“Navigation wouldn’t have to be that precise,” Canidy said. “All you’d have to do would be to maintain a known heading. Over five hundred miles, you could put something like that within, say, ten miles of where you wanted it. London is a lot wider than ten miles. And if you knew the cruising speed, a simple timer could shut off the fuel when it was over the target. ”
He looked at Donovan, who nodded.
“That’s just about the same answer I got from Professor Pritchard,” Donovan said,“who sends his regards.”
Matthew Pritchard had been one of Canidy’s teachers at MIT. More than a teacher, almost a collaborator in Canidy’s thesis.
“It’s frightening,” Canidy said. “The more you think about it, the more frightening it gets. And without having to worry about pilot safety, they could stamp them out like cookies. No landing gear, no communications equipment, a rudimentary stabilization system. . . . Just an engine and a load of explosive.”
“Matt Pritchard told me that the engine is the only weak point he could think of,” Donovan said. “As it is with the jet-powered fighters.”
“I don’t understand,” Canidy said. “I agree, of course, that the engine is the most important component, but I don’t see how that helps us.”
“We keep them from building engines,” Donovan said.
“How are we going to do that?” Canidy asked.
“I should have said, ‘we delay, we interfere with,’ the production of engines, ” Donovan said. “I think we can do that. How effectively remains to be seen.”
“How delay? How interfere with?” Canidy asked.
“The priority is first delay the jet fighters and next the flying bombs. If we can delay the production of jet engines, we can delay the production of jet fighters, and then we pray the Eighth Air Force can use the time bought to destroy German industry before they can, as you put it, start stamping out flying bombs like cookies.”
“And von Shitfitz can somehow help? How?”
"Specifically, by helping us bring out an expert who can tell us about the engines,” Donovan said. “Not their design. But their metallurgy. According to Pritchard and others, this is a whole new technology. A whole new metallurgy. If we can find out what kind of alloys are needed and shut off the German supply of the raw material, then we can delay—or at least interfere with—engine production.”
“Our own metallurgists can’t tell us?”
“There’re several ways to go, or so I’m told. We need to know which way the Germans are actually going before we can try to interfere with the raw-material-to-finished-engine process.”
“And the guy you want to bring out can tell us?” Canidy asked.
Donovan nodded. He was a little uncomfortable. While everything he had said to Canidy was true, it was not the whole truth.
“Who is he?” Canidy asked.
“His name is Friedrich Dyer. Professor Doctor Friedrich Dyer, of the Department of Physics at Philips University in Marburg an der Lahn in Hesse.”
“Which is where Eric went to school,” Canidy said.
Donovan nodded again.
Canidy accepted what he was being told without question. There was no reason that he should be suspicious, but it was better that he not be.
If Friedrich Dyer could be successfully extracted from Germany he might well be useful. But that was not the reason a good deal of effort and a great deal of money was going to be expended to extract him. If he could be extracted, then others on a list in Donovan’s safe could be extracted. The German chemists, physicists, and mathematicians on the list were those with expertise in the mathematics, physics, and chemistry of nuclear energy.
Getting them out might help Leslie Groves’s Manhattan Project. It certainly would deny their knowledge to the Germans. But they had to be extracted in such a way as not to alert the Germans to the American interest in nuclear energy. They would, in other words, have to be mixed with people with no nuclear connection.
Since Canidy could not be told about the atom bomb, he could not be told any more than he had been about the Dyer operation. Donovan understood the necessity for this, but he disliked what in the final analysis was deception of his own people.
“The prototype production of engines has been assigned to a plant in Marburg,” Donovan said. “The Fulmar Elektrisches Werk.”
"Fulmar?” Canidy said. "Jesus!” And then:“Electrical plant?”
“Relatively small electric furnaces capable of great and precise heat are what’s needed,” Donovan said. “The critical parts are small.”
Canidy grunted, as if ashamed he hadn’t thought of that himself.
“If we can bring the first man out, we can get others out,” Donovan said. “Dr. Conant of Harvard has made the point to the President that scientists are not a renewable resource.”
“It would be easier to kill them,” Canidy said. “Certainly cheaper.” Donovan looked at Canidy in surprise. Not that the thought had entered Canidy’s mind—it was a thought that had of course passed many times through his own mind—but that he could talk about it so matter-of-factly, aloud.
And then Canidy met his eyes, and Donovan saw embarrassment in them, maybe even shame.
“Don’t be embarrassed, Dick,” Donovan said. “It may well be necessary to take some people out.”
“Shit,” Canidy said.
“The rationale, for what it’s worth, is that any number of dead Germans are better than one dead American. A lot of innocent people are being killed in the bombing.”
Canidy grunted again.
“Would it be all right if I had a drink, Colonel?” Canidy asked.
“I sort of hoped you’d offer me one,” Donovan said.
That’s another lie, Donovan thought. I don’t like to drink. But I will drink with you now, because I know it’s important to you that I do that.
Canidy walked across the room to a table on which sat half a dozen bottles of whisky and gin and bourbon.
“Scotch?” he asked.
