"Oh, really?
"Ann snapped.
Canidy looked over at her.
"I'm now going to find Fulmar," he said, rand tell him what interesting things we have planned to keep him from getting bored."
"Like what?
"Ann asked. And then she understood. She reached over and took his hand. "I guess I'm a selfish bitch, after all," she said.
"I was just thinking, better him than you." XXLL [ONE] OSS Load on gstatioa Borholysquarq Z100 Soura David Bruce was forced to admit that Dick Canidy's grasp of problems and his imaginative solutions to them were on a par with his own. Yet Canidy allowed emotion to enter into decisions, and he was prone to make them on his own authority, almost impulsively.
Canidy, for instance, had just now told Bruce that he had taken it upon himself to tell Fulmar all the details of the Dyer operation.
Fulmar should have been told no more than he had to know. What he needed to know was that he was about to be put inside Germany. What he was to do there was to be explained later.
Bruce could only guess what Canidy had actually said to Fulmar, but according to Canidy himself, he had told Fulmar that for reasons he himself did not know, it was important to bring Professor Friedrich Dyer out of Germany, via Hungary and Yugoslavia, that Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz and Muller were involved, and that when they reached the island of Vis, he would be there with the B-25 to pick them all up.
In an operational sense, the worst thing Canidy had done was tell Fulmar that he would be given a Q pill in case things went wrong. The Q pill was actually a tiny glass vial containing cyanide. It caused almost instant death when crushed between the teeth.
The Q pill was absolutely the last thing on an agent's checklist.
Agents wondered enough about getting caught without being reminded that the OSS was obligingly providing a Q pill just in case. Fulmar would now have a full ten days to dwell on the subject.
And until he actually crossed the German border, Fulmar had the unspoken right to change his mind. Someone else would be sent in, of course, but it would take at least two weeks--and very probably much longer--to recruit and train him. And he would not be as qualified as Fulmar, obviously, and besides, the schedule of events in Germany, Budapest, and Yugoslavia could not be put on hold.
"For God's sake, Dick," Bruce asked, trying to keep his temper under control, "why did you get into the Q pill with him?"
"Maybe, David," Canidy said, unrepentant, "I was hoping he would tell us to go fuck ourselves," Canidy said.
"He still may," Bruce said. "Presumably you've thought of that?"
"He'll go," Canidy said. "Ol' Wild Bill is very good at recruiting people who will put their head in the lion's mouth for God, Mother, and Apple Pie." Bruce stilled his reply at the last moment. Canidy was one of those who'd had his head in the lion's mouth.
"Where is he now?" Bruce asked.
"He went to see his mother," Canidy said.
"He did what?" Bruce asked, incredulously.
"He went to see his mother," Canidy repeated.
"I don't think that was a very good idea," Bruce said, aware that it was a marvel of understatement.
"Neither do I," Canidy said. "But he decided that he wanted to see her, and I decided that it wasn't any of my business, our business."
"From his dossier," David Bruce said, "I would have thought--God, she has treated him like dirt from the moment he was born--I would have thought he would never want to see her."
"You can kick dogs, David," Canidy said, "and a lot of the time they keep coming back, hoping maybe this time you'll scratch their ears."
"Where is this touching reunion to take place?" Bruce asked after a moment.
"Her troupe is doing a show at Wincanton. I sent him up there--with Fine--in the Packard. Fine knows her. He'll be able to handle anything that might come up."
"You hope," Bruce said.
""Hope springs eternal in the human breast, "' Canidy quoted. "You ever hear that, David?"
"I think that will be all, Dick," David Bruce said. "If anything unusual comes up, I'll expect you to let me know." Wincanton Air Corps Bane lseat, EAGLAND 1330 Hours Captain Stanley S. Fine and Lieutenant Eric Fulmar got lost on the way to Wincanton, despite a map Fine had the OSS Motor officer make up for him.
So it was late, nearly half past eleven, when they finally made it to the Wincanton Air Base Officers' Club, an old stone barn jammed full of the drunken aviators who had come to be entertained by the fifteen or twenty young women in Monica Sinclair's USO troupe.
As they made their way to where Monica was whooping it up with a handful of the base's brass, Eric attracted her attention. His pink and green uniform, with the paratrooper patch sewn on his overseas cap, stood out from the way most of the Air Corps men were dressed, in leather flight jackets.
