Part 7 (1/2)

There was more, Whittaker thought, than simple chemistry to explain why he had disliked Eldon Baker from the moment he had met him. He could prepare a long list of Things-Wrong-with-Eldon-Baker, headed by Baker's ruthlessness, and running down to such items as pompous, overbearing, and the compleat bureaucrat, but it was the chemistry primarily responsible for the inevitable verbal flare-ups whenever they were together.

Baker now chose to tolerate Whittaker.

”There's a mission envisioned for you,” he said.

”What kind of a mission?”

Baker ignored the question.

”Prior to which it has been decided that you will go through the course.”

”Decided by whom?”

”It's OSS policy,” Baker said, ”that everybody will go through the school.”

”You're weaseling,” Whittaker said. ”Donovan doesn't know you expect me to go through this school of yours for spies, does he? You were just going to tell me that's the 'way it is.' Screw you, Eldon. That won't work. Canidy told me that Donovan told him that neither one of us had to do this. For Christ's sake, I was running running the school in England. ” the school in England. ”

”You have no training in infiltration by rubber boat from a submarine,” Baker said. ”Obviously, it was not my intention to send you through the whole course . . .”

”Oh?”

”And actually, I had planned to ask you to teach a few hours. I thought it would really get and keep the men's attention if they understood they were being taught by someone who had been operational.”

”If that's a bone you're throwing, gnaw on it yourself,” Whittaker said. He started out of the room, then turned and stopped at the door. ”I'm going back to Was.h.i.+ngton,” he said. ”And it's going to take Wild Bill himself to order me back here. And then I may not come.”

”Obviously, there's no purpose in debating this with you,” Baker said.

When he went outside the building, determined to find Cynthia, Whittaker saw her immediately. In the time it had taken him to go through the confrontation with Baker, her group of trainees had run from where he had seen them on the road to the mansion.

Presumably, he decided, they had run all the way. Cynthia and another woman, both of them red-faced and heaving from the exertion, were sitting on the ground, their backs against a wall.

He walked over to her. She looked up at him but said nothing.

One of the senior trainees walked quickly up to him. He was tall and muscular and very handsome, and looked somehow familiar to Whittaker.

”May I help you, Sir?” he asked.

”Take a walk,” Whittaker said.

He met Cynthia's eyes. ”What the h.e.l.l do you think you're doing?”

”What does it look like?” she replied.

”Jesus Christ, if it wasn't so stupid, it would be funny,” he said.

”Jimmy, why don't you just turn around and walk away from here?” Cynthia asked.

Instead, he reached down and grabbed her wrist and jerked her to her feet.

”What do you think you're doing?” she snapped.

He kissed her, moving so quickly there was no time for her to avert her face, and so surprising her that it was a moment before she twisted free.

One of the trainees laughed and applauded.

”What was that all about?” Cynthia said, seeming torn between outrage and tears. ”Why did you do that?”

”Two reasons,” he said. ”To remind you that you're a woman. And because I love you.”

”d.a.m.n you!” Cynthia said, fighting an infuriating urge to cry.

”Now, just a minute here!” the senior trainee said.

”Greg, don't!” Cynthia called quickly. ”He's crazy. He'll kill you!”

The trainee looked at him warily and with great interest.

”Relax,” Whittaker said. ”I'm a lover, not a fighter.” Then, feeling very pleased with himself, he walked over to the Packard, got in, and started it up.

III.

1.

HEADQUARTERS, 344TH FIGHTER GROUP ATCHAM ARMY AIR CORPS STATION, ENGLAND 31 JANUARY 1943.

Rank hath its privileges. In this case that meant that the commanding officer of the 344th Fighter Group was driven in a jeep from the final briefing to the revetment where his aircraft was parked. The other pilots rode jammed together in the backs of trucks.

