Fine-who was Jewish and did have a wife and three children waiting for him in Santa Monica, California-drained his coffee, then nodded appreciatively as he put the empty cup on the table.

"Trust me," Fine said, an edge to his voice, "that thought has crossed my mind more than a time or two." He paused, then in a more pleasant tone said: "And speaking of family, how is Ann?"

Canidy shrugged. "If she had her way we would be a family right now. I told her that this was not the time to get married. She kept a stiff upper lip, as our Brit cousins would say, but she's not overly happy with me right now."

Twenty-year-old Ann Chambers-a highly intelligent gorgeous blond southerner whose father's empire included nine major newspapers and more than twice that many radio stations-and her girlfriend had been injured in March when Luftwaffe bombs leveled Ann's London neighborhood. The friend had died from head trauma. Ann had suffered amnesia, and she and Canidy had only recently been reunited after Ann was found sixty miles north of London, in a barn that had been converted into a makeshift infirmary.

"I actually meant her health," Fine said.

"She seems fully recovered," Canidy said. "Operative word seems. The doctors have told her to take it easy for now. With her flat destroyed and housing tight, we're grateful to you that she could sublet the studio's apartment. She is very comfortable there, and starting to write again for her old man's news service."

Continental Motion Picture Studios quietly maintained a luxurious penthouse apartment in Westminster Tower, which overlooked Hyde Park, and was two blocks from the Dorchester Hotel. When Brandon Chambers heard that doctors said his daughter needed time to recover, cost for her room and board was not a consideration.

"It must have been hell wondering about her," Fine said. "I'm glad you know she's now comfortable."

Canidy clearly remembered the gut-wrenching feeling he'd had when he first saw Ann's flat leveled, and then the overwhelming emotions in Sicily when Tubes Fuller had handed him the message from Stan Fine announcing that Ann had been found-and was safe at OSS Whitbey House Station.

The helplessness I felt at Ann gone missing because of those goddamn German bombs came close to a simmering rage.

The thought of losing someone you deeply love triggers emotions more powerful than I ever imagined.

And then to think how the Nazis so savagely treat prisoners . . .

"Getting back to the goddamn Krauts," Canidy then added, "I saw more compassion, more respect for life and death when they took all of us in Saint Paul's lower school to the slaughterhouse to show us where hamburgers really came from."

Fine knew all about Saint Paul's. It was there that he had first crossed paths with Dick Canidy.

Stanley S. Fine had been a very young Hollywood lawyer-the vice president, legal, of Continental Motion Picture Studios, Inc. His responsibilities included keeping secret from the general public that "America's Sweetheart"-Continental's virginal movie star Monica Carlisle, born Mary Elizabeth Chernick-had not only been married to a German aristocrat and soon thereafter divorced, but that the union had produced a son by the name of Eric Fulmar.

After Eric's father returned to Germany, his mother had decided that Eric was the last thing she needed in her Hollywood lifestyle. She ordered Fine to ship her son to boarding school.

The headmaster of Saint Paul's School, Cedar Springs, Iowa, was one George Crater Canidy, Ph.D, D.D. It was said of the Reverend Canidy, a widower, that he wasn't simply devoted to the Episcopal school-he and Saint Paul's essentially were one and indivisible.

Reverend Canidy had a son about the age of Eric. Dick Canidy and Eric Fulmar quickly became buddies-and almost immediately seemed to be in constant mischief. Or worse.

Once, on the annual fall nature walk, Dick and Eric were horsing around, shooting wooden kitchen matches from toy pistols that were supposed to shoot suction-cup darts. The matches set a leaf pile on fire-and the Studebaker parked next to it went up in roaring flames.

Fine had had to rush to Cedar Rapids. He bought the owner of the destroyed automobile a new one. That calmed everyone, and freed the boys from the clutches of a fat lady at the Juvenile Authority. Even more important, it kept the whole escapade out of the newspapers.

Some six months later, just barely released from school probation, Eric and Dick were allowed-after repeated warnings of what would happen if there was anything but golden behavior-to join a field trip to the Iowa Cattlemen's slaughterhouse.

Reverend Canidy had not been at all thrilled with the idea of this particular educational activity, especially its gore, of course, which he considered beyond grisly. But he was an educated man, and knew that even the Bible depicted the gruesome sacrifices of animals. He also understood that young teenage boys should not be coddled, and finally gave his reluctant approval to the biology teacher who with great enthusiasm had offered to run the field trip.

