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“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 Oper
ation 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?”
After a moment, Canidy made a face that he understood, then said: “Change of subject: Have they come up with a D-day for Husky?”
“Which D-day?”
“There’s more than one? How can that be?”
“Right now, it’s next Wednesday.”
“Next Wednesday?” Canidy repeated, his tone incredulous.
Fine grinned and looked at John Craig van der Ploeg.
“Tell him, son.”
“You’ve heard,” John Craig began, “that ‘Three can keep a secret—’”
“‘If two of them are dead,’” Canidy finished. “You probably learned that in my Throat Cutting and Bomb Throwing course.”
