The Saboteurs

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Stan!” a familiar voice called from the hallway just outside the door. “I need a moment with you.”

  Captain Dancy recognized the voice, and was not surprised when a moment later Major Richard Canidy appeared in the doorway.

  “—It’s him,” she said, finishing her sentence with a smile in her voice.

  “‘It’s him’ who?” Dick Canidy said, mock-innocently. “I could not possibly be guilty of that for which I have been unjustly accused.” He paused. “Could I?”

  Captain Dancy liked Major Canidy as much as—if not more than—she did Captain Fine. And for some of the same reasons—Dick was a bright guy, one who was genuine and caring—as well as for some other reasons—Dick was damned dashing, with a real magnetism that on occasion caused her to lament the differences in their ages.

  “You tell me, Major Canidy,” Captain Dancy said in a conspiratorial tone, then added warmly, “It’s nice to have you home safe.”

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  “Can whatever it is you need to discuss wait till lunch?” Fine asked.

  Canidy thought about it for a second. “Fine, Captain Fine.”

  Captain Dancy stood, shaking her head.

  “If you two will follow me, please,” she said, and started for the office of the chief of OSS London Station.

  David Bruce, holding a coffee cup saucer in one hand and sipping from the cup in his other, was in deep thought looking out one of the tall windows when his office door opened and Captain Dancy announced, “Sir, Captain Fine and Major Canidy are here.”

  Bruce, still looking down at the street and sidewalk, said, “Thank you. Send them in, please.”

  A moment later, Fine and Canidy said, almost in unison, “Good morning, sir.”

  Bruce turned away from the window in time to see Captain Dancy leaving the office and pulling the door closed behind her.

  “Good morning,” Bruce replied. He looked them in the eyes for a moment, then said, “Please allow me to say that I am deeply relieved that you both made it back.”

  He looked at Canidy and added, “That didn’t always seem to be the case.”

  “Thank you, sir,” they replied.

  “You certainly deserve some time off after that mission,” Bruce said. “But I’m afraid it’s going to have to wait. The sooner we get going on this, the better.”

  Fine and Canidy exchanged glances.

  “Get going on what?” Canidy said to Bruce. “We haven’t—”

  There was a knock at the door and it swung open.

  “Colonel Stevens, sir,” Captain Dancy announced.

  Lieutenant Colonel Ed Stevens was standing there behind her, a worn-leather briefcase in each hand.

  “Come,” Bruce said almost impatiently.

  When Ed Stevens entered, Fine and Canidy came into his view.

  “Stan! Dick!” Stevens said.

  He put down the briefcases, went to them, and embraced them one at a time, giving each a loud double pat on the back. When he was confident of his voice, he added, “Damn, it’s good to see you guys!”

  Lieutenant Colonel Stevens took a step back and composed himself.

  “Thanks, Ed,” Canidy said.

  “It’s good to be back,” Fine added. “Thank you, Ed.”

  Stevens nodded and smiled, then collected the briefcases and turned to Bruce.

  “I knew we had these funds in the safe. I’m having them see how much more we can get, and how soon.”

  “Funds?” Canidy repeated.

  When Stevens nodded, Canidy turned to Bruce.

  “This have to do with what you’re talking about, David?”

  Bruce ignored the question. He pointed to the couch.

  “Put them there, Ed,” he said.

  He looked at Canidy and Fine.

  “Can I offer you some coffee?” he asked. “Helene just made it.”

  As Bruce poured everyone a cup from the new carafe brought in by Captain Dancy, Stevens placed the briefcase from his left hand on the couch first, then the one from his right hand beside it.

  He worked the combination lock on the left briefcase, pushed the buttons to unlock its clasps, and after the clasps sprung open with a dull click-click he slowly opened the case. Then he repeated the process with the right case.

  Stevens looked at Bruce.

  “Nice,” Bruce said, stepping over to admire the worn currency that was in fat bundles secured with paper bands. “I don’t care how much one might be around money, you just can’t help but be impressed with cold, hard cash—seeing it, feeling it, smelling it.”

