The Double Agents (Men at War 6)

Kappler saw in Schrader’s eyes that he clearly understood the ramifications of that.

“No,” Schrader said. “Of course not. You should leave for Palermo at once, Oskar. Take whatever and whomever you think necessary. Report back as soon as you can.”

[TWO]

37 degrees 51 minutes 01 seconds North Latitude 11 degrees 13 minutes 05 seconds East Longitude Strait of Sicily Aboard theCasabianca1025 26 March 1943

“Commander, there is absolutely no question in my mind that that cargo ship had to be a total loss,” United States Army Air Forces Major Richard M.Canidy said, his dark eyes intense. “I used enough Composition C-2 to blow up a vessel damn near twice its size. What’s not clear is what kind of”—he paused, glancing at the ceiling as he mentally searched for an appropriate description—“secondary destruction was caused by the cloud created from the Tabun burning in the hold.”

Commander Jean L’Herminier, chief officer of the Free French Forces submarine Casabianca, nodded. There was no mistaking the human horror that was meant by the nerve agent’s “secondary destruction.”

The two were meeting in private in the commander’s small office, just two hatches down from the control room. The ninety-two-meter-long Agosta-class sub, submerged to a depth of ninety meters and cruising under battery power at a speed of eight nautical miles an hour, was en route to Algiers, Algeria, from the northwestern tip of Sicily. The executive officer had the helm for this leg, the last on what for the Casabianca promised to become a regular route for covert missions in the Mediterranean Sea.

The commander’s dimly lit, drab-gray office held little more than bare essentials—a metal desktop, three metal chairs, and a framework on one wall with navigation charts of the Mediterranean. The desktop, which doubled as a plotting table, had two collapsible legs on one end and, on the other, was attached to the wall by a long hinge so that the top could be folded up flat and out of the way.

Canidy sat on one side of the desktop, in one of two armless metal chairs; across from him, in the single metal chair that had arms, was L’Herminier, now leaning back with his hands behind his head, fingers interlaced.

At five foot seven and maybe one-forty, the thirty-five-year-old L’Herminier—who carried himself with a soft-spoken confidence—comfortably fit the room’s tight surroundings, as would be expected of such a seasoned submariner.

Not nearly at ease in the tight confines, however, was Canidy, whose big bones and wide shoulders on a six-foot frame made the twenty-six-year-old seem somewhat like the proverbial bull in the china shop. And Canidy’s energy right now—intense, smoldering just under the surface—did little to diffuse that impression.

L’Herminier knew that while Canidy carried authentic papers stating he was a major in the USAAF, Canidy was in fact with the Office of Strategic Services. Since mid-December, L’Herminier had also been working for the organization; the Casabianca was serving as a spy delivery vehicle.

I know little about Canidy, the commander thought, but I like him. And my gut tells me that, until he proves himself otherwise, he is a man of his word.

The admiration was mutual.

For one, Major Canidy knew what Commander L’Herminier had done just four months earlier. Many people knew—including the Nazis, if not Hitler himself—as it had become damn near legendary.

On November 27, 1942, as Nazi Germany carried out the personal orders of its furious leader to retaliate against Vichy France for its cooperation with the Allies in the taking of North Africa—Operation Torch—the German SS raided the southern France port of Toulon in an attempt to capture the French fleet there.

The French had ordered those vessels to be scuttled.

Dozens of ships were burned and sunk at their moorings. But—against odds, not to mention against orders of the admiralty of Vichy France—L’Herminier commanded his crew to dive. As the Casabianca came under enemy cannon fire, she made way for Algiers.

There, in newly liberated North Africa, the captain and crew of the somewhat-new submarine (it had been launched not quite seven years earlier, in February 1935) joined the Free French Forces.

L’Herminier’s brave act had been a remarkable one in that it at once saved the warship from either destruction or falling into the hands of the Nazis and preserved it and her skilled crew for use against the Axis powers.

Canidy’s admiration of L’Herminier also came from personal experience with the commander, whom he found to be a real professional.

When Canidy had first approached the submariner with the vague outline of his proposed mission in Sicily and his request to be inserted by sub, L’Herminier quickly had said, “Consider it done.”

It had been no problem in large part because, shortly after joining the Allies, Commander L’Herminier had begun doing something very similar to what Canidy requested.

On December 14, 1942—only weeks after fleeing Toulon—Commander L’Herminier had maneuvered the Casabianca just off shore of Corsica, the Axis-occupied French island in the upper Mediterranean Sea.

The sub carried her complement of four officers and fifty-plus men. Also on board: two teams of OSS agents.

Using the method that L’Herminier himself had developed for the secret landing of spies, he carefully surveyed the coast by periscope, found an area suitable for putting ashore a small boat, then slipped the sub back out to sea, flooded its ballast, and sat on the bottom of the Mediterranean till dark.

Under cover of night, L’Herminier then returned the submarine to within a mile of the position he had found on the shoreline, and, with the sub’s deck just barely awash so as to keep a low profile from enemy patrols, ordered the launching of a dinghy.

A pair of Casabianca crewmen, armed with Sten 9mm submachine guns, then rowed ashore the first team of three OSS men. They carried with them equipment (machine guns, pistols, ammunition, wireless radios) and money (several thousand Italian lire, a million French francs).

After the OSS team began to make its way inland, the crewmen rowed back to the sub, and then the sub returned to her spot on the sea bottom to await a second insertion.

Thirty hours later, the last of the OSS spies and supplies were ashore.