The boys had indeed been fascinated with the facility, including the actual processing of the cattle, which the biology teacher had pointed out was conducted as humanely as possible. And with the exception of someone having unlatched a holding pen gate and a score of cows having to be herded back in-fingers were pointed, but Dick and Eric dodged all accusations-there had been no real trouble on the field trip.

The only problem had come that night in the school dining hall. By unfortunate coincidence the main dinner course served to students in both the upper and lower schools was spaghetti with a pulpy red tomato and meat sauce.

When Dick, and then Eric, covered their mouths and moaned a long and deep Mooooo!-and that got picked up by the older boys, who made it echo in the dining hall-many of the younger boys, their plates untouched, went to bed hungry that night. A couple, having rushed to the restroom when their faces went white, fell asleep with completely empty stomachs.

For the next week, Reverend Canidy saw to it that the chefs left red meat off all menus.

"Who is Mordechaj?" John Craig van der Ploeg repeated.

"Kapitan Mordechaj Szerynski," Canidy said, looking between van der Ploeg and Fine. "Code name Sausagemaker. He's a resistance leader in the Polish Home Army. Lost most of his family-including his teenage brother, who the SS dismembered last Christmas-in the Warsaw ghetto. Before I came here from OSS London, I helped with the team that was working with him. Ever hear of Sikorski's Tourists?"

John Craig shook his head.

"The prime minister of the Government of Poland in Exile is a general-a real warrior-by the name of Wladyslaw Sikorski. When Poland was invaded by Germany in '39, Sikorski fled with his army and navy to regroup. Now the ones who go back and forth to Poland supplying the resistance-with supplies provided by the OSS-call themselves Sikorski's Tourists. They, like the Poles trapped in Poland, revere him. He really is one tough sonofabitch."

John Craig nodded.

"Dick, what do you think are the real chances for the Poles?" Fine said.

Canidy sighed, then shrugged.

"Hell if I know, Stan. In the big picture, I just don't think anyone gives a rat's ass about liberating Poland right now." He waved with his coffee cup uphill, in the direction of Allied Forces Headquarters. "Not with all of AFHQ's effort going into the biggest picture-taking Sicily and Italy and, ultimately, Normandy."

Fine shook his head. "It's been more than five months since the Polish foreign minister gave those details on the concentration camps-and has anything really been done?"

"Done about what?" John Craig van der Ploeg said.

"Count Edward Raczynski," Canidy said, "gave a speech-'The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland'-to the United Nations. The SS runs concentration camps that work the stronger prisoners to death-the rest they send directly to death camps. There're at least a half-dozen camps in Poland alone. I think I brought one of the booklets that a London publisher reprinted with the speech. You should read it for your edification."

Canidy paused, drained his coffee, then added: "The nasty truth is that the Poles are really being screwed. Especially considering it's our Bolshevik buddies taking turns with the Krauts to exterminate every Pole they can when the two aren't bitterly fighting each other and snatching up parts of Poland for their own."

"The Katyn Massacre?" Fine said, making the question more of a statement.

"That's one nice example," Canidy said, his tone bitter. "Our so-called Ally."

"The mass murder of all those Poles," John Craig said. "I heard about that. The Russians really did it, huh?"

Just the previous month, in mid-April, Radio Berlin announced to the world that the Germans had discovered the mass graves of more than twenty thousand Polish intellectuals-army officers, businessmen, priests, and other leaders-executed in the Katyn Forest area of the Soviet Union, territory that Nazi forces had taken. The dates on papers found in the pockets of the dead ended a year earlier, in April 1940-which had been after the Soviet invasion of Poland and after Joseph Stalin's signing of an order for the execution of the entire Polish Officer Corps.

Reich Minister Joseph Goebbels, relishing the high propaganda value of the horror, declared to the world that what had come to be called the Katyn Massacre was proof that the USSR-and by association its Allies, especially the Americans and the British-were mass murderers.

"Red Joe," Fine said, "took offense at the accusation that the blood is on Soviet hands. He's 'outraged,' and has unequivocally denied any connection whatsoever. It's so blatantly a lie you'd expect him to profess not even knowing a Katyn Forest exists."

Canidy shook his head, disgusted.

"And getting back to all the slaughtering by the Germans," he said. "The evidence is overwhelming. That's bad enough, but now we know there is the threat of them using chemical or germ weapons on the battlefield. While Kappler, the SS-obersturmbannfuhrer in Messina, said that he was ordered to stage the howitzer rounds with the Tabun only as insurance, that hothead SS major in Palermo-the same prick who was running the yellow fever experiment that came from Dachau-Muller, that's the sonofabitch's name-he found the gas and had to have plans to use it."

