The Secret Warriors - By W.E.B. Griffin Page 0,135

forehead.

“I wondered where the hell you were,” Canidy said.

“Who did you think carried you here? The good fairy?”

He knelt over Canidy and examined the cut.

“You’ll live,” Whittaker said. “Only the good die young.”

There was the sound of aircraft engines.

Whittaker stood up, then reached down and hauled Canidy to his feet so that he, too, could see the Curtiss C-46 with “China Air Transport” painted on the fuselage making its final approach to the Kolwezi runway.

8

THE HOUSE ON Q STREET, NW

WASHINGTON, D.C.

1340 HOURS

AUGUST 23, 1942

Colonel William J. Donovan and Captain Peter Douglass were having a private business lunch to which Miss Cynthia Chenowith, to her very carefully concealed displeasure, had not been invited. She suspected, correctly, that the luncheon had very little to do with the national security generally, but a very great deal to do with one particular activity of the OSS.

Fine and the CAT transport were missing and presumably lost. As the result of a series of fuckups—Cynthia was fully aware that the F in the acronym SNAFU did not represent “fouled”—it had been necessary to send the backup Naval Air Transport Command C-46 on the African mission. And with Canidy and Whittaker flying it, rather than the qualified Navy crew on the backup flight. And they had not been heard from, either.

Cynthia thought that it was one thing to order faceless agents on a mission. It was something else entirely for Donovan and Douglass when they knew—and were fond of—the participants.

That was the real reason Colonel Donovan and Captain Douglass wished to be alone, have a “private” working luncheon.

But it’s my mission too! I’ve been involved in it from the beginning.

God’s sake, I’m the damned case officer!

And it was worse than that, worse than being banished to sit over a cup of cold tea in the kitchen while the colonel and the captain waited in splendid masculine isolation in the dining room. She had been considering over the past thirty-six hours the very real possibility that Canidy, that sonofabitch, and Jimmy Whittaker would not be coming back.

As time passed, she was no longer able to convince herself that her concern was primarily because poor Mrs. Whittaker would be devastated if poor Jimmy were lost. The truth was that she was going to be devastated herself, and not even because Jimmy was a dear old friend.

She realized now that what Ann Chambers had done at Summer Place with Dick Canidy was what she should have done with Jimmy. It would have been very unprofessional, of course, and unladylike, but she should have given him that—and not only because he was going in harm’s way, but for her own selfish purposes.

When an unsmiling Chief Ellis came into the kitchen of the house on Q Street, she knew that he had word, and that it was not good news.

“They said they didn’t want to be disturbed unless it was important,” Cynthia said. Her voice, she noted with bitter pride, had not broken.

“This is addressed to you,” Ellis said, and handed her the sheet of light green paper on which decrypted Top Secret messages were typed.

“Thank you, Chief,” she said, and unfolded it and read it.

URGENT TOP SECRET

FROM STEVENS LONDON

1600 GREENWICH 22 AUGUST 1942

FOR OFFICE OF DIRECTOR WASHINGTON

EYES ONLY CHENOWITH

FOLLOWING FROM BLUEBELL PRETORIA

LIFEBOAT CRASHED ON TAKEOFF LEADCITY STOP REMAINS NAPOLEON BURNED WITH WRECK STOP SANDBAGS AND HARDY BOYS EVACUATED KEYWEST BY CHOPSUEY WHOSE ARRIVAL DELAYED BY INTERNMENT BIRDLAND STOP SANDBAGS TRANSFERRED TOMATO WHICH SAILED BROADWAY 0515 GREENWICH 22 AUG STOP CHOPSUEY DEPARTED KEYWEST WITH ALL HANDS 0910 GREENWICH 22 AUG STOP JULIET VERY NOSY STOP ADVISE STOP STEVENS

It was a coded message within an encrypted message, but Cynthia did not need her little black codebook to read it. Lifeboat was the relief C-46 aircraft borrowed from the U.S. Navy. Leadcity was Kolwezi. Napoleon was the French mining engineer, Grunier. Sandbags was the uranitite ore. The Hardy Boys was Donovan’s droll contribution to the list of code names for Canidy and Whittaker. Chopsuey was the C- 46 with China Air Transport markings. Birdland was the emergency landing field in the Spanish Canary Islands. Keywest was Capetown, South Africa. Tomato was the destroyer (“tin can”) U.S.S. Dwain Kenyon, DD-301, a brand-new, very fast vessel that had been waiting in Capetown to transfer the uranitite to Broadway, which was the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

And Juliet was, of course, Miss Ann Chambers, who was in London, and was determined to find Canidy. Colonel Stevens was fully aware of the trouble she could cause if she was aroused.