“Please,” Donovan said.
Canidy made two stiff drinks, walked back, and handed one to Donovan.
“Are we in touch with von Heurten-Mitnitz?” Canidy asked.
"Von Heurten-Mitnitz,” Donovan noticed, not“von Shitfitz”; Canidy was now thinking too hard to indulge his tendency to be clever.
“We have limited access to a British agent in Berlin who will make initial contact with him when the time comes. When that will be, I’ll leave up to you.”
“What exactly is my role in all this?”
“I thought you would have figured it out,” Donovan said. “This operation is yours, Dick.”
That wasn’t the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, either. Donovan had planned to talk to Canidy, to feel him out. The decision as to who would run von Heurten-Mitnitz would be made later, after talking to Stevens and Bruce. Bruce wanted to give the assignment to Eldon Baker. Stevens thought Canidy should have it.
“Getting Professor Whatsisname out?” Canidy asked. “Or running von Heurten-Mitnitz?”
“Running von Heurten-Mitnitz,” Donovan said, making the decision, and then immediately making another. “And running the entire pipeline, when we get that far. You have objections?”
Canidy didn’t reply for a moment.
“I was talking to one of the SOE guys,” he said finally. “He told me, with great pride, that the English spend their time between wars training their intelligence people. That way they have competent people available when they’re needed. At the time, I just got mad. The sonofabitch was taking a shot at the OSS—they’re good at that—but now I’m wondering why we don’t do that. If we did, I wouldn’t be sitting here now, unable to honestly come up with a name, except maybe Baker’s, who could run von Shitfitz better than I can.”
“I think you can do better than Eldon Baker,” Donovan said. “That’s why I gave the job to you.”
“What happens next?”
“Plan to spend severa
l hours with Ed Stevens after I leave. He’ll give you all the details.”
“I’ll stay here?”
“Until it gets in the way,” Donovan said. “You’ve done a good job here, Dick. I was nosing around before.”
“Is that what they call ‘throwing the dog a bone’?” Canidy asked.
Donovan laughed. “Actually it’s called ‘Putting the Other Side to Sleep, We Hope.’ We know they’re watching us pretty closely, so we’re going to try to put them to sleep a little. Fine, for the time being, will continue as Stevens’s administrator. And then we’re going to send him to Switzerland, where we hope they will think he’s going as an administrator.”
“Switzerland? What for?”
“Do you know Allen Dulles?”
Canidy shook his head. “No.”
“I thought maybe you’d met in Washington,” Donovan said. “Dulles is station chief in Switzerland. Good man. We intend to use Stan Fine’s contacts with the Zionists—as incredible as it seems, with what Hitler is doing with the Jews, they have a fine intelligence net inside Germany—to see what he can find out for us. And then, in time, we—which is to say you—will bring Fulmar up from Morocco, where he is working as a linguist, and work him here as a linguist for a while and then send him to Switzerland too.”
“From where we can move him into Germany?” Canidy asked. "You may conclude that it’s necessary,” Donovan said.
“That’s already been decided, hasn’t it?” Canidy asked, looking into Donovan’s face.
“You may come to conclude that it’s necessary,” Donovan repeated.
“And Whittaker?”
“Whittaker will continue on running agent training,” Donovan said.
“Oh,” Canidy said with sarcastic innocence, “I thought maybe you’d come to conclude that it’s necessary to send him back to the Philippines.”
He was expecting a reaction from Donovan, but not the one he thought he saw in his eyes.
“Jesus Christ!” he said. “When? Why?”
“I think we’ve covered everything that has to be covered, Dick,” Donovan said, very evenly. “Why don’t we call it a night?”
[TWO]
Special Operations Executive Station X 7 December 1942
The meeting was held in a small, oak-paneled chamber on the second floor of a Georgian mansion that had been the country home of a ducal family. Before the home had been turned over to the Imperial General Staff of His Majesty’s Forces, and then by the IGS to the SOE, the room was known as the “small bridge room.”
Which was a euphemism. The truth was that His Grace, having been corrupted by the Americans, had turned the “small bridge room” into a salon for the play of much less reputable games. While visiting the 160,000-acre ranch his family had owned in Montana since 1884, His Grace had visited Las Vegas, Nevada, where he had been introduced to an American game of chance known as “poker.” Though losing a bit ($18,000) before he got the hang of it, His Grace became enraptured with the game. And he soon came to understand the philosophy of play: He came to see that it was really a game that turned not so much on the luck of the draw as on the quick-wittedness of the players and upon their ability to judge the psychological makeup of their opponents.
His Grace found that far more interesting than waiting to see what card would fall next in Chemin de Fer or where the ball would come to rest after it bounced around a roulette wheel. Moreover, once he came to understand the game, His Grace was rather good at it. He left Las Vegas $22,000 richer than he had come.
It wasn’t the money that pleased him—His Grace owned substantial tracts of land in Mayfair—but the sense of accomplishment. And he would be damned if he had to forgo that pleasure until his next visit to America, which might not be for another five years. He knew enough men who would not only be as fascinated with the game as he was (after he had overcome their initial resistance), but who also possessed both the intellectual bent and the financial resources (once they had the hang of it) to make formidable—and thus worthy—opponents.
