Cloak and Dagger: The Last Mission

Welcome to the Great Adventurers of Old Time Radio from Voyse Atahol. This is your host, Adam Graham. In a moment, we are going to get into this week's episode of Cloak and Dagger, but first I do want to encourage you, if you are enjoying the podcast, to please follow us using your favorite podcast software. And our program is brought you in part by the financial support of our listeners.

Are you willing to to take a dangerous mission behind the enemy lines, knowing you may never return alive.

What you have just heard is the question asked during the War of agents of the OSS. Ordinary citizens to this question answered yes. This is Clock and Dagger, black warfare, espionage, international intrigue. These are the weapons of the OSS. Today's adventure, the last Mission, the story of an American OSS agent in Canton, China, is suggested by actual incidents recorded in the Washington files of the Office of Strategic Services, a story that can now be told.

He must have had another name, but I never knew what it was. Everybody on the waterfront called him Charlie. He was old and he limped, and he should have drunk less and shaved more. We'd see him on the walls in the afternoons, in his dirty dungarees and thorn sweater, begging cigarettes from sailors. Then evenings he would hobble into leechen Stoven, where I worked to beg for something else.

Hey, turn you, Hey, Hey, ain't you gonna buy Charlie one little drink?

He No, I'm not Charlie. No drinks on the house Tonight.

Robert, Tonight, tonight, Geranti, be drinks in the house. Are you forgetting? It was just five years ago? Tonight? Canton Parallel Japanese. Hey, we gotta celebrate, don't we? What do you matter? I say something wrong?

I don't like your sense of humor.

I don't see what you got again, the Japs, Jenny, with all m nationalities mixed up in you, you probably got some Jap blood yourself.

No, I haven't.

Every other kind maybe Spanish and Russian, even Irish. But there's not a drop of job blood in the pony.

Guess right, I don't get stealing up. I still say there's no reason for you to hate him. Why do you care who's running canton?

I told him then. I don't know why I did. I never told anyone else how they had murdered my family nineteen six years before, my father, my mother, my two sisters. The Japs had killed them all, And if we hadn't got out of the city ahead of them, they'd have killed my brother, Florian and myself.

So he wasn't always a waitress and a waterfront dive haunt on you.

No, and my brother didn't always prowl the streets looking for trouble. I got the job to thank for that. No, maybe you can understand.

We got visitors.

What do they want now?

Checking identification papers again?

Uee, press arise always arise in the presence of the suggest Remember that he had to no your papers press here. Danya Bonnie born in Madrid. You are Spanish by you have Russian first name.

And an Irish middle name. What does that make me?

Perhaps makes you anyway Arian captain? Yes, it would be very Darrell in Canton. If we put all the beautiful girls in jail, that is true.

You peppers. You know that, Miss Bunny. I know your peppers press who me. I ain't got no papers. Cavin what you're done with them? Don't know. I guess you must have lost him. What is nationality? I don't know that need and nobody never told me. Seems like I've been around Canton since it was knee high on you American perhaps American. That's good. I came away around I know not wait a minute, hour wa the horse is well here. I ain't gonna do you guys no good

What your man?

Or man?

How could that hep us.

I get around? Cap'n Oh, Charlie talks to everybody, and everybody talks to me, and they ain't too careful what they say neither. If anybody was planning any monkey business, sabotagement or anything like that, oh, Charlie would be just about the first to know about it.

And you would report it to us.

Why not?

You're the guys you're running the show. So you're the guys I take orders from you, know what I mean?

They saw what he meant, and when they left, he was still sitting with me, grinning as if you were proud of what he had done. I got up without a word and went to the bar and bought a drink. I brought it back and held it out.

Hey, did you buy that for me, Toney?

Yes, I bought it for you.

Well, now that's mighty nice. Have you let me have it?

I'll let you have it there.

What's the ideas thrown good whiskey in my face? What's the idea that I.

Couldn't find words to tell you what I think of you, Charlie, But I wanted you.

To know.

I was sorry afterwards. After all, Charlie was old and hungry and half cracked. I should have saved it for somebody else, someone closer and dearer to me. I should have saved it from my brother. Florian was waiting.

For me when I got home.

I thought, you never get it here, Tanya, hurry up and change your clothes. We're going to a party.

Party.

What party, Florian?

Well, it's sort of an anniversary banquet, you know, five years in Canton. There's gonna be a lot of important people. There are Chinese Japanese, both big celebration, and we're going to celebrate with them. We weren't invited, of course, but I know a fellow at the door. He's gonna let us in. We rubbed shoulders with some of the most important people in Canton, maybe.

Even with the men who murdered your mother and father.

Oh no, don't be like that, Tanya. That was a long time ago. These aren't the same fellows who took nineteen the Japanese.

