Ellis’s eye fell on the overnight traffic. He should get that out of the way before he laid this stuff out.
Then he had another thought. He opened a drawer and took out a lined pad and a pencil and wrote quickly on it.
“You want to make yourself useful,” he said to Vose.
“Get this encoded and out right away. And then stick around. I think there will be a reply to the Eyes Onlys.”
Vose took the sheet of lined paper from Ellis and read it.
Ui4 iKSFwyzg rw. Hj US f to4 iA Pife&AW ftWu4* – ?t**M C,tMt evKf
Kit yew iiwt en 4teA
4. K, WA.
QtU iw Suf. eu
“You really want me to send this?” Vose asked.
“Just that way,” Chief Ellis said.
[FOUR]
Office of the Station Chief OSS London Station Berkeley Square, London
“Is something wrong, David?” It. Colonel Edmund T. Stevens asked.
Bruce looked at him with his eyebrows raised.
“I would say so, wouldn’t you?” he replied dryly.
“I mean, right now, here,” Stevens said.
“You were frowning.”
“Oh,” Bruce said, and then managed a faint smile. He gestured vaguely around his office.
“Actually, I was thinking, paraphrasing Churchill, that ‘never have so few been commanded by so many.”” The three visitors’ chairs in the office were occupied by Colonel Stevens, Capt. Helene Dancy, and It. Charity Hoche. Capt. Stanley S. Fine was leaning against the wall.
“I don’t see that it could be avoided,” Stevens said.
“No,” Bruce agreed, then: “I presume this is one of those things in which Miss Hoche has a special interest?”
Stevens nodded.
“Well, let’s get on with it, then,” Bruce said.
“You first, Charity, please.”
She didn’t seem surprised, but neither did she say anything.
“The way we do this, Charity,” Bruce explained, “is ‘in the military manner.”
That is to say, the junior member of this panel is asked for his… her… opinion first, so that it will not be influenced by that of more senior members.”
Charity nodded.
“I don’t see that we have any choice but to give Dick Canidy what he’s asked for,” she said, and then quickly added, “at least until we hear to the contrary from Washington.”
“That doesn’t address the question of authorizing him to try to get Fulmar and Professor Dyer out of the jail in Pecs,” Bruce said.
“I think we’ll be told what to do about that,” Charity said. Bruce looked at Stevens, who just perceptibly nodded his head in agreement.
“What he’s asked for, specifically, is the next available Hungarian-speaking team, thirty pounds of C-2, and twenty thousand dollars in mixed currency,” Bruce said.
“That’s what you mean?”
Charity nodded.
“That, and Captain Fine to step in as control.”
“We’ll start with that, then,” Bruce said.
“Unless I hear an objection, I will ask Fine if there is some reason he cannot, or thinks he should not, take over as control.”
He looked at Stevens, then at Helene Dancy, and finally at Fine.
“No, Sir,” Fine said.
“So ordered,” Bruce said.
“One thing, Stanley,” Stevens said.
“Charity is cleared for this. All the way.”
“Yes, Sir,” Fine said.
“I want to clarify that, Stan,” Bruce said.
“Charity is to be brought into anything connected with this that Colonel Stevens and myself are.”
“Yes, Sir,” Fine repeated.
“Well, why don’t you sit here,” Bruce said, “and take over this meeting?”
“I don’t mind standing, Sir,” Fine said.
“I’d rather walk around,” Bruce said, and gestured for Fine to sit down.
Fine sat down at Bruce’s desk, put a lined pad on the green blotter in front of him, and took a pencil from a dozen sitting, point up, in a gray pottery orange marmalade jar.
“Helene,” he said.
“You’ll take care of the money? Is that going to pose any problem?”
“We don’t have that much,” Capt. Dancy said.
“But I can have it by, say, nine in the morning.”
“And the C-2?”
“I’m sure there’s at least that much at Whifbey House,” Colonel Stevens said.
“There should be,” Helene Dancy agreed.
“But I’ll check.”
“That, then, brings us to the team,” Fine said.
“First,” Charity Hoche said.
“To the question of their documents. Canidy said Hungarian and/or Yugoslavian. If we can, I think we should give them both.”