W E B Griffin - Men at War 1 - The Last Heroes

by The Last Heroes(Lit)

  And be, when not long afterward he began to explore her body with his hands, found her hair to be fuller, richer, and darker than he was used to... except where she had carefully made herself babysmooth.

  National Institute ot Health Building Washington, D.C.

  November 30,1941 captain Peter Douglass gave Eldon C. Baker a cup of coffee, oured himself one, then carried it behind his desk.

  6 61 9ve just been reading your files," he said. "Again."

  "I'm a little surprised to hear that," Baker confessed. He wondered how the Navy captain had managed to gain access to his personal records.

  "The psychiatrist thinks you have a tendency to indulge your fantasies," Douglass said. He flipped through papers on his desk. "Would you say that's the case, Mr. Baker?"

  Now Baker was even more surprised. It was absolutely against regulations for psychiatric evaluation records to be disseminated outside the intelligence division of the State Department, much less casually shipped to some public-relations outfit sharing quarters with the National Institute of Health.

  "May I see that?" Baker asked.

  "Help yourself," Douglass said.

  Baker got out of his chair and walked to Douglass's desk.

  "They were more than a little upset when I went over there for these," Douglass said. "And were more than a little reluctant to ha d them over." 11

  "You're not supposed to have access to these records,- Baker said.

  "Nor these either, I daresay," Douglass said. He pushed a stack of manila folders to Baker. They were all Stamped SECRET. What they were were his complete files--copies of everything he had transmitted to the State Department since entering his intelligence assignment in France.

  "If it's your intention, Captain, to surprise me, you have," he said. "May I ask what's going on around here?"

  "What had you heard?" Douglass asked.

  "That you were going to handle the national propaganda, should we get in a war," Baker said.

  "That, too," Douglass said, "%at is it YOU want of me?" Baker said.

  "Well," Douglass said. "You have a nice speaking voice, and I understand you're perfectly fluent in French and German, Perhaps we could put you to work doing foreign-language broadcasts." You're mocking me," Baker said, without anger." why?"

  "I want to see if the psychiatrist is right," Douglass said. "I'd like to know what your imagination makes of all this."

  "Are you serious?"

  "Perfectly."

  "Anything with enough authority to get my records is some sort of intelligence operation," "Very good," Douglass said. "But I'm not sure whether that is your imagination at work, or whether Undersecretary Quinn told you that he's heard this is some sort of intelligence operation and suggested you find out as much as you can about it while you're over here."

  "Half and half," Baker said. "When Mr. Quinn learned f was coming over, he said something about what he'd heard. But I don't understand how you got the wherewithal to remove my files. That, my unfettered mind suggests, means you have a great deal of authority. roo LAST HEIROES ITS qreport to Colonel William J. Donovan. Donovan answers to the president," Douglass said.

  ,And what do you want with me?"

  ,We want you to head up what would be called, in the State Department, the French desk."

  Baker just looked at him.

  ,We,re still in the process of starting up," Douglass went on. "The French deskat least for the near future-includes French North West Africa." -Why me?"

  ,well, for one thing, Robert Murphy thinks very highly of you I Douglass said. "He was furious when he couldn't get you to be one of his control officers."

  "I have no idea what you're talking about," Baker said. Douglass laughed, pleasantly.

  "The Weygand-Murphy Accords are only classified secret," he said. "If I can get your dossier and your files, are you really Surprised that I know about them?"

  "Knowing about something and talking about it are two different things," Baker said. "We are entitled to know everybody's secrets," Douglass said. "The reverse is not true."

  "Forgive me, Captain, isn't that a little melodramatic?"

  "Possibly," Douglass said.

  "What, exactly, would I be doing on your French desk?"

  "Whatever has to be done in what Colonel Donovan decides is the interest of the United States," Douglass said. "Some of the things you may be asked to do might violate the law, and will certainly violate what is commonly thought of as decency and morality. Would that bother you?"

  "I'm unable to take you entirely seriously," Baker said.

  "Oh, I'd hoped the files would impress you," Douglass said. "They don V"

  "Yes, they do," Baker said after a moment. "But you're throwing this at me awfully quickly."

  : spend the balance of Your governr make that point?"

  "We're back to the melodrama," Baker said.

  ""m sorry You feel that way," Douglass said.

  "How much time do I have to think this Over?"

  "Until YOU leave the room," Douglass said.

  "Wouldn't you be likely to think l,m impulsively?" a fool if I jumped into this "I've read Your files; You're no fool. The question before me now is how decisive you are.-"I'll call Your bluff," Baker said.

  "I'm not bluffing," Douglass said.

  "As I understand your offer, tus... retain my State Department sta- "For the time being. You may be asked to transfer to us la Douglass confirmed.

  "Yes, I know," Douglass said. "But don't take that to meal, th t am acting impulsively. Before we sent for you, you were go., over very thoroughly. The decision to send for you was made by Colonel Donovan himself", "What would I be doing?" Baker asked.

