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“Of course,” Whittaker said, and finally let her hand go. Captain the Duchess Stanfield came to almost a position of attention, her face rigid.

“Well, Dick—” Whittaker said. His voice sounded very strained.

Canidy said, “Try not to fly into a rock-filled cloud,” and then he put his arms around Whittaker and hugged him, and whispered, “If anyone even looks cockeyed at her, I’ll slice his balls off.”

Whittaker broke the embrace.

“You do that, Major, sir,” he said. And then he picked up his bags and proceeded to board the aircraft.

Canidy took Captain the Duchess Stanfield’s arm, and they marched in almost a military manner out of the passenger terminal.

Sergeant Agnes Draper, WRAC, when she saw them coming, opened the rear door of the Packard.

“I’ll drive, Agnes,” Canidy said, motioning with his head for her to move to the back with the Duchess. He got behind the wheel and threw the lever that raised the glass divider. Ann Chambers slipped in beside him.

“Rough?” she asked.

“There was an old buddy of the Duke’s in there,” Canidy said. “What they got to do was shake hands.”

“Oh, God!” Ann said.

“Stiff upper lip and all that crap,” Canidy said.

“Why don’t we take her someplace? Would that help?”

“I have other plans,” Canidy said.

“Oh, really?”Ann snapped.

Canidy looked over at her.

“I’m now going to find Fulmar,” he said, “and tell him what interesting things we have planned to keep him from getting bored.”

“Like what?”Ann asked. And then she understood. She reached over and took his hand. “I guess I’m a selfish bitch, after all,” she said. “I was just thinking, better him than you.”

XIII

Chapter ONE

OSS London Station

Berkeley Square

2100 Hours 21 January 1943

David Bruce was forced to admit that Dick Canidy’s grasp of problems and his imaginative solutions to them were on a par with his own. Yet Canidy allowed emotion to enter into decisions, and he was prone to make them on his own authority, almost impulsively.

Canidy, for instance, had just now told Bruce that he had taken it upon himself to tell Fulmar all the details of the Dyer operation.

Fulmar should have been told no more than he had to know. What he needed to know was that he was about to be put inside Germany. What he was to do there was to be explained later.

Bruce could only guess what Canidy had actually said to Fulmar, but according to Canidy himself, he had told Fulmar that for reasons he himself did not know, it was important to bring Professor Friedrich Dyer out of Germany, via Hungary and Yugoslavia, that Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz and Müller were involved, and that when they reached the island of Vis, he would be there with the B-25 to pick them all up.

In an operational sense, the worst thing Canidy had done was tell Fulmar that he would be given a Q pill in case things went wrong. The Q pill was actually a tiny glass vial containing cyanide. It caused almost instant death when crushed between the teeth.

The Q pill was absolutely the last thing on an agent’s checklist. Agents wondered enough about getting caught without being reminded that the OSS was obligingly providing a Q pill just in case. Fulmar would now have a full ten days to dwell on the subject.

And until he actually crossed the German border, Fulmar had the unspoken right to change his mind. Someone else would be sent in, of course, but it would take at least two weeks—and very probably much longer—to recruit and train him. And he would not be as qualified as Fulmar, obviously; and besides, the schedule of events in Germany, Budapest, and Yugoslavia could not be put on hold.