“But you’ll have to arrange for me to see them, as soon as you can.”
“This afternoon?”
“Fine,” Donovan said.
“And let’s do it on our turf. Either at Berkeley Square or at Whithey House. I don’t want to give them the impression that I have been summoned for a dressing-down on their carpet.”
“What about the apartment in the Dorchester?”
“Fine,” Donovan said.
“And let’s do it over drinks and hors d’oeuvres. As fancy as we can manage” “I’ll get Helene Dancy to set it up,” Stevens said.
“Better yet, Charity. She’s at Berkeley Square.”
Donovan grunted approval.
“Ellis,” Stevens said, “there’s a radio up there.”
“I can hear it, Sir.”
“We’re Birddog,” Stevens said.
“Call Foxhunt, Captain Dancy’s monitoring it, and tell her to have Charity set up a fancy do for half past five at the Dorchester, details to follow.”
“Aye, aye, Sir,” Ellis said, and reached for the microphone.
“Napoleon said,” Donovan said, “that an army marches on its stomach. This one marches on hors d’oeuvres.”
Stevens chuckled.
“My real purpose, of course,” Donovan said, still conversationally, but very seriously, “is to be near what’s happening in Hungary. So you better start by telling me what is happening, Ed.”
“You got the message where Canidy asked for a team?”
Donovan nodded.
“It went in at 0500 this morning, or thereabouts,” Stevens said.
“We’ve had no word how that went.”
“This morning? God, that was fast! How did you arrange that?”
“We flew the team–specifically Stan Fine and young Douglass flew–the team to Cairo in one of the new B-17s we got for Operation Aphrodite.”
“And then used Canidy’s B-25 to drop the team? That’s why you involved young Douglass, to fly the B-25?”
“That was the idea, but something went wrong. The last radio from Wilkins said that the team was being dropped by a C-47, flown by Dolan and a C-47 pilot we borrowed from the Air Corps, and that the B-25 with Douglass and Fine in it was going to Vis.”
“Where’d you get the C-47?” Donovan asked. And then went on without waiting for a reply, “I didn’t know a C-47 had that kind of range.”
“It doesn’t,” Stevens said.
“I called Joe Kennedy and asked him about that, and he said that it’s possible to refill the main tanks of a C-47 from barrels of fuel carried in the cabin. He also said that it’s dangerous as hell, but apparently that’s what they have done. Wilkins borrowed the C-47 at Cairo.”
Donovan grunted.
“It’s time we thought of the worst possible scenario,” he said.
“That should be plural. The first thing that can go badly wrong–and I am frankly surprised this hasn’t already happened–is that they will find out who Fulmar and the Professor really are….”
“Colonel,” Stevens began.
“Let me finish, please, Ed,” Donovan said.
“The best we could hope for in that situation would be that the Germans would decide we wanted Dyer for what he knows about jet- and rocket-engine metallurgy. That they would not suspect that what we’re really after is getting nuclear-useful people out of Germany.”
“Yes, Sir,” Stevens said.
“The second thing that could go wrong would be for Canidy to be captured.
Quite aside from what else he knows, I think we have to consider that the Germans know full well who he is–that he’s the number three here–and would decide that we are either very interested in Professor Dyer, or, I’m afraid, that there is more to all this activity than is immediately apparent.”
Stevens didn’t reply.
“I think I have to say this, Ed,” Donovan said.
“On reflection, I think I made an error in judgment. I think what I should have ordered–to cut our losses to the minimum–was to give the Germans Fulmar and the professor.”
Stevens didn’t reply.
“Or alternatively, to arrange for them to be eliminated. On reflection, that’s what should have been done. There are two ways to do that. The first would be to message Canidy to do it. I don’t know if that would work. If he went in there without orders, in direct defiance of orders, I don’t think we can expect him to obey any other order he doesn’t like.”