  Douglass ignored The question. at the State Department', "You're about to be promoted 'he said. "Which was one of the reasons Partment had high-priority plans for you. our prio Mr. Murphy couldn't have You as a control officer. The State D ehighee, _rity i's even Douglass waited a moment for that to sink in and then went on, "You will, in anycase, be given that promotion. If you Come over here, State Department records will indicate that you are a special assistant to the undersecretary of state for European affairs. For the time being, at least, you will remain on the State Department pay. roll. But you will answer to me, not to anyone in the State Department. If I ever find out that you told anyone in the State Department anything that you learn here-and I would, Mr. Baker-you will flent career stampi _ng visas. Do I Baker asked.

  ,And I am to report to you, as head of a French/French North West African desk that is somehow involved in intelligence?"

  "Yes."

  ,All right Baker said.

  ,Would you be offended if I said that I am not surprised? That, in fact, I have already arranged an office for you?" Douglass Baker thought that over. asked.

  "No," he said.

  "What is the highest security classification with which you are familiar, aside from Presidential Eyes Only?"

  "Secretarial Eyes Only, I suppose," Baker said. "Until we run you through the administrative process around here, I'm afraid I can't let you take this out of the office," Douglass said. "But I want it running through your head while you're over at State this afternoon cleaning out your desk."

  "That quick?"

  Douglass ignored the question. "The classification of this-we haven't come up with a satisfactory classification system yet, frankly-is somewhere below Presidential Eyes Only and somewhere above Secretarial Eyes Only, Only those Cabinet members with a need to know have access to it."

  He handed Baker a file. "There's as much information as we have on a man named Louis Albert Grunier in there Douglass said. "The first thing we have to do is find him, and the second thing we have to do is figure Out the best way to get him here without arousing the suspicions of the Germans."

  A quick glance at the first couple of lines showed Baker that Louis Albert Grunier was a French national who was last known to be an employee of Union Mini6re in the Katanga Province of the Belgian Congo. His
present whereabouts were unknown.

  "May I ask why this man is valuable?" Baker asked.

  "Grunier knows the location of a certain raw material that is : ITS W. E. URRIPIP11V considered of great importance. We think he will be able to help us get our hands on it."

  "You're not going to tell me what kind of material? Or what it is to be used for?"

  Baker asked.

  "No," Captain Douglass said. "But I'll tell you what I want You to do: indulge your imagination and make guesses. Come in here at nine in the morning and tell me what you've been thinking."

  SEVEN Summer Place 1)eal, New Jersey 10:30 A.m., December 7, 1941

  Chesley Haywood Whittaker, Sr., had built Summer Place in New Jersey in 18 89 because the senior Whittaker did not like Long Island or Connecticut or Rhode Island, where most of his peers had their summer places. He was neither a Vanderbilt nor a Morgan, he said to his wife, just a simple bridge and dam builder; and he could not afford to copy in Newport or Stockbridge a Florentine palace. So she would just have to deal with Deal. The play on words amused him.

  The names his wife suggested for the new summer house (twenty-six rooms on three floors, sitting on ten acres which sloped down to the beach of the Atlantic Ocean) also amused him. She proposed Sea View and Sea Breezes and The Breakers and Ocean Crest and Sans Souci (and the English translation, Without Care).

  ""Careless'would be all right, Mitzi," Chesley Haywood Whittaker told his wife. "It would memorialize my foresight in hiring Carlucci.- Antonio Carlucci and Sons, General Contractors, had built the house, graded the dunes, and laid the grass, driveways, and a sixhole putting green for what Chesley Haywood Whittaker, Sr., considered an outrageous ninety-seven thousand dollars.

  Esther Graham "Mitzi" (for no good reason) Whittaker was alone with the father of her three sons in the privacy of their bedroom in their brownstone on Murray Hill in New York City. There were no children or servants within hearing.

  "Call it what you damned well please, you ass!" she flared. "But there had damned well better be a sign up by next week!"

  The house, not quite two miles from the railroad station in Asbury Park, could not be seen from the road. Mitzi's sister and brother-in-law had ridden in a hack for two hours up and down the road before they found it. It was, Mitzi pointed out to her husband, the only one of more than two dozen summer places nearby that had neither a gatehouse nor a sign.

  A sign was up when next Mrs. Whittaker went to Deal. The senior Whittaker had ordered a brick wall six feet high and eight feet long on the sand beside the road. Mounted on it was a bronze sign, cast as a rush order and special favor to Whittaker by the Baldwin Locomotive Works:

  SUMMER PLACE WHITTAKER "It would have taken six men and God only knows how much`:1 money to take it down, and your father knew it," Mitzi Whittaker had often told her sons. It was one of her favorite stories, and every time that Chesley Haywood Whittaker, Jr., passed the sign he thought of his mother telling that story.

