“The
re’s confirmation,” he said. “Guess we have no mail.”
Canidy snuffed out his cigar and put it in his pocket. “Then shut it down and let’s get some shut-eye.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice. . . .”
As John Craig reached for the power—and in his head heard Duck’s voice saying, Tha-tha-that’s all, Folks!—the receiver came alive.
“Oh, shit!” he exclaimed, reaching for the cans.
Five minutes later, after pulling out the codebook and writing freehand on the transcription pad, he had the message decrypted.
He tore out the sheet and handed it to Canidy.
“And, no,” he said, “I did not make up the second part.”
“What?” Canidy said as he began reading:
* * *
30MAY 2345
To Jupiter
From Caesar
Neptune says he will pick you up per usual. Contact him on Schedule EO-1.
Good thing Neptune will, because I have to ground Hermes for what I guess is excessive drinking. He won’t quit telling wild story about Apollo shooting down Nazi Giant bird with tiny gun.
More soon. Check six.
* * *
[THREE]
OSS Algiers Station
Algiers, Algeria
1201 31 May 1943
Stanley Fine was eating a grilled tuna steak on a hard-crusted roll at his desk while reading the overnight messages—and rereading the ones from Wild Bill Donovan and Allen Dulles, and shaking his head—when he heard a knock at his office door.
Oh, hell, he thought when he looked up. What does this sonofabitch want?
“Colonel,” Fine called out formally. “Nice to see you. Please come in.”
Fine was amazed at how the tall, slender, balding man looked uncannily like his boss—despite the fact that the clean-shaven Ike doesn’t have that ridiculous-looking “toilet seat” male-pattern baldness.
Intellectually, however, they had next to nothing in common.
A brilliant soldier, General Dwight David Eisenhower was commander in chief of AFHQ, and already had been tapped to command the even more important invasion of Normandy. Meanwhile, his aide Lieutenant Colonel J. Warren Owen was an Ivy League–educated world-class bullshitter whose only redeeming quality was his ability to recite chapter and verse of military protocol—then force it down others’ throats. He was prone to pretension, and always quick to remind everyone who his boss was, and thus, when he spoke, who he spoke for.
Some of Owen’s detractors devoutly—if not hopefully—believed that Ike kept Owen around because of the resemblance, and thus made for a convenient decoy—if not a bullet magnet.
Owen entered Fine’s office, seemingly awaiting Fine’s salute of a superior officer. When Fine simply stood and smiled, Owen unceremoniously held out a manila envelope.