Fulmar looked at him out of eyes that suddenly turned cold.
“That fucking postcard!” he said. “I wondered what the hell that was all about. Are you doing Baker’s dirty work again, Dick?”
“What I’m doing is my job,” Canidy said. “At the moment, I’m keeping Eldon Baker out of it. How long I’ll be able to do that depends on you.”
“Stop beating around the bush,” Fulmar said. “Let’s have it.”
“We are, through your friends Shitfitz and Mulleg establishing contact with Gisella Dyer.” Fulmar thought that over a moment before replying.
“You mean with her father,” he said. “That was on Baker’s postcard.” Canidy nodded.
“You sonofabitch!” Fulmar said. “Dick, if I’d known you were going to involve her in this OSS shit, I never would have told you about her.
“OK, let me handle that first,” Canidy said. “The first thing is that all’s fair in love and war.” “Fuck you,” Fulmar said. “I told you about her as a friend.”
“And the second thing is that it would have come out anyway.”
“How?” Fulmar snorted derisively.
“There is interest in Professor Dyer,” Canidy said.
“What kind of interest?” “I don’t know,” Canidy said. “We have a file on him, and so do the English. They–‘they’ being the powers that be that don’t confide in me-want to get him, and his daughter, out of Germany.” Fulmar looked at him suspiciously.
Canidy raised his right hand to the level of his shoulder, three fingers extended–the Boy Scout’s salute.
“Boy Scout’s Honor,” Canidy said. “Cross my heart and hope to die.
Okay?” Fulmar chuckled.
“Okay,” he said.
“They would have made the connection,” Canidy went on. “He’s at the University of Marburg. You went to Marburg. That connection would have come out on the punch cards.”
“On the what?”
“The IBM cards,” Fine explained. “Little oblong pieces of cardboard.
They punch holes in them, and then stab them with what looks like an ice pick. They can sort them that way. Understand?”
“I’ll take your word for it, Stan,” Fulmar said.
“It would have come out. You would have been asked if you knew Professor Dyer.” “And I would have said No, “‘ Fulmar said.
“Oh, goddamnit, no, you wouldn’t have,” Canidy said.
“Yeah, I would have, Dick,” Fulmar said.
“Okay,” Canidy said. “So I would have been asked if I had ever heard you mention the Dyers, and I would have said, Yes, Fulmar told me he was screwing his daughter. “‘ “That’s what I meant when I said, Fuck you, buddy, “‘ Fulmar said.
“We’re kicking a dead horse,” Canidy said. “We know about you and the Dyer girl. It has been decided to use that connection.”
“Shit!” Fulmar said.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Canidy said.
“Do you? When was the last time you were in Germany?” Canidy happened to be glancing at Fine when Fulmar said that.
Their eyes locked for a moment.
“I don’t want to come across all sweetness and light,” Canidy said.
“But since the intention is to get the professor and his daughter out of Germany, I suggest that we’re the good guys.”
“What makes you think you can get them out?”
“There are ways.”
“What I see is Gisella waving bye-bye to the airplane, or the boat, or whatever. The way you and I waved bye-bye to the submarine off Safi,” Fulmar said.
“So long as I’m running this,” Canidy said, “that won’t happen.”
“But you can’t, or won’t, tell me why they want him out?” Fulmar asked.
“Can’t,” Canidy said. “And if I have to say this, Eric, you and I both got out of Morocco eventually.”
“What do you think would happen to her if her father suddenly disappeared?” Fulmar asked. “And what makes you think she’ll go along with this, anyway? What’s in it for her? And don’t wave the flag.
That won’t wash.”
“Geting out is what’s in it for them,” Canidy said. “He’s still considered dangerous, I’m sure. Sooner or later, they’ll arrest him.
The both of them.
They know that.”
“So long as she’s being nice’ to Peis,” Fulmar said, or his successor, they’re probably reasonably safe.”
“Peis?” Fine asked.
“The local cop,” Canidy said. “Gestapo.”