Soldier Spies

by Griffin, W. E. B.

  “Particularly married officers and gentlemen,” Agnes interrupted. “Are you being oblique, Dick? Is this in the nature of a reprimand?”

  “Ann is Eddie’s cousin,” Canidy went on. “She went to college with Mrs. Bitter.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Agnes said.

  “Forewarned, to coin a phrase, is forearmed,” Canidy said. “Having done my paternal duty as your commanding officer, my dear child, I consider the matter closed.”

  “Now that you have managed to let Captain Fine know? And Lieutenant Fulmar?”

  “Don’t be a bitch, Agnes,” Canidy flared. “Fine has the need-to-know, and I didn’t want Eric and Eddie getting into anything over the prize of your charms.” He glared at her, then warmed to his subject: “I have enough on my mind without worrying about the impact of your getting the hots for one of my officers.”

  She glared at him, tight-lipped.

  “Now that I think of it, Agnes,” Canidy said, “and now that we’ve exhausted the subject, Lawrence of Arabia can wash behind his ears without supervision. Put a couple of bottles in bags, and we’ll go downstairs to the bar.”

  There was a moment’s hesitation before she smiled.

  The bar off the Dorchester lobby was full, already on the edge of being crowded. As they stood just inside the doorway looking for a place to sit, there was the snap of fingers and a man’s voice calling,“Over here!”

  Canidy saw two Englishmen at one of the few six-seat tables. One was a private in a mussed and ill-fitting uniform, and the other a very natty, mustachioed, vaguely familiar, major. British majors, especially ones like this one, who looked as if he had just marched in from Sandhurst, simply did not drink with private soldiers.

  Except, of course, he thought, if they were in SOE, where service customs were ignored whenever they got in the way. Clearly, these two were SOE, and he’d probably met the major while he was "liaising” with SOE at "Station X.”

  Well, they have a table. Getting a table was worth whatever liquor they would drink. And I’m already on shaky ground for not being as friendly as expected to my British counterparts.

  Canidy put a smile on, took Agnes’s arm, and propelled her across the room.

  “Good to see you again,” he said. “Have you room for us?”

  “By all means,” the major said.

  “Do you remember Sergeant Draper?” Canidy asked.

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t,” the major said. He offered his hand to Agnes. “My name is Niven,” he said. “And this is Private Ustinov.”

  Fine caught up with them.

  “Stan, I’d like you to meet Major Niven,” Canidy said.

  Fine was smiling strangely.

  “I have the privilege of the major’s acquaintance,” he said. “But where the hell did you meet each other?”

  “At . . . that place in the country,” Canidy said.

  “What place in the country would that be?” Major Niven said.

  “That place in the country, of course,” Private Ustinov said.

  “Oh, of course,” the major said. He smiled benignly at Canidy. “That place in the country.”

  “Why do I feel I’m making an ass of myself?” Canidy asked.

  “David and I are friends from Los Angeles,” Fine said. “Peter, too.”

  “By Los Angeles, you mean ‘Hollywood’?” Canidy asked. He turned to the major. “You’re in the movie business?”

  “Not anymore,” the major said. “But yes, I was.”

  “He was an elocution coach,” Private Ustinov said. “I was a ballet instructor. ”

  “Oh,” Canidy said.

  “I taught them, you see, to walk, and then David took over and taught them how to talk,” Private Ustinov said.

  “Well, I’ve obviously made a mistake,” Canidy said. “You looked like a British officer I met. Sandhurst type.”

  “Well, I’m guilty of that,” the major said. “I went to Sandhurst.”

  “Oh,” Canidy said,“no offense intended, of course.”

  “And certainly none taken,” the major said.

  “You have seen Major Niven before, Dick,” Fine said.

  “I knew I had,” Canidy said.

  “On the great silver screen,” Fine said. “This is the actor.”

  “Actors, if you please,” Private Ustinov said. “Currently not on the boards, of course, but actors, plural, nonetheless.”

  Only at that moment did Canidy recognize David Niven.

  “I know what I’m going to do,” he said. “I’m going to go back to the lobby, and then come in again, and walk over and ask for an autograph.”

