Not bad for a little bird . . . could take this to Sicily if we absolutely had no other choice.
But what a long damn ride that’d be.
And we’d have to find a place to hide it, and a way to refuel it. . . .
John Craig van der Ploeg turned to him, forced a smile, and made a thumbs-up gesture.
And I’m not sure he’d make it, Canidy thought as he pulled off his headset.
Despite the sweat on his forehead giving him away, he’s trying like hell to put a good face on his fear.
Then he thought: Damn I miss this! These seat-of-the-pants puddle jumpers are fun—but nothing like flying fighters. . . .
Canidy gestured with his thum
b to the back of the aircraft and said, “Let’s leave the gear there until we find out where it—and we—go.”
John Craig van der Ploeg glanced back at the hefty black duffel bags and two parachute packs, then gave him another thumbs-up. He nodded, his mop of thick black hair bouncing as he did so.
Canidy, watching the guard start tying down the aircraft, unfastened his harness.
He thought, Well, we are way ahead of where we were just two hours ago.
But still just barely getting fucking started . . .
* * *
“Bad news,” Captain Stanley S. Fine had announced to Canidy and John Craig two hours earlier at his desk at OSS Algiers Station.
Fine had set up his office in what before the war had been the villa’s reading room. It was on the second of the Sea View Villa’s four floors. In its center, four enormous dark leather chairs, each with its own reading lamp, were arranged around a low square stone table. The walls were lined with bookshelves, complete with a small ladder on rollers to reach the higher shelves. Covering one wall of books were various charts that detailed the OSS Mediterranean Theatre of Operations.
There had been no desk, and Fine had had one fashioned out of a solid door—complete with hinges and knob still attached—placed across a pair of makeshift sawhorses. His office chair had come from the kitchen, which was just down the hall, past the two dining areas. The room also had a view of the harbor beyond the French doors that opened onto a small balcony.
OSS Algiers HQ had a permanent staff of about twenty. Most wore, as did Fine, the U.S. Army tropical worsted uniform, with or without insignia depending on their current duties. Another group of twenty was transient, working mostly with the training of agents, and wore anything except military-issued items as they came and went on irregular schedules.
They all shared the folding wooden-framed cots that filled three of the four bedrooms on the villa’s top floor. The fourth bedroom—a windowless interior space—had been turned into the communications room. Its wooden door was steel-reinforced, with a wooden beam and brackets on the inside added as security. Tables held wireless two-way radios and Teletypes and typewriters. There was a nearly constant dull din of the operators sending and receiving the W/T traffic—the tapping out of Morse code and the clacking of their typing the decrypted messages. An armed guard was posted in the hall.
Next level down, the third-floor bedrooms had been made into basic offices for more of the permanent staffers. They held mismatched chairs with makeshift desks and rows of battered filing cabinets.
And the very bottom floor—a huge space, complete with a formal ballroom that prior to the war had been used for entertaining—was a warehouse. The storage area held stacks of crates and heavy wooden shelving. There were the usual office supplies—typewriters, boxes of paper and ribbons, et cetera—and the not so usual office supplies.
Safes contained hundreds of thousands of dollars in gold and silver coins. Rows of wooden racks held a small armory—weaponry of American, British, and German manufacture—as well as stores of ammunition. Other crates contained Composition C-2 plastic explosive and fuses. Clothing racks were lined with a variety of enemy uniforms collected from prisoners of war taken in the North African campaigns. And, stacked in one corner, were cases of Haig & Haig Gold Label scotch.
“What bad news?” Dick Canidy said, looking down at his feet as Stan Fine hung up the telephone that was a secure line to General Eisenhower’s AFHQ office at the Hotel Saint George.
Canidy plucked a crisp paper bill that was stuck to his chukka boot. He briefly examined its front and back, then let it flutter back to his feet.
The floor was nearly ankle deep in paper currency. The notes had not been printed by the United States Bureau of Engraving but, instead, by counterfeiters whom OSS Washington had arranged to be released from federal prison into OSS custody. The idea of convicted felons not only free to continue counterfeiting but being encouraged to do so had thrilled absolutely no one at the Treasury Department and had caused FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to formally protest to the President. But once again Wild Bill Donovan prevailed.
Now more than the equivalent of a million U.S. dollars’ worth of bogus 100 Deutsche reichsmark notes covered Fine’s office floor. Another million in a mix of French francs and Italian lire filled the floor of the commo room. It was obvious that fresh-off-the-press notes would not pass muster in the field and Fine had decided that the way to more or less gently “age” them was to walk on them.
“That was Owen on the horn,” Fine said.
He saw Canidy make a face at the mention of General Eisenhower’s pompous aide, Lieutenant Colonel J. Warren Owen. A chair warmer whose sole job seemed to be keeping Eisenhower’s schedule—and keeping Ike to that schedule, which could be a formidable task—Owen had a very high opinion of himself. It wasn’t necessarily deserved, many believed, especially when he arrogantly would, as a way to quickly establish his bona fides, reference anything that allowed him to boast of being a graduate of Hah-vard.
Fine remembered Canidy declaring: “When I was at MIT, I had a helluva lot of bright buddies in Cambridge. How that dimwit Owen got into Harvard, let alone got through it, I’ll never know.”
Making matters worse, for whatever reason—“It’s because he’s not bright enough to understand unconventional warfare and the risks required,” Canidy further declared—Owen liked nothing more than to say no to damn near anything that the OSS requested.