“Some gift ” Canidy groaned. “So what do I do next?”
“We wait. “I have a lot of books. I get a lot of reading done waiting.”
Cam des Deux Sabots Rabat, Morocco February 23,1942
Miffier will always be recognizably a cop, Max von Heurtenmitnitz reflected as the headwaiter led MWLER to the table. Like a Priest, naked on a beach where everyone would recognize him for what he was.
“How are you?” von Heurten-Mitnitz said, rising just enough to show proper regard for a friend in Miffler’s station. “Are you well?”
“I’m late Mfiller said, “but with excuses.”
“I’m aware you are late,” von : Heurten-Mitnitz said. He was al-ready into his main course, which was a more than passable Moroccan imitation of bouillabaisse. “Whose bed were you under? 0, do you have a better excuse?”
“Better,” Mfiller said, laughing. “Two minor American consular officers drove to the pasha of Ksar es Souk’s palace yesterday. They have returned to Rabat today. My guess is that the two minor consular officers were not paying a social call on Sidi el Ferruch.”
“Who were the officers?”
“One was a man named Baker. For a time he was a minor American official who watched over their embassy after we liberated Paris from the French. The other is named Canidy. He seems enough of a nobody that we have no file on him in Morocco. The two of them are obviously intelligence agents.”
“The Pope is Catholic,” von Heurten-Mitnitz agreed. “So what did they tell el Ferruch?”
“I don’t know.”
“And they are now back in Rabat?”
“Yes.
“Put surveillance on them. Real surveillance, not S6curit6 surveillance.”
“That’s already done.”
“Good. And what about el Ferruch?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know what he’s doing? Or you don’t know where he is?”
,,Neither.”
“Shit,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said, “the elusive Pimpernel.”
“What’s that?”
“The hero of a very bad novel that was turned into a very good film with Leslie Howard. The Pimpernel was a British nobleman who saved a number of his French colleagues from the Revolutionary guillotine. None of the French officials could ever figure out who he was, what he was up to, or where he’d turn up next. By rights, MULLER, Sidi Hassan el Ferruch ought to be one of the more MIS visible people in Morocco. Find him and keep an eye on him. Let him go about his enterprises, butfind out what those are.”
“It will be done.”
“And what about young Herr Fulmar?”
“Still in Ksar es Souk.”
“That’s as good as a jail. But if he leaves, attend to him like a mother-without letting him become aware of your attentions.”
“Yes, sir.”
: TWELVE Headquarters, U.S. Armed Forces, Far East. Corregidor Commonwealth of the Philippines 9 March 1942
On 6 March, there had been another radio message from C’ hief of Staff George Marshall to Douglas MacArthur. It was not an order, MacArthur judged, but a gloved reminder: “The situation in Australia indicates desirability of your early arrival there.”
MacArthur offered no comment on the cable to his staff, nor did anyone bring up the subject of his handwritten resignation, still in his desk.
Today, there had come a third radio message, priority URGENT, on the subject, and this time it was an order. General MacArthur was informed that he, “by direction of the President,” was expected to depart Corregidor no later than 15 March, to arrive in Australia no later than 18 March.
General MacArthur then replied to someone (no one later remembered who) softly, in bitter resignation, that an order was an order, and that he would have to obey. He would, he said, probably leave on the submarine Permit, which was enroute to Corregidor.
Later that day, someone told him that the Permit’s arrival was by no means assured, and that even if it came, it would probably not arrive in time for MacArthur to comply with his latest orders.
MacArthur then issued two orders to Huff. First he told him to contact Navy Lieutenant Johnny Buckley and have him consider their chances of getting through the Japanese blockade in Buckley’s remaining patrol torpedo boats, then tied up in battered con tion at a fishing wharf in Sisiman Bay, on the Bataan Peninsula.