  “I would much prefer a taste, if you don’t mind,” Niven said, “of what I suspect Lady Agnes has in the bags.”

  “There is no booze,” Private Ustinov said. “David and I came here in the hope that Stanley, who has some mysterious but steady source of intoxicants, would show up sooner rather than later.”

  “Booze, Sergeant!” Canidy said.

  “Sir!” she said, and produced a bottle of Scotch.

  “Have we met, Major?” Agnes asked when she had poured everyone a drink.

  “Your father is the Earl of Hayme, isn’t he?” Niven asked. Agnes nodded. “I thought so. I’ve been privileged to shoot over your estate in Scotland several times. The last time I saw you, you were a little girl. A spectacular little girl, obviously; you stuck in my mind.”

  “I didn’t know you were a blue blood, Agnes,” Canidy said.

  Agnes flashed him a brilliant smile.

  “Begging the major’s pardon, sir, there is a good deal about me the major doesn’t know,” she said sweetly.

  [FIVE]

  It was nearer to seven than six when Commander Edwin W. Bitter and Miss Ann Chambers reached the bar at the Dorchester. Once they had left Admiral Foster’s Connaught Hotel suite, they sent Mr. Meachum Hope, Lt. Commander Dolan, and Lieutenant Kennedy on ahead of them to the Dorchester. Then they went to the London bureau of Chambers News Service.

  There Bitter wrote a short, awkward letter to his wife. The gist of the letter was that Sarah, despite what she was going to read in the newspapers tomorrow, or what she was liable to hear on Meachum Hope’s “Report from London” broadcast, was not to worry. What he had done was neither as heroic nor as difficult as they were making it sound.

  She should, he wrote, think of it as an automobile accident. He had been a passenger in a wrecked car, so to speak, and when the driver couldn’t drive it himself, he simply took the wheel and drove it to the garage for him. He was not making regular bombing missions. He had thought, however, that he should make one mission as a passenger, so that he would understand what was involved. As far as he knew, he would never make another.

  He gave it to Ann, who sat down at a teletype machine and retyped it, sending it to the SHAEF press center for censorship, then transmitting it by radio to Brandon Chambers, editor-in-chief of Chambers News Service, as a service message. He would see that it got to Sarah in Palm Beach.

  “I don’t think she’ll believe you, Eddie,” Ann said. “But I will write her and tell her that Canidy told me he’s grounded you.”

  “Where did you hear that?” he asked.

  “I didn’t,” Ann said. “I just made it up. But now that I think about it, it seems like a good idea.”

  “Just mind your own business, please, Ann.”

  “Just how long do you think you can— What is it you say? ‘Harm’s way’? Just how long do you think you can go in harm’s way without getting harmed?”

  “Isn’t that a moot point? We’re in a war, and I’m a naval officer.”

  “You’re a horse’s ass,” Ann said. “Worse, you’re a horse’s ass with courage. That can get you killed. It will get you killed.”

  They locked eyes for a moment, and then Ann broke the silence: “Come on, let’s get to the Dorchester before someone starts making eyes at Dick.”

  “Does that happen often?” he asked. “How is the
great romance?”

  “I don’t know if you’ll believe this or not,” Ann said. “But if I can ever get him out of this war and up in front of an altar, I really believe he will be the perfect husband. His eye doesn’t wander when I’m around.”

  “Why don’t you marry him now?” Bitter asked.

  “The way that works is that the boy asks the girl, Eddie,” Ann said, “and Dick hates having to tell me that over and over.”

  “Aren’t you worried about . . .”

  “About what?”

  “Getting in the family way.”

  “Eddie, that’s in the category of none of your goddamned business!” Ann snapped. “God, I can’t believe you asked me that!”

  She gestured impatiently toward the door.

  When he saw Canidy’s Packard in front of the Dorchester, he knew he would have to face Agnes. And do so in front of the others. He hadn’t had a chance to speak to her at all after Dolan came to his room at Fersfield and told him that Commander Korman had arrived from London.

