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Damn, Ann would love this….

“Let me tell you what we’ve got going here,” Fine said after he had poured them each a fresh drink, “and then we can get into what you need.”

Canidy stood, leaning against the balcony wall.

“Great. Start with this villa. How’d you get it?”

“It belongs to Pamela Dutton, widow of one of Donovan’s law school buddies who made a mint in shoes, if you can believe it. Women’s shoes. She has—maybe it’s had—family here and split her summers between here and Italy, where they had the shoes made. She let us take this place over for ten dollars a year on the condition we’d protect it from the unwashed. And so now it’s our main OSS installation.”

“How does AFHQ feel about that?”

“Well, they aren’t exactly thrilled. We’ve been put under the direction of AFHQ—”

“Which is based at the St. George, right?”

“Yeah. The brass is, anyway. And unless they specifically ask us for any intel—which we’re supposed to supply, and gladly will, but more than a few there don’t like us—we avoid the place.”

Canidy nodded.

“Same old story.”

“Unfortunately. But we don’t have time to dwell on that. We’re in the very early stages of using the Corsica model of assembling teams. These we’ll insert in France to supply and build the resistance. The usual setup: The leader is an intel officer, and there’s a liaison and the two radio operators who report to him.” He paused. “We’re not where I’d like us to be timewise, but I just got here.”

Canidy nodded.

“I remember.”

“The SOE,” Fine went on, “has its finishing school down at Club des Pins. It’s a swank, resort-type place on the beach that they’ve taken over. They’re training their people—and mine—in telegraphy and cryptography and such. They even have a jump school. And…that’s about the sum of it.”

“Nice.”

They silently sipped at their drinks.

Fine broke the silence. “So…you’re going in yourself.”

It was more a question than a statement.

Canidy nodded.

“It’s necessary, Stan. We need this guy out now. And I need to get a handle on whatever it is the boss is after there.”

And, should I not make it back, what the hell.

Ann didn’t, either.

“The trick,” Canidy went on, “is getting into Palermo.”

Fine was quiet a moment.

“How about PT boats out of Bizerta?”

The wooden-hulled patrol torpedo boats were faster than hell and armed to the teeth. The eighty-foot-long Elco model, powered by triple twelve-cylinder, fifteen-hundred-horsepower Packard engines, could make more than forty knots. They could be armed with .50 caliber machine guns, torpedo tubes, depth charges, even a 40 mm Bofors medium antiaircraft gun.

“That’s tempting. I had considered PTs, but then decided they were too open and it was too far. Plus, it’s really helpful to have good seas and a moonless night with them.”

Fine nodded.

“How about a sub?”