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“My God, what if somebody should come in!” she said softly.

“There’s probably room for another couple,” Whittaker said. “Whom did you have in mind?”

“That’s not what I meant!” She stopped, knowing that he had tripped her again.

“Lock the door,” he said.

She wet her lips, turned, and locked the door.

Then she turned and faced him, and met his eyes, and then very slowly and deliberately undressed. She knew that he liked to watch her remove her clothes, and letting him watch did something to her, too. She felt light-headed and excited by the time she walked across the tiles to slip into the tub with him.

She tried to snuggle in next to him, but he forced his knee between hers and she found herself straddling him.

“I probably shouldn’t tell you this,” she said,“but I missed you.”

And then she gave a little animal yelp as he entered her.

She moved on him, and then happened to glance beyond him. There was a mirror. She could see nothing of him but the back of his head. But she could see herself: wanton, she thought, jiggling up and down the way she was.

She looked down at him. His eyes were closed. He is very young, she thought. She felt incredible tenderness for him. He was young, twenty-four, twenty-five; and she was thirty-six and married and nothing could ever come of this affair.

But that doesn’t change anything. The absurd truth is, l love him. Even though I’m just a convenient roll in the hay for him.

“I love you,” she said.

He stopped moving under her and opened his eyes and looked at her.

For a moment she thought that he was going to reply, but he didn’t. And then, very slowly and deliberately, he started moving into her again.

III

Chapter ONE

Whitbey House, Kent

6 December 1942

Canidy was sitting at an ancient desk he often thought should be in a museum, working his way through the ten-inch-high stack of paper that had accumulated while he’d flown to North Africa.

With the command of OSS Whitbey House station came a mind-boggling bureaucratic responsibility: The paperwork involved in simply housing and clothing and feeding the OSS personnel there would in more normal times have occupied the services of half a dozen secretaries.

As he signed his name for the fiftieth or sixtieth time over the signature block (RICHARD M. CANIDY, Major, USAAC Commanding), he thought again about how the responsibility for Whitbey House had dropped down upon him. The appointment had been as inevitable as it was surprising. And frustrating.

Canidy had been recruited as an agent for the OSS when it was still the Office of the Coordinator of Information. Not because he had any espionage skills or relevant experience—for he hadn’t—but because he was an old friend of Eric Fulmar’s and they wanted to recruit Fulmar. The way to do that had been to find an old pal who could sing “Auld Lang Syne” while waving the flag in Eric’s face.

He had been so naive then that he had believed that his association with international espionage would end when that operation was over.

But then it had been made clear to him that since he was possessed of certain highly classified information—concerning not only the Fulmar operation but the workings of the COI itself—it would not be possible for him to just quit. So they had found something useful for him to do.

Despite the uniform he wore and the thousand times he had written his signature above the “Major, USAAC” signature block, he was not a major of the Army Air Corps. In June of 1941 he had been discharged from the Navy (as a Lieutenant, Junior Grade) and had gone off to Burma to fly P-40s for the American Volunteer Group. Which meant that he had been a civilian when he was hired on as a “Technical Consultant” for the COI.

Later it had been decided that military status was important for the Fulmar operation. So the Adjutant General’s office had handed him an AGO card that made him a major. And “Major” he had remained. He was still paid as a “Technical Consultant,” however, and had apparently been promoted, because the monthly checks were now over fifty dollars more than a major on flight pay with his length of service would be paid.

He didn’t call attention to this peculiarity, becaus

e he suspected they would give him a bona-fide commission if he did. And he would continue what he was doing for several dollars less a month.

Whitbey House was not his first “command.” “Major” Canidy had also commanded the COI “safe house” at Deal, New Jersey. Chesley Haywood Whittaker’s oceanfront estate had been turned over to Donovan and the COI by Chesty’s widow. And the COI had stashed there Vice Admiral de Escadre de Verbey of the French Navy until the time the admiral would be used against the Germans and/or General Charles de Gaulle, the difficult-to-deal -with head of the Free French.