Soldier Spies

by Griffin, W. E. B.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And, Stan, I want the Princess back.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  On the way to the Dorchester, Bitter was given the answer to the question he dared not ask. The Princess was the Austin Princess limousine Canidy had had at the airport.

  The entrance to the Dorchester Hotel was protected by sandbags stacked high around the revolving door, and the plate-glass windows that looked out onto Park Lane and Hyde Park were painted black and crisscrossed with tape to keep glass shards from flying if a bomb struck nearby.

  But inside, the hotel was much as Bitter remembered it. The only difference seemed to be that most of the men and many of the women in the lobby and bar were in uniform.

  Bitter was surprised that the British lady sergeant was at the table against the wall with the others. Another manifestation of Canidy’s contempt for military customs. Enlisted people were not supposed to socialize with officers.

  And officers were not supposed to demonstrate affection in public, either, he thought, when he saw that Ann Chambers was cuddled affectionately against Dick Canidy.

  “Commander Don Winslow of the Navy,” Canidy said, “and his ambulance chaser.”

  “The ambulance chaser,” Fine said, “has been sent to reclaim the Princess. ”

  “Oh, damn,” the British enlisted woman said. “And it’s such fun to drive!”

  "Besides,” Whittaker said, “the steering wheel is where it’s supposed to be, right?”

  Whittaker, Bitter saw, was holding the duchess’s left hand, on which she wore a wedding ring.

  “Now that you’ve had your lectures, Edwin,” Canidy said,“show us how you can charm the natives.”

  “Richard,” the British woman sergeant said, “for Christ’s sake, leave him alone.”

  That was astonishing behavior for an enlisted woman, Bitter thought, precisely the reason the customs of the service kept enlisted people separated socially from officers.

  “Commander,” the duchess said,“it seems only fair to tell you that for the last four days, we have heard nothing from Richard but glowing reports about you. I can’t imagine why he’s being such a shit to you now that you’re actually here.”

  A waiter appeared with one chair.

  “I’m terribly sorry, Your Grace,” he said. “But this is the only chair.”

  Bitter saw that she quickly pulled free the hand Whittaker had been holding.

  “We’ll manage,” the duchess said. “Thank you very much.”

  Bitter found himself sitting beside the English female sergeant. That made him uncomfortable, but there seemed to be nothing he could do about it.

  Whittaker reached under the table and came up with two gray paper sacks.

  “Scotch and applejack,” Eddie,” he said. “We’re out of bourbon and rye.”

  “I hate to admit this,” Fine said, “but I’m growing to like the applejack.”

  Under the circumstances, Bitter decided that he could not refuse a drink, even though he really didn’t want one.

  “Scotch, please,” he said.

  The English sergeant shifted on the banquette seat so she could reach the ice bucket. With long delicate fingers she dropped ice in a glass, then extended it to Whittaker for the Scotch.

  Bitter remembered her name: Agnes Draper.

  When she handed him the glass, their fingers touched, and he wondered if Canidy was actually capable of trying to fix him up with a female sergeant.

  He decided that he was.

  Fifteen minutes later, Lt. Colonel Stevens came into the bar.

  “I hate to break in on this happy little gathering,” Stevens said. “But I need a word with you, Dick. And you too, Stan.”

  Fine and Canidy immediately got to their feet. Ann slid over on the banquette, and then Agnes Draper followed her, which meant that her hip was no longer pressing against Ed’s.

  Bitter watched Canidy, Stevens, and Fine elbow their way through the crowded bar to the lobby.

  “They do that all the time, Eddie,” Whittaker said. “Have their private little chats. I’m not sure if they really have anything secret to talk about or whether they do it for the effect.”

  "Oh, come on, Jimmy,” the duchess said. “That’s unfair!”

  “Hey,” Whittaker said. “You’re supposed to be my girl. You keep taking his side, Ann’ll come after you with an ax.”

  “No, I won’t,” Ann said. “Anybody on Dick’s side is on my side.”

  “Will you watch your mouth!” the duchess said to Whittaker. But she reached her hand out and rubbed the balls of her fingers over the back of his hand.

