The Torch Betrayal Read online

  THE

  TORCH

  BETRAYAL

  A CONOR THORN NOVEL

  THE

  TORCH

  BETRAYAL

  A CONOR THORN NOVEL

  GLENN DYER

  TMR PRESS, LLC

  TMR PRESS, LLC

  2057 MAHRE DRIVE

  PARK CITY, UTAH 84098

  The Torch Betrayal is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, incidents, organizations, or locales are intended to provide a sense of authenticity. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  The Torch Betrayal. A Conor Thorn Novel (Book 1)

  Copyright © 2017 by Glenn Dyer. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form without permission.

  www.glenndyer.net

  First Edition

  ISBN 978-0-9991173-1-6

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017916639

  Printed in the United States of America

  The OSS logo is a registered trademark of The OSS Society, Inc. and is used with its permission.

  Cover and Interior Design: JD Smith Design

  To my wife Chris

  Who stood by me quietly and patiently nurturing my dream

  The best way to use the gold of the Redeemer is for the redemption of those in peril.

  - Saint Ambrose

  There is a unanimity of opinion of Army officers here that the proposed operation [Torch] appears hazardous to the extent of less than a 50 percent chance of success.

  - Cable regarding the invasion of North Africa from General George Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, to General Dwight Eisenhower, August 15, 1942

  As desperate a venture as has ever been undertaken by any force in the world’s history.

  - General George S. Patton

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  0130 Hours, Friday, October 2, 1942

  US Army Air Forces Film Lab, Camp Griffiss, London

  The cognac-induced buzzing in his head ramped up. The warm air passing over the frosted ground created a moist fog that, coupled with the diversion he’d put in motion earlier, guaranteed that the odds of being undetected were in his favor. Nonetheless, he silently rehearsed his story if he was found on the base so late at night.

  His breathing was still a bit labored from his sprint from the maintenance shed, where he’d set kerosene-soaked cloth fuses into the near-empty fifty-gallon drums of aviation fuel. He estimated he had six or seven minutes until the heavy material of the rags burned their way into the drums. He lit a cigarette to calm himself, and when that failed, he flicked it into the fog and pulled a flask from his inside breast pocket and took a long pull, draining it. The cognac’s warm trail was less intense than it had been the first time. He returned the flask to his breast pocket and pulled his pack of Player’s Navy Cut cigarettes back out. As he shook the pack, he heard the first explosion; then, three seconds later, the second. He dropped his cigarettes.

  “Shit,” he hissed. He crouched and lost his balance slightly. Both booms were unexpected. He had only been counting on a fire. When he’d tipped each drum, it had seemed there was an only inch or two of fuel—a careless miscalculation, but one that overdelivered on his need for a diversion. He heard shouts in the fog followed by two rifle shots. He checked his jacket pockets for his tools. Feeling the hard shapes of both the wire cutters and the ball-peen hammer, he began to slink across the frost-covered grass, toward the rear of the film lab. At the top of the stairwell that descended to the rear door, he stopped and turned to survey the grounds behind the building. Nothing was visible but fog and the top portion of the stand of trees he’d just exited. He headed down the stairwell. At the bottom, the drain was clogged with leaves and twigs, creating a small puddle. The fetid water threw off a sharp stench, and his leather shoes wicked up the foul water.

  The shouts of security personnel sounded farther away from down in the stairwell, and its thick concrete walls easily absorbed the sound of the hammer as he smashed through the dense pane of opaque security glass. Most of the shards landed inside, but a few pieces clung to the wire mesh embedded in the glass. He made quick work of the wire with the cutters, but when he started to push his hand through, it was too small. He reached again for his wire cutters, the handle catching on the lining of his pocket and tumbling out of his hand, into the putrid water at his feet.

  The shouts were getting louder, so he forgot the cutters and shoved his hand back through the hole, the wire leaving several rows of scratches on the back of his hand and wrist, and up his arm, like a neatly plowed, bloody field.

  The deadbolt slipped in his fingers at first, but he managed to get it unlocked, glass crunching under his feet once he finally stepped inside. The hallway was narrow, and with his right hand out, groping into the darkness so he didn’t run into anything, he took small, quick steps deeper into the building. The chemical smell that wafted from the film processors he crept past made his eyes water and the buzzing in his head got higher pitched. The fumes weakened his focus, but the sound of a pump in one of the processors engaging snapped him back to the present. He pressed on, the dim light from low-watt, naked bulbs hanging above each processor aiding his way.

  He was looking for one document. Only one. He headed for a metal locker marked “Lt. Johannson,” located near the front counter of the lab. Once he found the locker, he looked in the deeply stained coffee mug; the key to the file cage was there. The locker reeked of perspiration. A jar of hair pomade along with a comb wedged into a hairbrush’s bristles sat in the bottom of the locker.

