“Christ!” Beck said, pointing at the radar. “There’s a hot fish in the water! We’re under fire!”
Beck made a course correction, then reached up and threw two toggle switches. Lights above each of them glowed red.
“May as well get rid of some weight,” Beck said casually. “Turnabout, they say, is fair play.”
One of the lights turned green, then the other one did.
Beck hit one toggle—and the S-boat shuddered as a torpedo fired. After a count of three, he hit the second toggle, and there was another shudder. He then made a hard turn to port, started an evasive series of zigzags, and finally straightened out and pushed the triple throttles all the way forward.
He glanced at Canidy and grinned. The noise was now too great for anything said.
[FOUR]
39 degrees 01 minute North Latitude
12 degrees 23 minutes East Longitude
Aboard the Casabianca
Mediterranean Sea
2335 1 June 1943
Commander Jean L’Herminier, chief officer of the Free French Forces submarine, stood five-foot-seven and maybe 140. The thirty-five-year-old carried himself with an easygoing, soft-spoken confidence. He approached his executive officer—a frail-looking sad-eyed Frenchman a head shorter than the commander—who for the last hour had had his eyes glued to the periscope.
“Sir, I have visual on another S-boat,” the executive officer said.
This made the second Kriegsmarine patrol boat they had picked up on radar in the last three hours.
The XO added, “It’s too damn dark to make out her hull number, sir.”
“Understood. Canidy’s message clearly stated that confirmation of our target vessel will be that it is flying France’s new colors.”
“Yes, sir. I don’t quite understand that, but I am looking. . . .”
After a moment, the XO exclaimed, “Sacré bleu! Those sons of whores!”
“What?” L’Herminier said as he watched the XO step back from the scope.
“They mock us!” the XO almost spat out, indignant.
L’Herminier stepped to the periscope and had a look.
The XO could not believe his eyes and ears the next moment when L’Herminier chuckled, then stepped away from the periscope and began laughing hysterically at what appeared to be a white bedsheet flying above the S-boat’s bridge.
The memory of being under fire only six months earlier still was a fresh wound. Ignoring demands of the admiralty of Vichy France that French ships be scuttled at Toulon, L’Herminier had sailed for North Africa—saving his ship and men from surrender.
And now L’Herminier remembered Canidy’s descriptive word for Vichy France.
The commander turned to his XO and ordered, “Prepare to surface and make contact. Signal code word ‘chickenshits.’”
[FIVE]
OSS London Station
London, England
1200 17 June 1943