"Fortunately you took it out first," Fine said.

Canidy met Fine's eyes, then went on: "Here's the nice scenario I mentioned to Donovan in London: We know the Germans are testing the Fi-103-those Fieseler 'aerial torpedoes'-and plan to lob them at London. What's to stop another hothead SS sonofabitch like Muller from thinking that with the SS already using gas in the death camps-as Poland's foreign minister unequivocally outlined before the United Nations-and already having it on howitzer rounds, what's the difference with putting the nerve gas on an aerial torpedo and aiming it at, oh, say, Number Ten and Westminster . . . ?"

Prime Minister Winston Churchill was using the annex at 10 Downing Street as his residence. The Palace of Westminster, England's equivalent of the United States Capitol, housed its Parliament.

Canidy added: "I'd be really surprised that that hasn't been considered, starting with that sonofabitch Hitler himself."

"Even if the bombs didn't hit directly on target," Fine said, "the scenario is . . ." His voice trailed off as he considered the ramifications. "Horrific comes to mind."

Canidy nodded. "It could-it would-bring Britain to its knees."

John Craig van der Ploeg's eyes grew wide.

Even John Craig gets the gravity of that, Canidy thought.

He motioned again uphill.

"And then what would the big guns do?"

Fine knew that by "big guns" Canidy meant the full effect of General Dwight David Eisenhower, commander in chief, Allied Forces Headquarters. At AFHQ (pronounced "aff-kew") Ike, with his second in command, General Sir Harold Alexander, had under him nearly five hundred thousand soldiers, sailors, and airmen of the U.S. Seventh Army and the British Eighth Army.

The AFHQ brass had taken over the luxurious Saint George Hotel, which was uphill from the OSS's headquarters. The Saint George was very much like the Sea View Villa, built in the same style in the 1880s, but twice the size and with a brilliant white masonry exterior (Pamela Dutton had her villa painted a faint pink). It was surrounded by well-kept gardens and neat rows of towering palm trees. Its impeccable interior featured grand gilded ceilings and walls adorned by thousands of multicolored hand-painted tiles. If it weren't for all the "guests" wearing military uniforms, it would take some convincing that there actually was a war going on.

The overflow of officers from the Saint George-particularly all the brass's aides-filled a score of nearby buildings. It would have taken the Sea View Villa had Stanley Fine not played the OSS's Presidential Priority card and told one of Ike's flunkies, a pompous ass by the name of Lieutenant Colonel J. Warren Owen, to go to hell.

That the OSS technically reported to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff-and that Top SecretPresidential did not directly apply to protect OSS Algiers Station-was something Owen either did not comprehend, or was too afraid-"More like too lazy," Canidy suggested-to confirm with JCS.

The big guns were of course the conventional forces. What the spies, saboteurs, and assassins of the Office of Strategic Services did was anything but conventional. Their unorthodox methods were held in contempt-leaving the OSS to more or less operate all on its own.

Eisenhower only recently had become a cautious believer in the OSS after being impressed with intel from Corsica-an Axis-occupied French island in the upper Mediterranean Sea-that he had not expected.

The OSS's first covert team inside enemy-occupied Europe had established a clandestine radio station, code-named PEARL HARBOR, on the island, and on December 25, 1942, began sending almost daily messages to OSS Algiers Station. Among other things, PEARL HARBOR reported that only twenty-five thousand Italians-and almost no Germans-had taken Corsica and done so with relative ease. The Vichy government, in true French fashion, had ordered its two army battalions on the island not to resist. After waving a white flag of surrender, the battalions were demobilized and their general put under house arrest. Then the Italians, with their limited strength, concentrated their resources on only the west and east coasts, leaving most of the island undefended.

Fine had told Canidy that it had taken some effort, but he'd finally gotten past Lieutenant Colonel J. Warren Owen to personally deliver PEARL HARBOR intel to Ike on a regular basis. Fine insisted on the hand delivery because he did not want anyone else taking credit for it-or, worse, later saying it had been "misplaced" when it in fact had been thrown away in a hotel garbage can.

"Ike likes what I'm feeding him," Fine told Canidy, "but he still wants to keep us on a short leash. With the next ops about to launch, he's anxious about what we and the SOE are up to."