  There was no question about it. Whittaker was emotionally involved with the duchess, and the duchess was a married woman. And she didn’t really care much who knew about it. He told himself that it was none of his business, yet he wondered what Colonel Stevens, who must know, thought of it. And then he wondered what Colonel Stevens wanted to tell Canidy and Fine.

  Stevens, Canidy, and Fine went by elevator to the fifth floor of the hotel, then into a suite guarded by an American wearing a uniform with civilian technician insignia. Inside the suite, Stevens led them into a small study.

  He took a manila envelope from his briefcase, and a page of a newspaper from the envelope. He laid it on a table.

  “That came in an hour or so ago from Sweden,” he said.

  “You’re not going to ask how things went at Horsham St. Faith?” Canidy asked.

  “Eighth Air Force called and said the mission was accomplished,” Stevens said. “Is there something I don’t know?”

  “I was at Horsham St. Faith when the photorecon plane returned,” Canidy said icily.

  “I didn’t know that,” Stevens said, evenly.

  “It was pretty badly shot up. The copilot brought it back, but he dumped it on landing. The pilot died in the ambulance. Probably that was best. He had a large chunk of steel in his head. He would have been a vegetable anyway. ”

  “Jesus, Dick!” Fine said.

  “Dick, you can’t think that you’re in any way responsible,” Stevens said.

  “No, of course not. The Good Fairy ordered that recon mission. Not me.”

  "It was necessary,” Stevens said.

  “I should have flown it,” Canidy said. “Not some kid who graduated from high school last year. Some kid with maybe a hundred fifty hours total time.”

  “You know why that’s out of the question,” Stevens said.

  “Tell that to the kid’s mother,” Canidy said. “I say ‘mother’ because he didn’t look old enough to have a wife.”

  “Like you, Dick,” Stevens said,“he was a volunteer. And we could afford to send him.”

  Canidy looked at him for a long minute.

  “Was it Lorimer’s idea that I couldn’t go, Colonel,” he asked, “or yours?”

  “Mine,” Stevens said. “If that angers you, I’m sorry.”

  Canidy nodded. Visibly changing the subject, he went to the newspaper Stevens had taken from the envelope and looked at it. Then he pointed his index finger.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “Our old pal Helmut Shitfitz.”

  Stevens chuckled. He was relieved that Canidy was going to let his unhappiness about the B-26 pilot drop.

  “What’s it say, Stan?” Canidy asked, handing the clipping to Fine.

  "It’s the Frankfurter Rundschau, ” Fine translated. “Of December 30. The caption says ‘Dignitaries gathered at the memorial service for Oberstleutnant Baron von Steighofen.’ It lists them. One of them is von Heurten-Mitnitz. And Eric’s father. And our friend Müller, who is now a Standartenführer, it would seem.”

  "What’s a Standartenführer?” Canidy asked.

  “Colonel,” Fine said. “The SS organization comparable to a regiment is a ‘standart.’ Standartenführer, regiment leader.”

  “You think that they went to see Eric’s father?” Canidy said. “That they got the postcard, in other words, and a
re still with us?”

  “Müller spent New Year’s Eve,” Stevens said, “—spent all night in the Kurhotel on New Year’s Eve—with Gisella Dyer.”

  “The professor’s wife?” Canidy asked incredulously.

  “The professor’s daughter,” Stevens corrected him.

  “How do you know that?”

  “The British have an agent in Marburg. There’s a fighter base outside. We asked him to keep an eye on the professor. He thought this was interesting, and sent it along.”

  “They’re watching Dyer for us?” Canidy asked, surprised.

  “No. Not the way you suggest. If they fall into something, they pass it along if they can. He must have been at the hotel and thought Dyer’s daughter’s association with a Sicherheitsdienst colonel might interest us. But our English brothers have made it clear that what we’ve gotten is all we’re going to get. No more help from them from their guy in Marburg, in other words.”

  Canidy took that in and gave it a moment’s thought. "Okay,” he said, “so what do we do now?”

