The Fighting Agents Part 12

"That girl doesn't know what she wants," Whittaker said. "For example, she has some absurd notion that she wants to go operational. When I saw her, she was all dressed up in fatigues and carrying a Springfield at port arms. I found her irresistible. I wonder what a psychiatrist would make of that?"

"You made your peace with Baker?" Donovan asked.

"I left," Whittaker said. "He's probably still mad."

"You left?" Donovan asked, confused. "You mean, when Ellis came for you?"

"I left about thirty minutes after I got there," Whittaker said. "I've been at the house."

"I left orders that you were to be taken out there," Donovan said coldly.

"Staley told me," Whittaker said. "He was pretty insistent. "

Donovan looked at him coldly, waiting for a further explanation.

"I could offer some excuse, like I would probably have broken Baker's arms if I stayed, but the real reason I left was that Baker was acting as if he was controlling me."

"That's what he's paid to do," Donovan said sharply.

"I don't know what you've got planned for me, why I'm here and not in Australia, but if it means that Baker is my control, you're going to have to get yourself another boy."

"You can be a real pain in the a.s.s sometimes, Jim," Donovan said. "And this is one of them. Just who the h.e.l.l do you think you're talking to?"

Whittaker's reply came a long moment later.

"I know I'm talking to the head of the OSS," he said. "Not Uncle Bill, who used to bounce me on his knee. I'm not asking for any special treatment. I don't know what my alternatives are, but whatever they are, I'll take them, rather than go anywhere with him as my control."

Donovan glared at him.

"You have a reason for feeling that way, I presume?"

"There are two kinds of controls," Whittaker said. "Both profess great sadness when somebody gets bagged. One kind means it. Baker is the other kind. Baker is too willing to accept risks with somebody else's life. He sees 'the big picture' much too clearly."

They locked eyes for a moment, and then Donovan asked, "Did Ellis mention anything about dinner tonight?"

The question surprised Whittaker.

"No," he said. "He didn't." Then he thought a moment. "Don't tell me I'm to have dinner with Baker?"

"Not with Baker," Donovan said. And then, when he was sure in his own mind that Ellis hadn't said anything about the dinner and that Whittaker in fact did not know, he added, "With the President."

"Oh?" Whittaker said.

"There will be no repet.i.tion, nothing remotely resembling a repet.i.tion of what happened the last time you had dinner with him," Donovan said.

"I was a little crazy the last time," Whittaker said. "And I don't want to find myself locked up in a loony bin again."

"You take my point," Donovan said evenly.

Whittaker nodded. "Is dinner his idea, or yours?" he asked.

"His idea," Donovan said. "But when I told him you were in Was.h.i.+ngton, I was pretty sure he'd want to see you."

"You're being devious again," Whittaker said.

"Trust me, Jimmy," Donovan said, smiling.

"You, I trust," Whittaker said. I trust," Whittaker said.

"Ellis has some dossiers, and some other material, I want you to look at," Donovan said. "By the time you're finished, I should be finished here; and we can go over to the house."

The President of the United States traveled from 1600 Pennsylvania to Emba.s.sy Row in a four-car convoy: There was a District of Columbia police car with flas.h.i.+ng red lights; then a black Chevrolet full of Secret Service agents; a 1939 Packard limousine (not the the presidential limousine); and finally another Chevrolet packed with Secret Service agents. presidential limousine); and finally another Chevrolet packed with Secret Service agents.

The gate in the wall was already open when the convoy arrived. The police car and the tailing Secret Service car pulled to the curb and stopped. The lead Secret Service car and the Packard drove through the gate, which closed immediately after them.

When the two cars stopped, two burly Secret Service agents half trotted to the limousine. One of them reached in and swung the President's feet outward. Then he hauled him from the car and erect. Then he and the other agent, with an ease born of practice, made a cradle of their locked arms and carried him to and up the kitchen stairs. By the time they got there, a third Secret Service agent had taken a collapsible wheelchair from the trunk of the Chevrolet, trotted with it to the kitchen, and had it unfolded and waiting when the President was carried to it.

"One of you," the President of the United States said, "smells of something that didn't come out of an after-shave bottle. 'My Sin'?"

The burly Secret Service agent now pus.h.i.+ng the wheelchair chuckled.

"No comment, Mr. President," he said.

The other agent trotted ahead and pushed open doors until he reached the double sliding doors to the library, both of which he slid open.

"Is this the place with the booze?" the President asked as he was rolled in.

Donovan and Whittaker, who had been sitting on identical couches at right angles to a carved sandstone fireplace, stood up.

"Good evening, Mr. President," Donovan said.

"That'll be all, Casey," the President said. "If I need it, the Colonel can push me around."

The Secret Service agent left the room, closing the double doors carefully behind him.

"Well, Jimmy," the President said. "You look a h.e.l.l of a lot better than the last time I saw you."

"Good whiskey and fast women, Uncle Frank," Whittaker said.

He went to Roosevelt and offered his hand. Roosevelt ignored it. He gripped his arms with both hands, and with strength that always surprised Whittaker, forced his body down so that his face was level with Roosevelt's. Roosevelt studied him intently for a moment, and then, nodding his head in approval, let him go.

"Chesty would be very proud of you," the President said. "I am."

He let that sink in a moment, then changed the tone. "I had a letter from Jimmy," he said. "You know about Jimmy?" James Roosevelt, the President's eldest son, was commissioned in the USMC. He was second in command of the Marine Raiders in the Pacific.

