On the surface, one might imagine that no more than half a dozen people would be involved. Such thinking proved to be overoptimistic. For starters, people had to actually operate the devices. That is, somebody had to actually push the typewriter-like keys that would encrypt or decrypt magic material. Originally, the cryptographers at Pearl Harbor did this. But it didn't take their superiors long to realize that their time could be better spent decrypting intercepted Japanese communications than doing work clerk-typists could do just as well. So a few cryptographers who had been handling routine cryptographic material had to be granted magic clearances, and their names were added to the very short list of people, headed by the President, authorized to know that magic existed.
In time other names were added to the magic list, starting with the Secretaries of the Navy (Frank Knox) and the Army (Henry Stimson). The Director of the Office of Strategic Services (William Donovan) obviously had the Need To Know what the Japanese were up to, and he had gone on the list, as had the Chief of Naval Operations, the Chief of Staff, U.S. Army, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, and the Chief of the USMC Office of Management Analysis. In Brisbane, MacArthur decided that his Chief of Intelligence, Brigadier General Willoughby, had to be on the list, and he was added. Navy Secretary Frank Knox, meanwhile, sent a personal representative to the Pacific, a commissioned civilian named Fleming Pickering. Since he did not wish the Navy brass to know what Pickering was reporting to him, Knox gave him a magic clearance so that his reports could be transmitted over the Special Channel. And Army Secretary Stimson had recently convinced the President that General Dwight D. Eisenhower, soon to command the Allied Invasion of the European Landmass, needed access to magic material; and a magic device had been authorized for his headquarters in England and flown to London. Eisenhower had immediately obtained permission for his Chief of Staff, General Walter Bedell Smith, to be added to the magic list.
The brass had quickly learned that the Special Channel provided them with an absolutely secure means of communicating with each other on matters having nothing to do with magic material. And it had the added bonus of being far speedier than standard Army or Navy communications. Sixty percent of total Special Channel traffic now had nothing to do with magic.
As Special Channel users proliferated, Albright grew increasingly worried that the necessary close control of the Special Channel would be lost. Brass worldwide would inevitably become aware of its existence, and come up with arguments why they, too, should be authorized access to magic material and the Special Channel. Experience had taught him that the more people with access to a secret, the greater its chances of compromise.
But once Eisenhower and Bedell Smith were included on the magic list, Admiral Leahy had drawn the line and refused all further requests for magic access. After that, few other magic devices were actually needed. The ones operating in CINCPAC headquarters in Hawaii, Supreme Headquarters, Southwest Pacific Ocean Area in Brisbane, and in the Navy Communications facility in Washington all had backup devices in case of equipment failure. So did the one recently sent to London. There were also four other devices. Two of these were under constant evaluation at the Signal Laboratories, and two were used for training, one at a secret Signal facility on a farm in Virginia, and the other now at the OSS training base in Maryland.
With the drying up of demand, Albright had been able to shut down the production line at the Factory at Fort Monmouth. He had six magic devices «on the shelf» (actually, in a bank-type vault in the Pentagon), and that was going to be enough.
Or so he thought until the President overrode Admiral Leahy: Generalissimmo Chiang Kai-shek, the Nationalist Chinese leader, and Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, the Allied Commander for China, Burma, and India, were to be brought into the magic loop. That meant that a magic device, with a necessary backup, had to be transported to them and set in operation.
Giving a device to the Chinese and the Brits, in Colonel Albright's view, was tantamount to taking out a full-page advertisement in the
Washington Star
to announce to the world that some of the most secret Japanese messages were being read in Washington, Pearl Harbor, and Brisbane. But he was fully aware that it wasn't his responsibility to decide who received a magic device, it was the President's. His responsibility was limited to making sure that the devices reached Chungking and New Delhi, and were set up and put into operation without problems.
The immediate priority was to get devices to Chungking—under, of course, the close supervision of Major General Charles M. Adamson, USA, Secretary to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Colonel Albright was not at all surprised to pick up his telephone and hear ol' Cover My Ass Adamson's familiar voice on the line.
«Can you step in here a minute, Augie? I think we need to talk about China Clipper.»
«Be right there, sir.»
«Bring the China Clipper Opplan with you, please, Augie.»
«Yes, sir.»
Two minutes later, Colonel Albright walked into General Adamson's office and saluted. «Good morning, sir,» he said.
«Help yourself to some coffee,» the General said, holding up his own mug to show that he already had his, «and then tell me how it's going.»
Colonel Albright laid Opplan China Clipper on General Adamson's desk, then helped himself to a cup of coffee.
«Where would you like me to start, General?»
«At the beginning. I want every
t
crossed, and every i dotted.»
«Opplan China Clipper is sort of a carbon copy of Opplan London Fog,» Albright began, «suitably modified.»
Adamson nodded. London Fog, the plan to transport two of the magic devices to London, had gone off without any problems.
«I had people come up from Monmouth,» Colonel Albright went on. «They checked out two of the devices in the vault. When they were finished, I checked them out personally. They are now in crates marked «Personnel Records, Not To Be Opened Without The Specific Written Permission of the Adjutant General.»
«And the thermite grenades?»
«They» will be put in place once the crates are loaded aboard the C-46 at Newark Airport. Same system that we used to send the devices to London, except that the airplane will be a C-46 instead of a B-17.»
«By whom?»
«I offered General Pickering four CIC agents to handle that.» The Counter-intelligence Corps. «They'd go all the way to Chungking with the devices. Though Pickering initially seemed willing to go along with that, Colonel Banning thought that would unnecessarily complicate things, and Pickering went along with him.»
«Colonel Banning's giving you trouble?»
«I didn't mean to imply that, sir.» Albright really liked Ed Banning. For one thing, he was a professional, just as Albright was. For another, he had checked Banning out when his name had been ordered onto the magic list. According to Fritz Rickabee, Banning was as good as they came, and Hon Song Do in Australia had said the same thing.
He had been happy to be of service to Banning when Rickabee had called to tell him that Banning was going to Monmouth to find suitable shortwave radios for his current operation and to ask if he had anyone there who could help Banning with that. He himself had arranged to be at Monmouth when Banning got there.
«That's what it sounds like, Augie,» General Adamson said. «What does Banning have against CIC agents?»