"Mrs. Foster's going to be in late," Vole continued.
"She has a dental appointment, but says she can reschedule if you need her. Miss Haley, she says, can handle everything she knows about."
"Fine," Ellis said.
"And I just made a pot of coffee," the ASA warrant officer said.
"And can I use one!" Elli
s said.
"It's as cold as a witch's teat outside."
He went to the small closet where the coffeepot sat on an electric hot plate and poured a cup.
When he came out, the ASA warrant officer had taken the overnight messages from the safe and laid them out, together with the forms for the receipt of classified documents, on an oak table. Ellis sat down at the table.
"Anything interesting in here?" he asked as he began to sign the forms.
"Mostly routine," Vole said.
"The Philippines have been heard from again, but that's about all."
Ellis looked at him with a question on his face.
"Seventeen," the ASA warrant officer said.
When Ellis had finished signing the receipts and pushed the receipt forms away from him, he picked up file number seventeen and opened it. The first thing he saw was that it was an intercept, rather than a message intended for the OSS.
On his own authority, as "Special Assistant to the Director," he had sent a "Request for Intercept" to the ASA, asking that the OSS be furnished with whatever ASA intercept operators around the world heard on either American or enemy frequencies that had anything to do with American guerrilla activity in the Philippine Islands. Inasmuch as the ASA and every other military and naval organization knew that the alternative to not giving the OSS whatever it asked for was explaining to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff why thiN could not be done, the "request" had been in fact an order. ;
Ellis had decided that if Douglass or Donovan asked him why he had done' so, and he didn't think they would, he would tell them it was because of the?
Whittaker mission. That was logical, of course. But the truth was that Ellis ha put in the Request for Intercept long before it had been decided to send Whiti taker into the Philippines. He had suspected that the reason there had beeo| no reply to Fertig's original transmissions to MacArthur's headquarters in AuStralia was that some brass hats of MacArthur's palace guard, or perhaps eveqi MacArthur himself, considered the very existence of guerrillas embarrassing,!
MacArthur's liaison officer to Washington had flatly announced that "effectiv| guerrilla operations were impossible."
The ASA intercept operators were good. They had furnished Ellis with tbt radio message from MacArthur appointing Philippine Scout Major Marcarit Peralta "military guerrilla chief of temporarily occupied enemy territory," ant
with Fertig's response to that, a request for drugs to cure venereal disease--as much as telling MacArthur he considered himself nicked.
Today's message showed that Fertig had his temper under control and was thinking:
URGENT PROM WYZB FOR KSF
PASS TO SECRETARY 07 WAR WASHINGTON DC
AS SENIOR AMERICAN OFFICER IS THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS I
HAVE ASSUMED COMMAND OF MINDANAO AKD VISAYAS WITH RAMK OF
BRIGADIER GENERAL.
I HAVE REACTIVATED UNITED STATES FORCES IN THE
PHILIPPINES.
USFIP HAS REESTABLISHES PHILIPPINE CIVIL GOVERNMENT IN THE