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  Fine nodded. That certainly had been his experience with Lieutenant Colonel Warren J. Owen. He had also observed how Owen had used it as a sort of double standard.

  When delivering orders from Ike that would be well received, Owen would agree with you that the man was brilliant and that he had no doubt whatsoever in his mind that you would perform admirably in the execution of the orders.

  But when the orders were not what anyone wanted to hear—let alone eager to execute—Owen delivered them with the proverbial ten-foot pole while quietly agreeing with you that “the old man has lost his mind, but what can I say except that his orders are his orders and don’t shoot the messenger, and all that.”

  And that was definitely how he just presented himself today…merely a messenger.

  Fine wondered how a wet-behind-the-ears Warren J. Owen could have schlepped his books through Harvard Yard for four or more years and completely missed every damn course that could have created in him some—any—backbone.

  Being a Harvard-trained lawyer, Fine personally knew plenty of graduates of that great institution, each of whom had come out with enough character for five men—FDR certainly chief among them. People with conviction, ones who did not use their Hah vard sheepskin as evidence enough of their stellar status in the rarefied air of civilized society.

  Still, Fine figured that Owen had to have learned something worthwhile along the way—Maybe from advanced courses in How to Cover Your Ass by Always Citing Regulations?— or Eisenhower would not keep him around.

  Canidy looked curiously at Fine.

  “What’re you thinking about, Stan?”

  Fine smirked.

  “What a spineless bastard Owen can be,” he said, then paused. “Grudgingly, however, I have to give the guy credit. His capacity for speaking at great length but actually saying nothing is remarkable.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was here for almost an hour, and the only thing that I can tell you that I know he said for sure was that they had your information and that they had the situation under control. He shared no information from their intel. We could have just as easily been discussing the weather, for all I got out of it. Actually, now that I think of it, he did spend an annoyingly disproportionate amount time talking about the heat here.”

  Canidy laughed. Then he shook his head.

  “What is it that Donovan says?” Canidy said. “‘If it wasn’t for the fighting amongst our own, I’d have had this war with the real enemy won long ago.’”

  “Something like that,” Fine said, grinning. “I shouldn’t smile. It’s not funny at all.”

  “Speaking of our fearless leader,” Canidy said, “any idea what good ol’ Colonel Wild Bill thinks about all this?”

  “That’s good ol’ General Wild Bill,” Fine corrected.

  Canidy turned, his eyebrows raised. “Really?” he said.

  “Indeed. While you were gone—on the twenty-third, before you were headed back here—FDR had him placed back on active duty and made him a brigadier general.”

  “That’s good news.”

  Fine smiled. “Yes, indeed it is.”

  Stanley Fine was quite aware that it had taken Richard Canidy quite some time to come to hold William Donovan in high regard. Fine knew that because he had known Canidy a long time. Fine’s history of bailing out Canidy went back far before either of them had become part of the Office of the Coordinator of Information and the Office of Strategic Services—well before either organization even existed—back to when Fine was starting out in Hollywood and Canidy was in prep school in Iowa.

  The young Stanley S. Fine, Esq., the ink still damp on the juris doctor diploma hanging on the wall of his movie studio office, had been the lawyer for the actress Monica Carlisle when she had sent him to the Iowa school.

  Miss Carlisle was known at “America’s Sweetheart,” and the Hollywood studio PR flaks worked hard to maintain that image—and to keep secret from her adoring fans the fact that she had a young son, fathered before the war by a German industrialist.

  And so it had been Fine’s mission to smooth over the hysteria that had resulted from a practical joke performed by Eric Fulmar—who the sultry actress herself more or less refused to acknowledge existed—and his buddy, a troublemaker by the name of Dick Canidy.

  The joke had backfired, causing a Studebaker President to erupt in flames and, with it, a lot of tempers. Fine had shown up with a new replacement car and a calming influence over those who could have pressed charges. And with the damage thus limited, the friendship between Canidy and Fulmar—and their relationship with Fine—had become solidified for life.

  Canidy went on to pursue his dream to be a pilot, and in 1938 graduated (cum laude) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Science, Aeronautical Engineering. That had been on a Navy scholarship, in exchange for four years of postgraduation service. By the time he entered the Navy, he’d already accumulated a commercial pilot’s license, an instrument ticket, and three hundred fifty hours of solo time.

  A career in the Navy would have seemed the natural path for such a skilled aviator. Not Canidy. He made no secret of the fact that he felt constrained by the rigid ways of the service and that he was determined to stay only so long as to make good on his agreement. He swore not to serve one damn minute more than was contractually required to repay the cost of his education—and was already entertaining an offer of employment at the Boeing Aircraft Company, Seattle, Washington.

  But then, in June 1941, with barely a year left to his commitment, a grizzled, gray-haired man named Claire Chennault showed up at Naval Air Station Pensacola, where then-Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Richard M. Canidy, USN, was spending long days in the backseat of a biwing Kaydet, as a Navy instructor pilot for fledgling flyboys.

  The legendary General Chennault suggested that the United States of America was soon to join the raging world war and Canidy was kidding himself if he thought his country was going to just let him walk with his skills out of the military.