The commanding officer of the 344th Fighter Group, Eighth United States Air Force, was Lieutenant Colonel Peter (”Doug”) Dougla.s.s, Jr., USMA '39, a slight, pleasant -appearing officer who looked, until you saw his eyes, much too young to be either a fighter group commander or a lieutenant colonel. He was, in fact, twenty-five years old.

He was wearing a horsehide A-2 jacket, which had a zipper front and knit cuffs. On its back was painted the flag of the Republic of China and a legend in Chinese stating that the wearer had come to China to fight the j.a.panese invader, and that a reward in gold would be paid for his safe return in case he fell from the sky.

Doug Dougla.s.s had been a member of the American Volunteer Group in China and Burma, a ”Flying Tiger,” one of a small group of pilots who, before the United States had entered the war, were recruited from the Army Air Corps, the Marines, and the Navy to fly Curtiss P-40 fighters against the j.a.panese. On the nose of his P-38F there were painted ten small j.a.panese flags, called ”meatb.a.l.l.s, ” each signifying a j.a.panese kill. There were also painted six swastikas, representing the kills of six German aircraft, and the representation of a submarine.

While attacking the German submarine pens at Saint-Lazare, then-Major Dougla.s.s had attempted to skip-bomb a five-hundred-pound aerial bomb into the mouth of the pens. He hadn't made it. But his bomb had struck, literally by accident, a U-boat tied to a wharf just outside the mouth of the pen. It had penetrated the hull in the forward torpedo room, and what was known as a ”sympathetic explosion” had occurred. The explosives in the bomb and in G.o.d-alone -knew-how-many torpedoes had combined, and the submarine had simply disappeared, leaving few recognizable pieces.

Dougla.s.s and his group had been accompanied on the mission by photo reconnaissance aircraft, and there was a motion picture record of the five-hundred-pound bombs dropping from Dougla.s.s's wings, and of one of them striking the submarine, and of large chunks of the submarine hull floating lazily through the air. There was no question about it, mistakes counted, it was a confirmed kill.

Newly promoted Lieutenant Colonel Dougla.s.s had given in to the ”suggestion” by his division commander that he paint a submarine on the nose of his P-38F not because he considered it a victory but because it signified that he had been on the Saint-Lazare raid. He had lost forty percent of his aircraft-and his pilots-on that raid.

A story made the rounds that after the raid Dougla.s.s had walked into Eighth Air Force Headquarters and decked the Plans & Training officer who had ordered the mission. And that the b.l.o.o.d.y nose he'd given the chair-warmer had given the bra.s.s a choice between court-martialing a West Pointer who was a triple ace or promoting him, and they'd opted in favor of the promotion.

Today, there was with him in the jeep as it made its way down the parking ramp at Atcham another pilot wearing an identical A-2 jacket with the Chinese flag and calligraphy painted on its back. He was taller and heavier than Dougla.s.s, and, at twenty-six, a year older. His name was Richard Canidy, and he had been Lt. Col. Dougla.s.s's squadron leader in the Flying Tigers.

He was not a member of the 344th Fighter Group, nor, despite the gold leaves of a major pinned to his A-2 jacket epaulets, even an officer of the Army Air Corps. Canidy (BS, Aeronautical Engineering, MIT '38) had first been recruited from his duty as a lieutenant junior grade, USNR, instructor pilot to be a Flying Tiger, and from the Flying Tigers to be a ”technical consultant” to the Office of the Coordinator of Information.

The Office of the Coordinator of Information had been redesignated the Office of Strategic Services, and Canidy was now officer in charge, Whitbey House Station, OSS-England, which made him the third-ranking OSS officer in England. Civilians, in a military environment, attract attention. But little attention is paid, particularly at the upper levels of the military hierarchy, to majors. It had been arranged with the Army Air Corps to issue ”Technical Consultant Canidy” an AGO card from the Adjutant General's Office, identifying him as a major, and to ensure that if inquiries were made at Eighth Air Force or SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force) there would be a record of a Canidy, Major Richard M., USAAC.