The Soldier Spies (Men at War 3)

II

Chapter ONE

East Grinstead Air Corps Station

Sussex, England

3 December 1942

While he was in Cairo, Colonel William J. Donovan sent a courier ahead to London bearing material he did not wish to entrust to ordinary channels. Among this material was a personal message to David Bruce, Chief of the OSS London station, explaining that he would be leaving Cairo in the next few days. After that he planned to spend a day in Algiers and another day in Casablanca—“to see things for myself.”From there he would fly on to London.

In addition to the Casablanca station chief, two familiar faces were waiting for Donovan and Ellis at the Casablanca airfield.

They were Richard Canidy and James M. B. Whittaker. Both men were in their mid-twenties and close to the same height—about six feet—and good-looking enough to turn most girls’ heads in their direction. End of resemblance. Canidy was heavy of shoulder and large of bone, Irish dark-eyed and dark-haired, while Whittaker was pale blond and slender, with leopard-like moves.

Canidy and Whittaker had been close since they were schoolboys. Canidy was one of Donovan’s more recent acquisitions, but Donovan had known Jimmy Whittaker since he had worn diapers. Whittaker’s uncle, Chesley Haywood Whittaker, a Harvard- and MIT-trained engineer who had built railroads, dams, and power-generating systems around the world, had been a great friend of Donovan’s all of his life. Before the war began, it had been Donovan’s intention to make Chesty Whittaker his deputy. But on Pearl Harbor Day, while he was waiting at his Washington mansion for a summons to the White House, Chesty Whittaker had suffered a coronary embolism.

Canidy and Whittaker were readily recognizable as officer-pilots of the United States Army Air Corps. Both were wearing pilots’ sunglasses and leather-brimmed caps whose crown stiffeners had been removed. That way, the caps and an aircraft headset could be worn simultaneously. Canidy wore a tropical worsted shirt, no tie, and olive-drab trousers. He had on as well a garment officially described as Jacket, Horsehide, Flying, A-2. The golden oak leaves of a major were pinned to his epaulets, and a leather patch embossed with his name and the wings of the Chinese Air Corps was sewn to the breast.

The entire back of the jacket had painted on it a representation of the flag of the Republic of China. Below that was written a lengthy message in Chinese informing the people of that country that the wearer was engaged in fighting the Japanese invaders and that a reward, payable in gold, would be given for his safe transfer into the hands of any Official of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang government.

Before Pearl Harbor, Canidy had been a Flying Tiger, flying P-40s in Burma and China for the American Volunteer Group. He considered his jacket a lucky piece.

Whittaker was also wearing an A-2 jacket, but his was so new it still smelled of the tanning chemicals. On it were embossed leather representations of a captain’s bars sewn to his epaulets, and to the breast was sewn a patch with a representation of Army Air Corps wings and his last name. He was wearing pink trousers and a pink shirt. And looked, Donovan thought, like a fighter pilot in a recruiting-service poster.

Canidy carried an issue .45 Colt automatic pistol in an issue holster on a web belt around his waist. Whittaker had a Model 1917 Colt .45-caliber ACP revolver jammed casually into his waistband under the A-2 jacket. The crude hilt of an odd-looking knife was visible at the top of Whittaker’s Half Wellington boots. Donovan knew the knife. The blade, which was ten inches long and nearly black with oxidation, had a double edge cut in inch-long scallops. Jimmy Whittaker had brought the Colt and the Kris home with him from the Philippine Islands.

The two of them looked like pilots from a fighter squadron somewhere in North Africa who just happened to be at the Casablanca airport. They were in fact in the OSS, and they were supposed to be in England. Donovan wondered what the hell they were doing in Casablanca. He asked them.

Canidy gestured to a B-25 “Mitchell” twin-engined bomber parked on the grass not far from the terminal.

“Your personal chariot awaits your pleasure, Colonel,” Canidy said. “We thought you and Chief Ellis might want to avoid the common herd on the commuter flight.”

“That’s not what I asked, Dick,” Donovan said.

“Stevens sent us down here with three very heavy crates,” Whittaker said. “And when we checked in, they told us you were coming.”

Lieutenant Colonel Edmund T. Stevens was Deputy Chief of Station, London.

“It’s also the plane we used to drop Fulmar down on the other side of Ourzazate,” Canidy said. “Extra fuel tanks, even a couple of airline seats. The way we cleaned it up, it cruises right around 310 knots.”

Donovan took a closer look at the airplane. The turret on top had been removed, and the opening faired over. The machine-gun positions in the sides of the fuselage were also gone, and faired over. It was no longer a bomber, but a high-speed, long-range transport. Canidy, Donovan reflected, sounded like he was trying to sell it to him. He wondered what that was about but didn’t ask. Not only was he fond of both of them, but he trusted their unorthodox—sometimes even outrageous—style.

“I’ll be here two days,” Donovan said. “Won’t they expect you back?”

"Absence,” Jimmy Whittaker said solemnly,“makes the heart grow fonder.”

Donovan grinned.

“Why not?” he said.

The B-25 arrived in England sixty hours later, having flown a circular route far enough out over the Atlantic to avoid interception by German Messerschmidt ME-109E fighter planes based in France.

Lieutenant Colonel Stevens, another old friend of Donovan’s recruited for the OSS, was on hand to meet it. Stevens, forty-four, graying, erect, with intelligent hazel eyes, was a West Pointer who had resigned his commission and gone to work in his wife’s wholesale food business. He had lived in England for several years before the war, and his ability to handle upper-crust Englishmen had proved even more valuable than his military expertise.

Stevens wasn’t sure what he thought about their waiting around in Morocco so they could fly Donovan up on the B-25. Canidy, as usual, was treating orders and accepted procedures the way playboys treat women: Canidy knew damned well that he was expected to unload the crates, grab a few hours’ sleep, and fly back to England. Both he and Whittaker had more important things to do than drive airplanes.

Canidy had been put in charge of the OSS base in Kent. Whitbey House, the requisitioned “stately home” of the Dukes of Stanfield, was both the “safe house” for the OSS and the training base for agents. And there Jimmy Whittaker ran what the OSS called “The Operational Techniques School,” or what Canidy more accurately called the “Throat Cutting and Bomb Throwing Academy.”