The Double Agents (Men at War 6)

Officially, Canidy was in charge. And, officially, Charity was his acting deputy. Not Jamison. But she made a very real effort—sometimes successful, sometimes not—not to push it. She was smart enough to know that the much-liked Jamison could just as well make her job difficult as he could make it easy.

Charity Hoche and Bob Jamison had gotten along reasonably well as he had showed her the ropes. She liked him, and not only because he hadn’t made things even more awkward by making a pass at her. He was a nice guy, outgoing and agreeable.

And, over time, she came to understand his frustration, especially when he’d told her about being turned down to go operational, and why.

How awful, she’d thought. I wouldn’t want to be told I’ve done so well at my job I can’t do anything else, then have someone brought in above me.

She understood that that was the source of the friction, and so was a little afraid—if that was the right word—that it might turn to resentment for her being put in charge of Whitbey House in Canidy’s absence, even though they both understood how the system worked.

Her rank of first lieutenant did not help. It was an assimilated one, and only recently made, meaning that First Lieutenant Jamison had far more time in rank and thus was technically her superior. But he had also pieced together the information that she held some super–security clearance—he had no idea it was on par with that of Lieutenant Colonel Stevens’s Top Secret–Presidential, but he knew it was up there—and that the way the OSS worked was, Jamison could bloody well be a major general, but if Donovan said she was in charge, then, by God, Major General Jamison—or whoever—was going to cheerfully carry out her orders, even if Donovan had to have her made a lieutenant general for that to happen.

Jamison had been around the Office of Strategic Services long enough to know anything was possible, no matter how the real military world operated.

While Charity took care not to abuse her power, she did understand that there was a distinct difference between being in charge and disliked and being in charge, liked…and ineffectual.

You can’t make everyone happy, she thought, holding the facecloth under the running faucet and rinsing it. You have to break eggs to make the omelet.

From Day One at Whitbey House, she’d been determined to prove herself, just as she had accomplished proving her worth in Washington to Wild Bill Donovan. He initially had had his own doubts about her when she first arrived at the House on Q Street. And, clearly, the Philly socialite had earned the Boss’s respect.

David Bruce had let Charity read the personal note that Donovan had written to him. In it, the director of the OSS explained how Charity had come to get that security clearance (“I needed a clerk-typist and file clerk with the intellectual ability to comprehend the implications of the project, and to deal with the people involved,” he’d written) and how she came to be in England (“As a result of growth in the project, we cannot risk that something might slip past Ed Stevens’s attention. My decision is to send you Charity, who, on my authority, ha

s the Need to Know on anything there”).

“The project,” of course, was the most important one of the war—the Manhattan Project, the pursuit of the atomic bomb.

She knew that she certainly could “comprehend the implications of the project.” Beyond the simple fact that whoever built the nuclear device first would win this maddening world war, many would die in the quest to achieve it—some of whom she very likely would know.

And would love.

And that brought up “the people involved.”

Quite a few of these people, at one time or another, had come through Whitbey House.

Like Jimmy Whittaker, Charity thought, as she adjusted the faucet and added more hot water to the tub.

She knew that Captain James M. B. Whittaker, U.S. Army Air Forces, had been pulled away from Whitbey House and sent on an OSS mission to the Philippines—but not before getting romantically entwined with the Dutchess.

And likely in this very marble tub, Charity thought, reaching up to undo her ponytail and begin washing her hair.

Captain the Duchess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Stanfield, WRAC, was the liaison officer of His Majesty’s Imperial General Staff to OSS Whitbey House Station. The enormous property belonged to her—and to her husband, an RAF wing commander shot down and more or less presumed dead.

Whittaker—who was wealthy beyond imagination, and, in fact, owned the OSS safe house on Q Street—could, and did, address President Roosevelt as “Uncle Frank.” Whittaker had attended St. Mark’s prep school with Canidy and Eric Fulmar, and all were like brothers.

These latter two, Charity also knew, had been operational more than once in support of the Manhattan Project. Last she’d heard, they now were operational in preparation for the invasion of Sicily—oddly enough, something about running with the mob, Canidy in Algeria and Fulmar in New York City.

Then there was Canidy and Eddie Bitter. They had been in the Navy together, as instructor pilots at NAS Pensacola. Bitter was a cousin of Ann Chambers—My God, what about Ann? Where the hell can she be?—and it had been with Ann at her family’s plantation in Alabama that Charity had met Canidy and Bitter. It was right before they had gone off to join what she later learned was the American Volunteer Group in China and Burma, the “Flying Tigers.”

Now, she knew, Commander Edwin Bitter, USN, was over at Eighth United States Air Force, Fersfield Army Air Forces Station, with elements of the OSS hidden in the 402nd Composite Wing that was a cover for the explosives-packed B-17 drone project.

And Bitter and Canidy had been Flying Tigers with Doug Douglass—who now was Lieutenant Colonel Douglass, commanding officer of the 344th Fighter Group, Eighth United States Air Force, Atcham Army Air Forces Station. He had just returned from flying temporary duty on an OSS mission to Egypt.

Using a definition of “love” that was an intense feeling of tender affection and compassion, Charity Hoche knew that these “people involved,” as General Donovan had written, did love one another.

And that she loved them.

There was, of course, another definition of love, a deeper one—a passionate feeling of romantic desire and sexual attraction.

This Charity saved for Doug Douglass.