  There were appreciative chuckles.

  Canidy offered, “I’ve always thought that bank tellers were not being completely truthful when they said that they were unaffected by all the money they handled day in and day out.”

  “They were just saying something they felt obligated to say?” Fine said.

  “That’s my guess,” Canidy said. “That, or they’re just damned liars looking for a chance to skim it.”

  “There’s always that temptation,” Bruce said matter-of-factly. “Or out-and-out steal it all.”

  “Anyway,” Stevens said, pointing to the left briefcase, “in here is a half-million francs, and—” he pointed to the right one “—this is a hundred thousand in lire. It’s a start, and more is on the way. We had another two hundred thousand francs, but our contact at Banque Oran became suspicious of a series of deposits by the owner of a restaurant that had suddenly become quote very successful unquote and when the bills were inspected, about one in ten were found to have had sequential serial numbers.”

  Bruce grunted.

  “The Fascists really can’t think we are that stupid,” he said. “That’s insulting.”

  “More likely a stupid mistake on the restaurateur’s part. Careless. Or lazy. Just stuck the new bills in with old ones in a single batch, not bothering to spread out the ones with sequential numbers over time. After we discovered that the money was marked, but before we could turn him, I’m told somebody shot him.”

  Bruce shook his head. There was no room for mistakes in this business. Especially sloppy ones. Yet, there seemed to be no end of them, either. And it was too bad he’d been killed; you could never have too many double agents.

  “That amount should satisfy Sandman’s immediate request,” Bruce said, glancing at the pile of documents on his desk that included the message from Corsica as he sat down.

  He motioned for Canidy and Fine to take their seats in the armchairs in front of his desk and they did.

  “Yes, sir,” Stevens agreed and closed the cases, then moved one to take his seat on the couch.

  “Sandman?” Canidy said, eyebrows raised in question.

  Bruce bristled at the temerity.

  As a rule of thumb, the asking of questions in the OSS was discouraged; in fact, the act could, depending on the magnitude of the subject, carry significant penalties including but not limited to, say, confinement in an obscure stockade at the far end of the world for the duration of the war plus ninety days—if not longer. One either had the Need to Know or one didn’t. Lives—indeed, the war—could be lost if too many knew too much.

  Looking at Canidy, Bruce knew that he knew this. But Bruce also knew that he was still pissed that Canidy and Fine and Stevens, his goddamned deputy, had had the Need to Know about the smuggling of Professor Dyer and his daughter out of Hungary—while he didn’t.

  Intellectually, he could understand the logic. Emotionally, however, was something else.

  Yet here was Canidy once again questioning at will.

  Bruce was honest enough with himself to recognize that he had more than a little resentment toward Major Richard M. Canidy, USAAF.

  What bothered Bruce wasn’t the fact that despite the gold leaves of a major pinned to his A-2 jacket epaulets, Canidy was not an officer of the Army Air Forces. Assimilated ranks were issued all the time—particularly in the OSS. Because civilians in a military environment attract atte
ntion and because little attention is paid to majors, especially at the upper levels of the military hierarchy, it had made good sense to arrange for the Army Air Forces to issue an AGO card from the Adjutant General’s Office to “Technical Consultant Canidy” that identified him as a major. That way, should someone inquire of Eighth Air Force or SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force), a record would exist of a Canidy, Major Richard M., USAAF.

  And what bothered Bruce was not the fact that Canidy, with a bachelor of science degree in aeronautical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1938, had, as a lieutenant junior grade, United States Navy Reserve, been recruited from his duty of instructor pilot at Naval Air Station Pensacola to be a Flying Tiger with Claire Chennault’s American Volunteer Group, then from there been tapped to be a “technical consultant” to the Office of the Coordinator of Information, the first incarnation of the OSS.

  Canidy had proven himself a warrior—particularly in China with the Flying Tigers—as well as a natural leader, and Bruce respected that.

  No, what bothered the strictly ordered sensibilities of David Bruce was the fact that Canidy was simply too young and too reckless—particularly in light of the fact that being the officer in charge of Whitbey House Station, OSS-England, made him the third-highest-ranking OSS officer in England.

