“Van der Ploeg,” Fuller furnished.
“Right. Who, right now, better be filling the air with dummy messages to you.”
“Building the traffic level?” Fuller said, but it was more a statement than a question.
Tubes had been schooled in the tactic of manipulating W/T message traffic in order to confuse the enemy. A sudden surge in traffic would suggest to the eavesdroppers that an operation was imminent—the larger the volume, the larger the op—and they could respond accordingly. Thus the key was to avoid peaks and valleys in the daily flow of traffic.
Conversely, one bit of subterfuge was to play to that—occasionally create an artificial peak of messages to make the enemy think something was about to happen. This would cause the Germans to apply more resources, diverting anything from the attention of a single radioman to a Panzer Division from other real ops.
“I’m sure John’s got a credible volume going,” Fuller said. “Enough to appear normal, but not enough to draw attention. I told you, he’s really good.”
Canidy snorted.
“And really afraid of the bogeyman,” he added.
Fuller found himself grinning at that.
“He’s just a kid,” Fuller said loyally. “Maybe he’ll grow out of that claustrophobia.”
“Maybe,” Canidy said, sounding unconvinced. “Now, getting back to the Pins on the Map Syndrome. I now assume that Nebenstellen—‘nests’—and Aussenstellen are also terms unfamiliar to both of you?”
They nodded.
Canidy sighed.
“Okay, then,” he said, “I’m going to have to take this from the top.”
He looked at the sink, then at Nola.
“What are the odds that there’s actually something reasonably clean enough to drink out of,” Canidy said, “and that the water coming out of that faucet isn’t rancid?”
Fuller went to the cabinets and began opening the grimy doors. Behind the third one, he found glasses, no two alike. He stuck his fingers in three of them, then ran the tap. A discolored stream came out at first, and when that had purged and begun running clear he filled the glasses and distributed them.
As he did, Canidy began: “Pins on a map is another way of saying the tracking of assets. As I told you, Tubes, we are assets to the Allies. And Frank is an asset to the Allies—specifically, to the OSS. If the Abwehr could turn us, make us spy for them, we would become their assets. With me so far?”
Fuller nodded as he handed Canidy his glass.
“Thank you,” Canidy said, and took a sip. “Surprise, surprise. Not bad for motor oil.”
“Is rainwater from the cistern on roof,” Nola said, and took his glass and drank it down.
“Great,” Canidy said, putting his glass on the table. “Laced with Tabun ashes. I’ll think I’ll wait and watch what effect it has on you, Frank.”
There was a clunk as Fuller put his glass on the counter. When Nola looked at him, Fuller shrugged sheepishly. “Sorry, Frank.”
Nola shook his head, then said to Canidy: “Yes, I also follow you. So far. But I don’t think I like where this is headed. Go on.”
“Okay, I’ll try to keep this simple,” Canidy said. “The Abwehr collects agents like, well, like a boat hull collects barnacles. And with about as much discretion. The more the merrier. Why? The more assets, the more pins, the more power. And power corrupts…”
“…and that brings us to the Abwehr’s Nebenstellen,” Canidy said, concluding what was basically the same thirty-minute briefing he had given to Max Corvo’s men at the Sandbox. “These ‘nests’ have specialty teams called Aussenstellen, or ‘outstations.’”
He looked at Nola, then added: “And if we can get you to talking to an outstation here in Palermo, Frank, we would have all kinds of answers.”
Nola looked more than a little dubious.
“I don’t know that I could get away with that, Dick,” he said. “I am a fisherman. I have enough trouble paying the SS soldiers at Quattro Canti, the ones who report to Sturmbannführer Müller.”
The SS had its local headquarters in the Quattro Canti, Palermo’s “four corners” city center, which had been built by the Normans nine centuries earlier. Nola—reluctantly, after Canidy had cornered him—told Canidy that greasing the right hands there allowed him the freedom to move almost anything he wanted in and out of the port of Palermo.