“I thought a car would be nice to have. You just signed what I consider to be a splendid justification for a sedan,” “Okay,” Canidy said, smiling.
“If you think you can ‘persuade’ them to give us one, fine.”
“They just got half a dozen Fords,” Jamison said, and added, “I have a spy planted in the enemy headquarters. I can’t promise, but there’s a chance I can steal one from the motor pool, and we can worry about returning it later.”
“Lieutenant,” Canidy said, “are you actually standing there and proposing theft of an automobile from the OSS motor pool? You don’t really think you could get away with that, do you?
Christ, it’s the OSS. They probably chain each vehicle to the pavement.
And have you considered the trouble I would be in if you got caught?”
“I guess,” Jamison said uncomfortably, “it’s not such a hot idea,” “Now,” Canidy went on, “Captain Whittaker could probably get away with it. And he could probably figure out how we could keep it after we stole it. Where is he?” Jamison smiled.
“Playing billiards,” he said. “How do you plan to get to London?”
“With the message-center car,” Jamison said. “I am going to hold you responsible if Captain Whittaker returns from London with a social disease,” Canidy said.
“With that caveat, you have my permission to have at it. But you should keep in mind that I will follow sacred OSS tradition in this.
If you get caught, I never saw you before in my life.” He handed the requisitions back to Jamison, and they went looking for Whittaker.
Canidy had dinner with Admiral de Verbey, and they played chess for an hour afterward; then Canidy went to his room. The ducal chambers, which Canidy had claimed for himself, were large, beautifully furnished, and had an alcove with a desk and telephone he used as an office. Both for reasons of protocol and because he liked the old man, Canidy had originally planned to put the admiral in the ducal chambers, but Lieutenant Jamison talked him out of it. The apartment had so many entrances that guarding the admiral there would be more difficult than it would be in a smaller apartment with only one door. Whittaker was in the connecting apartment, where the duchess of Stan field had slept.
Despite the warning Canidy had received from Colonel Stevens, Her Grace had not appeared at Whitby House, and neither had the British Army officer who was supposed to “liaise” with him. Canidy wasn’t sure exactly what that meant; and so far as he was concerned, he hoped neither ever showed up. n Chambers a letter-exactly the same letter he had writhe wrote An ten her every day since his first night in Whitby House: “Having a smashing time, wish you were here. Love, Dick.” The letters, all bearing the return address “Box 142, Washington, D.C.,” were sent to London, where they were put in a pouch and flown to the States. They would be stamped with a Washington postmark and mailed.
Presumably, eventually there would be letters from Ann. He was smugly pleased with the idea of sending her what amounted to a daily postcard the censors and letter readers could find no fault with. Ann’s incoming mail was not supposed to be intercepted, of course-actually, he was not entirely sure about that-and she would, he told himself, understand why he was not writing more than he was. He was sure she’d get the message that he was indeed thinking about her at least daily.
The truth of the matter was that he was thinking of her all the time, like a lovesick high-school kid. And the simple act of sitting down and writing those very few words to Ann had become enormously important to him.
Having finished this day’s letter to Ann, he decided to take a drink from one of the bottles of Chesly Whittaker’s twenty-four-year-old Scotch he had “borrowed” from the library in the house on Q Street just before they’d come to England. He was sitting in a brocade-upholstered armchair with the almost untouched drink in his hand, his mind full of the myriad physical charms of Ann Chambers, when there came a knock at his door. “Come!”