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 Secret–Presidential 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.