"Stevens asked.
"No, just general allegations about your being uncooperative, which I interpret to mean you have both locked them out of our cupboard and have turned a deaf ear to the pronouncements of the professionals," Donovan said.
"But you'll have to arrange for me to see them, as soon as you can."
"This afternoon?"
"Fine," Donovan said.
"And let's do it on our turf. Either at Berkeley Square or at Whithey House. I don't want to give them the impression that I have been summoned for a dressing-down on their carpet."
"What about the apartment in the Dorchester?"
"Fine," Donovan said.
"And let's do it over drinks and hors d'oeuvres. As fancy as we can manage" "I'll get Helene Dancy to set it up," Stevens said.
"Better yet, Charity. She's at Berkeley Square."
Donovan grunted approval.
"Ellis," Stevens said, "there's a radio up there."
"I can hear it, Sir."
"We're Birddog," Stevens said.
"Call Foxhunt, Captain Dancy's monitoring it, and tell her to have Charity set up a fancy do for half past five at the Dorchester, details to follow."
"Aye, aye, Sir," Ellis said, and reached for the microphone.
"Napoleon said," Donovan said, "that an army marches on its stomach. This one marches on hors d'oeuvres."
Stevens chuckled.
"My real purpose
, of course," Donovan said, still conversationally, but very seriously, "is to be near what's happening in Hungary. So you better start by telling me what is happening, Ed."
"You got the message where Canidy asked for a team?"
Donovan nodded.
"It went in at 0500 this morning, or thereabouts," Stevens said.
"We've had no word how that went."
"This morning? God, that was fast! How did you arrange that?"
"We flew the team--specifically Stan Fine and young Douglass flew--the team to Cairo in one of the new B-17s we got for Operation Aphrodite."
"And then used Canidy's B-25 to drop the team? That's why you involved young Douglass, to fly the B-25?"
"That was the idea, but something went wrong. The last radio from Wilkins said that the team was being dropped by a C-47, flown by Dolan and a C-47 pilot we borrowed from the Air Corps, and that the B-25 with Douglass and Fine in it was going to Vis."
"Where'd you get the C-47?" Donovan asked. And then went on without waiting for a reply, "I didn't know a C-47 had that kind of range."
"It doesn't," Stevens said.