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Chapter FOUR

“Hello, Dick,” Donovan said. “I have just been hearing in some detail about your war with the Air Corps.”

Colonel Stevens, who was sitting at a small table with Stanley Fine, chuckled.

“That’s not true,” Stevens said. “I just told him that to my considerable astonishment you were the picture of tact and calm reason.”

“We could have used you up there, Colonel,” Canidy said as he shook Donovan’s hand. “We were outnumbered.”

“Ed told me it was tough,” Donovan said. “It couldn’t be helped. You understand, I suppose, that the meeting wasn’t really about the reconnaissance missions you’ve been asking for.”

“I don’t understand,” Canidy admitted.

“That’s part of it, but only part. As long as we maintain there is a bonafide threat from jet-propelled aircraft, the whole Air Corps strategy for Europe is being questioned. The pressure on the people you and Ed were dealing with came right from the top. I’m sorry you had to stand up under it, but the alternative was David going, and I didn’t want that.”

“Or you,” Canidy challenged.

“No way.” Donovan laughed. “I was saying, I didn’t want David to go. Which made you and Ed the sacrificial lambs. I just want you to know I know it must have been tough acting that small gemlike flame of reason, et cetera et cetera.”

“I’m afraid there was antagonism, sir,” Canidy said.

“They’re going to be antagonized until we announce that we’ve been wrong all along,” Donovan said. “And since we are not wrong—”

“Well, I’m glad to hear you say that, sir,” Canidy said. “I was beginning to think I was on the shitlist.”

“Don’t be silly,” Donovan said quickly, and then went on:“Before we get into this, Canidy—how important is Jimmy Whittaker to you?”

“Sir? I don’t think I understand the question.”

“There’s an operation coming up in the Pacific where I think he’d be very useful. Barring a very strong objection from you—for example, if he’s absolutely essential to your plans to get Professor Dyer out of Germany—I want to send him over there.”

Canidy hesitated before replying:“Nothing specific at the moment, sir. I guess I think of him as my reserve. He has experience behind the lines. I’d really like to have him available in case I do need him.”

“I need that behind-the-lines experience myself,” Donovan said. “Or re-phrasing that so I don’t sound like God. Whittaker’s experience in the Philippines is just what is needed right now in the Philippines.”

“Sir, I don’t follow you.”

“Let me tell you what I have in mind,” Donovan said. “There’s an officer in the Philippines, a man named Wendell Fertig. Before the war, he was a civil engineer. He was a friend of Chesty Whittaker. He took a commission just before the war started, and then, refusing to surrender, took to the hills when Bataan fell. He made it to Mindanao and began guerrilla operations.

“He began by promoting himself to brigadier general—he was a major—apparently in the belief Filipinos wouldn’t be impressed with anything less than a colonel. He also appointed himself ‘Commander in Chief of U.S. Forces in the Philippines.’ That allowed him to recruit guerrillas. But as you can imagine, it didn’t endear him to Douglas MacArthur and his staff, who like to do things strictly by the book…”

“I hadn’t heard we had any guerrillas,” Canidy said.

“As I was about to say,” Donovan said sharply, annoyed at the interruption, " ’General’ Fertig and his guerrillas are being studiously ignored by Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur won’t even reply to his radio messages. He says they’re phony, controlled by the Japanese. MacArthur has a G-2 named Willoughby who says there is no way a useful guerrilla force can be organized or supplied.

“But Fertig made radio contact with the Navy in San Diego, it came to the attention of Navy Secretary Frank Knox—and the President—and Knox, who has his own private covert operation, called the Marine Corps Office of Management Analysis, has sent a team of Marines into Mindanao to see if they find Fertig.

“And if they find him, what?”

"There has been a suggestion from MacArthur’s headquarters that Fertig is not playing with a full deck. The first thing Knox’s people are supposed to do—presuming they can find him—is determine if he’s sane, and then what his chances are of mounting a useful guerrilla operation.”

“The Marines haven’t found him yet?” Canidy asked.

Donovan shook his head “no.”

“So far not a word,” he said. “I rate their chances of their mission being successful as fifty-fifty. And if they don’t make it, I rate the chances of the President—who is fascinated with the idea of American guerrillas in the Philippines—giving the mission of having another go at it to the OSS as one hundred to one.”

He paused, waited until he decided Canidy had time to absorb what he had been told, and then asked: