Again Albright didn't reply.
«Yes or no, Colonel?» Donovan asked, not unkindly.
After a perceptible hesitation, Albright replied, «Colonel, to repeat myself, I don't like to speculate about such matters.»
«Yes or no?»
«If I have your word, Colonel, that you will not ask me for a name?»
«You have my word.»
«Yes, sir, I think I could make a good guess who would send such a message.»
«But you won't give me the name?»
«That's correct.»
«I could get General Adamson in here and have him order you to give a name. For God's sake, Albright, we're talking about the compromise of magic.»
Albright didn't reply.
«If you refused a legal order from General Adamson, you would, as I'm sure you realize, be opening yourself up for disciplinary action?»
«Any accusation—and that's what it would be—I would make without knowledge of the facts would ruin someone's career, even if I was wrong. In that circumstance…«
«Wait here, please, Colonel,» Donovan said. «I'll be back in a moment.»
«If you're going for General Adamson, Colonel,» Colonel Albright said, «I can probably save you time. I won't answer the question from him, either.»
«Just wait here, please, Colonel,» Donovan said.
«I feel like Diogenes,» Donovan said when he walked into the transcription room. «I've just found an honest—read, ethical—man.»
«In the Navy, they call that loyalty upward. It's commendable,» Admiral Leahy said. «But is this the exception that proves the rule?»
«The question is,» Pickering said, «did Albright know about the heads-up? If he did and didn't report it, he's wrong. If he didn't, the question is what would he have done if he did know about it.»
«Do you think he knew, Pickering?» Leahy asked.
«No, I don't,» Pickering said thoughtfully, and only then remembered to add, «Sir.»
Leahy pointed at Second Lieutenant Hart.
«I should have asked that question of you first, son,» he said. «So your answer would not be colored by hearing what General Pickering said.»
«He would have told somebody, sir,» Hart replied. «He guards magic like a lioness guards her cubs. And he was almost like one of us, sir. That message could have fucked up McCoy and Zimmerman. Whatever it cost him, he'd have done whatever he had to do to keep that from happening.»
«General Rickabee?»
My God, I forgot he's here
, Pickering thought, actually surprised to see him, and even more surprised to realize that he had been there all the time.
And he has never opened his mouth.
Does that mean he was cowed by Donovan and Leahy?
Or that he had nothing to say? With the implication he approved of the way Donovan has conducted the questioning?
«Admiral, I'd bet on Albright,» Rickabee replied. «He knows when to keep his mouth shut.»
So much for my theory that Fritz is cowed by Admiral Leahy.
«Colonel Donovan?» Leahy asked.
«If I had to bet on it, sir—and that's what we're doing, isn't it? Taking a chance with other people's lives?—I don't think Albright knew, and I think if he knew. he would have done whatever had to be done.»
«That makes it unanimous, gentlemen,» Admiral Leahy said.
«So what do we do now?» Pickering asked. «The way I read Colonel Banning's back channel, anything we send over the Special Channel to Chungking will be read by Dempsey and/or his deputy.»
«Can we get something to your station chief in Chungking, Donovan, with any assurance that it won't be read by anyone else?» Leahy asked.
«I know very little about the Chungking Station, or how it operates,» Pickering said coldly. «The first time I heard we have—more correctly, that I have—an OSS station in Chungking was in Banning's Special Channel.»
«You have station chiefs all over the Pacific, General,» Donovan said. «Including one in Chungking. You were supposed to be briefed on that. I presumed that you had been.»
«Who was supposed to brief me, your Deputy Director (Administration)?» Pickering asked sarcastically.
«As a matter of fact, yes.»
«Well, goddamn it, I wasn't,» Pickering said. «Now I'm starting to wonder what else I should know that I haven't been told.»
«Your position, Colonel Donovan,» Leahy asked, «is that General Pickering's—what shall I say, 'inadequate briefing'?—was another failure on the part of your Director for Administration, and that until just now, you knew nothing about it?»
«It's a failure on my part, Admiral,» Donovan said sincerely. «It was my responsibility to make sure that
my
DDA did what he was supposed to do. And I just didn't do it.»
«What's the damage assessment?» Leahy asked, looking at Pickering.
«Reading between the lines of Colonel Banning's back-channel, Admiral, what he's done has told McCoy and Zimmerman to make themselves scarce while he waits to see what I'm going to be able to do for them.»
«There was supposed be a message to the Chungking station chief giving him a heads-up that Banning and the others were coming,» Donovan said.
«By
name
?» Admiral Leahy asked softly. But there was enormous menace in his voice.
«No, sir,» Donovan said. «The standard phraseology would be 'you will be contacted by an officer whose orders will be self-explanatory,' or words to that effect.»
«Was this message sent?» Leahy asked.
«What difference would that make?» Pickering snapped. «Banning wasn't told about an OSS station chief.»
Leahy gave him a dirty look.
Donovan picked up a telephone and dialed a three digit number. «I'm in the transcription room,» he ordered. «I want a copy of every message sent to Chungking since we became involved with Operation Gobi, and I want them right now.»
«Has this officer, whose name I still don't know, been made aware that I was appointed Deputy Director (Pacific)?» Pickering asked sarcastically.
«General, make a very serious attempt to put your anger under control,» Admiral Leahy said, almost conversationally, but the enormous menace was again present.
«I beg the Admiral's pardon,» Pickering said.
«My original question, which started all this, was 'Can we communicate with the OSS station chief in Chungking without the U.S. MilMission to China signal officer reading it?»
«If I may answer General Pickering first, sir,» Donovan said, and then went on without giving Leahy a chance to stop him: «Of course. He's at your orders.»
Pickering said nothing.
«To answer your question, Admiral,» Donovan went on. «Sir, since the U.S. MilMissionChi signal officer has ordered Banning to route everything through him, I would say, that we cannot communicate with any degree of security, vis-a-vis the signal officer, with the Chungking station chief.»
Pickering thought: I
can raise further hell about Donovan hiding this station chief, and presumably some sort of in-place organization
—
and goddamn it, it was wrong