Canidy crumpled it into a ball and tossed it back to John Craig. He caught it and put it in his makeshift burn bag.

"Who knows?" Canidy said. "Maybe they just have to stay on station at Corsica another day. Doesn't really affect us either way right now."

John Craig then brought the radio back up, switched to SEND, and tapped out another short string of code. Almost immediately after throwing it to RECEIVE, he got a reply. Canidy saw that it was a brief one, because he didn't bother writing anything before shutting down the W/T.

"Algiers?" Canidy said.

"Yeah. They have nothing for us now. I'll keep checking back. And I will see what kind of traffic I can create with quote Tubes unquote so that when you bring the gear with the radio direction finder, we might have some signal to home in on."

"The last contact with Mercury was when?"

"Last week. I think May twenty-sixth. The message that had the half-million-something troops and stuff arriving in Sicily."

"We're about to see how much of that is bullshit. This place should be crawling with Krauts if half of it is true. Speaking of whom . . ."

He paused, looked over at the machine guns lying by the mattresses, then walked over to them and took the Sten and put it within reach of John Craig.

"Okay," he then said, "you should be fine until I get back. If for whatever reason I don't come back, you're going to have to be creative."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that because of your bad foot, you'll have to figure out how to get the hell out of here and to the Casabianca."

Canidy could see by the look on John Craig's face that he had not considered that possibility.

He ran his fingers nervously through his mop of black hair as he nodded thoughtfully.

Then he softly said, "How the hell do you do . . . well, do this?" He gestured around the room and up and down. "I mean, torture, killing, living in filth, and with a corpse . . . and God knows what else. Why?"

Canidy grunted.

"Standard answer? I don't have a damn choice. Last I asked, they won't let me out of the OSS. Not until we make some certain crazy sonsofbitches in Berlin and Tokyo history."

"No, that's not what I meant. You do have a choice. You had all kinds of valid excuses not to put this mission together, starting with Eisenhower declaring Sicily off-limits. And you're not supposed to be operational. You know too much. Yet . . . here you are."

Canidy said: "From all the Top Secret messages that you've seen in the commo room, you're not supposed to be operational, either."

"You're not answering my question."

Canidy looked at him a long time, then exhaled audibly.

"What? You want me to wave the flag and hum 'The Star-Spangled Banner'?" Canidy mimicked waving a tiny flag with his right hand and hummed, Oh say can you see . . . "Sure, there's patriotism. But it's really about not letting the bastards win-on a personal level, not letting the cruel sonsofbitches get to our families in the ways we've seen them do others."

He paused, saw John Craig nod his understanding, then went on: "Two years ago, with England on its knees, Churchill spoke at that London boys' school-what's it called? Harrow-and said something that's stuck with me: 'This is the lesson:' he said, 'never give in, never give in, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty-never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.'"

John Craig considered that and said, "You mentioned earlier about not taking counsel of your fears."

Canidy nodded. "Right. There's no damn time for that. It's all about 'This is the lesson.'"

John Craig's stomach then growled noisily.

"Got your appetite back?" Canidy said.

He reached into the suitcase and pulled out a small paperboard box. It had olive drab print that read: DINNER and US ARMY FIELD RATION TYPE K.

John Craig took the box and tore it open.

"I'm starving. Thanks."

He dumped the contents on the table beside the radio. He picked through the round tin of ham and cheese and the packets of crackers and sugar and salt and powdered orange drink mix. Then he stuck the Peter Paul Choclettos candies, Dentyne chewing gum, and the four-pack of cigarettes and matches in his pocket.

As he worked the tiny key to open the tin can, Canidy said, "You should stay away from those Chesterfields. I hear smoking cigarettes stunts your growth."

John Craig grunted. "That'd be the least of my worries right now."

"You're right. So, be careful with that radio. You do not want to be found. Where's your Q-pill?"

John Craig suddenly looked up from the food.

"You're serious?" he said.

"You're goddamn right I'm serious." He gestured at the Sten. "You can shoot your way out only so far. So you either save a couple rounds for yourself, or you bite the pill."

John Craig dug in his pants pocket and produced the inch-long brass tube that contained the rubber-coated glass vial of cyanide.

Canidy nodded as he held up his tube. "Do I need to remind you about what the bastards did to Mariano?"

As Canidy knocked again on the wooden door of the brick building, he saw that the padlock hasp was empty and open.

So someone is either in there-or didn't lock the damn door when they left.

He grabbed the doorknob and tried turning it. It was locked and just barely budged. But he saw that the door did move somewhat, indicating slop in the lock's tang. He rapped on the door once more, waited a count of fifteen, then pulled out his pocketknife. He slid the knife blade in the crack of the door beside the knob. The blade depressed the tang, pushing it back into the door, and the door swung inward.

He pulled his .45 out as he entered, then pushed the door shut behind him.

Just as the last time he'd been there, Canidy found the same pair of desks pushed together back-to-back in the middle of the room, a wooden office chair at each, both piled high with papers. A row of battered wooden filing cabinets stood against the near wall. And random clutter-boxes of half-eaten German rations, broken wine bottles, overflowing cans of trash-was everywhere.

He then heard the sound of a deep snore. It had come from the next room, which Canidy remembered being a smaller office. He carefully pushed open its door, looked around the room, then slipped inside.

The room held a single desk with a wooden chair behind it. Against the far wall was a couch with a massive human form on top.

Ah, one of the Brothers Buda.

Canidy approached and could see that he was lying on his back, with one hand holding a wine bottle by the neck to his chest. He had pulled down his coppola just enough so that the traditional Sicilian tweed flat cap covered his eyes.