  Inside the chain-link file cage, where there were rows of file cabinets, he hunted for the one marked “G.D.D.E.” Inside, among dozens of manila files, was the familiar leather satchel, a set of handcuffs attached to its brown Bakelite handle, and a small k
ey to the lock on the satchel’s clasp. He opened the satchel and put its contents on a small wooden table in the center of the room and pulled his lighter out. He used the index finger on his uninjured hand to sift through the myriad documents. He was halfway through the pile when he found it, and adrenaline shot through his veins. He raised his eyes to the ceiling, and his breathing quickened. It was a piece of letter-sized onionskin. Typed instructions with dates and times filled the page. The number 117 was in the upper-right corner. The paper crinkled sharply when he folded it and slid it into his inside breast pocket.

  After returning the satchel to the file drawer, he locked the enclosure gate and raced back to Johannson’s locker. He dumped the key back into the mug and shut the locker. As he approached the rear door of the lab, he skidded to a stop, realizing he didn’t have a handkerchief or rag to clean up his blood, nor did he have the time to search for one. He pulled down the right sleeve of his jacket and swiped at the mess, but the drying blood was stubborn. As he pressed harder, he heard shouts from outside, closer this time. Plenty of people had his blood type—it was time to go. He stepped into the stairwell, his right foot landing unevenly in the puddle. The wire cutters. As he bent over to retrieve them, the buzzing in his head intensified.

  Outside, the air was choked with the smell of burning aviation fuel. The fire seemed to be sapping the fog of its moisture. As he raced away from the shouting, he was pleased with his performance—but he would be happier once he put his hands on more cognac.

  CHAPTER ONE

  1000 Hours, Saturday, October 3, 1942

  Headquarters of the European Theater of Operations, United States Army (ETOUSA), London

  The humiliation that Lieutenant Commander Harry Butcher, USNR, suffered over losing his lunch was slightly lessened by his having Miss Weddington leave his office beforehand.

  He couldn’t believe it had taken him only nine weeks to screw up his plum assignment as General Eisenhower’s aide. Visions of boarding a slow boat back to the States by order of the general and being reassigned to a desk deep in the bowels of the navy’s communications department filled his head. That selfish thought was soon overpowered by the magnitude of what Weddington had just told him: a document—one containing the directives of the Allies’ first joint offensive action against the Nazis—was missing.

  “Miss Weddington, you can come back in now,” Butcher shouted as he shoved the fouled wastebasket behind the blackout curtains. He looked out his window. Heavy, gray card stock checker-boarded the large window where panes of glass existed before the Blitz. Through the window’s few remaining glass panes, he watched an invasion of low, black clouds marching swiftly northward from the English Channel.

  As Elizabeth Nassar Weddington, Butcher’s secretary, entered the office and approached his desk, Butcher noticed her eyes were red and swollen. The slender-built woman was the only daughter of a long-tenured British Foreign Service diplomat and a mother who came from a prosperous Egyptian family. As Weddington stood before him in a faded blue dress, she tugged nervously at a handkerchief, contrasting with her normal poise.

  Weddington’s nose wrinkled—no doubt she had caught the stench that drifted from the wastebasket in the cramped office he shared with the general’s stenographer. Butcher dropped his gaze and cleared his throat. “Tell me again—slowly. And don’t leave anything out.”

  “I am at a complete loss to explain it. I cannot begin to tell you how sorry I am. I simply do not understand how I . . . misplaced . . . it,” she said.

  “Miss Weddington,” he tried again, stifling his mounting frustration. “Start again from the beginning. And speak slowly.” Weddington fired off a string of words in her Egyptian Arabic –tinged British accent, mumbling half of them as she tried to explain, but he caught a phrase here, another there. She paused and inhaled noisily through an open mouth, then began speaking more slowly.

  “I started merging the official documents with the personal ones, renumbered them, as I always do, into one set of pages. Then I placed all the pages in the satchel. Staff Sergeant Billings handcuffed the satchel to my wrist, per required protocol. Then, the sergeant and I left for the film lab.”

  “Where did you gather the pages?”

  “Outside your office, at my desk. And I had the outer office door locked.”

  Satisfied that Weddington had followed protocols, Butcher nodded. “Go on.”

  “We took a staff car to the film lab, and from the time we entered the lab to the time we left, nothing out of the norm happened.” Weddington again tugged at her belt.

  “Whom did you pass the diary pages to?”

  “The same lab technician I always do—Lieutenant Johannson. I work only with the lieutenant because of his security clearance. I picked up the prior batch of microfilm and left the lab. I told Lieutenant Johannson I would be back on Saturday to collect what I had just dropped off.”

