War Office and the OSS agreed that any actions taken with regard to Admiral de Verbey would be a joint decision,” the duchess said.
“So file an official complaint,” Canidy said, and took Whittaker by the arm and led him inside the hangar.
“The captain,” he said to the guards loud enough for the duchess to hear him, “is not authorized to enter the hangar.”
Inside, Whittaker saw Colonel Stevens standing expectantly beside a telephone. Next to him, a cigarette dangling from his lips, was the London chief of station.
“Are they down?” Whittaker asked. That could be the only explanation for their summons in the middle of the night to Croydon. Something had happened to Fine’s airplane, and the backup was needed.
“They’re overdue at Bissau,” Canidy said. “They will run out of fuel in about fifteen minutes.”
“So the backup flight is on?”
“Well, that’s being decided,” Canidy said dryly, nodding toward Colonel Stevens and the chief of station, “at the highest levels. Things are just fucked up, Jimmy.”
“Well, then, tell me what’s going on,” Whittaker said reasonably.
“I’ll start from the beginning,” Canidy said. “At seventeen hundred hours yesterday, purely as a precautionary measure, Colonel Stevens called over here and asked to speak to Commander Whatsisname. He wanted to put him on a six—as opposed to a twelve—hour alert. The flight engineer told him that Commander Whatsisname was with Captain Somebody at the moment. So Stevens, being a nice guy, said that’s all right, when he comes back, tell him he’s now on a six-hour alert, and ask him to call me for details. That’s fuckup number one.”
“How?” Whittaker asked.
“Bear with me,” Canidy said. “Then he went over to meet me at the Dorchester, where he told me that Scotland Yard is on the case of the stolen Ford, and that they expect to have the criminal behind bars in the immediate future.”
“Are you serious?”
“Dead serious,” Canidy said.
“Christ, and Elizabeth’s going to drive it back to Whitby House.”
“I’m fascinated to hear you refer to her as Elizabeth,” Canidy said. “But I thought you wanted to hear about this.”
“Go on.”
“We had a drink, and then he took me upstairs to a just-swept room, where I was, as they say, brought into the big picture. That was fuckup number two.”
“I don’t understand that.”
“I am now possessed, the London station chief feels, of such hot secrets that my capture cannot be risked, and therefore I can’t go on the backup flight.”
“So I’m to go,” Whittaker said.
“I’m not finished,” Canidy said. “After I was admitted to all the secret crap, and Stevens went back to the OSS, the duty officer told him that Commander Whatsisname—”
“Logan,” Whittaker impatiently furnished the name of the NATC aircraft pilot.
“—Logan had yet to report in. So Stevens called back out here, and the flight engineer said he had heard from him. They were in Liverpool, and Liverpool is socked in. The captain Commander Logan had gone to see was in Liverpool. That was the first time Stevens had heard that.”
“What time is Logan due here?”
“The train will get them here sometime around noon, I understand,” Canidy said. “The weather has been updated—would you like a report? I’ve been running over to the weather office every fifteen minutes or so since about one this morning, when the chief of station arrived out here. Liverpool is thick ground fog, visibility about two and a half feet, and expected to worsen. Oh yeah, and I seem to have left out that at midnight Colonel Stevens woke me up and told me it might be a good idea if I came out here.”
“What about another crew?” Whittaker said. “There ought to be a lot of people who can fly C-46s around here.”
“Not as many as everybody thought,” Canidy said. “And none we can find with a Top Secret security clearance, which the station chief has thrown into the equation. The Air Force is working on that. If they find somebody, then we have the problem of getting them here.”
“You and I could fly it,” Whittaker said. “You said the engineer is here.”
“You weren’t listening,” Canidy said. “I can’t go. I know too much.”
“So what happens now?”
Canidy nodded again toward the station chief and Colonel Stevens, who were hovering around the telephone.
“We wait for the phone to ring,” Canidy said.
“Jesus Christ,” Whittaker said.
The phone never rang. But ten minutes later, after Canidy had looked at his wristwatch yet again, a motorcycle messenger arrived outside the hangar.
“I don’t like that,” Canidy said.
“How do you know what it is?” Whittaker asked.
“If