  “Son,” the crusty WWI fighter pilot said in his coarse Southern accent, “you damn may as well go ahead and believe in the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and the fucking Tooth Fairy. There’ll be no time in the ramping up for war to adequately train all the new pilots that’re going to be needed. And you’ll be front of the line.”

  Chennault said that he was pulling together a group of volunteers—with FDR’s approval, if not direct order, though this was implied and not discussed in any more detail than necessary with Canidy. These top pilots would fly in support of the Chinese, specifically the protection of the two-thousand-mile-long Burma Road that was the critical route for getting Western aid to China.

  On behalf of Chiang Kai-shek, Chennault could offer Canidy a one-year contract flying Curtiss P-40Bs against the Japanese. Pay was six hundred dollars a month—twice what Canidy was getting from the Navy—plus a five-hundred-buck bonus for every Jap he shot down.

  Ever on the lookout for number one—himself—Canidy took it. He’d decided it was as much for the money as for the honorable discharge from the Navy that it came with.

  Being a Flying Tiger in Chennault’s American Volunteer Group (AVG) was not easy work—it was, in fact, damn dangerous—but Canidy quickly found his place and almost immediately had reaffirmed his belief that he’d been born to fly.

  Yet it seemed that as soon as he had discovered that he not only loved being a fighter pilot but was damn good at it—five kills on one nasty sortie alone, making him a certifiable ace—a pudgy, pale, self-important-looking bureaucrat by the name of Eldon C. Baker showed up one day in December 1941 on the flight line at Kunming, China.

  Baker came across as a supreme prick. But also a very highly placed prick—in his suit coat pocket he carried orders personally signed by the President of the United States—and he said that, as the U.S. had just joined the war, he was there to recruit Canidy.

  Trouble was, he added, it was into an outfit described
as so secretive that he (a) could not tell Canidy what he would be doing and (b) that in order for there to be no questions asked as to his disappearance—and thus no awkward answers that might reveal secrets—a cover story would have the newly minted ace whisked away under a cloud of disgrace.

  That did not necessarily bother Canidy—“I really don’t give a rat’s ass what anything thinks of me,” he’d muttered when informed of the need for the cover story—but leaving behind his buddies did.

  Still, he’d thought, if whatever it is that I’m wanted to do is important enough for the President to send this asshole clear around the damn world to get me, then that’s that. Pack the bags….

  Besides, being out of the AVG would mean he no longer would be getting shot at by the Japs. He figured it was only a matter of time before their Mitsubishi A5M 7.7mm machine-gun rounds found his ass. More important, he figured that taking the offer put him one step closer to getting the hell out of his military service obligations.

  Back in Washington, however, he found that it all was somewhat more complicated than that.

  The supersecret outfit turned out to be the Office of the Coordinator of Information, run by Colonel William “Wild Bill” Donovan and answerable only to Roosevelt himself. And it needed Canidy for his connections to help smuggle a French mining engineer prized by the Germans—and thus the Americans—out of North Africa.

  Then Canidy got really pissed.

  Pissed at this supersecret outfit, pissed at having left the AVG, pissed at himself for his options.

  Or lack of options.

  He had a choice: either agree to this “mission of considerable risk” or, now that he was privy to top secret information, be locked down in a secure institution for “psychiatric evaluation” for an unspecified time—habeas corpus be damned—which was to say, a very long time, at least the duration of the war, in order to keep the information safe.

  Canidy, still pissed but smart enough to keep his mouth shut, chose the mission. In due course, he was given the assimilated rank of major and presented with credentials stating that he was in the United States Army Air Corps and another (for when the first did not get him what he needed) stating that he worked for the Office of the Coordinator of Information, which carried a presidential priority.

  The mission had turned out to be of considerable risk indeed, not to mention had required cold, ruthless decisions, ones he found himself not necessarily enjoying but perfectly capable of carrying out.

  He realized it was a situation not unlike the one he had discovered as a Flying Tiger in China: that he more or less liked what he was doing and he did very well at it.

  This was not lost on Donovan and his top spies in what the COI now was called: the Office of Strategic Services. An unusually natural operative, Canidy proved expert at espionage and sabotage and more—at the “strategic services” deemed important to winning the war.

  Over time, Canidy was given—which was to say, Wild Bill Donovan had assigned him indirectly at first, then directly—more and more responsibility.

  There were missions to nab more engineers and scientists (ones with expertise in nuclear fission, the development and manufacture of jet aircraft, manned and unmanned), missions to smuggle uranite for the Manhattan Project’s development of the atom bomb, and missions to modify B-17s into explosive-filled drones that could be flown from England into German assets (submarine pens, plants manufacturing fighter jets, et cetera).

  Most recently—within the last month, in New York City—Canidy had found himself dealing with the Mafia in the extraction of Professor Rossi prior to the Allied Forces’ early planning of the invasion of Sicily.

  It had been the top mafioso himself—one Charles “Lucky” Luciano, in a New York State slam on prostitution and racketeering charges but still the acting “boss of all bosses”—who had directly helped Canidy make connections on and off the island.

