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"I don't know about that," Charity said, "but you were wrong about Colonel Stevens. You should have known he wouldn't have let me come over here if I was a complete fool."

[ FIVE ]

David Bruce, Chief of London Station, was surprised to sense his office door being quietly opened, and when he looked up, to see the face of Capt. Helene Dancy waiting to catch his attention.

"Sorry to disturb you, Sir," Capt. Dancy said.

Bruce's eyebrows rose in question.

"Miss Hoche is here," Capt. Dancy said.

Bruce frowned. He didn't want to see Charity Hoche. He wanted, in fact, to nip in the bud any idea of hers that she would enjoy with him the same close personal relationship she was supposed to have with Bill Donovan.

He had directed that Helene Dancy pick the girl up at Croydon and take her directly to Whithey House in one of the station's 1941 olive-drab Ford staff cars. En route, Helene was supposed to relay his orders to her to make herself useful wherever Lieutenant Robert Jamison felt she would fit in.

Jamison was Adjutant of Whithey House Station. His job had been to relieve Canidy of as much of the administrative burden as he could. He had done a good job, but not only was he admittedly unhappy with what he called his chief clerk's role, but he was also qualified, in Bruce's opinion, to assume greater operational responsibility.

Jamison wanted to go operational, which was different from assuming greater operational responsibility.

Bruce had already decided that was out of the question, not because Jamison couldn't do it but because he knew too much for the OSS to risk having him captured. With Canidy the exception that proved the rule, OSS personnel privy to OSS plans and intentions in more than one--their own--case were not permitted to go operational.

No attempt had been made to brief Jamison on any particular operation, but he did the paperwork, and he was as bright as a new dime. There was no question in David Bruce's mind that Jamison knew far too much about too many things to send him off somewhere where he was likely to find himself being interrogated by the Sicherheitsdienst.

But Bruce had always thought there were areas where Jamison's intel

ligence and other talents could be put to better use than requisitioning sheets and towels and keeping abreast of the paperwork. Canidy had been giving him jobs of greater importance than these. And he had accomplished them admirably.

Jamison had handled, for example, and handled well, a project in connection with "Operation Aphrodite":

There was only one way to test the practicality of the drone bomber project, and that was by setting up a target and trying to blow it up with an explosives- laden, radio-controlled B-17. This, of course, had to be done with as much secrecy as possible, so when they finally flew the flying bombs against the German submarine pens, they would have the necessary element of surprise.

Jamison had scoured the maps of the United Kingdom until he found a lonely bay in Scotland that could be used as a target range. It had required coordination with the English, the local Scottish government, the U.S. Army (from whom he had borrowed a detachment of Engineers to build a target, a mockup of the entrance to the Saint-Lazare submarine pens), and the U.S. Navy (who had provided ships to clear the area, and a yard boat to be available to pluck "Operation Aphrodite" aviators from the water, if that should prove necessary).

And Jamison had carried this responsibility (which was, of course, in addition to his "chief clerk" duties) with a skill, imagination, and discretion that had pleased Bruce. Jamison had come up with a different cover story for each set of outsiders involved, with just enough truth in each to make it credible, and far enough from the real truth to keep the secret of what was really going on away from German agents.

When the first Eyes Only Personal message from Colonel William J. Donovan regarding Miss Charity Hoche had come to Berkeley Square asking Ed Stevens if he could find useful work for her, Bruce had seen in it a solution to the problem of more efficient utilization of the talents of First Lieutenant Robert Jamison. She would be assigned first as Jamison's assistant. There she would do such things as learn how to requisition flour to bake bread--or a similar-looking white powder that had extraordinary explosive power when detonated, say, against the supports of a bridge in France or Yugoslavia.

The sooner she could take the paperwork burden from Bob Jamison's shoulders, the sooner Jamison could be put to work doing other, more important things.

"Why is she here?" Bruce asked. There was more than a hint of displeasure, even reproof in his voice.

"She has three Eyes Only for you," Captain Dancy said.

"Oh?" Bruce was surprised that Charity Hoche had been put to work as a

courier. Couriers were most often officers traveling to Europe for assignment, or sometimes warrant officers whose duty it was to travel around the world, providing armed, personal guard to documents that could not be trusted to the mail pouches.

"Send her in, please," Bruce said.

"She's in the ladies' room Capt. Dancy said, then added, "taking off her pistol."

Charity Hoche appeared a minute later. She had three letter-size envelopes in her right hand and a Colt "Banker's Special".38 Special revolver in her left.

She was stunning. She exuded, David Bruce thought personally, a subtle sexuality, even a sort of refined lewdness that would make an archbishop tend to forget his vows. Professionally, David Bruce had wondered if all of his happy plans to have this young woman relieve Jamison of his administrative chores might be shot out of the water by her blatant sex appeal.

Bruce had been amused to learn that the Army had officially approved the policy of inserting slides of attractive and scantily attired or nude young women into slide trays containing other slides demonstrating the proper technique of waterproofing a truck or assembling a pontoon bridge. It caught the men's attention, woke them up, got the blood flowing.

Bruce was genuinely concerned about the degree to which Charity Hoche's simple presence among the men in training and awaiting assignment at Whithey House would catch the men's attention. There were some women at Whithey House, and some local women, but not nearly enough of the opposite sex to go around.