The Fighting Agents Part 5

"As opposed to what?" Dougla.s.s asked.

"Charity wants to go to England," Donovan said. "I can't imagine why."

Charity chuckled deep in her throat.

A very s.e.xual young woman, Captain Dougla.s.s thought. Not quite what he had hoped for Peter Dougla.s.s, Jr. He wanted for Doug a girl just like the girl who had married dear old dad when he'd been an ensign fresh from Annapolis. Not this Main Line socialite who was used to spending more money on her clothing than Doug (even as an Air Corps lieutenant colonel drawing flight pay) made in a year. And who, according to the FBI's CBI (Complete Background Investigation) on her, was a long way from having any claim to a virginal white bridal dress.

He was really worried, he thought, that Charity looked on Doug as this year's chic catch, a das.h.i.+ng hero, rather than as someone whose life she would share.

"There have been some cables from London," Charity said. "Nothing important, except that Fulmar and Fine have left for Lisbon. And there's one from Cairo, with Jimmy Whittaker's ETA."

"Good," Donovan said. "I wasn't sure we could catch him."

"Apparently, they had some trouble finding him," Charity said. "The cable said that he had not checked in with them, which is why he wasn't on an earlier plane."

"I wonder what her name was?" Donovan chuckled.

"Jeanine d'Autrey-Lascal," Charity furnished. "Her husband ran a bank there before the war and is now with General de Gaulle."

"Wilkins sent that, too?" Donovan chuckled. "Thorough, isn't he?"

"Wilkins described her as Jimmy's 'good friend,' " Charity said.

"Pilots do get around, don't they, Charity?" Donovan teased.

"Until they're finally forced to land," Charity said. "What goes up, they say, has to come down. Eventually, if they're lucky, a Delilah comes into their lives."

"As in Samson-and?" Donovan chuckled. "You're planning on giving young Dougla.s.s a haircut?"

"I don't really think that's what Delilah did to Samson," Charity said. "But if that's what it takes . . ."

Both Donovan and Dougla.s.s laughed, but Dougla.s.s's laughter seemed a little strained. If he had correctly understood Charity, and he was afraid he had, she had as much as said that she was going to drain Doug s.e.xually to the point where straying would be physically impossible.

A buzzer buzzed four times.

"The Director has arrived," Charity said. "Are you going to meet him outside, or would it be better if we all prostrated ourselves in the entrance foyer?"

Donovan laughed heartily. He genuinely enjoyed Charity Hoche.

"Let's meet him outside and bring him in through the kitchen," Donovan said.

They went back to the cobblestone driveway that separated the mansion from the stable-still so called, although it had been converted to a five-car garage-as a Cadillac limousine, bristling with shortwave radio antennae, rolled majestically in.

There were two neatly dressed young men in the front seat, one of whom jumped out to open the door the instant the car stopped.

J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, got out.

"h.e.l.lo, Edgar," Donovan said. "I'm glad you could find the time."

"It's always a pleasure, Bill," Hoover said, firmly shaking his hand. He nodded curtly to Captain Dougla.s.s. "Dougla.s.s, " he said.

"Mr. Director," Dougla.s.s said.

"And you know Miss Hoche, I believe, Edgar?"

Hoover beamed.

"How nice to see you, my dear," he said. "And how is your father?" Before Charity could open her mouth, he went on, "You be sure to give both your mother and father my kindest regards."

"Of course," Charity said.

"Would you like a little belt, Edgar?" Donovan asked. "Or would you rather go right in to dinner?"

"This is one of those days when I would dearly like a little taste," Hoover said, "and just don't have the time."

"Well, we'll give you a rain check," Donovan said. "I'm trying to be very nice to you, Edgar."

"That sounds as if you want something," Hoover said, jovially, as they entered the house through the kitchen.

"Actually," Donovan said, "I was hoping you might have a contact with the state police in Virginia."

"I can probably help," Hoover said. "What is it you need?"

"You know somebody that can fix a speeding ticket?" Donovan asked.

Hoover looked at him in genuine surprise.

"Seventy-three-point-six in a thirty-five-mile zone," Donovan said, straight-faced. "The cop said that we'd probably lose our C-ration sticker, too."

Hoover smiled.

"Darn you, Bill," he said. "You really had me going there for a minute."

"Oh, Edgar, you know better than that. I'd never ask you to fix a speeding ticket."

"You didn't really get one, did you?" Hoover asked.

"Less than an hour ago," Donovan said. "On the way here. But don't worry about it, Edgar. I'm going to ask the boss for a presidential pardon."

Hoover's smile was now strained.

