“You may come to conc
lude that it’s necessary,” Donovan repeated.
“And Whittaker?”
“Whittaker will continue on running agent training,” Donovan said.
“Oh,” Canidy said with sarcastic innocence, “I thought maybe you’d come to conclude that it’s necessary to send him back to the Philippines.”
He was expecting a reaction from Donovan, but not the one he thought he saw in his eyes.
“Jesus Christ!” he said. “When? Why?”
“I think we’ve covered everything that has to be covered, Dick,” Donovan said, very evenly. “Why don’t we call it a night?”
Chapter TWO
Special Operations
Executive Station X
7 December 1942
The meeting was held in a small, oak-paneled chamber on the second floor of a Georgian mansion that had been the country home of a ducal family. Before the home had been turned over to the Imperial General Staff of His Majesty’s Forces, and then by the IGS to the SOE, the room was known as the “small bridge room.”
Which was a euphemism. The truth was that His Grace, having been corrupted by the Americans, had turned the “small bridge room” into a salon for the play of much less reputable games. While visiting the 160,000-acre ranch his family had owned in Montana since 1884, His Grace had visited Las Vegas, Nevada, where he had been introduced to an American game of chance known as “poker.” Though losing a bit ($18,000) before he got the hang of it, His Grace became enraptured with the game. And he soon came to understand the philosophy of play: He came to see that it was really a game that turned not so much on the luck of the draw as on the quick-wittedness of the players and upon their ability to judge the psychological makeup of their opponents.
His Grace found that far more interesting than waiting to see what card would fall next in Chemin de Fer or where the ball would come to rest after it bounced around a roulette wheel. Moreover, once he came to understand the game, His Grace was rather good at it. He left Las Vegas $22,000 richer than he had come.
It wasn’t the money that pleased him—His Grace owned substantial tracts of land in Mayfair—but the sense of accomplishment. And he would be damned if he had to forgo that pleasure until his next visit to America, which might not be for another five years. He knew enough men who would not only be as fascinated with the game as he was (after he had overcome their initial resistance), but who also possessed both the intellectual bent and the financial resources (once they had the hang of it) to make formidable—and thus worthy—opponents.
His Grace had a word with the owner-manager of Harrod’s Gambling Hall, a most obliging chap. When His Grace left Las Vegas, he took with him a heavy, oak, six-sided table with a green baize playing surface and rather clever little shelves around the edges in which one kept one’s chips and one’s glass; a light fixture designed to illuminate the playing surface and nothing else; six matching chairs with arms and cushions; a case of chips; two dozen green plastic eyeshades; and a case (20 gross) of plastic-coated cards. The latter two items were emblazoned with “Harrod’s Gambling Hall, Las Vegas Nevada.”
His Grace successfully taught the game to his friends, but he was not able to convince his butler—and thus, none of the other staff either—that poker was the sort of game His Grace should be playing. The butler, furthermore, felt that if it should become public knowledge that he was playing, His Grace might suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous rumors.
The room in which the poker table and the chairs and the special light fixture and the other accessories were installed was therefore referred to as “the small bridge room.”
"C” (as he was then and now known), who had been at Oxford with His Grace, had later been one of those taught the game of poker by His Grace, and who was now head of MI-6 and de facto chief of all British Intelligence, told this story to Lieutenant Colonel Edmund T. Stevens and Major Richard Canidy when they first sat down at the six-sided baize-covered poker table.
"In the eyes of the staff,”“C” concluded, “poker was rather like the young women the Duke brought here when he acceded to the title. We were still at Oxford then. He used to ship them over from Paris by the half dozen. The staff referred to them as his ‘special weekend guests.’”
Canidy and Stevens both laughed out loud. "C” chuckled, pleased that he had amused them. And that he had put them at ease.
"C” was a gentleman and subtle. The story was intended not only to amuse Canidy and Stevens but to remind them of the differences between the British and American cultures. And to suggest that they were all playing poker: the British and the Americans versus the Germans, and the British versus the Americans. These points were not lost on either Major Canidy or Colonel Stevens.
In the First World War, the British and the French had agreed between themselves that since Americans knew nothing of war, the American entrance into the war would mean nothing more than an influx—albeit a massive one—of “colonial” troops and matériel to be used as the experts saw fit.
Things didn’t go quite as the British and French experts had planned, the American Commanding General “Black Jack” Pershing being rather reluctant to follow their orders. He announced, and stuck by his decision, that when Americans went into combat, they would be led by American officers, and would not be fed piecemeal into either English or French formations.
The situation was changed in this war. An American general was in overall command, reflecting the reality that Americans would have otherwise sent their troops and matériel to the Far East. Japanese, not Germans, occupied American territory. Americans would go along with the notion that the war should be won first in Europe, but only if their man, Eisenhower, was in charge.
Since a large and powerful body of American opinion still held that the European war was none of America’s business, it would have been politically impossible for Roosevelt to send a million American soldiers to Europe to be commanded by an Englishman.
The British understood this; but that did not change their devout belief that the Imperial General Staff, as well as MI-6 and the Special Operations Executive, were far better equipped to run military operations and intelligence than was Eisenhower and his American staff and the just-born, relatively speaking, Office of Strategic Services.
If the British had their way, all the assets—matériel, personnel, and financial—of the OSS would be directed by the various intelligence officers who, in one way or another, all reported to "C.”
Colonel William J. Donovan was the World War II equivalent for espionage and sabotage—for “strategic services”—of General Black Jack Pershing and the AEF of World War I: Despite their inexperience and despite any other objection the Imperial General Staff—or Winston Churchill himself— might have, Americans, Donovan insisted—with the authority of President Roosevelt—would run their own covert operations.