  And, getting to the meat of it, what really bothered Bruce the most was not only the fact that Canidy pulled damned dangerous stunts—invariably leaving a mess for the diplomatic-minded such as Bruce to clean up—but that he damned well got away with them.

  Which, of course, left Canidy with no problem asking questions that he should not be asking.

  “Ed,” London Station chief David Bruce finally said, “why don’t you fill in the details?”

  “Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Colonel Ed Stevens said, then looked at Major Canidy and Captain Fine. “You’re familiar with ‘Pearl Harbor’?”

  “You’re referring to the OSS team,” Canidy said, “not to the Territory of Hawaii.”

  Stevens nodded.

  Stan Fine said, “We are.”

  Stevens stood and went to the desk and picked up the carafe. He raised the pot to ask everyone, More?, and poured after Bruce slid his cup closer, then warmed up Fine’s and Canidy’s cups, then finally his own.

  “Sandman is in Algiers,” Stevens continued, “training additional teams for insertion into Corsica. The next team will take in this cash, sharing it with the team already in place. You’re familiar with the makeup of the teams?”

  “The recruits are Corsicans,” Canidy began, “from the French Deuxième Bureau at Algiers.”

  The French Deuxième Bureau was the intelligence arm of the French army’s general staff.

  “Right,” Stevens said. “An officer and three men. The officer is the intel leader, and the liaison and the two radio operators report to him. So Sandman took the four-man team in by Casabianca—”

  “The French sub?” Canidy said.

  “Exactly. They infiltrated at night onto the beach by rubber boat. First wave ashore, they took wireless radio sets, money, weapons—”

  “Lots of Composition C-2,” Bruce interrupted.

  “Lots of C-2,” Stevens confirmed with a smile. “Then the sub backed just offshore, where it laid on the bottom for twenty hours. Meanwhile, the team went inland, established its base, then the next night returned to the beach—a different spot that’d been prearranged—and signaled the sub, which had been waiting subsurface, watching with its periscope. It surfaced, and full supply—more pistols, Sten nine-millimeter submachine guns, ammo, et cetera, et cetera—was completed.”

  Stevens took a sip of coffee, then continued: “In days we were getting reports from Pearl Harbor, making it successful on a number of levels—”

  “So much so,” Bruce interrupted again, “that our plan now is to send in teams to France.”

  There was silence as Canidy and Fine drank from their cups and considered that.

  Stevens went on: “There’s more, but for now understand that we’re going to use the Corsica model of inserting teams in France to supply and build the resistance. That said, it’s going to be more difficult. We got lucky in Corsica; the Germans and Italians took the island with next to no troops, and continue to hold it in a very sloppy manner. The French there hate the Fascist Italians, of course, and so far don’t seem afraid to take our help to rise up against them.”

  “Conversely, France is crawling with Krauts,” Canidy said. “And with a lot of Frogs who want to get along with the Krauts.”

  “Right,” Stevens said. “We’re confident that enough of the French will fight; it’s just going to be harder getting to them.”

  “And that’s where we come in?” Canidy asked. “C-2 and suitcases of cash—I’m in.”

  Canidy thought that he noticed a just-perceptible smirk from David Bruce.

  “That,” the chief of London Station replied evenly and with a straight face, “is where Captain Fine comes in. Captain Fine will be flying this money to OSS Algiers, where he will give it to Sandman and then begin the setting up of teams for France. Right now, Major, since you’ve just successfully come from German-occupied territory, I’m simply interested in your observations.”

  “Well,” Canidy shot back, “my first observation—”

  “Dick!” Fine said, cautioning him.

  “Before you go off half-cocked, Major,” Bruce said, “you should know that I have my reasons.”

  “Reasons?” Canidy parroted.

  David Bruce knew that he shouldn’t, but he felt some small pleasure picking up the envelope and handing it to Canidy. “For you.”

  Canidy reached out, practically snatched the envelope, and opened it. He flipped past the outer cover sheet stamped TOP SECRET, then past the inner one stamped TOP SECRET—EYES ONLY BRUCE STEVENS CANIDY and read the message without expression.