"As soon as we get our business out of the way, Edgar, we're headed for Warm Springs," Donovan said. "On his way down there, Franklin's always in a very good mood. He'll He'll take care of the speeding ticket, I'm sure." take care of the speeding ticket, I'm sure."

Hoover marched ahead of him toward the dining room. He knew the way.

Donovan glanced at Charity Hoche. She smiled and gave him a nod of approval. He had put Hoover off balance, and with consummate skill that Charity appreciated. First, by the suggestion of an insult: that the nation's ranking law-enforcement officer, Mr. G-Man himself, would fix a speeding ticket, and then with the announcement that he was going to Warm Springs with President Roosevelt (whom he was privileged to call by his first name) on a trip on which Hoover had obviously not been invited.

There were very few people who could discomfit J. Edgar Hoover. Donovan, Charity thought, could play him like a violin.

The table was set for three.

Charity waited until they were seated, then started to leave.

"I'll serve now, if that would be all right," she said.

"Fine," Donovan said, and then, as if he had just thought of it, "Oh, Charity, there was one more cable from London, a personal to me from Stevens."

"Something I should know about?"

"I want you to get it decoded," Donovan said. "The message is 'Katharine Hepburn's Fine by Me.' "

She smiled at him. It needed no decoding. Donovan had apparently cabled Lt. Colonel Ed Stevens, Deputy Chief of London Station, asking how he felt about Charity's being transferred there. Making light of her Main Line Philadelphia accent, Charity was known as "Katharine Hepburn."

"Oh, Uncle Bill," Charity blurted, and ran to him and kissed him wetly on the cheek. "Thank you!" you!"

"Serve dinner, Miss Hoche," Donovan said. "The Director looks hungry."

Hoover did not turn over his gla.s.s when a middle-aged maid produced the bottle of Chateau de Long '35.

Donovan interpreted this as a good sign: that Hoover had not come to this meeting with a litany of OSS offenses against the FBI.

The relations.h.i.+p between the Director of the FBI and the Director of the OSS was complex. When a new broom had been needed to sweep out the scandal-ridden Federal Office of Investigation, the post had been offered to Donovan, both because of his public image as a war hero of untainted honesty, and because of his political influence. He had declined, and taken some effort to see that the job went to J. Edgar Hoover, then a young Justice Department lawyer. When the FBI was established in 1935, Hoover-again with Donovan's support-was named its first director.

By the time Donovan returned to public service, shortly before the war, as the $1.00-per-annum Coordinator of Information, the predecessor organization to the OSS, Hoover had become a highly respected fixture in Was.h.i.+ngton, very nearly above criticism.

The FBI was without question the most efficient law-enforcement agency the nation had ever known, and the credit was clearly Hoover's.

And when the idea of a superagency to sit atop all the other governmental intelligence agencies came up, Hoover perhaps naturally presumed that it would fall under the FBI. He was bitterly disappointed when that role was given to the Office of the Coordinator of Information, and his old friend and mentor Bill Donovan was named as its head.

Hoover was a skilled political infighter with many friends on Capitol Hill and within Roosevelt's inner circle. He did not simply roll over and play dead. He got President Roosevelt to agree that the FBI should retain its intelligence and counterintelligence roles, not only within the United States but in Latin and South America as well. And he got Roosevelt to keep Bill Donovan's agents in South America under his own control by claiming the right to "coordinate" all their activities. Clearly, he could not coordinate their activities unless they made frequent and detailed reports of their activities to the FBI.

Donovan, because he acknowledged the battle as lost, or perhaps because Latin and South America were low in his priorities, gave Hoover his way. Not completely, of course, but he paid lip service to the notion that Hoover had been given North and South America as his area of operations.

Hoover saw Donovan for what he was: a highly competent man with a sense of morality and patriotism that was close to his own-and a good friend. But he also saw Donovan as someone who was challenging his (the FBI's) authority in all things concerned with espionage. And this was especially galling because Donovan had the same access to the President's ear that Hoover did. Despite their sharp political and ideological differences, Donovan and Roosevelt had been friends since they had been students at the Columbia School of Law.

And, with consummate skill, Roosevelt played games with them-Hoover and Donovan-sometimes pitting one against the other, and other times a.s.suring one that the other regarded him as the greatest patriot and most efficient employee on the government payroll.

And both Hoover and Donovan understood that the most dangerous thing that could happen to either was to force Roosevelt to choose between them. As confident of their own ability and their own influence with Roosevelt as they each were, neither was a.s.sured that the other would ever be asked for his resignation.

Tonight, with nothing specific on the agenda, they exchanged tidbits. Hoover told Donovan and Dougla.s.s what his agents had uncovered in Latin and South America. Donovan heard nothing he thought was very important. Much of what Hoover told him, he had heard before.

