The Fighting Agents Part 33

Immediately, a dozen GIs came out of the hangar and manhandled the B-25 inside the hangar. Darmstadter sensed, from the decreasing light inside the hangar, that the doors were being closed.

He looked at Dolan.

"You all right, Commander?" he asked.

"The word you have to keep in mind, Darmstadter," Dolan said, "is 'indigestion.' Am I going to have trouble with you about that?"

"No, Sir," Darmstadter said after a moment.

"Thank you," Dolan said, simply and sincerely.

"What happens now?" Darmstadter asked.

"I don't know," Dolan said. "Canidy gave me that 'Flight Four Zero Five' message just before we took off. I expect somebody will show up shortly. In the meantime, you might have them start to refuel it."

When Darmstadter dropped from the belly of the B-25, he saw that there were two military policemen, armed with Thompson submachine guns, guarding the airplane. And there was a captain, wearing an AOD (Aerodrome Officer of the Day) bra.s.sard.

Darmstadter walked over to him and saluted.

"I'd like to get this fueled," he said.

"Someone will be along for you shortly, Lieutenant," the AOD said. "In the meantime, nothing comes into, or goes out of, this hangar."

"We have a female pa.s.senger aboard," Darmstadter said. "She has to use the can."

"I don't know if there's one available," the AOD said.

"There has to be something," Darmstadter said.

"Jesus Christ!" the AOD said in annoyance.

"Sorry as h.e.l.l to inconvenience you," Darmstadter flared.

The AOD glared at him.

"Who the h.e.l.l do you think you are, Lieutenant?"

"I'm only a lieutenant," Darmstadter said, "but I can ask Commander Dolan to come down here if you have to have that as an order."

"Sergeant!" the AOD said, and one of the submachine-gun -armed MPs came over.

"There is a female aboard this aircraft who needs the facilities, " he said. "Take her there and bring her back."

Darmstadter climbed back into the aircraft.

"Would you like to . . . "

"I must have the ladies' room," Gisella Dyer said in precise, if uneasy, English.

"Come with me," Darmstadter said.

Five minutes later, before Gisella had come out of the men's room at the rear of the hangar, a side door opened and two men in U.S. Army civilian technician uniforms came in.

The AOD indicated Darmstadter with a nod of his head. One civilian walked up to him and held a leather folder in front of Darmstadter's eyes. They were OSS credentials, but Darmstadter had never seen any before, and it took him a moment to realize what they were.

The man's name was Ernest J. Wilkins.

"You're the flight Four Zero Five?" Wilkins asked.

"That's right," Darmstadter said.

"You want to tell me what this is all about? Before that, you want to show me your identification?"

"I think maybe you better go aboard and talk to Commander Dolan," Darmstadter said. "I'm just an airplane driver."

"Why don't you you go aboard and ask Commander Dolan to join us?" Wilkins said sarcastically. go aboard and ask Commander Dolan to join us?" Wilkins said sarcastically.

"He's a little under the weather," Darmstadter said.

"What's wrong with him?"

"Indigestion," Darmstadter said.

"Jesus H. Christ!" Wilkins said, but he went to the access hatch and climbed aboard the B-25.

There was a marked change in Wilkins's att.i.tude when he climbed back down from the airplane.

"Captain," he said to the AOD. "Get on the horn and get an ambulance over here. There is no medical emergency, we will not need a physician. I will require one of the MPs to come with us. This airplane is to be refueled and kept under guard in this hangar. I presume you have cautioned your men to keep their mouths shut?"

"Yes, Sir," the AOD said.

Gisella Dyer, trailed by the MP sergeant, walked up.

"Good afternoon, Miss Dyer," Wilkins said to her in fluent German. "Welcome to Egypt. We're going to go from here to a place where you'll be staying for a while. I'm afraid, for reasons of security, that you'll have to travel by ambulance. It'll be a little warm in the back, but we don't have far to go."

Thirty minutes later, Dolan, Darmstadter, and Wilkins were in what had once been the pool house by the swimming pool of a wealthy Egyptian banker. The blue-tile-walled room now held an impressive array of communications equipment under the supervision of a gray-haired, distinguished-looking man who wore a ring, an amethyst surrounded by the legend "20 Years Service AT&T."

Dolan seemed to be completely recovered from his "indigestion. " The color was back in his face, and he was no longer tensed with pain.