  * * *

  TOP SECRET

  OPERATIONAL IMMEDIATE

  FROM OSS WASHINGTON FOR OSS LONDON EYES ONLY BRUCE STEVENS CANIDY

  QUOTE USING MOST EXPEDITIOUS MEANS CANIDY IS TO REPORT TO THIS OFFICE AND TO ME RE PEAT ME DIRECTLY STOP CANIDY IS NOT REPEAT NOT TO ATTACH HIMSELF TO OR ASSUME AUTHORITY OF ANY OP OR MISSION STOP DONOVAN END QUOTE

  * * *

  Canidy put it back in the envelope.

  “Any idea what this is about?” he said.

  Bruce locked eyes with him, waited for a moment, then said, “Officially? No. Unofficially?” He paused, seemingly deciding if it was wise to go on. “Unofficially, I think it’s rather clear.”

  Canidy waved Go on with his hand.

  Bruce said, “You are damned lucky to be alive and free as opposed to alive and in the hands of the Sicherheitsdienst. You knew too much to go behind the lines. What if you had in fact been captured?”

  “But I wasn’t,” Canidy shot back. “And I accomplished the mission.”

  “At an incredibly great risk,” Bruce replied icily. “And not without significant loss. The Hungarian pipeline is blown, and last word we got from the OSS radio station was code that they had been discovered and were about to be captured.”

  Canidy’s face tightened. He looked past Bruce and stared out the window.

  “Judging by the wording of Colonel Donovan’s message,” Bruce went on calculatingly, “I presume he feels the same way.”

  After a moment, Canidy locked eyes with Bruce.

  “Maybe you’re right,” he said, putting his cup and saucer on the desk. “I greatly regret the loss of any agents, but I did what I thought was the best under the circumstances….”

  “And you did do the best considering the circumstances,” Fine offered.

  “Thank you, Stan,” Canidy said.

  Then he stood, and took the envelope that held his top secret order from Donovan.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I think I should pack.”

  [ ONE ]

  Unterseeboot 134

  30 degrees 35 minute
s 5 seconds North Latitude

  81 degrees 39 minutes 10 seconds West Longitude

  Off Manhattan Beach, Florida

  2305 27 February 1943

  Kapitänleutnant Hans-Günther Brosin—who was twenty-six years old, had a clean-shaven, soft-featured face, a head of loosely cropped black hair, and a compact fivesix, 130-pound build that one might expect of a seaman who had volunteered to go to war in the confines of a tube only thirty feet tall and two hundred long—not only was not happy with his present assignment, he was highly pissed.

  In his mind, it was one thing to have to follow orders that you knew went contrary to everything you understood your training to be—and, without question, the training of a Kriegsmarine U-boat commander and his crew was to hunt down and kill enemy vessels—but it was entirely another thing to follow orders that not only essentially repeated those of a mission that had been risky beyond reason but that very much repeated orders of a risky mission that had in fact proven to be a complete and utter failure.

  The vessel’s two-week-plus passage across the Atlantic Ocean—during which the U-134, running under strict radio silence, had come across a convoy of Liberty ships carrying war matériel eastward and the crew had not been able to fire a single one of its fourteen torpedoes because Kapitänleutnant Brosin’s orders specifically forbade any enemy contact unless it was in an act of defense and “necessary to ensure the success of mission”—had in no way tempered his anger.

  I am the commander of a fully armed man-of-war, he thought, not of a passenger ferry.

  Brosin looked up from the chart that plotted their course to the shores of America, and studied the cause of his contempt.

  Richard Koch and Rudolf Cremer were the leaders of the two two-man teams he was to put ashore. Koch’s partner was Kurt Bayer, and Cremer’s was Rolf Grossman. They were all in their late twenties and of average size and looks (none of the four appeared distinctly German), each dressed in all-black woolen clothing, complete with knit cap, and wearing a black leather holster that secured a Walther P38 9mm semiautomatic pistol and an extra eight-round magazine.