  Dolan, of course, knew that Agnes had been in his bed. He wondered if Dolan had decided that Canidy would be interested in that little bit of interesting information. And he wondered what Canidy’s reaction would be if he knew. Canidy might tell Ann, certainly would tell Ann, unless he went to him and expressly asked him not to.

  He decided he would have to do that. If Ann knew, it would get back to Sarah.

  The way to handle the situation was to tell Canidy and Agnes the truth. He would tell Agnes that he was deeply ashamed, that he had been, as she knew, under terrible strain. He would tell her there was no excuse for what he had done, but that it would not happen again.

  And he would tell Canidy much the same thing. That he was deeply ashamed, not of getting laid especially, but of taking advantage of an enlisted person. It was a violation of the officer’s code that he had not thought himself capable of.

  The bar was now jammed with shoulder-to-shoulder drinkers, and it took them several minutes to find Canidy and the others.

  Canidy was half in the bag, with one arm around Agnes’s shoulders and the other around a rotund English private whom he introduced to Ed Bitter as a Hollywood ballet master with a Russian name.

  There was an English major at the table who wasn’t feeling any pain either. And Fulmar, resplendent in pinks and greens and glossy parachute boots and wearing the Silver Star. And Fine, also a little tight, which surprised Bitter.

  “Agnes,”Ann said,“that man with his arm around your shoulders belongs to me.”

  “I have more than enough to go around,” Canidy said grandly.

  “That was before me,”Ann purred. “Out of there, Agnes. You can sit with my cousin the hero.”

  Agnes didn’t look at him as she came around the table and a chair was found for her.

  “Excuse me, Major,” Bitter said,“haven’t we met?”

  "Possibly,” Major Niven said. "Congratulations on your DFC. Dick’s been telling us about it.”

  “You ever go to a bar in New York called the ‘21’ Club, Eddie?” Canidy asked. “Dave was just telling us he used to work there.”

  “Yes,” Bitter said. “As a matter of fact, I have. My father goes there all the time. The place that used to be a speakeasy?”

  “Right,” Major Niven said. “On West Fifty-second Street.”

  “Then that must be it,” Bitter said.

  “Ed,” Ann said, “you can be such an ass. This is David Niven, the actor.”

  He felt his face flush as he saw in Canidy’s delighted grin that he had been had.

  “Dick’s no better,” Agnes said loyally. “He thought he was from SOE and walked over and greeted him like a long-lost brother.”

  “I’ll get you for that, Lady Agnes,” Canidy said.

  Bitter found himself looking into Agnes’s face.

  “What’s that about? What’s he up to now?”

  She shrugged but said nothing. And then their knees brushed. And then a moment later their hands found each other under the table. As her fingers curled with his, he felt his heart jump.

  “And what brings you to London, Major Niven?” Bitter asked.

  Canidy laughed out loud and hard.

  “Lend-lease elocution lessons,” the English private said.

  At about eight they all crowded into the Packard, and Agnes drove them across town to a black-market restaurant she had heard about from the other limousine drivers. Canidy and Niven talked their way in.

  The food was neither good nor plentiful, but it was expensive. Meanwhile, under the table, Agnes slipped her foot out of her shoe and ran her toes over Bitter’s ankle.

  As they were having a fourth bottle of wine to go with the Stilton cheese, a microphone was turned on in Broadcast House. At the third of thirty messages, an announcer with impeccable diction solemnly proclaimed:

  “Bübchen would like to paddle Gisella’s canoe again. Bübchen would like to paddle Gisella’s canoe again.”

  XI

  [ONE]

  Marburg an der Lahn, Germany 15 January 1943

  Hauptsturmführer Wilhelm Peis stood at rigid attention and extended his right arm from the shoulder at a forty-five-degree angle.

  “Heil Hitler!” he barked.

  Standartenführer SS-SD Johann Müller casually raised his right arm from the elbow and let it drop.

  “Wie geht’s, Wilhelm?” he asked.

  Müller’s manner of returning the now-required straight-armed Nazi salute—or, more accurately, of not returning it—was intentional, an affectation that he had learned from Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz.

