The crude hilt of an odd-looking knife was visible at the top of Whittaker’s Half Wellington boots. Donovan knew the knife. The blade, which was ten inches long and nearly black with oxidation, had a double edge cut in inch long scallops. Jimmy Whittaker had brought the Colt and the Kris home with him from the Philippine Islands.
The two of them looked like pilots from a fighter squadron somewhere in North Africa who just happened to be at the Casablanca airport.
They were in fact in the OSS, and they were supposed to be in England.
Donovan wondered what the hell they were doing in Casablanca. He asked them.
Canidy gestured to a B-25 “Mitchell” twin-engined bomber parked on the grass not far from the terminal.
“Your personal chariot awaits your pleasure, Colonel,” Canidy said.
“We thought you and Chief Ellis might want to avoid the common herd on the commuter flight.”
“That’s not what I asked, Dick,” Donovan said.
“Stevens sent us down here with three very heavy crates,” Whittaker said. “And when we checked in, they told us you were coming.” Lieutenant Colonel Edmund T. Stevens was Deputy Chief of Station, London.
“It’s also the plane we used to drop Fulmar down on the other side of Ourzazate,” Canidy said. “Extra fuel tanks, even a couple of airline seats. The way we cleaned it up, it cruises right around 310 knots.” Donovan took a closer look at the airplane. The turret on top had been removed, and the opening faired over. The machine-gun positions in the sides of the fuselage were also gone, and faired over. It was no longer a bomber, but a high-speed, long-range transport. Canidy, Donovan reflected, sounded like he was trying to sell it to him. He wondered what that was about but didn’t ask. Not only was he fond of both of them, but he trusted their unorthodox–sometimes even outrageous–style.
“I’ll be here two days,” Donovan said. “Won’t they expect you back?”
“Absence, “Jimmy Whittaker said solemnly, “makes the heart grow fonder.” Donovan grinned.
“Why not?” he said.
The B-25 arrived in England sixty hours later, having flown a circular route far enough out over the Atlantic to avoid interception by German Messerschmidt ME-109E fighter planes based in France.
Lieutenant Colonel Stevens, another old friend of Donovan’s recruited for the OSS, was on hand to meet it. Stevens, forty-four, graying, erect, with intelligent hazel eyes, was a West Pointer who had resigned his commission and gone to work in his wife’s wholesale food business.
He had lived in England for several years before the war, and his ability to handle upper-crust Englishmen had proved even more valuable than his military expertise.
Stevens wasn’t sure what he thought about their waiting around in Morocco so they could fly Donovan up on the B-25. Canidy, as usual, was treating orders and accepted procedures the way playboys treat women, Canidy knew damned well that he was expected to unload the crates, grab a few hours’ sleep, and fly back to England. Both he and Whittaker had more important things to do than drive airplanes.
Canidy had been put in charge of the OSS base in Kent. Whitbey House, the requisitioned “stately home” of the Dukes of Stanfield, was both the “safe house” for the OSS and the training base for agents.
And there Jimmy Whittaker ran what the OSS called “The Operational Techniques School,” or what Canidy more accurately called the’ Throat Cutting and Bomb Throwing Academy.” But separately and–more important–together the two were a very persuasive pair. When the problem of transporting the crates of radios and special explosives earmarked for Casablanca but sent in error to England) came up at a staff meeting in London, Canidy and Whittaker had quickly made convincing arguments that the obvious solution was for them to fly the crates down to Casablanca in the B-25, There was no reason they couldn’t be absent from Whitbey House for seventy-two hours, the crates would not be misdirected again, and there wouldn’t be all the bureaucratic crap involved in arranging for the priority shipment through normal channels.
Stevens had let them go, though it was even money they wouldn’t be back in seventy-two hours–Canidy and Whittaker being Canidy and Whittaker.