  Canidy carried in his possession a personal note from Charlie Lucky that asked of anyone so able to please provide Canidy whatever aid possible. It was a carte blanche instrument that Canidy now expected he would desperately need to use to find out about the nerve gas.

  And so Fine, in short, understood that Canidy had become “almost” the perfect spy. “Almost,” because he’d also become what no spy was supposed to be…indispensable.

  “I don’t think it’s so much what Donovan thinks about all this,” Fine began, then reached for the stack of papers before him on the table and fingered down through it until he came to what he was looking for. He pulled out a typewritten sheet, held it out, and went on, “This came back in response to your second message, the sit-rep sent from the Casabianca.”

  Canidy walked over to the table, took the sheet, and read the decrypted message:

  “‘By highest authority’?” Canidy quoted. “‘Any and every expeditious method’?”

  “I’d say the President has taken a personal interest in your discovery,” Fine said. “And clearly he’s aware of possible obstacles and wants this done quietly.”

  Canidy grunted.

  “So I’m going to have to go back in. And, Stan, I’m going to need help. Help on the island and help in keeping clear of AFHQ.”

  Fine nodded.

  “Both will be a challenge,” Fine said. “We’ve already had some trouble, not counting today’s visit from Owen.”

  “Why both? And what kind of trouble?”

  “Help on the island is difficult because basically AFHQ has declared it off-limits. We’ve been told that we can plan for the invasion, collect intel, but we are not supposed to go there.” He paused. “I understand—though not necessarily agree—as to why. Hell, anyone with a map can make a rather well-educated guess what Hitler considers possible in the way of Allied intentions.”

  “Sure,” Canidy said. “He sees that we can go from here into Sicily, then up through Italy. And, alternatively, from here up through southern France. We know he’s bracing for a cross-channel invasion of western France, as he’s been using forced labor to build defensive positions all along the coast. And then there’s an attack from across the Balkans. And, of course, the Red Army has Hitler looking nervously over his shoulder to the east.”

  Fine sipped his coffee and nodded.

  “Hitler just does not know which one when,” he said.

  “And each one—location and D-Day—is a huge variable by itself,” Canidy put in. “Torch was first expected to land in May. Six months is a long time to wait, especially if you’re not sure you’ve got the right spot.”

  “Exactly,” Fine said. “And Hitler cannot defend them all…and wait it out. So the trick is to fool him as to exactly which island and when. Done right, he sends his defenses to where we say, then we take advantage of his weak spots. But if, say, you get caught in Sicily now, Dick, and his intel is telling him that we’re amassing troops and ships here and in Tunis, it would be clear we’re preparing for an invasion.”

  Canidy’s eyebrows went up. “And next is, as we know, Sicily.”

  “As of today, right. Never mind what you found there. OSS London is helping our cousins with one very quiet operation that’s meant to fool the Germans and Italians into believing that the invasion will be on Sardinia and Greece. Meanwhile, we—OSS Algiers—are supposed to be concentrating on training teams for the French réseau.”

  Canidy knew the réseau—for “resistance network”—was in large part the maquis, young men who refused to be slaves of the German occupation. They had fled into France’s woods, where the Allies planned to insert teams and supplies to help them wage guerrilla war.

  “Tell me about the trouble you mentioned,” Canidy said.

  Fine got up from the table. He walked over to the open French doors, then went through the doorway. Canidy followed him onto the balcony.

  “You’ll recall Club des Pins, the resort that’s down there on the beach?” Fine said, pointing to the western end of the coast that was visible.

  “Yeah,” Canidy s
aid. “The one that the SOE is using for its finishing school, right?”

  Special Operations Executive was the British saboteur and operative arm. The OSS was emulating it, and had named theirs, accordingly, OSS Special Operations.

  “Right. The teams are modeled after the OSS teams we have in Corsica.”

  “We had the reinforcement teams on the sub,” Canidy said.

  “Of course. So you know each has an officer and three men, a liaison and two radio operators, who report to him.” When Canidy nodded, Fine went on: “So the SOE is fine-tuning their people in radio operations, Morse code, encryption, map and compass, hand-to-hand combat. There’s even a jump school and a demolitions school.”

  “Their people? I though we had our guys there, too.”

  “A handful. We maintain a presence in the interest of ‘Allied cooperation.’ But for the bulk of our men, it just wasn’t working out.”

  Canidy’s expression showed that he was surprised.

  Fine explained: “Our guys were being treated—in that fine, subtle English way, but it was there nonetheless—as sort of stepchildren. The training for the Brits’ missions always seemed to take precedence and we were left on a space-available basis. ‘Sorry, old chap, that was the last spot on the plane. We’ll put you top of the queue to jump tomorrow.’ And, of course, the next day there was another reason why we got bumped.”

  “So much for Ike’s declaration that we’re all in this together.”

  “I like Eisenhower,” Fine said, “and respect him immensely. But you and I know that the OSS must by its very nature operate on a far smaller scale.”

  Canidy nodded. “We have—what—maybe ten thousand serving in the OSS?”

  “I heard almost twelve thousand at last count. Total.”

  “Okay, call it twelve. And figure half of that number are in Washington.”