When Stevens nodded, Canidy turned to Bruce.
“This have to do with what you’re talking about, David?”
Bruce ignored the question. He pointed to the couch.
“Put them there, Ed,” he said.
He looked at Canidy and Fine.
“Can I offer you some coffee?” he asked. “Helene just made it.”
As Bruce poured everyone a cup from the new carafe brought in by Captain Dancy, Stevens placed the briefcase from his left hand on the couch first, then the one from his right hand beside it.
He worked the combination lock on the left briefcase, pushed the buttons to unlock its clasps, and after the clasps sprung open with a dull click-click he slowly opened the case. Then he repeated the process with the right case.
Stevens looked at Bruce.
“Nice,” Bruce said, stepping over to admire the worn currency that was in fat bundles secured with paper bands. “I don’t care how much one might be around money, you just can’t help but be impressed with cold, hard cash—seeing it, feeling it, smelling it.”
There were appreciative chuckles.
Canidy offered, “I’ve always thought that bank tellers were not being completely truthful when they said that they were unaffected by all the money they handled day in and day out.”
“They were just saying something they felt obligated to say?” Fine said.
“That’s my guess,” Canidy said. “That, or they’re just damned liars looking for a chance to skim it.”
“There’s always that temptation,” Bruce said matter-of-factly. “Or out-and-out steal it all.”
“Anyway,” Stevens said, pointing to the left briefcase, “in here is a half-million francs, and—” he pointed to the right one “—this is a hundred thousand in lire. It’s a start, and more is on the way. We had another two hundred thousand francs, but our contact at Banque Oran became suspicious of a series of deposits by the owner of a restaurant that had suddenly become quote very successful unquote and when the bills were inspected, about one in ten were found to have had sequential serial numbers.”
Bruce grunted.
“The Fascists really can’t think we are that stupid,” he said. “That’s insulting.”
“More likely a stupid mistake on the restaurateur’s part. Careless. Or lazy. Just stuck the new bills in with old ones in a single batch, not bothering to spread out the ones with sequential numbers over time. After we discovered that the money was marked, but before we could turn him, I’m told somebody shot him.”
Bruce shook his head. There was no room for mistakes in this business. Especially sloppy ones. Yet, there seemed to be no end of them, either. And it was too bad he’d been killed; you could never have too many double agents.
“That amount should satisfy Sandman’s immediate request,” Bruce said, glancing at the pile of documents on his desk that included the message from Corsica as he sat down.
He motioned for Canidy and Fine to take their seats in the armchairs in front of his desk and they did.
“Yes, sir,” Stevens agreed and closed the cases, then moved one to take his seat on the couch.
“Sandman?” Canidy said, eyebrows raised in question.
Bruce bristled at the temerity.
As a rule of thumb, the asking of questions in the OSS was discouraged; in fact, the act could, depending on the magnitude of the subject, carry significant penalties including but not limited to, say, confinement in an obscure stockade at the far end of the world for the duration of the war plus ninety days—if not longer. One either had the Need to Know or one didn’t. Lives—indeed, the war—could be lost if too many knew too much.
Looking at Canidy, Bruce knew that he knew this. But Bruce also knew that he was still pissed that Canidy and Fine and Stevens, his goddamned deputy, had had the Need to Know about the smuggling of Professor Dyer and his daughter out of Hungary—while he didn’t.
Intellectually, he could understand the logic. Emotionally, however, was something else.
Yet here was Canidy once again questioning at will.
Bruce was honest enough with himself to recognize that he had more than a little resentment toward Major Richard M. Canidy, USAAF.