And then Fine saw in her eyes and in her smile that she was more than a little drunk, and knew there was going to be trouble.
Stanley S. Fine had never liked Monica Sinclair. Some of the dislike sprang from the way she had treated Eric--storing him out of sight like a piece of furniture that didn't fit in with her present decor but couldn't be thrown out with the trash because it was a gift from someone important.
But as Fine gazed at her now, and she looked at him with recognition dawning in her eyes, he realized that his dislike wasn't based just on principle, He despised her personally. The phrase in the industry was that she believed her own press releases. But that was too simple. She wasn't the only one guilty of that, certainly. But Monica Sinclair not only believed she was truly' America's Sweetheart," she was convinced that anyone who didn't believe it was her enemy.
That belief meant that "America's Sweetheart" deserved to have her every wish indulged.
Shooting schedules never called for her to appear before half past nine in the morning. She was not at her best before that. Her dressing room trailer was a Taj Mahal on wheels. And she checked other dressing room trailers to make sure no lesser star had a better one than she did.
Max Liebermann had not officially given her cast control, but everyone knew she could be counted on to come down with an incapacitating migraine if she found on the set another actress who did not look at least five years older than she did.
When neither fans nor motion picture columnists were around, "America's Sweetheart" had a mouth like a sewer. That, too, was not unusual. Max Liebermann theorized that actresses used foul language the way infants used crying. But Monica Sinclair's foul tongue was legendary.
"Look who the fucking cat drug in!" Monica Sinclair exclaimed when she was sure it was indeed Stanley S. Fine swimming across the room in her direction.
She shrugged free of some arm that was around her shoulder and took two steps toward Fine.
"You were supposed to meet me in London, you asshole!" she said.
Some officer who had been looking down the front of her USO uniform now directed his somewhat drunken attention to Fine.
"Duty called, Monica," Fine said. "I came as soon as I could get away." "Bet your sweet ass you did," Monica said. Then she put her hands on his neck, pulled his face down to hers, and kissed him wetly, loudly, and with a tongue probing in his mouth.
Her eyes then fell on Eric. And they lit up. For a moment, Fine thought there was recognition. But then, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, he knew that what had made her eyes bright was not maternal affection.
"And did Stanley bring you for me?" she asked.
Eric nodded.
"Fine, you prick," Monica Sinclair said, "all is forgiven." She snaked her arms around Eric's neck, pulled his face to hers, and kissed him openmouthe. Then she rubbed her body lasciviously against him.
It took a moment before Eric was able to push her away, his face showing shock and revulsion.
She stared at him, then turned to Fine.
"Stanley, who is this fucking fairy, anyway?" Fine had seen the horror on Eric's face.
"Why, this is Lieutenant Eric Fulmar, Monica," he said. "Remember him?" That set off a violent gust of obscenity, If this is your fucking kike idea of a fucking joke, and so on. Screams followed, When she told Max what he had done to her, he had fucking well better pray he got killed in the war, because he was through in the fucking industry.
At that point, an officious Special Services officer appeared, demanding to know just who they were and what in the name of Christ they had said to Miss Sinclair.
"This officer, Major," Fine said, "is Miss Sinclair's son." The Special Services officer looked at Fine with dismay and loathing in his eyes.
"I can't even imagine why you would wish to embarrass Miss Sinclair this way, Captain," he said. "But that is the sick est joke I have ever heardls "What's sick about it is that it's not a joke," Fine said.
"You two will leave the club immediately!" Eric spoke for the first time.
"Piss off," he said contemptuously. Then he looked directly at his mother. "Hi, Mommy!" he said cheerfully. "Long time no see!"
"You ungrateful shit!" she hissed.
"Mommy!" Eric said, as if he were a little boy crushed by an unjust accusation.
Monica put her hands over her ears and howled.
The piercing shriek silenced the room.
Still holding her hands over her ears, Monica Sinclair screamed, "Get him the fuck out of here!" The Special Services officer, carried away with righteousness, put his hand on Eric's arm and tried to pull him away. Fine called out a warning. He knew that trying such a move with Eric was foolish under any circumstances, but under these it was suicidal. Eric Fulmar's jaws were working, and there were tears in his eyes.
