The Saboteurs Read online

  Her brothers had died in battle, and her parents and grandparents were killed during a blitz when a series of bombs leveled their neighborhood. There were somewhere some second cousins twice or thrice removed, but for all the contact between the families, she said, “They may as well be bloody Aborigines. Could be dead, too. Who knows? That’s how close we are.”

  Ann was not sure if it was Sara’s matter-of-fact delivery, or the realization that Sara was about Ann’s age and given some tragic turn Sara’s story could be Ann’s story, or all the beer they had consumed—or a combination thereof—but Ann was terribly saddened for Sara.

  Sara, however, would have none of it. She would not accept pity, she said. “Others have lost everything, yet here I am alive and well and with my life ahead of me. I can—I must—carry on.”

  Ann had found strength in Sara Spenser. She was impressed with her brave front, and perhaps even more so with her ability to find humor in some of the most difficult of times.

  Sara had turned heads with her laughter that night in the noisy pub as she told Ann about the time her Light Rescue Section had been removing rubble of another bombed-out building, first evacuating victim after victim still alive to the ambulances, then dealing with the dead, then uncovering an older gentlemen, looking a bit bewildered but clearly alive, pants around his ankles and surrounded by debris one would expect to find in a water closet.

  Sara had taken a deep swallow of her stout, then recalled, “As I helped him pull up his trousers, I asked if he was all right. He nodded and said, ‘It’s just that it’s rather odd that one moment, here I am sitting on the loo, and the next, when I pull the chain, down comes the bloody house!’”

  Ann had spent exhausting days running around London’s bomb-debris-filled streets to track down stories and interview people, then often-sleepless nights awaiting the haunting sounds of the air-raid sirens.

  More than once she had wondered why she didn’t just go home to Atlanta…or even back to Bryn Mawr. Return to the safety and sanity of the States. But then she realized that she might not meet a person such as Sara otherwise, and she knew there was no way she could not be here. Writing about the war had become her duty.

  In the glow of the candles in the mirror, Ann smiled at herself.

  And I didn’t really come here for the work. I came here for Dick.

  And then her throat caught.

  Where the hell is he? It’s been almost two weeks since he left and not a word. For all I know he could be lost or captured or… She tried to force herself not to think it…dead.

  Although Major Richard M. Canidy wore the uniform of the United States Army Air Forces, Ann Chambers knew that the dark-haired aviator worked for an outfit called the Office of Strategic Services. More than worked for it—was pretty high up in it.

  It was more or less known that the OSS was a military intelligence operation, a secretive collection of spies, analysts, and such from various branches of the military and the government and corporate America, some very highly connected, reflecting in part the fact that its head, Colonel William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan, enjoyed the confidence and close friendship of President Franklin D. Roosevelt going back to their days in law school at Columbia.

  But that was all she knew—despite her sniffing around on the side—and it was more than Canidy was willing to tell her. Even this current mission of his was one he had said not one word about.

  Except to say good-bye here at the flat in a very special, very personal way.

  Which was why, she thought, and made a mischievous grin in the mirror, the flat would always be kept only for her. Her and Dick.

  If he ever comes back.

  Dick, with the warmth and smell of Ann on her coat and sweater, thought that he had nearly died and gone to heaven. He moved under their weight and caused a spring in the couch seat to creak.

  He looked toward Ann and saw her eyes dart in the mirror, searching.

  After a moment, she turned toward the couch.

  What the hell. Now or never.

  As he started to sit up, he said, “Hey…”

  Ann had heard a noise. Was it the floor creaking?

  She held her breath and looked in the mirror, searching to see if there was someone in the room behind her. She saw nothing, then quickly turned to look more carefully.

  Then she thought she had heard a man’s voice—Dick’s?—but knew that that had to be impossible.

  Just imagined it, she thought, just wished it.

  She shook her head, telling herself it had been too long a day.

  Then suddenly she saw the clothes she had tossed on the couch were…moving?

  She started to scream—but then there was Dick Canidy coming out from under her coat, the sweater still on his head.