"Somebody talked him into joining the Marines," Whittaker said. "I thought he was smarter than that."

Roosevelt laughed heartily.

"I think he was taken with the uniform," he said. "Anyway, he asked about you."

"Give him my regards," Whittaker said.

Donovan handed the President a martini gla.s.s.

"I think you'll like that, Franklin," he said. "Basically, it's frozen gin."

Roosevelt sipped the martini and nodded his approval.

Roosevelt asked about England, first generally, and then specifically about David Bruce, the OSS Chief of Station in London, and finally about Canidy.

"Your friend Canidy's all right?"

"Just fine," Whittaker said.

"I'm sorry that Bill and I can't tell you why, Jimmy," Roosevelt said, "but that Congo mission the two of you flew was of great importance."

"I thought it probably was of enormous importance," Whittaker said.

"Why did you think that?" Roosevelt asked. His famous smile was just perceptibly strained.

"The airplane Canidy and I flew was a brand-new C-46, fitted out like the Taj Mahal, and intended to fly Navy bra.s.s around the Pacific."

"Nothing is too good for our boys in the OSS," Roosevelt joked, exchanging a quick glance with Donovan.

The mission, ordered by Roosevelt himself, had been to bring ten tons of bagged ore from Kolwezi in the Katanga Province of the Belgian Congo. Only four people-the President; Donovan; Capt. Peter Dougla.s.s, Donovan's deputy; and Brig. General Leslie R. Groves, director of something called "The Manhattan Project"-knew that the ore was uraninite. The Manhattan Project was intended, in the great secret of the Second World War, to refine the uraninite into uranium 235, and from the uranium 235 to construct a bomb, an "atomic bomb" that would have the explosive equivalent of twenty thousand tons of TNT.

Roosevelt's, and Donovan's, great fear was that the Germans, among whose scientists were some of the greatest physicists in the world, and who were known to be conducting their own nuclear research, would learn of the American effort and increase their own research effort. Whoever could produce the first nuclear weapons would win the war.

"Canidy," Donovan said very quickly, to shut off any possibility that Whittaker-now that he'd made his little joke-might ask why it was of great importance and that the President just might tell him, "shot down two German fighters, Messerschmitts, near Dortmund three days ago."

"Good for him!" the President said, pleased to change the subject.

"Bad for him," Donovan said. "He's not supposed to be flying missions as a fighter pilot."

"He must have had his reasons," Whittaker said loyally.

"You and d.i.c.k always have your reasons," Donovan said dryly.

"Come on, Bill," the President said. "You're just jealous. I'm sure that you would rather be in the field with a regiment than doing what you're doing."

"I do what I'm told," Donovan said. "And I naively expect people who work for me to do what they're told."

"Did I hear a subtle reprimand?" Whittaker asked. "Or is that just my guilty conscience?"

"Well, Jimmy, what have you been doing that you shouldn't?" Roosevelt asked.

Donovan walked to Roosevelt and topped off the President's martini from a heavy crystal mixer.

"Not doing what he should have been doing, Franklin," Donovan said.

"What was that?" Whittaker asked.

"Learning how to get into a rubber boat from a submarine, " Donovan said.

"Why would I want to do that?" Whittaker asked.

"Scheduled Pan American service to the Philippines has been temporarily suspended," Donovan said. "A submarine's the only way we know to get you into the Philippines."

"Is that where I'm going?" Whittaker asked.

"That hasn't been decided yet," the President said coldly. "Whether you or anybody else is going into the Philippines."

"Now that you mention it, Uncle Frank . . ." Whittaker said.

"I don't think I'm going to like it, Jim," Roosevelt said. "But finish that."

"Why have we abandoned the people in the Philippines? " Whittaker asked.

"What makes you think we have?" Roosevelt replied, just a little indignantly. He was not used to having his decisions questioned by anyone. "There was simply no way to reinforce MacArthur before the j.a.panese overwhelmed him, and there is simply no way, at this time, that we can consider an invasion. It's just too far away, and we just don't have the logistical capability."

"I'm talking about the guerrillas," Whittaker said. "The people who haven't quit. The ones in the mountains."

It was a moment before Roosevelt replied.

"I was about to say, Jim, that you are emotionally involved, and that unfortunately I can't always do what my emotions tell me I should. But then it occurred to me that you have a greater right to be emotionally involved than most people. So I will not change the subject. The answer to your question is that the best advice I can get is that there are no guerrillas. I tend to place faith in that advice, because it comes to me from Douglas MacArthur and George Marshall, and it is the first thing I can think of that they have agreed upon since 1935."

"There are at least ten guerrillas, Uncle Frank," Whittaker said.

"How can you possibly know that?"

"I talked to them on the radio this afternoon," Whittaker said.

"You did?"

"I did," Whittaker said.

Roosevelt looked at Donovan.

"You arranged that, Bill? He's talking about this self-appointed general . . . what's the name?"

"Fertig," Donovan said.

"Fertig," Roosevelt repeated. "Jim," he said kindly, "it is the opinion of everybody but Bill Donovan that the j.a.panese, for whatever reason, are using prisoners, attempting something. Most likely, that they hope to get us to send them a million dollars in gold by submarine. Whereupon, they will take the million dollars and sink the submarine."

"Uncle Frank, I talked on the radio this afternoon with two of my my men." men."

"What do you mean, 'your' men?"