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Gardner Cowles was the owner of the hugely successful magazine, as well as quite a number of other properties that competed directly with those of the Chambers Publishing Corporation.
Brandon Chambers would just as soon gouge out his eyes than see his daughter’s byline in Look, never mind having the skills of a Chambers making money for that sonofabitch Cowles.
And so it was that Ann Chambers had come to England to work for the Chambers News Service.
While her dashing Dick Canidy disappeared now and then on some secret mission to win the war, Ann had set about the serious business of capturing the war in words for those back home. She worked writing scripts for the newsman Meachum Hope on his Report from London radio broadcast. And she had developed her own human interest series—“Profiles of Courage,” newspaper articles about the extraordinary efforts of everyday citizens in war-torn England—and each week had sent out a new installment across the Chambers News Service wire.
Until her flat had been bombed during an attack of London by the Luftwaffe.
“You are aware,” Lieutenant Colonel Ed Stevens said, “that I have been in touch with Andy Marks, the CNS bureau chief here. Canidy gave him my name as a contact if Marks heard news of Ann.”
“I’m aware,” Colonel David Bruce replied agreeably.
Bruce walked a somewhat fine line with Stevens. He knew that Donovan had personally recruited Stevens, a West Pointer who had resigned his commission before the war in order to work in his wife’s wholesale food business, and who, because of that, had lived and worked in England. Donovan had noted how Stevens handled with ease the difficult upper-crust Englishmen and had tapped him for OSS London Station as much for that valuable skill as for his military expertise.
“As far as Marks knows,” Stevens said, “we’re no more than another bureaucratic layer for the Army Air Forces, a logistical office.”
Bruce grinned. “Which is not exactly untrue.”
“We spoke daily when Ann Chambers first went missing,” Stevens went on, “then went to weekly. Marks waited as long as he could—ten days—before passing the news to the home office. Read: her father. Marks had had reporters disappear for a few days for any number of reasons and had hoped that that was the case with Ann. He didn’t see any sense in worrying the family and had seen to it that there had been a bureau-wide effort not to draw attention to Ann’s absence. But then it was inevitable that before long someone got suspicious, and Marks said he couldn’t respond with a lie, so he took the bull by the horns….”
Bruce’s eyebrows rose.
Stevens quickly added, “I didn’t mean to suggest her father…”
“It’s all right, Ed,” Bruce said. “I know you didn’t.”
“Anyway, I feel responsible for where we are now.”
“How is that?”
“I told Dick that I would keep on top of what was going on with Ann and let Dick know of any news. I went with Marks to inspect the bombed flat. The Civil Defence rescue crews had combed through the rubble and come up with nothing. Which we felt was better than if they had found her in there. Anyway, we gave them Ann’s name and our names and numbers, and they promised to get in touch….”
Bruce shook his head slowly. “I know. A long shot.”
“Marks said he’d have his reporters ask around as they went about their day-to-day duties, covering the city. It seemed sufficient…especially as she hadn’t been found in the rubble…. People turn up all the time.”
“Assuming that she went off to wherever,” Bruce put in, “it’s curious that she has not sent word she’s fine. That she hasn’t perhaps suggests she’s not. But…it could be anything, Ed, and you shouldn’t take it personally.”
Both men sat in quiet thought for a moment.
“You know,” Stevens then said, “I’m surprised that her father didn’t get my name from Marks and then contact me.”
“I’m not. I’m more surprised that I don’t have a message from Bill Donovan or FDR, instead of a courtesy call from the ambassador. People like Brandon Chambers go right to the top of the food chain.”
Bruce stood, methodically brushed the creases from his trousers, then walked over to the windows and looked out at the gray day.
“Knowing that,” Bruce went on, “we had better, as you put it, take the bull by the horns.”
“Message General Donovan?” Stevens said.
“Certainly that,” Bruce said, turning and walking back to his desk. “Having the old man talk with Canidy is impossible. So I’d say we need to find Ann, and fast. Certainly before the FBI sticks its nose in it. It seems to be that or have her old man raise enough hell—or spill enough ink—to bring the OSS out of the shadows.”
“Hoover would love that,” Stevens said.
John Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had been silently furious when President Roosevelt shared with him his ideas of how the United States should deal with espionage and counterespionage. Hoover believed it to be the purview of his federal police force. But FDR had told him that (a) he was not only giving those duties (worldwide, with the exceptions of the Americas, which remained with the FBI) to what then was the COI (later the OSS), but (b) he was heading it with one of Hoover’s longtime rivals, William Donovan.
Ever since, Hoover had made every attempt to prove that the President had made a grave error of judgment…and to rub it in, which invariably involved quietly feeding the information to reporters.
