Secret Warriors (Men at War 2)

I TURKE I Summer Place Deal, Now Jersey 0830 Hours July 5, 1942

When Barbara Whittaker left the table to go to the kitchen to ask for another pot of coffee, Charity Hoc he smiled sweetly at Ann and said, "The tabletop is glass, so I think I should tell you that everybody can see you playing kneesie with Major Canidy."

"Charity!" Sarah Child Bitter snapped. Captain Stanley S. Fine had trouble swallowing his coffee, while Ann Chambers and Richard Canidy flushed and separated at the knees. Then Ann looked at Canidy. "I don't mind if you don't," she said, and Canidy moved his knee against hers again. Ann thumbed her nose at Charity, and Fine and Sarah laughed. This was the scene that greeted a security man and two Air Corps officers-both captains and both appearing to be in their mid-thirties when they walked into the breakfast room: A very good-looking young woman was thumbing her nose at two other equally attractive young women and two men, one wearing an insignia-less tropical worsted uniform and the other, younger, wearing swim trunks and a battered, washed out gray sweatshirt with cutoff sleeves. On the front of the sweatshirt was still faintly visible the legend "Massachusetts Institute of Technology." They were all giggling and more than a little red in the face. It was not what two officers who had volunteered for a hazardous secret mission expected to find when they reported for duty on orders conspicuously stamped Top Secret.

"These gentlemen have

orders to report to you, Major," the security man said.

"I've verified their identity." Canidy took his knee away from Ann's.

She sensed it would be a long time before she felt that delightful pressure again. "Thank you," Canidy said, and reached out for a manila envelope the older of the two captains held in his hand. "I'm Canidy," he said.

"That's Captain Fine." He did not introduce the women. He opened the envelope, removed another envelope from inside, and broke its seal. He then read the orders, put them back in the envelope, and passed it down the table to Fine. "Is the car ready? You put gas in it?" Canidy asked the security man. "Yes, Sir. It's out in front."

"The weekend is over, I guess," Canidy said to Ann. "Come see us off," Ann said as she got up. He nodded.

"Give me a minute," he said, and waited until the women had left the room before asking, "Have you had breakfast?"

"No, Sir," the older of the two Air Corps officers said. The "Sir' came hard, Fine thought. But if I were as old as they are, I would find it hard saying "Sir" to a guy in trunks and an MIT sweatshirt who looks as young-who is as young-as Canidy is. "Sit down," Canidy ordered, waving the two officers into chairs at the table. Barbara Whittaker came back into the room with a silver coffeepot.

"Gentlemen," Canidy said, "this is our hostess, Mrs. Barbara Whittaker." Uncomfortably, the two officers gave Barbara Whittaker their hands and mumbled their names. "Would you please see about getting them some breakfast?" Canidy said.

"And then detour anyone else who wants to eat?"

"I'll have a table set on the porch," Barbara said. I'll see the girls off," Canidy said."

Stan, hold the fort, will you? When they were alone, the older of the two captains said to Fine with mingled annoyance and curiosity, "He's a little young to be a major, isn't he? "He's also a little young to be the man in charge," Fine said. "But he's an unusual young man. He was the first ace in the AVG."

"This isn't what I expected to find," the Air Corps officer said. "Me either," Fine said.

"A week ago I had a B-17 squadron at Chanute, "What the hell is this all about?"

"I think," Fine said, "that I had better wait and let Major Canidy tell you that." , Canidy returned to the breakfast room five minutes later.

He was still wearing the battered, washed-out MIT sweatshirt and swim trunks, but Fine thought he no longer looked or sounded like a young Romeo who had just found his Juliet. "I'll begin with a statement of fact," Canidy said as he poured another cup of coffee.

"If either of you in any way breaches the security requirements I am about to outline for you, you will spend the duration of the war in a psychiatric hospital. It is not a threat. Simply a fact. Is that perfectly clear to both of you?"

"Yes, Sir," the two Air Corps officers said, almost in unison. There was no hesitation in calling him "Sir' this time, Fine thought. Was that because I had told them Canidy had been the AVG-sfirst ace, or did they now sense a ruthlessness in him that had not been there when they had first walked into the breakfast room?

