“That’s Chief Ellis. Donovan’s shadow. Nice guy. Just don’t fuck with him. The best way to handle him is to remember the only people around here who tell him what to do are Colonel Donovan and Captain Douglass.”
Upstairs, Ellis got off the elevator and walked down the marble-floored corridor to the Director’s office.
“Good morning. Sir,” he said to the slight, balding man in his late thirties sitting at Colonel Donovan’s secretary’s desk.
William R. Vole was in civilian clothes, but he was a chief warrant officer of the Army Security Agency, a cryptographer, on what had turned out to be o and wire communications nets to ensure that no classified information was being transmitted in such a manner that it would become available to the enemy It had also developed a capability, however, to intercept enemy radio transmissions and to break enemy codes.
There were eight such cryptographic experts assigned to the OSS in Washington and one of them was always available to the office of the Director.
They had become de facto duty officers in the Director’s office, in addition to their cryptographic duties. It had been made official by Colonel Donovan, at Ellis’s suggestion. Ellis had pointed out that their cryptographic duties had al ready made them privy to the contents of incoming and outgoing encrypted messages, so they would learn little they already didn’t know by keeping the Director’s office manned around the clock. And there were other ways they could make themselves useful in the Director’s office.
“Chief,” CWO Vole responded with a smile.
Vole liked Ellis, and felt a certain kinship with him as well. They both had long enlisted service before the war. And unlike many of his peers, he did not resent Ellis’s authority to speak for Colonel Donovan, or Donovan’s deputy, Captain Peter Douglass. He had been around the OSS long enough to see how Ellis used that authority, and he had never seen him abuse it.
And there was enough vestigial enlisted man in Chief Warrant Officer Vole to take some pleasure in the annoyance and discomfiture of a long line of brass hats who had tried and failed to pull rank on the salty old chief. Vole could not remember an incident where Ellis had not been backed up by Cap tain Douglass when some brass hat had complained to him about a decision of Ellis’s, and he had several fond memories of incidents where some brass hat, having gotten no satisfaction from Captain Douglass, had gone over Douglass’s head to Colonel Donovan.
The response then had been a furious, if brief, ass-chewing of the brass hat, done with the skill and finesse only a former infantry regimental commander as Donovan had been in the First War could hand out.
Ellis took off his brimmed cap and hung it atop a bentwood clothing rack.
Then he removed a white silk scarf and folded it very neatly and hung it on a wooden coat hanger. Finally, he took off his blue overcoat and hung that care fully on the hanger. Then he turned and looked at the ASA warrant officer.
“The Colonel’s home,” Chief Warrant Officer Vole reported.
“Staley’s with him. The Captain’s home. I sent Marmon with a car for him. He’s going to the Pentagon and will be in about ten, maybe a little later.”
Marmon was a former District policeman who served as combination chauffeur and bodyguard to Captain Peter Douglass.
“That’s it?” Ellis asked.
“Mrs. Foster’s going to be in late,” Vole continued.
“She has a dental appointment, but says she can reschedule if you need her. Miss Haley, she says, can handle everything she knows about.”
“Fine,” Ellis said.
“And I just made a pot of coffee,” the ASA warrant officer said.
“And can I use one!” Ellis said.
“It’s as cold as a witch’s teat outside.”
He went to the small closet where the coffeepot sat on an electric hot plate and poured a cup.
When he came out, the ASA warrant officer had taken the overnight messages from the safe and laid them out, together with the forms for the receipt of classified documents, on an oak table. Ellis sat down at the table.