  Butcher rested his chin on his clasped hands and lowered his gaze to his desk blotter. Tucked into a corner of the blotter was a picture of him shaking Eisenhower’s hand on his first day as the general’s naval aide.

  “You’re absolutely sure about the specific page that’s missing?” Butcher asked.

  “Yes, sir, I’m afraid I’m sure,” she said.

  Butcher slumped back in his chair.

  “Today’s batch included pages 103 to 150. Every typewritten page with any pasted or stapled notes still attached came back except page 117.”

  Butcher began to sweat. “Thanks, Miss Weddington.”

  Weddington, with her handkerchief pressed tightly against her lips and her eyes welling up, turned to escape the office.

  “Call over to the lab,” he called after her, causing her to briefly slow her exit. “Tell whoever is in charge that no personnel are to leave until we get there.”

  Weddington scurried out of the office without responding and closed the door behind her. A brown-framed wall clock, its face pale yellow, ticked off the seconds noisily.

  It was time to deliver his news.

  #

  Butcher’s head began to throb, which made it difficult to focus on what he was going to say to Eisenhower. He took a deep breath and exhaled fully as he rapped on the man’s office door. For a moment, there was nothing but silence on either side. Then a muffled voice said, “Enter.”

  Butcher pushed aside the heavy oak door to General Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower’s office. The sturdy and graying Colonel William “Wild Bill” Donovan settled back in his chair as Butcher entered. Donovan was the director of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the fledgling secret intelligence organization that had been formed a mere four months prior. Eisenhower loomed over maps of the North African coastline, their corners pinned down by ashtrays that overflowed with cigarette butts and Hershey’s candy bar wrappers. He held a foot-long rubber-tipped pointer in his hand.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked, his face leaden with fatigue.

  “General, excuse the interruption, but I need a minute.”

  “My guess, given your face, is that it can’t wait.”

  “You would be right, General. It concerns Torch.”

  Eisenhower cocked his head, the tiredness on his face giving way to confusion. “What about Torch?”

  A bead of perspiration trickled down Butcher’s spine. “Simply put, General, a page that was sent over to the army film lab on Thursday to be microfilmed along with a large batch of documents has been reported . . . um . . . ” Butcher stopped. He realized that he didn’t know if it had been misplaced, accidently destroyed, or . . . stolen.

  “Butch, I am sure this is important enough for you to interrupt Colonel Donovan and me, so get to the point,” Eisenhower said, tossing the pointer onto the desk.

  “Yes, sir. A page sent to be microfilmed has been reported . . . missing. Specifically, it was page 117. That was the page from the combined chiefs of staff that detailed the objectives of Operation Torch.”

  “My God,” blurted Do
novan.

  Eisenhower glowered at Butcher. Their time spent together in Washington—while Eisenhower had been assigned as assistant to the chief of staff for the assistant secretary of war and Butcher was vice president and general manager of the CBS radio station WJSV—had allowed them and their spouses to establish a strong friendship. But Butcher couldn’t help but think that Eisenhower was now questioning his decision to have Butcher assigned as his aide. Eisenhower didn’t ask much of Butcher, just had him run interference with the press, hold the blue-haired British socialites at bay, be the one person he could talk to without having to worry about being told what people believed he wanted to hear, and keep his personal diary.

  Eisenhower came around his desk to face Butcher. “Butch, you and Miss Weddington have been doing this for months. What the hell happened?” Eisenhower’s neck above his starched collar was turning pink.

  “We sent forty-eight pages to be microfilmed. All the original documents were returned except for one—the directives from the combined chiefs for Torch. I don’t have an explanation beyond that.”

  Eisenhower turned away from Butcher, walked to the window behind his desk, and stood motionless for a several moments. “The prime minister, as you both know well, has been relentless in his pursuit of a firm date for Operation Torch. Up to this point, my reluctance was based on concerns over logistics, controllable military matters,” he stated, his voice calm and clear. Then he turned toward his desk and grabbed the back of his chair. “What we now have, among other things, is another example for the British of our inability to manage confidential matters. Amateurs, they say. Well, that characterizes it kindly, I’d say.”

  “General, maybe we’re overreacting,” Donovan said, rising from his chair.

  “I don’t believe overreaction is possible, given what’s at stake. If the invasion of North Africa is successful in drawing off men and materiel from the eastern front, and we think it will be, it will be critical for the survival of the Soviet Union. And Torch’s success is not possible if the element of surprise isn’t maintained.” Eisenhower stabbed the pointer at the south coast of England. “Not to mention we have ships from both the eastern and western task forces taking on the last of their cargoes with tentative embarkation dates of October 22 and 23.” Eisenhower shook his head slowly and dropped the pointer on the desk. “Setting a firm date for the invasion is something I must do within days; otherwise, it will throw our whole plan into utter confusion,” he finished, his eyes locked on Butcher.