Canidy knocked the coppola to the ground.

Okay, which one are you?

I think Tweedle Dumb . . .

He aimed his .45 at the puffy chest, then sharply nudged him in the ribs with his knee.

The fat man snorted loudly, then cracked open his right eye. Both eyes then popped wide open. They were bloodshot.

No, maybe it's Tweedle Dee.

"Remember me?" Canidy said, and smiled.

VIII.

[ONE].

Chemische Fabrik Frankfurt, Germany 1445 31 May 1943 In addition to his luxurious office that filled the entire top floor of the Berlin headquarters of Kappler Industrie GmbH, Wolfgang Augustus Kappler, as befitting a company's chief officer, kept a private office at each of his subsidiary companies. None, however, was as well appointed as that in his headquarters building. They were purposefully Spartan by design, meant to give the visiting chief executive a highly efficient space from which to conduct what more times than not could be a brutally cold business. Kappler believed that a chief executive of a multinational corporation belittled certainly himself, if not his subordinates, by working out of a common area such as a conference room.

As Wolfgang Kappler entered what he still considered to be his personal office, despite Chemische Fabrik having recently been nationalized, he thought, Battles are always best fought on home turf. And I have many, many battles yet to fight. . . .

Early that morning, Kappler, traveling on papers of highest priority issued by the Office of the Reichs Leader and signed by Reichsleiter Martin Bormann himself, had secured at the last moment a very small but private compartment on the first Frankurt-bound train out of Bern. Watching the springtime beauty of the Switzerland countryside go past had allowed him to consider without interruption all that he very well might have to do in short order. Then, at the German border, having that quiet time turned upside down by the arrogance of a Gestapo officer as he scrutinized Kappler's documents only served to put a point on it.

After finally arriving at the dreary Frankfurt Main Hauptbahnhof, he then came directly to his Chemische Fabrik office.

He wore a perfectly tailored dark gray woolen suit with an almost crisp white dress shirt, and matching burgundy necktie and pocket square. He had just put his black leather briefcase on the massive wooden desk when a plump fifty-five-year-old woman appeared at his office door. She had a very round face and wore her thin graying hair braided and rolled into a bun at the nape of her neck. She had on, over a basic white linen long-sleeved blouse, a plain brown woolen jumper dress, its hem falling almost to her leather flats.

Kappler knew that Bruna Baur was, like him, a devout Roman Catholic and, quite possibly, also an anti-Nazi. Especially after her only son, Otto Baur, fighting in vain with the Sixth Army at Stalingrad, had been killed in January. Bruna at first appearance seemed very simple. But Kappler knew that she was much brighter than most gave her credit for. She long had worked for him through Klaus Schwartz, and with Schwartz's departure she had more or less begun working directly for him.

"As you asked, I have Frau Kappler on the line for you," she announced. "I have placed a call to Herr Krupp's Berlin office. And Herr Hoss said he is on his way."

"Danke, Bruna," he said, taking his seat behind the desk.

"Herr Kappler?"

He looked up. "Yes?"

"It is good to have you back," she said in a genuine tone that showed she appreciated the gracious gentleman that he was.

He smiled.

"Danke," he repeated, then he lied: "It is good to be back."

As Wolfgang Kappler picked up the telephone receiver, he looked at it and thought, I do not know for certain if the line is being listened to by the SS, but Allen Dulles told me that I must assume everything I do is-"You cannot afford to take any chances whatever from this point forward."

And on the assumption that my conversations are being listened to, I believe I will mention whatever I can think of that will confuse whoever is out there listening.

Kappler was tired, but made himself use a chipper tone as he spoke into the telephone. "My darling! How good it is to hear your voice. How are you and Anna? . . .

"That is wonderful, dear. And, yes, I know it has been two weeks since we have talked. . . .

"I understand. But I was out of the country on business-actually in Portugual first, and just now back from Bern-and simply unable to call. But that is why I call you now. . . .

"No, I have had no communication with Oskar in many weeks. I'm sure he's all right, my dear, and busy with the war effort. We would have heard otherwise were that not the case. . . .

"Yes, of course, I cannot wait to see Anna and you, too, my love. I need to be at my Berlin office, and will probably be up there in a day or so. Please be sure not to go anywhere until we can see each other. . . .

"Yes, to you, too. Good-bye."

Thank God I kept that short, before she had a chance to possibly mention the Ruhr bombings.

I wonder if she is even aware of that? If not, that is why I want to be the one to tell her, as well as what I've told Oskar. . . .

He hung up the receiver, then stood and went to the large plate glass window. It had a reflective film on the inside that allowed for anyone in the office to look out but did not allow anyone on the manufacturing floor to see what or who was behind the window.

As he looked out over the factory floor, he heard behind him a light rap at his door and then a familiar voice.

"Herr Kappler?" Walter Hoss said, his uneven tone betraying his nervousness.

Kappler turned. "Walter. Please come in. How are you?"

Hoss walked to the desk. He was a small-framed, frail-looking thirty-five-year-old who in his neat but bland two-piece suit and tie looked like the overly organized accountant he had been before Kappler had promoted him. Kappler towered over him, and it was obvious that he was made uneasy by Kappler's intense green eyes that were surveying him hawk-like.

"I am fine, Herr Kappler. We, uh, we were not given word to expect you."

We? The royal "we"?

Has your new temporary chief officer title gone to your head?

"Did my Berlin office not call ahead?" Kappler said. "There were instructions to do so."

Actually, I did not make that call on purpose, Walter.

Surprise visits from the boss can be quite useful for a number of reasons.

"No, there was no word."

"So you said."