Fine went on: “Owen said that Ike—he actually said it in that condescending tone he uses, ‘Per our Supreme Commander’s direct order’—the Casabianca was the last submarine they’re letting us use ‘until further notice.’ I won’t bore you with all his other reprimands.”
Canidy was not only familiar with the Free French Forces submarine Casabianca, he considered himself friends with her thirty-five-year-old captain. Commander Jean L’Herminier had extricated Canidy from Sicily on March 25 and then eleven days later put Canidy back in—this second time with Frank Nola and Jim “Tubes” Fuller—before pulling Canidy out alone.
“The last?” Canidy repeated. “Damn it!”
Fine nodded. “And he added that that had been allowed only because the sub is headed back to Corsica. Ike was genuinely impressed with the intel that Pearl Harbor has provided, and now that the station has gone off the air again—it’s having troubles with its SSRT transmitting—he said he feels obligated to let us check on it. We’re sending in a replacement radio and other supplies. More importantly, we want to make physical contact to ensure the station isn’t blown.”
L’Herminier—whose submarine was carrying her complement of four officers and fifty men, plus a half-dozen OSS agents—would again use the method he had developed for covert landings. After carefully surveying the coast by periscope, looking for any enemy activity and pinpointing an appropriate landing spot for the teams to go ashore by rubber boat, the sub would slip back out to sea, flood its ballast, and sit on the bottom of the Mediterranean awaiting night.
Then, at dark, with the sub barely on the surface to keep a low profile from enemy patrols, the small boat would be launched. Casabianca crewmen, armed with Sten 9mm submachine guns, would row the OSS men—carrying W/T radios and weapons and cash—to shore. The team then inserted, the crewmen would return to the sub and the sub would return to the sea bottom until the scheduled times to ascend to periscope depth and receive the signal either to retrieve the team or to leave them.
“But goddamn it!” Canidy blurted. “That is exactly the same thing we’re trying to do with Mercury Station!”
“Except,” Fine said reasonably, “Mercury is (a) on Sicily and (b) no one at AFHQ is aware that the station even exists. Owen took more than a little delight just now in carefully reminding me quote Remember that our Supreme Commander is quite anxious about the security of Husky and thus has ordered there be absolutely no OSS activity there prior to D-day unquote.”
Canidy looked ready to explode.
“The sonofabitch doesn’t know that I’ve been in and out of Sicily twice!” he said. “Can you imagine trying to sell this to Ike now? ‘General Eisenhower, sir, I realize that no one in AFHQ ever believed that the Krauts had chemical and biological weapons on Sicily. But I went in and found them, then blew them up, and then left behind a clandestine radio team that, despite us now believing it is controlled by the SS, is reporting that up to a half-million enemy combatants are arriving to defend against Husky. Oh, and we also have reason to believe that the Krauts have brought in more Tabun and/or yellow fever. So, sir, can you please allow us a sub to insert one small team?’”
Fine stared silently at Canidy.
“Yeah. And that’s exactly what Ike would do, too, Stan. Just stare at me. And then probably have me put in shackles until after Husky—hell, maybe for good measure until six months after the end of the war—for the ‘good order and discipline’ of the service.”
He paused, then sighed. “Jesus!”
Kicking up a trail of counterfeit reichsmarks, Canidy walked across the room to the French doors. He swung them open and for a long, quiet moment looked out at the ocean.
“When did the Casabianca sail?” Canidy then said.
“Three days ago,” Fine said.
“From here to Corsica,” Canidy said, looking out in its direction, “that’s right at five hundred nautical miles, making it a four-day run at best to get there. Then another day or two on station, while they deal with Pearl Harbor, then four days to get back here.”
He turned, looked at Fine, and said, “That’s best-case scenario—”
“Agreed.”
“—and I can’t wait that long, ev
en if I thought I could convince Jean to turn around and insert us again in Sicily.”
“Then what?” Fine said.
“We are in radio contact with the Casabianca, no?” Canidy said.
Fine looked at John Craig van der Ploeg.
“Daily, right?”
John Craig nodded.
“The commo room,” he said, “has a schedule of four times each day for the Casabianca to surface en route to periscope depth and receive our messages. Beyond that, she can transmit to us anytime that she needs to.”
“Great,” Canidy then said. “Then that’s what we’ll do!”
“What is what you’ll do?” Fine said.
“What we’ll do is parachute in and get Jean to pick us up.”