W E B Griffin – Men at War 2 – Secret Warriors

When the truck had been loaded, the remaining Fords drove them into London. Almost immediately they saw signs of the bombing. There were fire-scarred holes, like missing teeth, where German bombs had landed on row houses. They passed a bomb crater from which the rear of “An embroidered blue triangle with the letters “US,’ worn sewn to the lapels. a bus still protruded, and when they got to the Dorchester Hotel, the entrance was piled high with sandbags, Canidy saw there remnants of what must have been prewar splendor-there was an elaborately uniformed doorman in a top bat, and small uniformed boys who came out to unload the truck-but the hotel was war-tarnished, and the lobby was crowded with headquarters types. One of the civilian technicians from Croydon was waiting for them inside, and led them to an elevator. There was another civilian technician sitting at a small desk in the corridor of the sixth floor, barring access to the wing where Colonel Stevens, alone, was waiting for them. The civilian technician who had met them in the lobby was introduced as Mr. Zigler of the Counterintelligence Corps. Zigler told him that he would be responsible for Admiral de Verbey until Canidy felt that the security of Whitby House was such that he could take over. Zigler explained that after a survey of the estate, he’d made certain recommendations for its security. The first elements of the infantry battalion had begun arriving that morning “If you feel up to it, Dick,” Stevens said, “I thought you might go out there first thing in the morning You could drop Martin and Fulmar off at Station IX on your way. There will be a car for you here at eight o’clock. 7) “Fine,” Canidy agreed, although he would have preferred to sleep for twenty-four hours, Stevens, Canidy, and Whittaker had a room-service dinner with Admiral de Verbey in the three-room suite provided for him. The service was shabbily elegant, Canidy thought, and the portions very small. He had ordered roast beef, envisioning a juicy slice of rib. He got a two-inch-square, tough chunk of overdone meat. During the dinner, Colonel Stevens told the admiral politely but firmly it would be best if he didn’t leave his suite or contact anyone while he was in London. The admiral seemed resigned to whatever indignities the OSS had planned for him. Canidy felt a little sorry for him. Breakfast in the hotel dining room was much like dinner.

The coffee-and they were allowed only one cup-was watery, the jam for the single piece of cold toast was artificial, and the scrambled eggs were powdered But precisely at eight o’clock a bellboy wearing a round hat cocked over his eye like Johnny in the Phillip Morris advertisements came into the dining room paging Canidy by holding up a slate on a pole with “Major Canidy” written on it. “Your car and driver are here, Sir,” he announced when Canidy waved him over. The car was a Plymouth sedan driven by a GI. Even with some of their luggage on the front seat, the trunk would not close over the rest of it, and it had to be tied closed with twine. They made it that way, however, to Station IX. Canidy found the British Special Operations Executive training school officers to be an insufferably smug collection of bastards who made no effort to conceal their “superiority” over their American cousins. The lieutenant colonel in charge told Canidy and Whittaker in great detail what was planned for “your young chaps.” What was planned that didn’t sound childish sounded sadistic, and Canidy toyed for a few minutes with the notion of somehow rescuing Fulmar and Martin from the Englishman before he realized that was out of the question. And so was telling the Englishman that Fulmar had lived among the Berber tribesmen of Morocco-some of the most vicious fighters in the world-long enough to be accepted as one of them. He was also tempted to tell the English officer-a parachutist who made it plain that parachuting was an exclusively English specialty@a story that Fulmar had told him: At the OSS school in Virginia, Martin had given his own high-altitude jump trainees a long moment’s horror by “falling out” of his harness and, with a bloodcurdling scream, dropping out of sight, It turned out that he did not become hamburger. He had hidden a second reserve chute under his field jacket, and was waiting, smiling broadly, immensely pleased with himself, when they themselves had landed. Martin had made sixty-odd jumps, which Canidy suspected was far more than any of the Englishmen who were going to teach him how it should be done had made.

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