Page 164

There was a long, awkward silence.

Stevens then said, “Dick, it was Old Man Kappler who got us the V-1 specs.”

“So the Krauts really are going to do that?”

“Last word,” Stevens said, nodding, “is that Hitler is backing Milch’s desire to have fewer bunkers, but ones the size of the bigger bomb-proof kind—like those of the submarine pens in Brest. Hitler and Milch agree that those heavily fortified bunkers best resist our bomb attacks.”

“Field Marshal Erhard Milch?” Canidy said.

“Head of the Luftwaffe production program,” Stevens confirmed. “Meanwhile, Göring is going off half-cocked. For one, he told Hitler he’d have fifty thousand V-1s built a month. He’s had to settle for a hundred a month—”

Donovan laughed. “Who among us would have wanted to be there when Göring had to tell Hitler that exciting news?”

There followed the expected chuckles.

Stevens went on: “That production figure would rise to five thousand per month by early next year. Göring also had to compromise on the bunkers—only four of the heavily fortified ones, along with almost a hundred smaller ones in the field, and the ones launched from He-111 bombers.”

“More fun news to deliver to Hitler,” Donovan said lightly, then his tone turned more serious. “Still, Ike is not going to be happy hearing any of that. I bet he will come knocking on our door, especially understanding what we’ve accomplished supplying the Polish underground.”

Stevens looked at Canidy and explained: “We upped the supply drops to Poland. Tripled, so far. And last week, Sausagemaker’s team took out the construction site that’s set to build the V-1s. Half of his team got the prisoners freed.”

“Great!”

“But there’s bad news. Mordechaj was following Stanislaw Polko—”

Canidy nodded. “His lieutenant. One brave, ballsy bastard.”

“—and they got trapped. He and the other half of his team . . . they were wiped out.”

“Jesus Christ . . .” Canidy sighed. “Then we’ve barely slowed the bastards down.”

“But we did slow them down,” Wild Bill Donovan put in. “And eventually we will stop them.”

“‘This is the lesson . . .’” Canidy then said.

Donovan nodded.

“Churchill, despite occasional bad advice, does get it right.”

After a moment, Canidy shook his head and chuckled.

“What?” Wild Bill Donovan said.

“I’ll always remember the last thing that Szerynski, the poor sonofabitch, said to me. ‘Two things I’ve learned, Dick. One, we make war so that we may live in peace.’ . . .”

Everyone nodded solemnly.

“Aristotle,” Wild Bill Donovan said.

Canidy nodded, then finished, “. . . ‘And, two, never share a foxhole with some bastard who’s braver than you.’”

AFTERWORD

As Allied forces attacked occupied France in OPERATION OVERLORD on D-day, 6 June 1944, Adolf Hitler ordered Generalfeldmarschall Karl Rudolf Gerd von Rundstedt to transmit code word Rumpelkammer—junk room—alerting the regimental staff to prepare to fire the first volley of vergeltungswaffen.

At the launch code word Eisbär—polar bear—Nazi Germany’s retaliation weapons began bombing London six days later.

Almost ten thousand aerial torpedoes—averaging one hundred V-1s a day at the peak—were launched at England for sixteen months, until Allied forces overran the final launching site in October 1944.