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Canidy frowned.
“No, Stan, we don’t.”
“And we don’t know, really, if there was gas and if it burned, and if it did burn what damage it caused.”
“No, and no, and no.”
“So small wonder that my new friend Lieutenant Colonel Owen says no one on Eisenhower’s staff believes any of this.”
“They don’t think that we found the nerve gas,
” Canidy asked, “or they don’t believe that it exists?”
“Both, as best I can tell,” Fine said. “I’m having a little trouble discerning exactly what to them is worse: one, that they don’t know about it or, two, that we, you, do. Regardless, it’s clearly caused some concern at AFHQ, enough to merit our personal visit from this pompous Owen.”
“Does that mean they’re actually going to act?”
Fine grunted derisively.
“Hardly. That, again as best I can tell, was the purpose of the visit. By definition, not to mention by Ike’s supreme order, AFHQ speaks for all Allied Forces here, the Brits included. And AFHQ’s position is that they have the situation under control, thank you very much for your concern. Or, as Owen put it, ‘Ike asked me personally to thank you for your input.’ Which, basically, was a smack at the OSS, translation being: ‘How could you new kids on the block possibly have anything over the British who’ve been playing the spy game for centuries?’”
Canidy shook his head. He knew that the early beginnings of what would become the British Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6, could be traced back to when Henry VIII sent agents slinking around Europe.
“Christ!” Canidy flared. “Ed Stevens warned me about that sonofabitch. Said he was glad Owen wasn’t nosing around London Station anymore. Now I know why. I despise aides who love reminding you at every opportunity who they work for—worse, who they speak for, therefore their words carry the same power as their boss’s.”
Lieutenant Colonel Edmund T. Stevens was David Bruce’s number two at OSS London Station. A West Pointer—not a diplomat with an assimilated military rank—Stevens understood Canidy as an operative and thus held a far higher opinion of him than did Bruce. Fine was acutely aware of the dynamics of all this, as he had served as Stevens’s deputy prior to being sent to OSS Algiers.
Fine nodded. That certainly had been his experience with Lieutenant Colonel Warren J. Owen. He had also observed how Owen had used it as a sort of double standard.
When delivering orders from Ike that would be well received, Owen would agree with you that the man was brilliant and that he had no doubt whatsoever in his mind that you would perform admirably in the execution of the orders.
But when the orders were not what anyone wanted to hear—let alone eager to execute—Owen delivered them with the proverbial ten-foot pole while quietly agreeing with you that “the old man has lost his mind, but what can I say except that his orders are his orders and don’t shoot the messenger, and all that.”
And that was definitely how he just presented himself today…merely a messenger.
Fine wondered how a wet-behind-the-ears Warren J. Owen could have schlepped his books through Harvard Yard for four or more years and completely missed every damn course that could have created in him some—any—backbone.
Being a Harvard-trained lawyer, Fine personally knew plenty of graduates of that great institution, each of whom had come out with enough character for five men—FDR certainly chief among them. People with conviction, ones who did not use their Hah vard sheepskin as evidence enough of their stellar status in the rarefied air of civilized society.
Still, Fine figured that Owen had to have learned something worthwhile along the way—Maybe from advanced courses in How to Cover Your Ass by Always Citing Regulations?— or Eisenhower would not keep him around.
Canidy looked curiously at Fine.
“What’re you thinking about, Stan?”
Fine smirked.
“What a spineless bastard Owen can be,” he said, then paused. “Grudgingly, however, I have to give the guy credit. His capacity for speaking at great length but actually saying nothing is remarkable.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was here for almost an hour, and the only thing that I can tell you that I know he said for sure was that they had your information and that they had the situation under control. He shared no information from their intel. We could have just as easily been discussing the weather, for all I got out of it. Actually, now that I think of it, he did spend an annoyingly disproportionate amount time talking about the heat here.”
Canidy laughed. Then he shook his head.
“What is it that Donovan says?” Canidy said. “‘If it wasn’t for the fighting amongst our own, I’d have had this war with the real enemy won long ago.’”
“Something like that,” Fine said, grinning. “I shouldn’t smile. It’s not funny at all.”