  He was dressed in uniform, his eyes smiling, his arms open wide.

  “Hey, baby!” he said. “Surprised?”

  Ann caught her breath, then felt slightly unsteady on her legs.

  “Dick!” she cried softly.

  She padded across the room into his arms, pulled the sweater off his head, buried her head in his neck. She felt his arms wrap around and hold her tightly. It was an incredible feeling.

  She turned to look up at him, smiled, and they kissed deeply.

  When finally they had separated, Dick lovingly cupped her face with both of his hands. He thought he noticed something on her cheek, gently angled it toward the candlelight, then saw on her fair skin a line of tears that glistened with the reflection of the flame.

  He felt his body quiver, slightly and involuntarily, as he realized just how incredibly beautiful he found Ann and how deeply she affected him.

  “Miss me?” he said softly and kissed the tears.

  Ann was already unbuttoning Dick’s shirt.

  “So how did you get in the flat?” Ann said as she poured port into the wineglass that Dick Canidy held, filling it about halfway.

  They were lying side by side on the floor before the fireplace—which now crackled as it burned brightly—on top of giant pillows covered in a fine silk fabric and under a goose-down-stuffed, cotton-fabric-covered duvet.

  Ann put the cork back in the squat fat bottle, placed the bottle near the fire to keep it warm, then snuggled up to Canidy.

  He offered the glass to her, raised an eyebrow, and she leaned forward and took a big sip, then leaned forward and kissed him. She wondered if it was possible to feel any more warmth in any more places of her body at once.

  Canidy smiled and finally said, “Getting in places—mostly where I’m not supposed to be—is what I do for a living.”

  He shrugged.

  “This place is no challenge—boarded windows, half the building missing—”

  “Is that where you were?” she pursued. “Where you weren’t supposed to be?”

  “Annie,” he said, sighing. “You know I can’t—”

  “I know, I know. But you can’t blame me for trying.”

  She looked into his eyes.

  “I worry about you. I worry about you and me.”

  “Shhhh,” he said, looking back into her eyes and gently touching his index finger to her lips. “Stop. Don’t. We’re fine. And now that I’m back and certain problems have been solved, I plan to be around for as long as I can.”

  Beaming, Ann quickly sat up, and as she did the duvet slipped, exposing her bosom.

  Dick smiled and kissed her left breast.

  “Promise?” she said softly, modestly pulling up the duvet.

  “I go where I’m ordered, Annie. I can’t—”

  “Promise?” she repeated, this time more forcefully. “Please?”

  Dick took the glass of port and put it beside the bottle, then wiggled under the duvet and wrapped himself around her.

  “Promise,” he said softly, knowing sometime—probably soon—he would have to break it.

  [ THREE ]

  Brooklyn Army Base and Terminal

  Brooklyn, New York

  0545 26 Febr
uary 1943

  “Tony the Gut” Lucchese, the five-foot-seven, 220-pound gang boss of local 213, International Longshoreman’s Association, stood near the edge of the industrial dock as icy gusts came across the East River.

  Son of a bitch! the thirty-five-year-old thought, turning his back to the wind. I’m gonna freeze my fuckin’ nuts off out here.

  He took a final puff of what was left of his stub of a cigar, threw the butt into the dark water, then thrust his hands into the pockets of his heavy woolen overcoat, his fat fingers hitting the grip of the .357 caliber revolver he’d put in the right pocket.

  Lucchese looked up as an olive drab jeep floated past, hanging from a cable of a loading boom on the dock, then shivered violently and wondered if the shiver had been caused by the bitter cold—or his outright fear.

  Seventy percent of the war goods and soldiers shipped to Europe passed through New York area terminals—much of that going through the Brooklyn terminal.

  The ILA controlled it all.

  The union saw to it that the loading went on smoothly round the clock—and on time, like that bastard Mussolini ran his trains—because not only was the shipping critical to winning the war, keeping the pace steady was important to the ILA boys doing the skimming.

  The more they moved, the less anyone noticed a container here and pallet there had been “misplaced” in transit.

  This was not lost on Lucchese.

