“Canidy is not a fool,” Stevens said loyally.
“Sometimes I wonder about that,” Donovan said.
“The second way to ensure that the Germans don’t get to question Fulmar and the professor is to bomb St. Gertrud’s prison.”
“Canidy’s thought of that. He asked for Composition C2.”
“I meant by aircraft,” Donovan said “A raid on Budapest. Failing to reach the target, a squadron of B-17s would bomb an alternative target. A target of opportunity. Pecs. That happens all the time.”
“That’s a little far-fetched, isn’t it?” Stevens said.
“It’s laid on for tomorrow,” Donovan said.
“Presuming the weather permits.
If not tomorrow, the day after. I have been assured–there is only minimal antiaircraft around Pecs, they can go in low–that there is a seventy-five-percent chance that the prison can be taken out completely. Totally destroyed.”
“My God!”
“You know what’s involved with this,” Donovan said.
“I don’t see I have any alternative. Do you?”
“No, Sir,” Stevens said after a moment.
“With that scenario,” Donovan said, “there is the possibility that the team, and Canidy, can get out.”
“If he does,” Donovan said, “by the time I’ve finished with him, he may wish he was still in Hungary.”
“Sir,” Stevens said.
“From his perspective, I’m sure he thought he was doing the right thing.”
After a moment, Donovan said, “I’m surprised to hear you say that, Ed. I thought by now you would have figured out that ‘the right thing’ has absolutely no meaning for the OSS. We do what has to be done, and’right’has absolutely nothing to do with that.”
He raised his voice.
“You can take us to Berkeley Square now, please, Ellis.”
When they got there, Captain Helene Dancy was waiting for them with a just-decrypted message:
OPERATIONAL IMMEDIATB
FROM STATION VIII FOR OSS LONDON
C47 THREE HOURS OVERDUE HERE STOP TOTAL FUEL EXPENDITURE
OCCURRED MOT LATER THAM 0800 LONDOH TIME STOP MUST PRESUME
AIRCRAFT LOST STOP INASMUCH AS SUCCESSFUL DROP SIGNAL
ONRBCEIVED MUST PRESUME FAILURE STOP UNABLE ESTABLISH
CONTACT YACHTSMAN OR PHARMACIST STOP ADVISE STOP
PHARMACIST II
Donovan read it, then handed it to Stevens.
The C-47 with Dolan and Darmstadter was lost. And the worst possible scenario: before they had been able to drop the OSS team.
“I think you’d better radio him to come home,” Donovan said.
“And message Wilkins to arrange for a ferry crew for the B-17.1 don’t want to lose that, too.”
[THREE]
127 Degrees 20 Minutes West Longitude
The Drum was on the surface. In these waters, off the eastern shore of Mindanao, the risk of a submarine on the surface being spotted by Japanese aircraft and patrol boats was almost unacceptable. But surfacing had been necessary. There was no way to attempt to contact the American guerrilla radio station from a submerged boat.
In these circumstances, when the life of his boat was literally at stake, It.
Commander Edwin R. Lennox ordinarily would have exercised command from the bridge on the conning tower, where he could make the decisions (including the ultimate decision: to dive and run or stay and fight). But It. Bill Rutherford, the Drum’s exec, was on the bridge and had the conn, and Lennox was below, leaning against the bulkhead. He, Captain Whittaker, and It. Hammersmith were watching as Radioman Second Joe Garvey tried to establish contact with U.S. forces in the Philippines.
Once he had learned that Joe Garvey was not really a motion-picture photographer, Lennox had wondered how good a radioman Garvey could be–he looked to be about seventeen years old–and how the boyish sailor was going to fare when they put him ashore on Mindanao.
The first question had been answered when they had been under way only a few days. The Drum’s chief radioman, into whose care Garvey had been entrusted, a salty old submariner not given to complimenting his peers, had volunteered the information that “Garvey really knows his stuff.” From the chief radioman, that was tantamount to comparing Garvey to Marconi.
Lennox had noticed the two of them together frequently after that, with the innards of a radio spread out in front of them, and he had overheard several of their conversations, of which he had understood very little.
But he understood the problem Garvey and his chief radioman were trying to solve. The first part of it was that the American guerrillas were operating a homemade radio, and establishing contact with it using the radios available on the Drum might prove difficult.
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