The Haigerloch Project

Dirk was shrugging out of the heavy pack. He stretched luxuriously.

He, too, felt good. He'd actually enjoyed running the damn course.

Sig stood up. He rubbed his ribs. They were still tender. He turned to Rosenfeld.

“Is the jar okay?” he asked.

Rosenfeld looked blank.

“What jar?”

“The jar. In the pack. With the rocks.”

Rosenfeld laughed.

“Hell — there's no jar! Just thought we'd worry you a little….”

Sig felt the blood rise to the tip of his ears. He looked at Dirk, deeply affronted.

“Scheissdreck, nochmal!” he swore. “Shit and double shit!”

The corners of Dirk's mouth twitched. He began to laugh. Sig stared at him; then suddenly he, too, was laughing.

Rosenfeld regarded them soberly.

“Okay,” he said. “Come on. Back to camp. There is a lot to be done. You leave tomorrow for London.”

Sig looked at the OSS officer. To do what? he thought. It's about time we found out. He opened his mouth to speak. Dirk beat him to it.

“Isn't it about time you told us what the hell this is all about?” he asked tersely.

Rosenfeld nodded solemnly.

“It is.”

He told them.

11

Dirk was bored.

He considered Captain Cornelius Everett, Jr., USA, a colossal pain in the ass.

He and Sig had arrived five days before at the secluded OSS training-and-staging center at Milton Hall, a grand old manor house a hundred miles from London — and ever since they'd had to listen to Everett run off at the mouth. He talked and talked and talked with the stilted verbosity of a dull book. Too damned bad, Dirk thought wryly, that he couldn't be shut up the same way.

He knew the captain from his last mission, which had also been mounted from London.

Everett had shown up at Milton Hall directly from the States in early February of ’44—about the time the first “Jeds” began to arrive at the Hall. The special Jedburgh teams were formed there, made up of three agents from each of three countries, England, France and the States, in any combination. They were to be dropped into France to help prepare the Maquis for their role in Operation Overlord — the invasion of Europe.

Except for Scandinavia, which the British considered their special domain, there had been, and still was, close cooperation between the OSS and the SOE — the British Special Operations Executive — on actions in Europe, and Everett had soaked up the British methods like a sun-dried sponge. He'd adopted every ploy and every trick he could ferret out. And he'd used them all. Still did.

Dirk had been incredulous when Everett pulled the routine “old buddy” test on him and Sig when he'd picked them up in London to escort them by train to the Hall. The coaches on the British trains are divided into compartments, and as Everett had been helping stow Dirk's and Sig's gear in the overhead racks, he'd spotted a British officer, obviously an old buddy of long standing, less obviously an MTO — a Military Testing Officer — assigned to the test. There'd been a lot of back-slapping, small-talking and old-boying — all of which clearly established that Everett and his buddy were intimate friends. Once the train was under way, Everett had excused himself on some pretext or other and left “old buddy” alone with the two pigeons. That was supposedly the moment of truth. Or rather— of withholding the truth!

To be capable of surviving within a totally hostile environment, an agent must above all be discreet — in fact, have a veritable passion for anonymity. How careful would Sig be in talking about himself to this “old buddy,” so obviously “one of the gang,” under gentle, friendly probing? Would he be tempted to brag a little about his important job? Quite a few candidates had wondered why their one-way journey to Milton Hall had turned into a return trip.

But not only had Sig clammed up and not burned himself or the mission — he'd barely been civilized to the “old buddy”!

Dirk forced himself to return his attention to Corny's lecture — something about eating habits.

“It is nearly always the little things that betray the agent,” Everett was saying, “—give him away as a foreigner. Such as the eating habits we've discussed. Remember — never put down your knife and pick up your fork in your right hand to eat. You might as well wear an American flag sticking out your ear!”

He paused dramatically to let his witty wisdom sink in.

Doesn't the dope realize that both Sig and I were born in Europe? Dirk wondered.

“Then, of course, there is the language factor,” Everett continued “Multilingual or bilingual people instinctively lapse into their native language when they pray or swear. When they count — or screw!” He smiled thinly.