The Soldier Spies (Men at War 3)

JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF PENTAGON WASH DC

FOR COL W J DONOVAN OLD FRIENDS SAFE STOP NEW

FRIENDS GOING HOME STOP SIGNED MURPHY STOP END

The radio message was received and logged in at the Pentagon Message Center at 0515 hours, Washington time. Since it had been transmitted in the clear, no decryption was necessary. It was placed in Box G at 0517 hours.

Box G was emptied at 0528 hours, and its contents carried by armed messenger to the National Institutes of Health building, where it was logged in at 0605 hours. At 0615, the message was placed in a box marked DIRECTOR, by which time it had a red tag stapled to it, identifying it as an “Operational Immediate” message deserving the Director’s immediate attention.

At 0619 hours, the messages in the Director’s box were picked up by Chief Boatswain’s Mate J. R. Ellis, USN, a ruddy-faced, heavyset man of thirty-eight whose unbuttoned uniform jacket revealed a Colt .45 semiautomatic pistol carried high on his hip in a “skeleton” holster.

Ellis read the sheaf of messages, then put them into a briefcase. He buttoned his uniform jacket and went to the parking lot, where a white hat sailor, a torpedoman second class, sat behind the wheel of a Buick Roadmaster sedan. Ellis got into the front seat beside him.

“How they hanging, Chief?” the torpedoman asked, and then, without waiting for a reply, asked,“Georgetown?”

“Georgetown,” Ellis confirmed.

When Chief Ellis had joined the OSS—so early on that it was then the “Office of the Coordinator of Information”—he was a bosun’s mate first class just back from the Yangtze River Patrol, and he had been the driver of the Director’s Buick Roadmaster. His duties were different now, if somewhat vaguely defined. Newcomers to the OSS, particularly senior military officers who might naturally tend to assume a chief petty officer was available to do their bidding, were told two things about Chief Ellis: Only the Colonel and the Captain (which meant Colonel William J. Donovan, the Director of the OSS, and Captain Peter Douglass, USN, his deputy) gave orders to Chief Ellis.

More important, if the Chief asked that something be done, it was wise to presume he was speaking with the authority of at least the Captain.

When the Buick pulled to the curb before a Georgetown town house, a burly man in civilian clothing suddenly appeared from an alley. It was clearly his intention to keep whoever got out of the Buick from reaching the door of the town house.

And then he recognized Ellis, and the hand that had been inside his jacket reaching for his pistol, came out and was raised in a wave.

“What do you say, Chief?” he asked as Ellis stepped out of the car and walked toward the red-painted door of the building.

“I thought you got off at six,” Ellis said.

“So did I. Those sonsofbitches are late again,” the burly man said.

Colonel William J. Donovan opened his own front door. He was stocky and silver-haired, and he was dressed in a sleeveless undershirt. Shaving cream was still on his face.

“The damned alarm didn’t go off,” he said. “How much time do we have?”

“Enough,” Ellis said.

“You didn’t have to come here, Chief,” Donovan said. “I was going by the office anyway.”

He turned and motioned for Ellis to follow him inside.

“Something important in there?” Donovan asked, indicating the briefcase.

Ellis opened it and handed Donovan the sheaf of red tagged messages. Donovan read them, carefully, and then handed them back.

“Douglass see these yet?” he asked.

“No, sir, I thought I would send them back with the driver,” Ellis said.

“You saw Murphy’s radio?”

“Yes, sir.”

“There never was any doubt in your mind about that, was there, Chief?”

"Not about Fulmar,” Ellis said. "I wasn’t too sure about the Krauts.”

Donovan chuckled.