His Grace had a word with the owner-manager of Harrod’s Gambling Hall, a most obliging chap. When His Grace left Las Vegas, he took with him a heavy, oak, six-sided table with a green baize playing surface and rather clever little shelves around the edges in which one kept one’s chips and one’s glass; a light fixture designed to illuminate the playing surface and nothing else; six matching chairs with arms and cushions; a case of chips; two dozen green plastic eyeshades; and a case (20 gross) of plastic-coated cards. The latter two items were emblazoned with “Harrod’s Gambling Hall, Las Vegas Nevada.”
His Grace successfully taught the game to his friends, but he was not able to convince his butler—and thus, none of the other staff either—that poker was the sort of game His Grace should be playing. The butler, furthermore, felt that if it should become public knowledge that he was playing, His Grace might suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous rumors.
The room in which the poker table and the chairs and the special light fixture and the other accessories were installed was therefore referred to as “the small bridge room.”
"C” (as he was then and now known), who had been at Oxford with His Grace, had later been one of those taught the game of poker by His Grace, and who was now head of MI-6 and de facto chief of all British Intelligence, told this story to Lieutenant Colonel Edmund T. Stevens and Major Richard Canidy when they first sat down at the six-sided baize-covered poker table.
"In the eyes of the staff,”“C” concluded, “poker was rather like the young women the Duke brought here when he acceded to the title. We were still at Oxford then. He used to ship them over from Paris by the half dozen. The staff referred to them as his ‘special weekend guests.’”
Canidy and Stevens both laughed out loud. "C” chuckled, pleased that he had amused them. And that he had put them at ease.
"C” was a gentleman and subtle. The story was intended not only to amuse Canidy and Stevens but to remind them of the differences between the British and American cultures. And to suggest that they were all playing poker: the British and the Americans versus the Germans, and the British versus the Americans. These points were not lost on either Major Canidy or Colonel Stevens.
In the First World War, the British and the French had agreed between themselves that since Americans knew nothing of war, the American entrance into the war would mean nothing more than an influx—albeit a massive one—of “colonial” troops and matériel to be used as the experts saw fit.
Things didn’t go quite as the British and French experts had planned, the American Commanding General “Black Jack” Pershing being rather reluctant to follow their orders. He announced, and stuck by his decision, that when Americans went into combat, they would be led by American officers, and would not be fed piecemeal into either English or French formations.
The situation was changed in this war. An American general was in overall command, reflecting the reality that Americans would have otherwise sent their troops and matériel to the Far East. Japanese, not Germans, occupied American territory. Americans would go along with the notion that the war should be won first in Europe, but only if their man, Eisenhower, was in charge.
Since a large and powerful body of American opinion still held that the European war was none of America’s business, it would have been politically impossible for Roosevelt to send a million American soldiers to Europe to be commanded by an Englishman.
The British understood this; but that did not change their devout belief that the Imperial General Staff, as well as MI-6 and the Special Operations Executive, were far better equipped to run military operations and intelligence than was Eisenhower and his American staff and the just-born, relatively speaking, Office of Strategic Services.
If the British had their way, all the assets—matériel, personnel, and financial—of the OSS would be directed by the various intelligence officers who, in one way or another, all reported to "C.”
Colonel Willia
m J. Donovan was the World War II equivalent for espionage and sabotage—for “strategic services”—of General Black Jack Pershing and the AEF of World War I: Despite their inexperience and despite any other objection the Imperial General Staff—or Winston Churchill himself— might have, Americans, Donovan insisted—with the authority of President Roosevelt—would run their own covert operations.
And, to the surprise of some British, the Americans had done well, in an intelligence sense, in the invasion of North Africa. If they had failed, perhaps there would have been a chance to argue again for British control. But that hadn’t happened. There was no way now to talk the Americans out of independent operation. There would be cooperation, nothing more.
And that, Stevens thought, was the real reason "C” was sitting across the poker table from him now. The ostensible purpose of this meeting had to do with certain operational details involving Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz and Johann Müller. If the British had been running these agents, the personal attention of "C” would not be required. "C” was here now to ensure that his people understood that the decision had been made to cooperate with the independently operating Americans.
Photostatic copies of all the MI-6 files on Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz and Johann Müller, on the von Heurten-Mitnitz family, on the Baron Fulmar, on the German rocket installation at Peenemünde, on German jet-engine experimentation, on everything the Americans had asked for, plus some things they hadn’t asked for but which they would find of interest, had been brought to the meeting at Station X.
It took more than four hours before the Americans had examined the photostats and were out of questions; arranged the details of liaison with the British agents in Germany; and come to an understanding, an agreement, about where British support would end and the Americans would have to fend for themselves.
And then the Americans left.
The deputy chief of MI-6 sat alone with "C” at the poker table, a bemused look on his face.
“If you’re about to say something witty, Charles, about our American friends,”"C” said, "please spare me. Otherwise?”
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