  It don’t take no Road Scholar to figure out I can get whacked for doing this thing, he thought.

  And Lucchese knew that if they didn’t whack him for causing the loading of the ships to slow—or stop—then they’d likely do it for him going behind the ILA’s back and working for Harry Bridges in the first place. The head of the stevedore unions on the West Coast, from Seattle to San Diego, was trying to muscle his way in on East Coast business—and the ILA locals weren’t happy about that shit at all.

  Lucchese mindlessly kicked at the snow with the toe of his boot. He still had time to back out of this thing, time to save his ass. Just pick up the phone and call it off.

  But…Bridges’s boys would be really pissed, and he would blow this, his big chance to move up when Bridges came in, to be at the front of the line—to be the real player they kept saying he should be.

  Lucchese pushed back his round, pressed-steel safety hat. He scanned the lines of railroad flatcars and semi-truck flatbed trailers that waited to off-load tanks and trucks and munitions and medicine and food and more—everything desperately needed to fight and win a war. The lines went back as far as he could see in the dimly lit dockyard.

  At the head of the lines, booms on the dock and ships moved like giant fingers lifting the pallets and containers and vehicles into EC2 (Emergency, Cargo, Large Capacity) ships. Each 441-foot-long vessel could transport the same amount as three hundred railroad cars, and a dozen EC2s were moored here, taking on cargo, while a couple dozen more were staged in the bay, waiting for their turn at the dock.

  It was no secret that these so-called Liberty ships were being built in record time at U.S. shipyards on the East, West, and Gulf Coasts—and being sunk by enemy torpedoes damned near as fast.

  Convoys, each with scores of Liberty ships, rushed eastward across the Atlantic, only to be hunted down by packs of German U-boats. Hundreds upon hundreds of the ships and their crews were blasted into the icy-cold depths—seven and a half million tons of critical cargo lost in 1942 alone.

  The Nazi submarines were so deadly effective that the Allies considered a Liberty ship to have earned back its cost if it made just one trip across the Atlantic Ocean.

  Which made, the nervous Lucchese knew, today’s act all the more volatile, if not reprehensible.

  A ship horn suddenly blew and Tony thought he’d shit his pants.

  Aw, fuck it. I gotta do this thing.

  Tony the Gut walked up to the door of the tin box of a dock office that he shared with International Longshoreman’s Association gang bosses Michael Francis “Iron Mike” Mahoney and Franco Giuseppi “Little Joe” Biaggio. He grabbed the knob, then stopped short of turning and pulling it.

  He was still anxious, not to mention breathing a little heavily from the walk, and the feeling in his ample belly still was not a good one. Maybe not so much dread. Maybe more like a mix of emotions—fear for sure, anxiety…hell, even a little excitement muddled in there.

  Yeah, Lucchese thought, that’s all. C’mon, you can do this!

  He took a deep breath, exhaled, turned the knob, and pulled the door open.

  The twelve-by-twelve paneled office held—barely—the wooden desks of the three gang bosses. Space was tight; if two of the men leaned back in their chairs at the same time, they hit. Each desk was pushed up against a wall of its own. The top of Lucchese’s desk butted the bottom of the grimy plate-glass window—with the dusty, three-month-old MERRY CHRISTMAS! & HAPPY NEW YEAR! banner draped across the top—that overlooked the waterfront. Mahoney’s was opposite it, at the foot of a large chalkboard that was a grid of white boxes in which the gang bosses kept track of who worked loading what ship and at what job—winch drivers, boom men, jitney drivers, and so on. The third desk, Biaggio’s, was against the wall directly across from the door.

  They shared the office’s one battered telephone, coal black with a long, frayed cord. It was on Biaggio’s desk, next to a filthy ashtray and a beat-up RCA radio softly playing music.

  Biaggio, a compact five-foot-three, 120-pound thirty-year-old with piercing gray eyes and a mostly bald head that he kept trimmed to the scalp, was talking on the phone when Lucchese entered the office. The bitter cold wind blasted in from behind him, carrying some snow-flakes.