  He remembered the sign when it stood alone on the sand. Now there was a fence, brick pillars every twenty-five feet, with pointed steel poles in between. The road had long ago been paved with brick, and Summer Place had become the year-round residence of Chesley Haywood Whittaker, Jr.

  After the death of first their father and six months later their mother, Mitchell Graham Whittaker, the older brother, had taken over the brownstone in Manhattan and lived there unmarried (but, it was reliably rumored, seldom without female companionship) until his death.

  And the house on Q Street had gone to James Graham Whittaker, the baby brother, who had been killed with Pershing in France four months before his wife delivered their only child. As Chesley 14aywood Whittaker often thought, young Jim Whittaker became the only chance the family had to perpetuate its name and fortune. sty and his wife-to their deep regret-were childless.

  Che For James Is wife, a Martindale girl from Scarsdale, had remarried a couple of years after his death; but she had been extraordinarily kind to Chesty and Mitch about the boy, who had been christened James Mitchell Chesley Whittaker at Saint Bartholomew's on Park Avenue with his uncles and Barbara as his godparents. She had shared the boy with them more than they had any right to expect she would.

  Her second husband, a lawyer on Wall Street, was a Yalie by way of Phillips Exeter. Little Jimmy had followed the Whittakers through St. Mark's and Harvard. Every New Year's, they had sort of a delayed Christmas for him at Summer Place, and Jimmy's mother and her husband and their children always gave them the boy for a in onth in the summer.

  It had been planned that when Little Jimmy graduated, they would take him into the firm, but he had instead elected to go into the Army Air Corps and learn to fly. At the time, it had seemed like a good idea. Let him sow a few wild oats before he settled down. But now that Roosevelt had extended his service for a year and he had been sent to the Philippines, it obviously hadn't been such a good idea.

  Chesty Whittaker missed Jimmy very much, and so did Barbara, and Chesty was also worried about what the war that seemed Imminent would mean for Jimmy. Today he would get some answers. Or thought he would. He was going first to a Giants game, and then to Washington, with his lawyer friend Bill Donovan. Donovan was already doing something very hush-hush for Roosevelt-so hush-hush that the normally cheerful and expansive Donovan changed the subject every time Chesty tried to pry out of him what it was he was doing for Franklin, though it was obviously related to what he and Commander Ian Fleming had been cooking UP together last summer.

  Donovan, nevertheless, had better access to what the future had in store for him and for Jimmy than Chesty himself did, and Chesty knew that except for those matters covered by secrecy, Donovan would give him straighter answers than he had got from Franklill the night he and Jimmy ate with him at the White House. When he'd asked him for straight answers, Franklin just grinned his enigmatic grin. "If you want to get in the game, Chesty," he said, "you're going to have to join the team."

  Chesty Whittaker was damned if short of war he would join Roosevelt's "team." If the man wasn't a socialist, he was the next thing to it.

  When he went into the breakfast room to say good-bye to Barbara, she asked him if he had any money. When he looked, he found he didn't, and she shook her head at him, took two hundred dollars in twenties from her purse, and gave it to him.

  Barbara was his best friend, he thought, far more than a wife. And whenever she was kind to him, which was often, he was ashamed even more about Cynthia. If Barbara ever found out about that, she would be deeply hurt. Chesty Whittaker would rather lose an arm than hurt her. Mother Nature was a bitch, he thought. If she had caused Barbara to lose interest in the physical side of life, it seemed only fair that she dampen his urges too. And she had not. Cynthia kept him as randy as he had been as a young man.

  He left the house by the kitchen door. Chesty squinted against the sunlight. It was so painfully bright as to cause pain. The last damned thing he needed was a headache--or rather another headache. For he'd had a few lately. And this sort of surprised him, because he was otherwise in perfect health.

  At fifty-three Chesley Haywood Whittaker, Jr., carried only twenty pounds more than the one hundred eighty-two he had carried as a tackle at Harvard. He played golf at least once a week, squash at the New York Athletic Club every Thursday afternoon, and had giver' up the boat only when he marked his half century of life. He was, his doctor told him, in as good shape as he'd been at twenty-one.

  Edward, the chauffeur, had the Packard waiting. He got behind the wheel and pushed the starter button and ground the damned starter gears. You actually could not feel or hear that the Packard engine was running, but that did not keep him from feeling foolish. He put it in gear and moved away.

  Chesty saw Barbara wave at him from the breakfast room. He waved back, and he considered again that she probably sensed he had a woman somewhere. But if she knew, she hadn't said anything, or done anything. There had not been so much as a hint or a pointed remark.<
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  He forced that thought from his mind again, and the Packard turned past the sign his father had erected and headed for New York on Route 35, through Perth Amboy and into Elizabeth and then around Newark Airport and over the Pulaski Skyway. He smarted, as he always did, at the thought that he did not build the skyway. His firm had bid on it (all it was, really, was a high, paved railroad bridge; bridges were bridges) and had lost out by a lousy eleven million dollars.