  “The first thing is to get Fulmar back here from Morocco,” Stevens said. “I hope Gisella remembers his handwriting.”

  “And we can’t get the Limeys to help? Is that what you just said? Beneath their dignity, or what?”

  “There are other priorities, Dick,” Stevens said.

  “Did the new aerial photos show you anything, Dick?” Fine asked.

  “Yeah,” Canidy said. “That Douglass’s mission was a waste of effort. It’s true that Doug’s guys managed to put a few five-hundred-pounders where they were supposed to be. But the Air Corps’ position that these did some damage is wishful thinking. I think they’ll be willing to admit that before long, although they’ve got their ‘experts’ still looking for something.”

  “You sound pretty sure,” Stevens challenged.

  “I’m a former naval person myself, Colonel,” Canidy said dryly. “When I see a photograph of a sub being fueled while a crane loads torpedoes, I am expert enough to deduce the maintenance facility is functional.”

  He waited until Stevens nodded, then went on. “It’s going to take several of those flying bombs to take out those pens, and the small problem there is that I don’t think Aphrodite’s going to work.”

  “Why not?” Fine asked.

  “Controlling those airplanes by radio is a lot easier said than done,” Canidy said. “Particularly when they’re old and shot up and worn out.”

  “Is there a reason for that?” Stevens asked.

  “Yeah, if you mean an aeronautical, or aerodynamic reason,” Canidy said. “Control surfaces are activated by cables. Even in a brand-new airplane, you may have to apply more pressure to get, say, the desired amount of left rudder or up-aileron than you do to get that much right rudder or down-aileron. The B-17s Kennedy’s working with are old airplanes that should be in the boneyard. In many cases, they’re made up of parts cannibalized from three, four, five airplanes. They’re harder than hell for a pilot to fly. Trying to fly them with radio-actuated servomechanisms is damned near impossible. Power enough to put one into a dive, power enough for that much cable movement in other words, often won’t raise the nose perceptibly when it’s applied the other way. But servomotors give you the same pull in both directions. You follow?”

  Stevens nodded.

  "And that’s empty,” Canidy said. "We haven’t even tried flying them with a load.”

  “Would it be easier—more possible—if Kennedy had new airplanes?” Stevens asked.

  “Some, not much, but some,” Canidy said.

  “I’ll check on that,” Stevens said. “And Dick, you just said ‘we’ haven’t tried flying. You are not to fly Aphrodite aircraft. If that sounds like an order, it is.”

  “I know,” Canidy said, dryly sarcastic. “Like a vestal virgin, I’m being saved for something important, right?”

  “Yes,” Stevens said,“as a matter of fact, you are.”

  Stevens took the front page of the Frankfurter Rundschau from the table and put it back in its envelope.

  “That’s it,” he said. “You can go back to your party.”

  [FOUR]

  Broadcast House London, England 1015 Hours 8 January 1943

  The producer in the booth pointed his index finger at the left of two men sitting in the studio. The man he pointed at leaned barely forward.

  “This is the overseas service of the British Broadcasting Corporation,” the man said.

  The producer pointed his index finger at the engineer in the booth beside him. The engineer lifted the balls of his fingers from the edge of the phonograph record he had cued.

  The chimes of Big Ben went out over the air.

  The producer pointed his finger at the man sitting at the right of the table in the studio.

  “And now some messages for our friends in Germany,” the man said to his microphone. He read down a neatly typed list of brief, cryptic messages until he came to number eight.

  “The Kurfürstendamm is slippery with ice,” he read, then read it again, slowly, with precision:“The Kurfürstendamm is slippery with ice.”

  The message sounded meaningless. But it would be carefully recorded in Berlin by radio operators of the several German intelligence agencies, including the SS-SD, and by the Ministry of Information, who would study it in an attempt to take some meaning from it. It would be compared with all other messages mentioning the Kurfürstendamm, or Berlin, or slippery, or ice. All possible meanings would be noted, however far-fetched, and copies would be made and distributed, so that information would be available for reference when the next “message for our friends in Germany” using any of those words came over the air. All the effort would be futile, for that message was in fact meaningless.

