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"White is black, up is down," Canidy went on, "and I am supposed to apologize for taking a shot at the bad guys."

There is, Helene thought, a certain undeniable logic to what he says.

You'd think they'd want to give him a medal for shooting down enemy planes, not be furious with him.

"Major Canidy," she said chastisingly.

"I let all the pretty girls call me "Dick,"" he said.

"You are impossible," she said.

"This is supposed to be a military organization."

Canidy's face registered great surprise.

"You're kidding! "he said.

"Mr. Bruce is down in crypto," she said.

"You are to wait."

"And you're not going to tell me what I've done wrong, are you, Dancy?"

"No," she said, unable to resist smiling back at him.

"But it may have something to do with this."

She opened her drawer and took from it a top secret cover sheet.

As he took it from her, she said softly, "If it doesn't come up, it would probably be better if you didn't mention I'd shown you that."

Canidy raised the cover sheet and read the partially decrypted message.

Even if the Germans intercepted the message and succeeded in decrypting the text, they would not know the meaning of the code words.

EX LAX FOUR PROCEEDING ALL WELL YACHTSMAN

"Speaking to you both as your military superior, Captain," Canidy said, "and as someone you know has the Need-to-Know, have there been any developments in the Balkans I should know about?"

Shaking her head and smiling, Capt. Dancy said, "You have it in your hand."

"Well, now you're off the hook with the dragon," Canidy said.

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"I asked you for this. You had no choice but to give it to me."

She smiled at him. She thought that was nice of him.

"Have you got a copy of the OP PLAN [Operations Plan] here, or am I going to have to root around in the basement?"

Capt. Dancy walked to a sturdy safe from which, quite unnecessarily, for the door was ajar, hung a sign reading "Open" and took from it a manila folder with top secret stamped on it.

Canidy unfolded a map. On it was drawn in grease pencil Eric Fulmar's route into Germany, and his escape route. Along it were marked, in Roman numerals, the stages of the route. There was a I at Marburg an der Latin, in Germany.

There was a II beside Vienna on the map, and a III beside Budapest. The fourth leg of the route ended at Pecs, in southwest Hungary.

Pecs was the site of the Batthyany family coal mines. Most of the coal in Hungary is low-grade "brown" coal. The mines at Pecs produced a high-grade anthracite that for hundreds of years had contributed to the Batthyany wealth.