The Double Agents (Men at War 6)

“But it would appear,” Canidy went on, “that you’re expected to perform the traditional greeting.”

Fuller looked at Canidy, confused.

About that time, Andrea moved forward.

To Fuller’s amazement, she touched her left cheek to his, made the sound of a kiss, then repeated it as her right cheek touched his.

Then she stepped back, smiled, and diverted her eyes.

“That is what I meant,” Canidy said. “You can take the boy out of California, but you can’t take the beach bum out of the boy.”

Fuller smiled at Canidy and quietly said, “Can I change my name to Venus?”

Venus? Canidy thought.

Then it took every effort for him not to grin.

Venus, goddess of love….

Canidy took a match from the box on the table and struck it.

“Tubes, touch her in any way that could be construed as anything but for the protection of her life,” Canidy said lightly, “and…”

He touched the tip of the flame to the flash paper.

Andrea gasped.

[ONE]

Great Glen, England 1620 4 April 1943

For the first eighty miles or so miles of Charity Hoche’s drive north, the view from behind the wheel of Ed Stevens’s olive drab 1941 Chevrolet staff car had been relatively unchanged.

It had been that of a big red cross painted on an even bigger square of white painted on a big dark green box.

Since leaving Whitbey House, Ann had followed the British Humber light ambulance that carried Major William Martin, Royal Navy Marines.

Then, just shy of Northampton, her view had changed somewhat. As the ambulance approached a fork in the road, she saw a right arm sticking out from what was the driver window and a left arm out from the passenger window. The arms did not belong to the same body, of course.

The passenger’s arm—that of Private Peter Ustinov—waved an animated cheery good-bye. The other arm pointed dramatically forward, in the direction of the fork, a narrow macadam lane that split off to the right. The ambulance then followed the main road to the left, continuing north to Glasgow and then on to the docks at Greenock.

Charity came up on the smaller road, checked for oncoming traffic, and then took the turn, tapping the horn twice as she did to signal Good-bye, too.

The one who had pointed out the turn was the bigger of the two men who wore the uniform of the British Motor Pool Corps. Confirming Charity’s suspicions, they were not actually assigned to the MPC; Ustinov had said it was their cover story for what he called “the unfortunate unauthorized reallocation of the Humber.” The burly man had also given Charity written directions to follow from that point forward.

“Sorry we can’t show you personally, miss,” he had said. “Can’t yet afford to lose the ambulance to the real MPC types, you know.”

The instruments of the American Chevrolet staff car registered, of course, in miles. The speedometer indicated that Charity, now on the far side of Northampton, was making about twenty-five miles an hour over the rough surface of the uneven macadam. And the odometer showed that she had covered more than one hundred miles.

Generally, Charity had a little difficulty with the mathematical conversion of miles to kilometers—it wasn’t that she couldn’t do it; she just rather didn’t care for the mental exercise—but this time it was easy.

A round 100 makes it a snap.

The formula is to multiply the number of miles by 1.6 kilometers.

And that means I’ve just gone 160 kilometers.

On the left roadside, she saw by the sculpted hedgerow a signpost that read GREAT GLEN 14 KM.