Darmstadter was uncomfortable. There was no doubt in his mind that there was a h.e.l.l of a lot more wrong with the old sailor than indigestion. What was his duty, to tell Wilkins-who had identified himself as Station Chief, Cairo-so that Wilkins could, by force if necessary, get him medical attention? Or to obey Dolan's admonition to "keep in mind that the word was indigestion"?

Dolan himself answered the question.

When London acknowledged receipt of the encrypted message from Canidy and ordered Cairo to stand by while the message was decrypted, Dolan handed the man with the AT&T ring a sheet of paper.

"Encrypt that, and send it, urgent, before they get off the air," he ordered.

When the communications officer had run the message through the encryption device and begun to transmit the encoded message, Dolan reclaimed the sheet of paper and handed it to Darmstadter.

TO OSS LONDON STATION. EYES ONLY BRUCE AND STEVENS. SUFFERING SEVERE INTESTINAL DISTRESS AND FEVER. PROBABLY RECURRENCE OF MALARIA. HAVE MADE DARMSTADTER AWARE OF ALL REPEAT ALL OPERATIONAL DETAILS IN CASE HIS a.s.sUMPTION COMMAND NECESSARY. DOLAN, LIEUTENANT COMMANDER, USNR.

When Darmstadter looked at him, Dolan shrugged.

"What the h.e.l.l, kid," the old sailor said. "You didn't really want to go back to flying Gooney Birds, did you?"

2.

OSS LONDON STATION BERKELEY SQUARE LONDON, ENGLAND 1105 HOURS 17 FEBRUARY 1943.

There is a three-hour time difference between Cairo and London. The message transmitted from the pool house of the villa in Cairo at 1405 Cairo time was acknowledged by London at 1110 London time. The second acknowledgment (confirming satisfactory decryption in London) was sent to Cairo at 1124, London time, and the second acknowledgment of Dolan's message at 1141, London time.

Both encrypted messages had come out of the encryption /decryption device in Berkeley Square in the form of punched tape. It was necessary to feed the punched tape into another machine (a converted teletype machine), which then typed out a copy on paper. The messages were next entered in the Cla.s.sified Doc.u.ments Log, and finally they were put, separately, inside two cover sheets. The outer was the standard Top Secret cover sheet, and the inner one was stamped with both TOP SECRET and EYES ONLY BRUCE AND STEVENS.

It was by then 1158.

Rank hath its privileges, and the privilege the senior cryptographic officer of OSS London Station, twenty-six-year -old Captain Paul J. Harrison, Signal Corps, had claimed for himself was the day s.h.i.+ft, 0800 to 1600. And just as soon as he could get the personnel section at SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force) off their a.s.s to pin second lieutenants' bars on two of his sergeants, he intended to take no s.h.i.+ft at all. But now, with his perfectly qualified sergeants barred from acting as cryptographic duty officer by a bulls.h.i.+t directive from David Bruce, he had the duty.

As was his custom with Eyes Onlys-the forty-page SOP for cla.s.sified doc.u.ments made no specific reference to who should physically carry messages-Capt. Harrison personally took both messages up from the cryptographic room in the subbas.e.m.e.nt to the Station Chief's office.

Capt. Helene Dancy told him that David Bruce had moments before left the building. He was to have lunch with Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith, General Dwight D. Eisenhower's deputy at SHAEF. "Beetle" Smith and David Bruce were friends as well as professional a.s.sociates. Knowing this, Eisenhower had for all practical purposes given General Smith carte blanche in dealing with the OSS.

"Where's the Colonel?" the cryptographic officer asked.

"Whitbey House," Helene Dancy replied. "What have you got?"

"An Eyes Only Operational Immediate . . . two of them . . . for Bruce and the Colonel. From Canidy and Dolan."

The SOP was very clear on the handling of Operational Immediate messages: 16. [b]. Operational immediate messages will be immediately delivered to the addressee, or in his absence, to the senior officer present possessing the appropriate security clearance. In no circ.u.mstances will a delay of more than ten [10] minutes between decryption and delivery be tolerated.

"Can I see it?" Helene Dancy asked.

"You're not next on the list," Captain Harrison said reluctantly, obviously uncomfortable.

"That's right," she said, just a little tartly. She picked up her telephone.

