isn’t going to be written up in a history of intelligence triumphs of the Second World War. All Colonel Donovan asks is that we find some Air Corps captain that he knows is on a MATS flight and send the sonofabitch to Washington.”
“Skipper,” his deputy said to Wilkins (in deference to Wilkins’s pre-OSS service as a Naval officer), “I’ll lay even money he’s off somewhere getting his ashes hauled.”
“Where, for Christ’s sake? In the bushes in Al Ezbekia Park, no doubt? For three goddamn days? He’s not in a hotel, we know that. And he’s not with any high-class whore, or we’d know that, too . . . and goddamn, I found it embarrassing to have to call the Egyptian cops and ask them to check their whores for him. . . .”
He stopped and looked out the window at Opera Square again.
“The Chrysler here?” he asked, reasonably calmly, when he turned around a moment later.
“Yes, Sir,” his deputy said.
“Nobody stole the wheels? The driver is present and sober?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“I’ll be back,” Wilkins said, and headed for the door.
“Going to the airport, Sir?”
Wilkins glared at what he considered to be a stupid question.
“I’ll lay even money he’ll show up for the flight, Skipper, ” his deputy said reassuringly.
“And if he doesn’t? What if he got tired of waiting for them to fix the engine and hitchhiked a ride to Brisbane? That MATS flight isn’t the only plane headed in that direction. How the hell am I going to say anything to Donovan without looking like a horse’s ass?”
With an effort, Wilkins kept from slamming the door after him.
The 1941 Chrysler Imperial was equipped with the very latest in automotive transmission technology. This was called “fluid drive.” In theory, it eliminated the need to shift gears. In practice, it didn’t work, the result being that it crawled away from a stop. The Chrysler was, Wilkins decided on the way from Opera Square to the airfield, north-east of Cairo, probably the worst possible automobile in the world for Cairo traffic, less practical than a water buffalo pulling a wooden-wheeled cart.
At the MATS terminal, he sought out the military police captain in charge of security, showed him his OSS identification, and said that it was absolutely essential that he locate one Captain Whittaker, James M. B., USAAC.
Ten minutes later, three military police brought Captain Whittaker and a strikingly beautiful woman to the MP captain’s office. A flyboy, Wilkins decided somewhat sourly. A good one, to judge by the DFC. He wondered what the OSS wanted from a flyboy.
“This gentleman wishes to see you, Captain,” the MP captain said.
Whittaker smiled.
“As long as it won’t take long,” Whittaker said with a smile. “They’re loading my plane.”
“You won’t be making that flight, Captain,” Wilkins said.
“Says who?”
“Says me.”
“And who are you?”
“That’s not really important,” Wilkins said. “You’ll have to take my word for it. You’re coming with me.”
Whittaker looked at him with amusement in his eyes, his left eyebrow cocked quizzically.
“That just won’t wash,” Whittaker said.
Wilkins took his OSS identity card and held it out.
Captain Whittaker fumbled in his pockets and came out with a nearly identical card and held it out. Wilkins saw that there were two differences in the cards. His own card bore the serial number 1109 and was signed “for the Chairman, The Joint Chiefs of Staff” by Captain Peter Douglass, Sr., USN. Whittaker’s card bore the serial number 29 and was signed by Colonel W. J. Donovan, GSC, USA. Obviously, this handsome flyboy had been in the OSS almost from the beginning.
“What is all this, mon cher?” the Frenchwoman asked, softly, in French.
“Nothing at all,” Whittaker replied, in French, and then looked at Wilkins, waiting for an explanation.
Wilkins handed him the radiogram from Donovan.
“I’ll be damned,” Whittaker said. “When’s my plane?”
“Tomorrow,” Wilkins said. “At 0915. You had a seat on this morning’s flight, but you missed it.”
“It appears,” Whittaker said to the Frenchwoman in French, “that we’re going to have to climb the Great Pyramid again.”
She blushed attractively.
“There are quarters available, if you’ve checked out of your hotel,” Wilkins said.
“That’s very kind of you, Sir,” Whittaker said. “But that won’t be necessary. I’ll be staying with a friend.”
The Frenchwoman blushed attractively again.
"War is hell, isn’t it?” Whittaker, smiling broadly, asked Mr. Wilkins.
3
VIRGINIA HIGHWAY 234 NEAR WASHINGTON, D.C. 25 JANUARY 1943
There were four men in the 1942 black Buick Roadmaster, riding in silence.
There had been a little snow, but the road was clear, and the illuminated needle of the speedometer pointed just past