Douglass said. “But I thought I would pass it on.”
Canidy laughed. “Who is going to fly the African mission?” he asked.
“African mission?” Baker asked incredulously.
“That depends in large part on you,” Captain Douglass said, ignoring Baker and acknowledging that Canidy’s suspicions were correct.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
Douglass handed him one of the service records. “This is the man we would like to make the flight,” he said. “Do you think he could handle it?”
Canidy took the records and found the Air Corps captain’s flight records. The officer had entered the service with several hundred hours of single-engine civilian time, taken a quickie course in a basic trainer, and then gone right into B-17s. He had picked up not quite two hundred hours as a B-17 pilot in command, and was currently commanding a bomber squadron.
The first thing he thought was that the captain was not especially qualified for either a quick transition course to the C-46 or to fly across the Atlantic to Africa. And then he glanced at the pilot’s name: Captain Stanley S. Fine.
There were, Canidy thought, probably fifteen Stanley S. Fines in the Washington telephone directory, and three times that many in the directories of Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago, but he knew, somehow, that this one was his Stanley S. Fine.
Canidy had first met Fine in Cedar Rapids, when he and Eric Fulmar were kids. When he and Eric, horsing around with matches fired from toy pistols intended to fire suction-cup darts, had managed to set an automobile on fire, Fine had rushed to Cedar Rapids to buy the guy a new Studebaker, free them from the clutches of a fat lady of the Juvenile Authority, and, most important, to keep the whole escapade out of the newspapers.
Fulmar had told him Stanley S. Fine was a lawyer who worked for his uncle, who owned most of Continental Motion Picture Studios. His responsibilities included keeping the secret that “America’s Sweetheart,” Monica Carlisle, had not only been married but had a thirteen-year-old son by the name of Eric Fulmar.
The last time Canidy had seen Fine had been here in Washington just before he and Eddie Bitter had gone off to the Flying Tigers. They had had dinner with Chesly Whittaker and Cynthia Chenowith. Fine had some business with Donovan’s law firm.
The more he thought about it, the more it would be an extraordinary coincidence if this B-17 pilot was not the same Stanley S. Fine.
“I think I know this guy,” Canidy said.
“Colonel Donovan thought you might remember Captain Fine,” Douglass said.
“The question you were asked, Canidy,” Baker said, “is whether you think he can handle the mission.”
“According to this, he’s a qualified multiengine pilot with long-distance navigation experience,” Canidy said. “But certainly there ought to be better-qualified people around for something like the African flight.”
“But he could handle it?” Douglass pursued.
“Yeah, I think he could.”
“We’ll arrange for an experienced crew to go with him,” Douglass said. “That’s presuming you can talk him into volunteering.”
Canidy looked at Douglass thoughtfully for a moment.
“You don’t mean talking him into volunteering for just this flight,” he said. “What you want him to do is enlist in Donovan’s Dilettantes.”8
Douglass laughed. “You heard about that, did you?”
“We get newspapers in Deal,” Canidy said.
“The colonel was rather amused by that piece,” Douglass said. “And told me it would probably do us more good than harm.”
“You didn’t answer my question, Captain,” Canidy said.
“You’re right, we want Captain Fine permanently.”
“Why?” Canidy asked.
“You ask entirely too many questions, Canidy,” Baker said.
“He’s another good friend of Eric Fulmar,” Captain Douglass said.
“You gave me that too easily,” Canidy said. “Which means that isn’t the reason you want him.”
“You’re getting very perceptive, Dick,” Douglass said. “But we’re not playing twenty questions. If you don’t like that answer, I’m sorry, but it’s all you get for now.”
“Why have I been picked to recruit him? I hardly know him.”
“When I said that’s all you get for now, Dick,” Douglass said, “I meant it.”
2
CHANUTE FIELD, ILLINOIS
JUNE 28, 1942
An eight-ship flight of B-17Es appeared in the air in the north. Canidy watched from a pickup truck. The truck was painted in a checkerboard pattern, and a large checkerboard flag was flying from its bed. The tail-end B-17E dropped its nose and made a steep descent for a straight-in approach to the runway.
“That’ll be Captain Fine, Sir,” the assistant base adjutant, who was driving the pickup, said to Canidy. “He likes to sit on the taxiway so that he can offer ‘constructive criticism’ of their