"Speaking of whom," Canidy said. "I'm guessing we still have the same joyful relationship with our spook cousins."

Fine found himself chuckling. He then cleared his throat.

"Sorry," he said. "The last thing I should be doing is laughing. If you asked them, they would look you square in the face and say, 'Everything is bloody brilliant. We're all in this together, old chap!' But the fact of the situation is that it has not improved-and is damn laughable."

Wild Bill Donovan had worked closely with British intelligence-particularly a navy officer by the name of Commander Ian Fleming-when he began forming what eventually would become the Office of Strategic Services. Donovan understood that the Brits were more than mere veterans at the tradecraft of espionage-they arguably were the masters. It certainly didn't hurt that their Secret Intelligence Service had been formed in the sixteenth century.

In 1940, Winston Churchill had spun off the SIS's Section D, what it called its clandestine arm, to help create the Special Operations Executive. The prime minister ordered the SOE to set Axis-occupied Europe "ablaze" with guerrilla warfare.

Donovan had patterned-some said shamelessly stolen-a great deal of the unconventional warfare tactics for the OSS's Special Operations after the SOE, specifically its Research and Development Station IX.

When asked why, Donovan shot back: "Because they know what they're doing!"

From the first day that Stan Fine had arrived at OSS Algiers Station, the understanding had been that, in the spirit of Allied Forces cooperation, the OSS agents would train with the SOE agents at the SOE's "finishing school" at Club des Pins. The onetime swank beach resort had telegraphy and cryptography and jump schools, plus courses in the use of plastic explosives to blow up bridges, railroads, et cetera.

It made perfect sense in theory; both were honing the same skills of irregular warfare, and of course both were fighting for the same side.

In reality, inter-service rivalry reared its ugly head.

Fine went on: "As you'll recall, more and more of our guys were being turned away. And then I was told that due to a rush of incoming new SOE agents, there would be no room at all for my men."

"'Thank you very much, and don't let the doorknob hit you in the ass on the way out,'" Canidy said bitterly.

"That pretty much was the message."

"Thank God you started the Sandbox."

The Sandbox was the code name for a deserted Catholic school that was inside a high-walled compound at Dellys, about sixty kilometers to the east. Dellys was sort of a miniature Algiers-really not much more than a very big village-with its own port and ancient casbah. Fine had taken over the school and other property in and near Dellys to create an OSS Operational Techniques School. It had all the training classes that the SOE had at its Club des Pins, plus a half-dozen fishing boats and another dozen rubber boats that they used for putting agents ashore. There also were C-47 "Gooney Bird" aircraft for the agents to practice parachuting.

Fine grinned. "Actually, after you went out there in March and taught that ad hoc course on how the Germans run their Abwehr, we brought in some of the training material you had at Whitbey House. So they're now referring to the Sandbox as the Dick Canidy MTO Throat Cutting and Bomb Throwing Academy. It's everything the Brits have-and, even better, we have complete and total access to it. We wait for no one."

Canidy nodded. "And we damn sure shouldn't. I've had it with the OSS being treated as the redheaded stepchild of this war-by our so-called Allies and by our own military."

He sighed.

"Fuck it. You know what they say: Don't worry about things you can't control. Deal with what you can."

"Getting back to Ike," Fine said. "Every time I take him new intel, he makes a point to remind me of his order that none of our agents are to go into Sicily for fear we will blow Operation Husky."

Canidy grunted.

"Never mind that we have gone in-what?-four times," he said. "That I have twice-and destroyed nerve gas that could have been used against us. I don't guess Ike gave the OSS an Attaboy! pat on the back for that."

Fine shook his head. "Don't hold your breath waiting for that to come-even if we had told AFHQ about that."

"AFHQ was never told?"

He thought that over as he sipped his coffee.

"Well, I guess that makes sense. Ike's people repeatedly told us that there was no indication that the Krauts had the gas in the first place. So, why would that asshole Owen and Company want to believe us when we say that (a) not only did it exist, but (b) we took it out?"

"And, Dick, Owen would loathe being proven wrong. Which, frankly, would've been next to impossible for us to do without any physical evidence."

"Oh, there's evidence all right. It just happens to be a thousand meters down on the ocean floor."

Fine added: "It just wasn't a battle worth fighting."

"If Ike doesn't want us in Sicily, what are you telling him about Tubes and Mercury Station?"

Fine, stone-faced, looked at Canidy and said, "About who?"