Death and Honor

And there was a psychological advantage to wearing the uniform when dealing with other senior officers. He had been awarded the nation’s highest award for valor in action in France in the First World War. Although he rarely actually pinned the blue-starred ribbon of the Medal of Honor to his tunic, everyone seemed to look for it, and were aware that he could have pinned the ribbon on had he wished to. It reminded every professional soldier that this civilian-in-a-general’s-uniform was in fact a soldier who had not only performed superbly in combat, but had seen much more of it than had most of his professional soldier critics.

The idiotic suggestion to give OSS agents badges and identification cards would have been funny, Donovan thought, had it not represented the expenditure of a lot of time and effort, and revealed an appalling ignorance of how OSS agents were supposed to work, which was, of course, in absolute secrecy.

Some nitwit—probably a half-dozen nitwits—on a lower floor of the building had come up with an absolutely nonsensical idea, then spent much of their own—and other OSS personnel’s—time in getting it ready to submit to the boss for his approval.

A mental image came to him, and he smiled:

“Guten tag, Herr Oberburgermeister, my name is John Smith. I’m a spy for the OSS. Here are my credentials. What can you tell me about German efforts to make an atomic bomb?”

Four sets of credentials had been prepared for Donovan’s approval, which made him wonder, very unkindly, how much time the Documents Branch— which was charged with preparing counterfeit credentials and identification badges—had wasted on this idiotic idea.

Each set of credentials held a gold badge in one side of a leather folder, and a sealed-in-plastic photo identification card in the other. The photo ID was clearly patterned after the Adjutant General’s Office identification cards issued to commissioned officers. There was space for a photo, a thumbprint, and the individual’s name, rank, and date of birth.

Besides that, the badges were unlike any other Donovan had ever seen. Donovan had to admit they were both impressive and attractive. In the center was the great seal of the United States. In two curved lines at the top was the legend THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, and under that, OFFICE OF STRATEGIC SERVICES.

Under the badge, in a rectangular block, was space for the individual’s rank. One of the badges read SPECIAL AGENT; the second, SENIOR AGENT; the third, SUPERVISORY AGENT; and the fourth, AREA COMMANDER.

There were no such ranks in the OSS, and the armed forces rank that an individual might have brought with him into the OSS carried little weight. There were people in charge of this and that, of course, and their assistants and deputies, but authority was given to station chiefs, for example, based on who was the best man for the job, not on his date of rank—if indeed he had a rank.

Donovan’s imagination flew again.

Well, hell, we might as well go whole hog.

We can have a badge for Saboteur. And Assassin. And Burglar.

The possibilities are limitless!

He pulled a pad of interoffice memorandum forms to him and picked up his pen. Then he changed his mind.

This was too spectacular of an idiotic idea to be dismissed by one of his “Not only no but HELL NO!” memos, with the addendum, “Destroy these! ”

This dedicated idiocy deserved more. He decided he would think about it after he had dealt with the off-the-wall analysis and then the problem he really shouldn’t have to deal with himself but had to.

He put the leather folders back in the accordion folder and turned to the analysis.

The analysis was labeled: “Geo-Political Analysis Division Document #1943.24.04.717. An Analysis of Japanese Infiltration Among the Muslims Throughout the World.”

It was a thin document stapled together under a pale yellow cover stamped TOP SECRET at the top and bottom, and carrying the names of the authors who appended PhD to their names. Donovan recognized both names. They were distinguished academics. One had come into the OSS from Yale, the other from the University of Chicago.

Neither of them was a fool—although one of them was truly strange-looking—and Donovan knew he wouldn’t be able to dismiss their argument as quickly as he had the badges; he would have to read the entire document.

He was a lawyer, of course, who was capable of not only reading rapidly but also of retaining the important points a document made. Still, it took him ten minutes to read the analysis and sort out its pertinent points.