Page 133

He started shaking his head.

“I know it’s a long shot, Ed,” Charity said, “but, so far, it’s the only shot.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But, then, I have no other suggestion. No one has come up with anything?”

He looked at Charity, studying her.

She was shaking her head. He could see genuine anxiousness in her eyes.

“You’ve got a good feeling about this, don’t you?” he said.

“Yeah, I do.”

“Okay. Take one of my staff cars. I’ll bring Jamison up to speed.”

“Thank you, Ed,” she replied, then turned to go.

“And, Charity?” Stevens called.

“Yes?”

“Let me know what you find as soon as you can and if there’s anything that I can do. I’ll be at London Station.”

“Will do.”

And she went out the door.

[FOUR]

Palermo, Sicily 0855 5 April 1943

Canidy and Nola entered the upstairs bedroom. There were two small beds pushed together. Canidy noticed the bedside table that held the moldy tea and the book that had been left opened facedown.

Jim Fuller was at the far end of the room, near the window, which was pushed up. A chilly morning breeze blew in.

He had the suitcase opened, and the lid to the false compartment removed. The set of three instruments—the transmitter, the receiver, and the power supply—had been removed from the suitcase. They were now on a low wooden coffee table, connected by two thick black power cords with chromed plugs. A length of thin bare wire—the antenna—ran from the set, past a big bowl with a white, glazed finish, and on out the window to the plant shelf.

Fuller sat down on the floor, situating himself in front of the radio set, his legs crossed. A pair of headphones hung around his neck.

As Canidy approached, he could see inside the big bowl. The mice were in it. Adolf —Or is that one Eva? Canidy thought—was nibbling on cut-up pieces of raw vegetable. The other was trying, in small bursts of energy, to run on the slick surface and getting nowhere.

Fuller saw him looking at the mice.

“I found some small sweet potatoes in a basket on the plant shelf,” he said and looked toward the window. “When I strung the antenna out there on it.”

Canidy nodded.

“I’m getting a little hungry myself,” Canidy said.

Canidy reached into his pocket and pulled out the flash-paper message. He glanced at it one final time. It reminded him of Algiers, when the mission was laid on to find the chemical and biological weapons. Stan Fine and Canidy had had to come up quickly with its additional code names.

When Fine had suggested that they might use Roman mythology—“There’s so much of that there,” Fine had wondered aloud, “who’s going to be able to separate it from the real thing?”—Canidy had embraced the idea.

And so now he had just written the message using the code names for the clandestine wireless radio station (“Mercury”), for the team (“Jupiter,” “Optimus,” “Maximus”), and for the submarine (“Neptune”). The code name for the nerve gas—“Antacid”—came from the earlier Sicily mission, when Canidy had pulled out Professor Rossi.

He held out the message to Fuller.

“Here’s this,” he said.