The Saboteurs (Men at War 5)

“Our swords,” Canidy and Gurfein repeated in unison.

After they sipped, Donovan looked at Gurfein. “Nice booze, no?”

“Very.”

Donovan turned to Canidy. “For your edification, Dick, the most recent time that Murray and I had the opportunity to share a single malt was last summer at the bar of a very nice hotel in midtown Manhattan, a den of ill repute frequented by the usual bigwigs, including Mayor Fiorello La Guardia himself. Our host was a lawyer by the name of Moses Polakoff.”

Canidy drew a blank on the name, and shook his head slightly to indicate that.

“Charles Luciano?” Donovan said.

Canidy shook his head again.

Gurfein offered, “Charlie ‘Lucky’?”

Canidy’s eyebrows rose. “The head of the mob? Isn’t he doing time?”

Gurfein nodded. “Thirty to fifty, courtesy of my former employer.”

“Before Murray joined the OSS,” Donovan explained, “he was head of the Rackets Bureau of the New York County District Attorney’s Office. Tom Dewey, as D.A. for New York County and as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, did an incredible job of cleaning out the underworld—Dutch Schultz, Waxey Gordon, Legs Diamond.”

“Luciano went down in ’36,” Gurfein added, “for compulsory prostitution of women. Moses Polakoff is his lawyer. Luciano was in Dannemora Prison till last May, when we had him transferred to Great Meadow.”

“Why the move?” Canidy said.

“That’s why Murray is here,” Donovan said. “When he was running the Rackets Bureau, an unusual situation arose with ONI. One that might help you.”

Canidy looked incredulous. “I’m going to ask a Guinea gangster for help?”

Donovan looked at him a long moment. “Time to dance with a new devil, Dick.” He glanced at his watch, then at Gurfein. “Why don’t you start from the beginning, Murray? But first, shall we eat?”

[ TWO ]

Manhattan Beach, Florida

0330 28 February 1943

Richard Koch and Rudolf Cremer helped Kurt Bayer and Rolf Grossman dig two shallow holes beyond a line of sand dunes fifty yards inland from the beach in order to bury the black stainless steel containers—now each just top and bottom shells that were nested together after being emptied of the soft bags that contained explosives, detonators, pistols and ammunition, United States currency, and clothing.

Koch thought, but couldn’t be sure, that he heard the angry shouting of Kapitänleutnant Hans-Günther Brosin from just offshore. He told himself that he had to be imagining it because of at least two things: Enough time had passed since they had sent the young coastguardsman, bound and gagged, out to the U-boat in the train of rafts being retrieved, which should have put the vessel—and its captain—far out of earshot. And the U-boat commander would not be so careless as to draw undue attention to himself while in the process of trying to get his ship to deeper water before being discovered.

Still, Koch smiled in the darkness at what he imagined as the U-boat captain’s furious reaction to his little surprise.

The men filled in the greater part of the holes using their short-handled shovels, then tossed the shovels in on top, too, and filled in the last foot or so of sand by hand. They smoothed out the top of the disturbed sand as best they could, then left it, relying on the rain and wind to blend it all back together.

They stood, and each slung one of the heavy soft bags over their shoulder, adjusted its strap, then started moving southward along the sand-dune line, the team of Richard Koch and Kurt Bayer in the lead and, some ten paces or so back, Rudolf Cremer and Rolf Grossman bringing up the rear.

The plan now called for the two teams to separate as soon as possible. That meant after they had secured transportation—a 1935 Ford sedan, big enough to fit them all for the short time necessary—which Koch told them he had arranged for through an old contact.

On the surface, the car seemed only a convenience, not a necessity—each team member had been thoroughly briefed on the terrain and alternate transportation options by Koch and could find their way alone if necessary—but beyond that, it held other value to Koch.

Richard Koch had lived for three years—between stints as a part-time engineering student at the University of Florida at Gainesville—in Jacksonville, where he worked for the local company that distributed Budweiser beer. He had driven a truck and delivered cases and kegs of Auggie Busch’s best brewed hops and barley to Duval County bars in the seaside towns that lined its shore—Manhattan Beach, Jacksonville Beach, and on down U.S. Highway 1 to the St. Johns County line.

Over the course of his regular three-times-a-week route, he had become friendly with many of the bartenders and restaurant managers with whom he had come in contact, but none so well as J. Whit Stevens. “Jay,” as he was called, was a stocky, middle-aged blue blood from Philadelphia who had inherited from his eccentric grandmother a popular hole-in-the-wall at Neptune Beach called Pete’s Bar.

It was because of his grandmother that generations of the Stevens family had spent their winter breaks at Jacksonville Beach. She was a free spirit in the world of the upper crust, and believed that the Palm Beach–type crowds wintering to the south of Jax were snooty and terribly overrated. She had spent nearly a lifetime trying to take some of the stiffness out of her own husband—Stevens’s grandfather—and her son—Stevens’s father—but with little success.

And so it surprised no one when, after old man Stevens died of a heart attack at his senior vice president desk in the trust department of Mellon Bank, Grandma Stevens up and moved permanently to Jacksonville Beach, where, in another free-spirited act, she opened Pete’s to help her pass the time.