John Craig nodded. “As a matter of fact, I did. I also learned that Benjamin Franklin—who knew a thing or two about spying, having been part of the Secret Committee created by the Second Continental Congress in 1775—actually said it first.”
“Impressive,” Canidy said drily. “And this little bit of trivia of yours has what bearing on D-day?”
“Well,” John Craig said, “the minute those proverbial three people hear the date for D-day, word spreads. To throw off the enemy, AFHQ is assigning at least four days as Husky’s D-day. The first one is Wednesday of next week. It’s what’s called ‘disinformation.’”
“I know what the hell disinformation is,” Canidy snapped. “As I’m sure you’ve been seeding that disinformation in your messages that we assume are being intercepted by our eager enemies. And the closer we get to Wednesday, the heavier your message traffic will become to give the illusion of a pending invasion.”
John Craig nodded. “You have no idea. Our commo room is really busy. We’ve also been spreading rumors around Algiers that that’s the date. With any luck the Krauts will man their guns next Wednesday awaiting a beach assault—and be met with only another lovely Mediterranean sunrise. Then we’ll repeat all that with the next date that AFHQ gives us. With more luck, they’ll think the date for the real D-day is just more disinformation and not show up.”
Canidy grunted. “Don’t hold your breath that that will happen.”
“Dick,” Stan Fine then said, “you didn’t hear it from me: It’s early July. No hard date yet.”
“We’re invading Sicily in six, seven weeks?”
Fine nodded.
“What about Corkscrew?” Canidy said. “It has to be right about now.”
The primary objective of OPERATION CORKSCREW was the destruction of Pantelleria’s airfields and radar installations considered a threat to the invasion of Sicily. Pantelleria, a thirty-two-square-mile island that was thirty miles east of Tunisia and sixty miles southwest of Sicily, had a normal population of about three thousand. Italian soldiers had quadrupled that.
CORKSCREW’s secondary objective was to gauge just how many bombs would be required to take the island—information that could then be used in the plans for taking Sicily.
“The heavy pounding starts Wednesday of next week,” Fine said.
“No shit? Or is that another bogus date?”
“It’s actual,” Fine said.
John Craig offered: “That makes the other disinformation not seem intentional. They will think they just misread or misinterpreted what we sent. Right date, wrong island.”
Canidy looked at John Craig.
“Believe it or not, I do know how that works,” Canidy said, then sighed. “Jesus! All this changes everything with Mercury Station.”
[THREE]
Aboard the Sequoia
On the Potomac River near Mount Vernon, Virginia
1703 30 May 1943
“You might want to check your line there, General,” the President of the United States said casually to the director of the Office of Strategic Services, gesturing with his silver-tipped cigarette holder at the fishing rod that had just barely flexed.
It was a warm, cloudless spring afternoon. William Joseph Donovan and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, sipping gin and tonic cocktails from squat fine crystal glasses, were seated in heavily varnished mahogany fishing chairs on the stern of the 104-foot-long Sequoia. The wooden motor vessel recently had been replaced as the Presidential Yacht by the 165-foot all-steel U.S.S. Potomac and passed to the secretary of the Navy on the condition that FDR, as he did now, could on occasion borrow her to conduct quiet meetings.
“For fishing expeditions,” FDR had explained to Navy Secretary Frank Knox, adding with a conspiratorial grin, “maybe even ones that actually involve a rod and reel.”
The Sequoia—running on only one of her twin diesel engines in order to slowly troll the fishing lures—made her way upriver after having cruised down to where the Potomac River flowed into Chesapeake Bay.
The sixty-one-year-old President, looking gaunt and a little tired, wore a long-sleeved white shirt, its cuffs rolled up to his elbows, and khakis, both starched but well wrinkled. A wide-brimmed floppy canvas hat shielded his pale face and scalp from the sun.
Roosevelt held up his glass in the direction of Mount Vernon, now visible on the southern bank.
“A toast to our first commander in chief,” the present commander in chief announced, “and spymaster. I trust you’re aware that George Washington set up the Continental Army’s first intelligence command.”
Donovan, a stocky, ruddy-faced, silver-haired Irishman of sixty, was similarly clothed but with a dark blue button-down shirt and no hat.