  The BBC announcer did not read message number 9. For there was an insert mark between number 8 and number 9. The message he read next had been given to him less than thirty minutes before. And a notation at the bottom of the sheet of paper instructed him to read the message each night for ten nights.

  "Gisella thanks Eric for the radio,” he read very carefully, and then again, “Gisella thanks Eric for the radio.”

  Then he returned to his original sheet:

  "Bruno sends greetings to Uncle Hans. Bruno sends greetings to Uncle Hans.”

  [FIVE]

  Whitbey House Kent, England 8 January 1943

  Somewhat chagrined to be wakened by a sergeant with the message that if he wanted breakfast, he’d better shag ass, Lt. Commander Edwin W. Bitter dressed quickly and went looking for the mess. When they arrived the night before, he had been led to a room by another sergeant, and he had been sleepy and a little drunk. So when he went into the corridor now, he didn’t remember which way to go to return to the main hall.

  Whitbey House reminded him of a museum. He would not have been astonished to see uniformed guards standing around, or a group of school-children being given a tour down the wide corridors.

  He turned the wrong way and had to retrace his steps after finding himself at a dead end. When he finally found the main hall, he felt like a fool. It was equipped with a direction sign. Lettered arrows had been nailed to the pole. Two of them pointed to “Washington” and “Berlin.” And near the bottom was one with “Mess” lettered on it.

  As he got close, he heard the murmur of voices and could smell coffee and bacon. At the entrance to a long, high-ceilinged room a PFC sat at a table and collected thirty-five cents for the meal.

  He saw that the mess at Whitbey House served both enlisted and commissioned personnel, and there were far more people than Bitter had expected. He made a quick guess of one hundred fifty, including twenty-five or thirty uniformed women. He wondered at first if this was yet another manifestation of Canidy’s disdain for those customs of the service that decreed separation by rank.

  But then he saw subtle differences: Although there were officers and men (of both sexes) sitting together at the eight-chair tables, the enlisted personnel w
ere going through a serving line, while the officers were served by waiters. And there were separate tables for both enlisted and commissioned instructors. And one table at the far end of the room was separate from all the others. This one was reserved for the commanding officer and his staff, which was to say Canidy, Whittaker, Jamison, and Captain the Duchess Stanfield, WRAC.

  Canidy saw Bitter standing in the door and motioned him to the head table. As he started across the room, someone greeted him.

  “Good morning, Commander,” Sergeant Agnes Draper said.

  She was at a table with several other enlisted women, American WACs and British.

  “Good morning, Sergeant,” Bitter said.

  Sergeant Draper, Bitter noticed, was not wearing a tunic, just a khaki uniform shirt and knit khaki necktie. Her breasts stretched the khaki noticeably.

  “I have known Commander Don Winslow,” Canidy greeted him, “since Christ was an apprentice seaman, and this is the first time I’ve ever seen him needing a shave.”

  “Sit down, Commander,” the duchess said. “Ignore him. He’s in one of his rotten moods.”

  “Overslept, did you?” Canidy pursued.

  “I guess I did,” Bitter said as a GI waiter handed him a mimeographed menu. He was impressed with the array of food offered. “Very impressive menu,” he said.

  “A well-fed sailor is a happy sailor,” Canidy said piously. “Thank Jamison for the food. He is a first-class scrounger.”

  “So I see,” Bitter said. He ordered poached eggs and roast beef hash, then poured himself a cup of coffee from a silver pitcher.

  “We have a reputation to maintain here, Commander,” Canidy said. “Your commanding officer expects you to be shaved and shined and in every way to measure up to our well-known spiffy sartorial standards.”

  Bitter looked at him. Canidy was wearing an open-collared khaki shirt with no insignia of rank, and over that an olive-drab sleeveless sweater with the neck and arm holes bound in leather. It was, Bitter decided, British rather than American issue.

  “Yes, sir,” Bitter said. “I will try not to disappoint you, sir.”