Hoover, only half joking, said that he was on the edge of doubling his security force at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where the refining of uranium was getting under way in a top-secret plant. He would use half the force, he said, to keep the Germans from finding out what was going on, and the other half to keep the scientists-fifty percent of whom, he said, were "pinkos"-from pa.s.sing what they knew and were learning to the Soviets. There was no question in his mind, Hoover said, that the scientist in charge, J. Robert Oppenheimer, was as left of center as Vladimir Lenin.

"And it's delicate, you know, Bill, with the Boss," Hoover said. "If he has one flaw in his political judgment, it has to do with the Russians. He thinks Joe Stalin is sort of the Russian senator from Georgia. And that he can buy him off with a dam or a highway."

Donovan laughed.

"You think there's a genuine danger of somebody actually spilling the beans to the Russians?" he asked.

"Not so long as I'm in charge of security," Hoover said. "Instead of, for example, Henry Wallace."

He said it with a smile, but Donovan understood that Hoover regarded the Vice President and several of the people around him as bona fide threats to the one great secret of the war: that the United States was engaged in building a bomb that would use as its explosive force nuclear energy, a force-presuming theory could be turned into practice-that would give one five-thousand-pound bomb the destructive force of twenty thousand tons of TNT.

"Henry doesn't know about Oak Ridge," Donovan said. "And the President tells me he has no intention of telling him."

"Franklin Roosevelt has been known to change his mind to fit the circ.u.mstances of the moment," Hoover said, adding dryly, "I'm surprised you haven't noticed."

Donovan chuckled appreciatively.

"On the subject of Oak Ridge, Edgar," Donovan said, "there's something coming up-"

"Oh?" Hoover interrupted.

"We are going to try to bring some German scientists here," Donovan said.

"You mean, get them out of Germany?" Hoover asked, surprised. "Can you do that?"

"In the next couple of days," Donovan said, "we're going to make sort of a trial run." He waited for Hoover to interrupt him again, and when he didn't, went on. "The first man we're going to bring out is a metallurgist-"

Now Hoover obliged him. "Why a metallurgist?"

"I've told you about the German flying bombs and jet-propulsion engines," Donovan said. "I finally managed to convince the President that they pose a real threat, no matter what the Air Corps says, to our plans for the ma.s.sive bombing of Germany. I have permission to do what I can to at least slow down the production of jet-propulsion and rocket engines. Both require special metal alloys and special techniques to machine the special alloys. The idea is that when we find out what kind of special metal and what kind of special techniques are required for the necessary machining, we will just put those locations on the top of the bombing priority list."

Hoover grunted, then asked, "What's this got to do with Groves's bomb? With Oak Ridge?"

"If we succeed in getting the metallurgist safely out, and see how much attention the Germans pay to his disappearance, we'll start bringing out the mathematicians and physicists we need . . . or whose services we don't want the Germans to have."

"And if they catch you bringing out the metallurgist, the Germans won't connect it with the Manhattan Project?" Hoover asked.

"Precisely," Donovan said. "If we get to the point where we do bring nuclear people out, once they get to this country, they'll be your responsibility, protecting them at either Oak Ridge or White Sands. I thought perhaps, presuming we get the metallurgist out, you might want to use him as sort of a dry run yourself."

"You keep saying 'if' and 'presuming' you can get him out," Hoover said. "There's some question in your mind that you will? Or do you believe the operation won't work?"

"We have high hopes, of course," Donovan said, and went on to explain that the OSS had set up a new escape route "pipeline," which ran through Hungary and Yugoslavia, for the sole purpose of getting the "special category" people out of Germany. The normal, in-place pipelines took people off the European continent through Holland and France to England.

Hoover displayed a deep curiosity in the details of the new pipeline, and Donovan explained the operation to him, wondering if the FBI Director's curiosity was professional or personal. Hoover, he knew, liked to think of himself as an agent rather than an administrator. Donovan suspected that Hoover was vicariously crossing the border from Germany into Hungary, and then walking out of Yugoslavia in the company of Yugoslavian partisans.

When the explanation was finally over, Hoover grunted, then looked at Captain Dougla.s.s.

"You don't seem to have much to say, Dougla.s.s," he said.

"I ask Pete to sit in on the more important meetings, Edgar, so I don't have to spend time repeating to him what was said."

"I was thinking along those lines myself," Hoover said. "That it's going to take me some time to repeat all this to Tolson." Clyde Tolson was Deputy Director of the FBI and Hoover's closest friend. They shared a house.

"If Clyde was cleared for the Manhattan Project," Donovan said, "I'd be the first to say bring him along."

"Clyde knows about the Manhattan Project," Hoover said. "He's my Deputy."