"Sergeant, do you know where Captain Fine is?" she asked a moment later, and then, when there had been a reply: "Send someone for him, please. Get him back here as soon as you can."

"Well, who's next on the list after Fine?" Harrison asked.

"Oddly enough, I am," Capt. Dancy said, a little ice in her voice. She put out her hand for the doc.u.ments.

"Hey, Dancy," Capt. Harrison said as he handed them to her. "I don't make the rules. I just try to obey them."

"I know," Helene Dancy said. "d.a.m.n, why does everybody have to be gone at once?" And then she quickly glanced at the first message: Canidy's.

"Oh, Christ!" she said.

"My thought exactly," Capt. Harrison said.

She flipped back the cover sheet on the second Eyes Only: Dolan's.

"I think you'd better get both of these off, Operational Immediate, to Was.h.i.+ngton, Eyes Only, Donovan and Dougla.s.s, " Capt. Dancy said.

She saw the look on his face.

"Okay, I'll make it official. As the senior officer present, I order you to transmit these messages to Was.h.i.+ngton, Eyes Only, Donovan and Dougla.s.s."

"I'm not trying to be chickens.h.i.+t about this," Harrison said. "You heard Bruce eat my a.s.s out the last time I 'acted without thought and authority . . .' "

"Well, I just took you off the hook for this time," she said.

"Yeah," Harrison said. "Helene, I'm not asking you to make it official, but should I try to run down Bruce at SHAEF?"

"That would make a second copy necessary," she said. "The sergeant major will get Fine in here in a couple of minutes."

The SOP was specific about that, too: 16. [f]. In no case, except with the specific permission of the chief of station, or the deputy chief of station, will more than one [1] copy of an eyes only doc.u.ment be prepared. It is emphasized that addressees of eyes only doc.u.ments, with the exception of the chief of station and deputy chief of station, are specifically forbidden to make copies of eyes only doc.u.ments for their own files, or for any other purpose.

"What the h.e.l.l," Capt. Harrison said. "How mad can Bruce get?"

"Pretty mad," she said. "I don't know, Paul."

"Is Bruce eating at the SHAEF general's mess?" Capt. Harrison asked, having made up his mind.

"He wasn't sure," Capt. Dancy said. "When he can get Beetle Smith out of the building for an hour or so, he likes to b.u.t.ter him up at the Savoy Grill."

"And if I call either place to find out, no one will tell me," Harrison said. "I think I'll take a chance on the Savoy."

Five minutes later, after having made copies of the Eyes Only messages and ordered their transmission to Was.h.i.+ngton, Capt. Harrison went onto Berkeley Square to get into a Ford staff car. There he saw Capt. Stanley S. Fine getting out of a jeep driven by the sergeant major.

He waved at Fine, but said nothing to him about the Eyes Onlys, or about where he was going. If he told Fine, Fine might forbid him-he had the authority-to take copies of the Eyes Onlys to Bruce. More likely, once he'd explained the situation, Fine would also decide it was the thing to do, and to h.e.l.l with Bruce's SOP. That would put him in the line of fire if Bruce didn't like the decision, and that wasn't necessary. Fine was a good guy.

The maitre d'hotel of the Savoy Grill blandly denied the presence of either Lt. General Walter Bedell Smith or Mr. David Bruce. He smilingly announced he hadn't seen either of them in days.

Capt. Harrison looked around the large, elegantly appointed room and found what he was looking for. A major having a solitary lunch at the far end of the room. Behind the major was an ornately carved movable screen, so placed that it could conceal a table for two. And hanging from the epaulets of the major's green tunic was the golden rope of an aide-de-camp.

"Thank you very much," Harrison said to the maitre d'hotel. And then he ducked past the maitre d' and headed for the screen. The maitre d' scurried after him, but unless he broke into a run, Harrison knew he wouldn't catch up with him.

But Beetle Smith's aide-de-camp saw him and rose quickly to his feet, obviously intending to block his path. Harrison reached in his pocket and was enormously relieved to find his OSS credentials there. He was terrified of the consequences of losing them, and since he rarely had need of them, he usually kept them in the Top Secret safe.

He got them out of his pocket and held them up for General Smith's aide-de-camp to see.

"Just a moment," the aide-de-camp said. "I'll tell Mr. Bruce you're here."