The Vice Admiral’s eyes went up, but he said nothing. He had seen the card signed by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“Go on,” Ellis repeated. “See if you can raise them.”
The radioman second turned to his key and moved it quickly.
“I sent ‘KSF calling MFS,’ ” he replied.
“I read code,” Ellis said, not arrogantly.
There was no immediate reply.
The radioman second tapped his key again. When the transmitter was activated, the receiver was automatically shut down. When he turned the transmitter to standby, the receiver was issuing a series of dots and dashes.
The radioman second, without thinking, tapped it out on his typewriter. The Vice Admiral leaned over to read:MFS STANDING BY FOR KSF
“Send this,” Ellis said, and handed the radioman a sheet of paper, on which was typedKSF TO MFS SEND ENCRYPTED FOLLOWING FIRST NAME OF FERTIG SECOND NEXT OF KIN NAME AND DATE OF BIRTH KSF BY
“Send it twice, and then wait,” Ellis ordered. “If he’s using one of these things, it’ll take him a minute.”
He held up a Device, Cryptographic, M94. He’d had a hell of a time finding one and had annoyed the Presidio of San Francisco no end by requisitioning theirs.
Five minutes later, MFS came back on the air, and the radioman second quickly typed it.MFS TO KSF QEWRG SJTRE SDIQN SPIID CVKQJ MFS BY
It didn’t take Ellis long to work the Device, Cryptographic, M94; there had been one on the Panay.
“Hot damn!” he said, after a minute. Then he ordered: “Send ‘We are ready for your traffic,’ ” and then he corrected himself. “No, send ‘Welcome to the net, we are ready for your traffic.’ ”
Then, without asking permission, Chief Ellis picked up the telephone and told the Navy operator to get him Mrs. Mary Fertig in Golden, Colorado.
The telephone operator said that no long-distance calls could be placed without the authority of the communications officer and an authorization number.
“I’m going to need an authorization number,” Ellis said to the communications officer.
The Admiral motioned for Ellis to hand him the telephone.
“This is Admiral Sendy,” he said to the telephone. “Put the call through.”
In Golden, Colorado, Mrs. Mary Fertig answered her telephone.
“Ma’am,” Ellis said. “This is Chief Ellis. You remember me?”
Of course she remembered him. He had telephoned late the night before and said he couldn’t tell her why he wanted to know, but could she give him the full name and date of birth of her oldest child? He had woken her up, and she hadn’t been thinking too clearly, so she had given it to him. Later, she had worried about it. There were all kinds of nuts and sick people running loose.
“Yes, I remember you, Chief,” Mrs. Fertig said somewhat warily. “What do you want now?”
“Ma’am,” the salty old chief bosun’s mate said, “we’re in contact with your husband. I thought maybe you’d want to say something to him.”
“Where is he?” she asked, very softly.
“Somewhere in the Philippines, that’s all we know,” Ellis said. Then he said, “Wait a minute.”
The radioman second had handed him a brief decrypted message.
FOR MRS FERTIG QUOTE PINEAPPLES FOR
BREAKFAST LOVE END QUOTE
Ellis read it over the telephone.
It took Mrs. Fertig a moment to reply, and then, when she spoke, it was with an audible effort to control her voice.
“My husband, Chief Ellis,” she said, “is on the island of Mindanao. We used to go there to play golf at the course on the Dole Plantation. And we ate pineapples for breakfast. ”
II
1
SHEPHEARD’S HOTEL CAIRO, EGYPT 23 JANUARY 1943
Captain James M. B. Whittaker, U.S. Army Air Corps, was twenty-five years old. He was tall, pale blond, and slender, with leopard-like moves. He was wearing a superbly tailored pink-and-green uniform and half Wellington boots. The uniform and the boots had both come from Savile Row in London. The boots had cost just about as much money as the Air Corps paid Captain Whittaker each month, and the uniform had cost a little more than the boots.
Whittaker had never considered what the uniform and boots had cost, mostly because he really had no idea how much money he had. Whatever his civilian income was, it was more than he could spend. There was a lawyer in New York who looked after his affairs and saw to it that there was always a comfortable balance in his Hanover Trust checking account.
This is not to suggest that Whittaker was simply a rich young man who happened to be in