the English, the local Scottish government, the U.S. Army (from whom he had borrowed a detachment of Engineers to build a target, a mock-up of the entrance to the Saint-Lazare submarine pens), and the U.S. Navy (who had provided ships to clear the area, and a yard boat to be available to pluck “Operation Aphrodite” aviators from the water, if that should prove necessary).
And Jamison had carried this responsibility (which was, of course, in addition to his “chief clerk” duties) with a skill, imagination, and discretion that had pleased Bruce. Jamison had come up with a different cover story for each set of outsiders involved, with just enough truth in each to make it credible, and far enough from the real truth to keep the secret of what was really going on away from German agents.
When the first Personal—Eyes Only message from Colonel William J. Donovan regarding Miss Charity Hoche had come to Berkeley Square asking Ed Stevens if he could find useful work for her, Bruce had seen in it a solution to the problem of more efficient utilization of the talents of First Lieutenant Robert Jamison. She would be assigned first as Jamison’s assistant. There she would do such things as learn how to requisition flour to bake bread—or a similar-looking white powder that had extraordinary explosive power when detonated, say, against the supports of a bridge in France or Yugoslavia.
The sooner she could take the paperwork burden from Bob Jamison’s shoulders, the sooner Jamison could be put to work doing other, more important things.
“Why is she here?” Bruce asked. There was more than a hint of displeasure, even reproof in his voice.
“She has three Eyes Only for you,” Captain Dancy said.
“Oh?” Bruce was surprised that Charity Hoche had been put to work as a courier. Couriers were most often officers traveling to Europe for assignment, or sometimes warrant officers whose duty it was to travel around the world, providing armed, personal guard to documents that could not be trusted to the mail pouches.
“Send her in, please,” Bruce said.
“She’s in the ladies’ room,” Capt. Dancy said, then added, “taking off her pistol.”
Charity Hoche appeared a minute later. She had three letter-size envelopes in her right hand and a Colt “Banker’s Special” .38 Special revolver in her left.
She was stunning. She exuded, David Bruce thought personally, a subtle sexuality, even a sort of refined lewdness that would make an archbishop tend to forget his vows. Professionally, David Bruce had wondered if all of his happy plans to have this young woman relieve Jamison of his administrative chores might be shot out of the water by her blatant sex appeal.
Bruce had been amused to learn that the Army had officially approved the policy of inserting slides
of attractive and scantily attired or nude young women into slide trays containing other slides demonstrating the proper technique of waterproofing a truck or assembling a pontoon bridge. It caught the men’s attention, woke them up, got the blood flowing.
Bruce was genuinely concerned about the degree to which Charity Hoche’s simple presence among the men in training and awaiting assignment at Whitbey House would catch the men’s attention. There were some women at Whitbey House, and some local women, but not nearly enough of the opposite sex to go around.
Miss Charity Hoche, Bruce suspected, would wake them up and get their blood flowing to an undesirable degree.
“Mr. Bruce,” Charity said in a low and sexy voice, “I’m Charity Hoche. Daddy said when I saw you to give you his best regards.”
She thrust the envelopes at him. They were of lightweight, airmail paper, double enveloped, the outer envelopes stamped TOP SECRET.
They were warm to the touch. After a moment, he figured that out. She had been carrying them on her person. In her girdle, specifically; there was no other place where they could have been carried unfolded. It made sense, of course, but there was still something unsettling about it.
Bruce forced his thoughts from Charity’s girdle to the pistol. The way she was holding it—upside down, her finger nowhere near the trigger, not waving it around, the muzzle pointed safely toward the floor—showed that she was quite at home with firearms. But one did not expect to see a snub-nosed revolver in the soft white hands of a long-haired blonde with a face that brought to mind candlelight dinners.
Charity Hoche saw the surprise in his eyes. She flashed Bruce a dazzling smile.
“I didn’t mean to startle you, Mr. Bruce,” she said. “But I . . . I can’t tell you where I’ve had the damned thing for the last thirty-six hours . . . just had to get it out of there. I’m scarred for life.”
The Fighting Agents Page 21