“We’re how far from Vis?” Fine wondered aloud.
“Four hours thirty,” Douglass said immediately.
“In the B25.”
Using his thumb and little finger as a compass, Fine measured the distance between Vis and Pecs.
“That’s about an hour and a quarter,” he said.
“Maybe a little less.”
“What about that ‘must take place at first light’ business?” Douglass asked.
“Jesus,” Fine said.
“You’re asking, how do we take off from Pecs in the dark?”
“Yeah,” Douglass said.
“But we don’t have to take off from Pecs. We can take off from here.”
“We don’t have the range,” Fine said.
“More than enough, if we sit down at Pecs on the way back,” Douglass said.
Fine was silent for a moment.
Then he said, “Message Pharmacist as follows. Team will be available for drop first light tomorrow.”
XII
lONE]
What Canidy had imagined was going to be adequate accommodation in the large trunk of Standartenfuhrer-SS Muller’s Opel Admiral quickly proved to be mildly, and then excruciatingly, uncomfortable.
Despite the generous proportions of the Admiral’s trunk, he could not stretch his legs without arcing his torso painfully, nor raise himself on his elbows without simultaneously lowering his head so that his chin rested on his upper chest.
And the thick goose-down comforters and pillows that the Countess Batthyany had put into the trunk to keep him warm and serve as cushions had not been as helpful as everyone had cheerfully, almost gaily, believed. The comforter had quickly crushed down under him, so that he could feel every ridge and indentation in the trunk floor. And the comforter he had wrapped around himself for warmth, and the pillows on which he had planned to cushion his head, made things worse than nothing at all, for they retained enough bulk to get in the way when he shifted his body again and again to relieve the strain on his muscles.
He became uneasy, nervous, worried, and he began to wonder if he had some previously unsuspected problem with claustrophobia. He reasoned that through and decided his nervousness was perfectly reasonable: He was in the dark, and nobody liked that.
More important, it was fifty-fifty that von Heurten-Mitnitz was wrong when he said he “rather doubted they would be stopped at all, or subjected to more than the most perfunctory examination if they were.” There was a fifty-fifty chance that the trunk lid would suddenly open and he would find himself looking up at a Black Guard, a Hungarian cop, or even a Gestapo agent. If that happened, he was not going to be in a position to do much about it. The Sten submachine gun Captain Hughson had given him in Vis was now in the hands of an admiring Yugoslav partisan. Canidy was armed now only with the Fairhairn and a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson.38, neither of which would be of any real use if the car was stopped and checked. If that happened, in addition to being nearly paralyzed by the goddamned trunk, he would be blinded by the sudden light and helpless.
There had been time to remember where he had gotten the snub-nosed38, and that hadn’t helped his morale either. Jimmy Whittaker had given it to him just before they’d taken off on the mission to the Belgian Congo. Moments before that, Jimmy had taken it away from the flight engineer. The flight engineer had been given the pistol by the Chief, OSS London Station, together with an order that he use it on Canidy the moment it looked as if Canidy was going to fall into enemy hands.
It was not difficult to proceed from that to the logical conclusion that if an elimination order–to keep him from failing into enemy hands–had been issued then, a similar order had doubtless also been issued to cover this circumstance.
He knew now more information that the Germans shouldn’t know than he had known when he and Jimmy had flown off to the Belgian Congo.
He wondered where Whittaker was at that moment. In Australia, more than likely, dazzling the Australian women with his good looks and all-pink uniform. Whittaker, he thought, should have been a sailor; he already had a girl in every airport.