  They had been having lunch, as they did at least twice a week, in the Adlon Hotel; and they had to wait for a table because of an official luncheon. A steady procession of military, security service, and party dignitaries came into the lobby and exchanged greetings.

  Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz leaned forward and spoke softly.

  "You will notice, Johnny,” he said dryly,“that, with a few exceptions, the crispness of the salute is in inverse proportion to the importance of the saluter.”

  Müller laughed. Von Heurten-Mitnitz had put into words what he had himself noticed, especially that the whole salute and “Heil” business had become mandatory. Young officers—and especially young SS officers—and zealous Party officials came to attention and saluted so crisply they almost quivered.

  Senior officers, both military and Party, were almost to a man far more sloppy. As often as not they “forgot” the “Heil, Hitler,” or said it in a mumble.

  It was as if they were saying,“That little dance is of course necessary for you underlings, but certainly not for someone like myself, of unquestioned loyalty and importance.”

  Müller then rose to his feet. “I am going to piss,” he said, giving a very sloppy Nazi greeting to von Heurten-Mitnitz. “Heil Hitler, Herr Minister.”

  "Heil Hitler, Herr Standartenführer,” von Heurten-Mitnitz replied, returning an even more casual salute.

  And as he walked across the marble-floored lobby of the Adlon to the men’s room, two Gestapo agents and an SS-SD Sturmbannführer, standing in conversation by one of the tall marble columns, recognized him and gave the Nazi salute in a manner that would have pleased Adolf Hitler himself.

  And they smiled with pleasure when he returned it with a casual movement of his lower arm and said, “Was ist los?” instead of “Heil Hitler.”

  Now Müller thought of that incident in the Adlon. And thought again that he had learned a good deal from the Pomeranian aristocrat since he had come to know him. Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz was a very smart fellow. He hoped von Heurten-Mitnitz was smart enough to keep them from being caught, doing what they were now doing.

  “I’m doing fine, Herr Standartenführer,” Peis said. “And may I say that it is a pleasure to see you so soon again?”

  “I had a very good time on New Year’s Eve, Wilhelm,” Müller said. “A very good time.”

  “I’m glad,” Pei
s said, then added:“I thought you might like her.”

  “And they’ve given me a new car, and I thought I should take it for a run and see how it handles, and here I am, Wilhelm.”

  “A new car, Herr Standartenführer?”

  Müller motioned him to the window and pointed out the Opel Admiral.

  “Very nice,” Peis said. “You must have a friend in the transport office, Herr Standartenführer. A good friend.”

  “You know how it goes, Wilhelm,” Müller said, “one hand washes the other.”

  Peis nodded understanding.

  “First things first,” Müller said. “I forgot to apply for gasoline coupons. You know how it is.”

  “No problem whatsoever, Herr Standartenführer,” Peis said. “We’ll fill it up here, and then I’ll give you whatever ration coupons you require.”

  “Very good of you, Peis,” Müller said. “I will be in your debt.”

  “Not at all, Herr Standartenführer. My pleasure.”

  "And, since I am here, I thought, I might telephone Fräulein Dyer and ask if she’s free. If she is, perhaps you and your lady friend—any one of your many extraordinarily lovely lady friends—might wish to have dinner with me?”

  “I would be delighted,” Peis said. “If you would permit me, Herr Standartenführer, I would be happy to telephone the lady and make the arrangements. And I presume you would like to stay at the Kurhotel again?”

  “What I thought I would do, Wilhelm,” Müller said, “is visit my mother this afternoon, and then we could meet for drinks at half past six at the Kurhotel?”

  "Consider it done, Herr Standartenführer,” Peis said. “And if I may make the suggestion, why don’t I turn my car over to you this afternoon? Then I could have the Admiral serviced and fueled, awaiting you at the Kurhotel.”

  “I am really getting deeply into your debt, Wilhelm,” Müller said.

  “Not at all, Herr Standartenführer.”

  “I was thinking, Wilhelm, of giving the lady a little present,” Müller said. “Do you think there would be something, a small porcelain perhaps, or a painting, something like that, in protective custody?”