I x ONE I Le Re lais de Pointe-Noire Near Casablanca, Morocco July R9,1942

Le Re lais de Pointe-Noire, a two-story stone building, sat on a huge granite crag thrusting into the Atlantic Ocean. The granite appeared black when surf crashed against it, hence the name Pointe-Noire. It was said that Le Re lais de Pointe-Noire was the best restaurant on the Atlantic Coast of Morocco, but it was perhaps best known for its chamhres spares-there were ten-on the floor above the main restaurant.

Five of the discreet, private dining rooms-which were furnished with a table, and a chaise lounge in case the diners decided to take a little nap after eating-had large windows looking out upon the surf. The others faced inward toward the narrow road that led from the shore to the granite crag.

Helm ut von Heurten-Mitnitz had reserved a chambre spare looking out on the surf for himself and Madame Jeanine Lernoine. There was no biding from anyone that the senior member of the Franco-German Armistice Commission for Morocco was a guest of the restaurant. For one thing, his Mercedes-Benz automobile was well known. And so, he suspected, was the Peugeot sedan with the Rabat license tag he used when he wished to be more discreet. For another, he was usually accompanied by a second Mercedes, a smaller one, carrying three members of the SS-SD, the secret police branch of the SS, and one member of the Sfiret6, the French Security Service, who were charged with his protection.

His best protection at this moment, von Heurten-Mitnitz had concluded, was to trust that people would imagine he had brought Jeanine Lemoine here tonight for carnal purposes. He would have been pleased if it came to that, for Jeanine was an attractive, pert-breasted female with surprisingly long legs for a Frenchwoman. Despite the official policy of Franco-German friendship, she was held in contempt by the French in Morocco. The wife of an officer being held in a German POW camp, especially one who did not need the money, should not have become "the little friend" of von Heurten-Mitnitz, who, more than any other man in Morocco, represented the Germany that had so humiliated France.

The entire rear wall of the chambre spare was a black mirror. Von Heurten-Mitnitz had wondered idly whether it had been designed that way simply because it made the room appear to be larger, or whether it was intended to reflect whatever might transpire on the wide, softly upholstered chaise lounge pushed against it, to cater to some odd French sexual hunger.

We make an attractive couple, von Heurten-Mitnitz thought as he saw their reflection in the mirror. It's really a shame she's not what people believe, and that we're not here for an illicit liaison. Or at least not an illicit sexual liaison.

Helm ut von Heurten-Mitnitz was a tall, sharp-featured, very erect Pomeranian, thirty-five years old and blond-haired. He was an aristocrat who, like half a dozen younger sons of the Grafs von Heurten-Mitnitz before him, had entered the diplomatic service of his sovereign. Karl Heinz von Heurten-Mitnitz, his paternal uncle, had witnessed the German humiliation at Compi&gne in 1918. And the current Graf von Heurten-Mitnitz, his elder brother, resplendent in his black honorary Standartenfiihrer-SS's uniform, had been part of Hitler's entourage at Compi&gne in 1940, when humiliation had been turned into revenge. An odd combination, von Heurten-Mitnitz thought, a whore who is not a whore, and a patriot about to turn traitor. Two minutes after von Heurten-Mitnitz and Jeanine Lernoine entered the chambre , a third man joined them. The presence of Robert Murphy, consul general of the United States to the French Republic's Pro rectorate of Morocco, at the Re lais de Pointe-Noire could not be concealed any more than von Heurten-Mitnitz's. His official Buick was trailed everywhere by a Sfiret6 Peugeot or Citron whose ostensible purpose was to provide him with the protection his rank was entitled to but whose real purpose was to keep an eye on him. He had to hope that whoever noticed that the head American and the head German in Morocco were simultaneously at the Re lais de Pointenoire would call it simply coincidence. That was in fact plausible. If they wanted to meet secretly, it was unlikely they would do so in a place where their presence would be so conspicuous.

The two men shook hands but did not speak. Murphy nodded his head-conceivably it could be construed to be a bow-at Mme. Jeanine Lemoine, and said, "Madame."