  “Close the goddamned door already,” Mahoney snapped, grabbing at papers being blown about his desk.

  Mahoney, who was thirty-two and had thick black hair that he kept slicked back, stood as tall as Lucchese but weighed 160, every ounce of muscle toned from long hours at Nicky’s Gym.

  Biaggio looked up from his desk, said, “I gotta go,” into the phone receiver and put it in its cradle.

  He caught Lucchese’s attention.

  “We need to talk, Tony. Have a seat.”

  Lucchese looked at him. Biaggio was the brightest of the three, on top of everything. He’d been brought in by the ILA not quite six months ago, when the union hall boss said Lucchese “could use a little help, what with the push to load ships faster and all.”

  Biaggio showed that he could handle his own work and at the same time know what was going on with Lucchese’s and Mahoney’s gangs.

  Since just after Biaggio first arrived, Lucchese had tried—but usually failed—to be one step ahead of Little Joe. The second-guessing tended to annoy Biaggio, but Lucchese never stopped.

  Must be that boom thing he’s worried about, Lucchese thought now.

  He said, “Engineering’s fixed that winch on that ten-ton—”

  “Sit,” Mahoney said pointedly as he stood up.

  Lucchese stared at him.

  “What the hell’s up with you?”

  “Tony, don’t make this harder than it has to be,” Biaggio said quietly. “Sit. Please.”

  Lucchese moved toward his chair, making an agreeable gesture with his hands up, palms out. He shrugged out of his heavy coat and dropped his huge frame into the wooden chair. He nodded toward the phone.

  “I’m expecting a call, just so’s you know.”

  “We know,” Mahoney said.

  Lucchese raised an eyebrow, his face questioning.

  “Everything,” Biaggio added, staring at Lucchese. “We know everything.”

  Lucchese looked blankly at Biaggio.

  What the hell? Everything?

  Biaggio stared straight back, said nothing, just let that information take root. He then, with some element of theater, pulled a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes from his shirt pocket, slid one from the pack and put it to his lips. He produced a scratched and dinged stainless-steel Zippo lighter from his pant
s pocket and, with a flourish, lit the cigarette, clicked the top closed with a flick of the wrist, and put the Zippo on the desk.

  He held the pack out to Lucchese.

  “No, thanks,” Lucchese said and cleared his throat, hoping that no one noticed the nervous slight stammer.

  He felt himself starting to sweat, despite the cold office, and hoped that that was not evident, either. A cigarette could calm him.

  “Wait. Yeah, Little Joe, I’ll have a smoke.”

  After he’d lit Lucchese’s cigarette and put the Zippo in his pants pocket, Biaggio continued: “Look, we know who you’ve been talking to, who you’re waiting to talk to”—he glanced at the phone—“and, most important, we know why. So don’t try bullshitting us.”

  Lucchese felt his stomach twist into a knot. He took a pull on the cigarette and looked out the window.

  Biaggio said, “You want to tell us why?”

  Why what? You don’t know shit, Lucchese thought.

  He said, “Tell you why what?”

  “Why you’re doing this thing?” Biaggio said, his tone suggesting that he was beyond annoyed.

  Lucchese inhaled deeply, then let it out.

  “What thing?”

  Mahoney slammed his fist on the desk. “Don’t bullshit us!”

  Lucchese slid his chair back and away, toward the door.

  “What the fuck is your problem?”

  “You!” Mahoney said, clearly upset. “You—”

  “Easy, Mike,” Biaggio said.

  Biaggio glanced out the window. No one was paying any particular attention to the gang bosses’ office. Men and machines worked at a steady pace. A jeep on a cable swung past the window.

  Biaggio locked eyes with Lucchese.

  “Harry Bridges,” Biaggio said slowly.

  Oh shit! Lucchese thought.

  He automatically glanced at the phone, then hated himself for it when he saw that Biaggio’s eyes had followed his eyes to it.

  Lucchese did not trust himself to speak at first. He took a puff, exhaled. Then: “Yeah? Okay, so what about Bridges? It’s no secret a bunch of us from the ILA listened to him speak.”