With blinding speed, Fulmar struck the Special Services officer on the bridge of his nose with the heel of his hand. Fine was familiar with the blow. He had learned it from the Berbers in Morocco and had taught it to Jim Whittaker, who, as a result of his own Philippine experience, was the OSS's acknowledged master of lethal hand-to-hand combat.
Whittaker, in turn, had taught it to the English experts at Station X. Its effectiveness had awed even the highly skilled assassins of the SOE.
Blood gushed from the flack's eye sockets and his nostrils, and he fell screaming to the floor.
The other Air Corps officers in the room, as if in slow motion, slowly realized what was happening and came to the defense of the man screaming on the floor.
A large captain, with the massive neck and shoulders of a football player, advanced warily on Fulmar. And Eric, his eyes narrow, seemed to be matter of-factly considering the best way to put him down.
"Eric," Fine shouted, "for Christ's sake, no!" For a moment there was no response, but then, as if he were waking up, Fulmar looked over his shoulder at Fine, and then at the man on the floor, and then back at Fine. Sadness was now in his eyes.
"Shit," he said.
SHREE] "I don't give a damn what this says, frankly, Colonel," the Air Corps colonel commanding Wincanton Air Corps Base said as he handed It. Colonel Edmund T. Stevens's OSS identity card back to him, "my flight surgeon tells me the officer your man struck is liable to lose an eye, and I'm not about to sweep this under the rug."
"Colonel," Stevens said, "if you question my authority, please call General Smith at SHAEE"
"Bedell Smith?" the Air Corps colonel asked.
Stevens nodded. "I'm not going to call anyone, Colonel. I'm the base commander. This is my responsibility."
"Then I will call him," Stevens said.
Somewhat contemptuously, the Air Corps colonel waved at his telephone.
"Thank you," Stevens said politely. He picked up the telephone.
"Get me London military two zero zero five, please," he said, glancing as he spoke toward Stanley Fine, who was sitting next to a wall trying to be invisible.
A direct order from Eisenhower's deputy, the second-ranking American officer in England, was enough for the Air Corps colonel to release Lieutenant Fulmar into the custody of Colonel Stevens, but it did nothing to assuage his anger.
"Just for the record, Colonel," he said to Stevens, "this isn't the end of this. I'm going to bring charges--it's assault upon a superior commissioned officer--and if this lieutenant of yours isn't tried, I'm damned sure going to find out why."
"I deeply regret this incident, Colonel," Stevens said.
"You damned well should, Colonel," the Air Corps colonel said.
And then he left them in order to order Fulmar released from the base stockade.
"I deeply regret this incident, Colonel," Fine said when they were alone.
"I feel responsible for it." Stevens looked at him.
"You know what I was just thinking, Stan?" he asked, and went on without waiting for a reply. "We're training people, by the hundreds, to... use their hands the way Fulmar did. What's going to happen five, ten years from now? When the war is over? In barrooms when they get drunk? In bedrooms when they are provoked?" "I said, sir, that I feel responsible," Fine said.
"No more than I am," Stevens said. "Canidy told me you were going to bring him here. I didn't stop him. And there's something else.
Maybe I'm being perverted by all this. I would like to think it's out of character for me to think this way, but the unpleasant truth is that when I called Bedell Smith, I was angry. Not at Fulmar, but at the damned fool who laid his hands on him and caused all this inconvenience."
"What am I to do with him when we get him back?" Fine asked.
Stevens's eyebrows rose as he considered the question.
"Under the circumstances, I think you should do with him what Dick would do with him," he said finally. "Go out and get drunk with him.
" The Air Corps colonel appeared with Fulmar a few minutes later.
"I'm sorry about this, Colonel," Fulmar said.
"So am I, Eric," Colonel Stevens said.
"How's the guy I hit?" Fulmar asked.
"He's probably going to lose an eye," the Air Corps colonel said, "and I, Lieutenant, intend to see that you are brought before a court-martial."
"I'm sorry," Eric said. "I'm really sorry."
"Sorry won't wash, Lieutenant," the colonel said. "I'm going to do whatever is necessary to take that bar off your collar and put you in the stockade." Colonel Stevens gestured for Fine and Fulmar to precede him out of the room.
When Fine and Fulmar reached the Dorchester, where Canidy, at Stevens's order, was waiting for them, it was long after hours and the bar was closed.
There was nevertheless the sound of voices and feminine laughter behind the door. Fine knocked, and a bartender quickly let them in.