this.”
“I shall, I shall.”
David caught the reflection of the sun on the mirror and beamed it up to a northern hill. He made a series of motions with his wrist, and the metal plate moved back and forth in rhythmic precision.
Seconds later there was a reply from halfway up thehighest hill in the north. Flashes of light shafted out of an infinitesimal spot in the brackish green distance. Spaulding turned to the others.
“We’re not going to Beta,” he said. “Falangist patrols are in the area. We’ll stay here until we’re given clearance. You can relax.”
The heavyset Basque put down the knapsack mirror. His companion still focused his binoculars on the field several miles below, where the American and his three charges were now seated on the ground.
“He says they are being followed. We are to take up counterpositions and stay out of sight,” said the man with the metal mirror. “We go down for the scientists tomorrow night. He will signal us.”
“What’s
he
going to do?”
“I don’t know. He says to get word to Lisbon. He’s going to stay in the hills.”
“He’s a cold one,” the Basque said.
DECEMBER 2, 1943, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Alan Swanson sat in the back of the army car trying his best to remain calm. He looked out the window; the late morning traffic was slight. The immense Washington labor force was at its appointed destinations; machines were humming, telephones ringing, men were shouting and whispering and, in too many places, having the first drink of the day. The exhilaration that was apparent during the first hours of the working day faded as noon approached. By eleven thirty a great many people thought the war was dull and were bored by their mechanical chores, the unending duplicates, triplicates and quadruplicates. They could not understand the necessity of painstaking logistics, of disseminating information to innumerable chains of command.
They could not understand because they could not be given whole pictures, only fragments, repetitious statistics. Of course they were bored.
They were weary. As he had been weary fourteen hours ago in Pasadena, California.
Everything had failed.
Meridian Aircraft had initiated—was
forced
to initiate—acrash program, but the finest scientific minds in the country could not eliminate the errors inside the small box that was the guidance system. The tiny, whirling spheroid discs would not spin true at maximum altitudes. They were erratic; absolute one second, deviant the next.
The most infinitesimal deviation could result in the midair collision of giant aircraft. And with the numbers projected for the saturation bombing prior to Overlord—scheduled to commence in less than four months—collisons
would
occur.
But this morning everything was different.
Could
be different, if there was substance to what he had been told. He hadn’t been able to sleep on the plane, hardly been able to eat. Upon landing at Andrews, he had hurried to his Washington apartment, showered, shaved, changed uniforms and called his wife in Scarsdale, where she was staying with a sister. He didn’t remember the conversation between them; the usual endearments were absent, the questions perfunctory. He had no time for her.
The army car entered the Virginia highway and accelerated. They were going to Fairfax; they’d be there in twenty minutes or so. In less than a half hour he would find out if the impossible was, conversely, entirely possible. The news had come as a last-minute stay of execution; the cavalry in the distant hills—the sounds of muted bugles signaling reprieve.
Muted, indeed, thought Swanson as the army car veered off the highway onto a back Virginia road. In Fairfax, covering some two hundred acres in the middle of the hunt country, was a fenced-off area housing Quonset huts beside huge radar screens and radio signal towers that sprang from the ground like giant steel malformities. It was the Field Division Headquarters of Clandestine
“I shall, I shall.”
David caught the reflection of the sun on the mirror and beamed it up to a northern hill. He made a series of motions with his wrist, and the metal plate moved back and forth in rhythmic precision.
Seconds later there was a reply from halfway up thehighest hill in the north. Flashes of light shafted out of an infinitesimal spot in the brackish green distance. Spaulding turned to the others.
“We’re not going to Beta,” he said. “Falangist patrols are in the area. We’ll stay here until we’re given clearance. You can relax.”
The heavyset Basque put down the knapsack mirror. His companion still focused his binoculars on the field several miles below, where the American and his three charges were now seated on the ground.
“He says they are being followed. We are to take up counterpositions and stay out of sight,” said the man with the metal mirror. “We go down for the scientists tomorrow night. He will signal us.”
“What’s
he
going to do?”
“I don’t know. He says to get word to Lisbon. He’s going to stay in the hills.”
“He’s a cold one,” the Basque said.
DECEMBER 2, 1943, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Alan Swanson sat in the back of the army car trying his best to remain calm. He looked out the window; the late morning traffic was slight. The immense Washington labor force was at its appointed destinations; machines were humming, telephones ringing, men were shouting and whispering and, in too many places, having the first drink of the day. The exhilaration that was apparent during the first hours of the working day faded as noon approached. By eleven thirty a great many people thought the war was dull and were bored by their mechanical chores, the unending duplicates, triplicates and quadruplicates. They could not understand the necessity of painstaking logistics, of disseminating information to innumerable chains of command.
They could not understand because they could not be given whole pictures, only fragments, repetitious statistics. Of course they were bored.
They were weary. As he had been weary fourteen hours ago in Pasadena, California.
Everything had failed.
Meridian Aircraft had initiated—was
forced
to initiate—acrash program, but the finest scientific minds in the country could not eliminate the errors inside the small box that was the guidance system. The tiny, whirling spheroid discs would not spin true at maximum altitudes. They were erratic; absolute one second, deviant the next.
The most infinitesimal deviation could result in the midair collision of giant aircraft. And with the numbers projected for the saturation bombing prior to Overlord—scheduled to commence in less than four months—collisons
would
occur.
But this morning everything was different.
Could
be different, if there was substance to what he had been told. He hadn’t been able to sleep on the plane, hardly been able to eat. Upon landing at Andrews, he had hurried to his Washington apartment, showered, shaved, changed uniforms and called his wife in Scarsdale, where she was staying with a sister. He didn’t remember the conversation between them; the usual endearments were absent, the questions perfunctory. He had no time for her.
The army car entered the Virginia highway and accelerated. They were going to Fairfax; they’d be there in twenty minutes or so. In less than a half hour he would find out if the impossible was, conversely, entirely possible. The news had come as a last-minute stay of execution; the cavalry in the distant hills—the sounds of muted bugles signaling reprieve.
Muted, indeed, thought Swanson as the army car veered off the highway onto a back Virginia road. In Fairfax, covering some two hundred acres in the middle of the hunt country, was a fenced-off area housing Quonset huts beside huge radar screens and radio signal towers that sprang from the ground like giant steel malformities. It was the Field Division Headquarters of Clandestine
Similar Books
