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Canidy thought the overcoat more than adequately concealed what he probably held underneath—a Thompson .45 caliber submachine gun. The man looked inside the vehicle, nodded at Ellis, then disappeared back in the hedgerow.
A moment later, the double gate swung inward, Ellis pulled forward, and just as soon as the car was inside, the gate doors swung closed again.
Ellis followed the cobblestone driveway back to the five-car garage, which was called the “stable” because that was what it had been before being converted to hold automobiles. He parked the car, then went to the trunk and retrieved Canidy’s duffel.
“I’ll get that, Chief,” Canidy said, holding out his hand.
“I can use the exercise,” Ellis said, waving him off. “Besides, I know how it feels when you get off that plane from London.”
“Nothing a good belt won’t fix,” Canidy said.
They walked up to the mansion, and Ellis opened the door that led into the kitchen, then followed Canidy inside.
It was a very large space—filled now with the delightful smell of onion and garlic sautéing in olive oil—and had the industrial-sized stoves and cookware and the stocked pantries and huge refrigerators that one would expect to find in a restaurant. And it was noisy.
A short, rotund, olive-skinned man in his fifties, wearing a white chef’s hat and coat, was loudly directing a staff of four, waving a large knife as his pointer. Before him on the marble counter were two large uncut tender-loins of beef on a cutting board.
“Chief Ellis!” the chef, now waving the knife at him, said in a deep, thick accent that Canidy guessed was Italian or maybe Sicilian. “You don’t interfere!”
“Just passing through, Antonio, just passing through,” Ellis replied. “Say hello to Major Canidy.”
Chef Antonio approached Canidy, stopped within five feet, put his hands stiffly to either side—the knife still held in the right one—and in an exaggerated fashion looked down at his feet for a long moment, then up and at Canidy.
“It is my great honor, Major,” he said formally.
Then he glanced at Chief Ellis and said to Canidy, “Chief Ellis is banned from my kitchen. He interferes, and food disappears.” He motioned back and forth over his round belly to illustrate.
Canidy laughed.
“It is my pleasure—Antonio, is it?” Canidy noticed that the chef beamed appreciatively that he had addressed him correctly, then went on: “And you’re right, Antonio. I’ve yet to meet a Navy man you can trust around food or booze. Speaking of which”—he looked at Ellis and nodded toward the heavy wooden door on the other side of the kitchen—“I’m going to get a taste of the latter and take it to my room.”
“Your bag will be waiting when you get there. And I took the liberty of having the staff clean and press the suit you left here. Might be a good idea to dress for dinner. The boss said to expect him about six o’clock.”
Canidy nodded. “Thank you, Chief,” he said sincerely. As he went though the door, he added, “It’s always wise to dress for what might be one’s last meal.”
[ ONE ]
Q Street, NW
Washington, D.C.
1755 5 March 1943
Dick Canidy left his room on the third and uppermost floor of the north wing of the mansion and walked down the long hallway. He had had difficulty getting the top button of his heavily starched dress shirt buttoned, and, when he finally did, he could not believe how tight the goddamned shirt collar felt. He wondered if the cleaning staff had done something terrible to his shirt—at one point questioning if it was even his shirt—then decided it was simply a very heavy starching that likely caused some shrinkage. Whatever the reason, the collar was extremely stiff and extremely uncomfortable and so he worked his necktie back and forth to loosen it, then squeezed fingertips inside the collar on either side of his neck and gently pulled, stretching the material.
That seemed to provide some comfort, and so he carefully snugged up his Windsor knot just enough to hold it in place but not so tightly as to cancel out what he’d just accomplished. He then closed one button on his dark gray, single-breasted Brooks Brothers suit jacket, surveyed himself in the enormous, etched-glass oval mirror hanging at the end of the hallway, then went down the wide stairway.
One of the heavy wooden double doors to the library was partially open and Canidy entered through it, closing it behind him with a squeak from its heavy brass hinges.
It was a huge room paneled with deeply polished hardwoods that held large oil paintings of family portraits of generations of Whittakers. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves w
ere filled. The dark wooden floor area was segmented by four large Oriental area rugs of equal size, on each of which were the same heavy leather couches and armchairs with overstuffed ottomans arranged facing inward, the design creating a quad of individual areas.
On the farthest wall, above and on either side of the ornate brick fireplace, which crackled with a just-beginning-to-burn fire, there were mounted trophies of great animals—among them a lion, a wildebeest, a zebra, and a pair of spectacular horned heads that Canidy seemed to recall were commonly known as Greater Kudus, which he thought was an antelope or such—in a gallery, near which a rollaway bar service had been positioned.
The bar was Canidy’s immediate destination and the soles of his leather shoes made a resounding thump-thump-thump in the quiet room as he crossed the wooden floor to reach it.
The service contained a wide selection of spirits, light and dark and very expensive, as well as aperitifs and two brands of VSOP cognacs he had never heard of. Canidy found what he was looking for—a delightful twenty-year-old single malt made by the Famous Grouse folks—and he poured himself a double, neat, in a crystal tumbler.