Yeah, you are not going to the party, Florian, we got nothing to celebrate.

No, maybe you are not gone, But I am why because I know what side my bread is putting on us. Why the jump side, as long as the top dog. Yes, and it looked like they're going to be top dog for a long time.

I see.

You're retraited to our family, Florine.

We haven't got family, Tanya. We haven't got anything, and we never will have unless one of us starts playing on the winning team. See you later.

I didn't sleep well that night, and lay there in the dark, feeling as if I were alone. You know, a world of enemies that same feeling haunted me all the next day at Leech and Charlie didn't come to the town, not even I didn't see him till I was through working, until I stepped out into the dark street. Then a shadowy figure came staggering up to me. You're drunk, charlieber go home.

That's just when I was thinking, Orry, I can't see him together. The street keeps going around and circles. How about you kind of steal chowry on.

I'm sorry. I want to get home myself. It's late.

Come on, tell her this worrier purple child.

He grabbed my arm and hung on to girl.

It's seemed easier to do what he asked me to argue about very good girl. I had never seen his home, but he remembered the address, and I let him toward it through the deserted streets.

Sir, here we are.

It was the kind of place expect Charlie to live, in, a filthy, two story dump in the worst part of Canton. He was still holding my arm as I took his key and unlocked his door for him. Good night, Charlie, go to bed and sleep it off.

No, good night, Jenny. We can have a red.

I don't want it drunk.

Come on anyway, come on, do you here?

But he didn't let go.

His fingers were like a vice around my waist. He jerked me across the treasure. He shoved me into the pitch black room and slammed the door.

Where you, filthy old bomb let me out of here.

Sorry.

I had the man handle you like that. It was the only safe way of getting you in here.

I thought someone else had said it. I thought there must be three of us in the room. Then the light flashed down and they were just two, just Charlie and me.

Surprised, Dania, I'm sorry, but I have to play it safe. You see, Tania, I am an American, an agent of the OSS.

I didn't speak and stared at him, tried to understand, tried to connect him with the shuffling little wolf rad i'd always known as Charlie.

I realized, of course, Tanya, that this is something of an act of faith, exposing my identity to you like this. No one else in Canton knows who I am. I'd fort a long time before I decided to let you in on it. When you told me about your family, I had a hunch I could trust you, and then when you threw that drink in my face, I was sure of it.

But I mean not right.

I'm still Charlie.

But why have you done this? Why should you trust me with your life?

For a very good reason, because I need your help my head. You see, I've operated alone here for a long time. It has been too tough. But now no Jab intelligence is tightening up a lot of things. I can't do alone anymore. That's why I need you.

But I have no experience. I don't know anything about.

Courage, and you hate the Japanese. That's worth a lot more of an experience.

What do you want me to do, Charlie?

Come on upstairs?

He led me up a long, narrow, muckety staircase. He opened the door to a tiny guard like a room just beneath the roof.

It was hot and stuffy. The light they switched don was so dimmed that at first I couldn't see.

Do you know what this is?

Tanya radio transmitter?

That's right. You send messages to whom American submarines operating off the Chinese coast, And what I send is all the information I can get about JAP shipping entering and leaving the port of Canton. I see, Danya, you wait on sailors at leech hands all day.

You drink with I've never drunk with a Japanese sailor.

But you could. Sailors talk a lot when they're drunk, and if they don't talk enough, I could provide you with knockout drops. They'd sleep peacefully while you examined their papers. He I see it scares you a little and little, yes, you see what a lever on the wall? Homos touched it better enough.

Oh what is it, Charlie.

It's a little precaution I've taken. I wouldn't want this transmitter to fall into Japanese hands. They could do a great deal of damage with her. But the lever in the wall that can do a great deal of damage too. It sets off an explosive that it blows building sky high.

I wasn't sorry to leave that room. We went downstairs. A few minutes later. He stood in front of me watching me.

Tania, let me explain something. We're all volunteers in the OSS, and the people who help us are volunteers too. You don't have to do this unless you want to.

I understand Charlie.

If you refuse, I won't worry about what you know. I'll still trust you.

I don't intend to refuse.

It doesn't scare you too much.

When I think of my father and mother and sister, it doesn't scare me at all.

It's a deal.

It's a deal, I am.

I don't have any liquor.

We might have a smoke on the tone American cigarettes.

I haven't had one for years.

Thanks to a free world, Tanya, to a free world.

That night, I slept work now I had friends and allies.

That is, I slept well until sometime shortly before dawn, and then the sound of my bedroom door opening awoke me. I wasn't frightened. I knew who it was and what he wanted had happened so many times before. I waited until he reached my dresser, until he bent over my purse. Don't take any of my money, Florian, Oh, oh you well, I was just yes, I know, but I really can't spare any of this week.

I need a little I got.

You don't need it any more than I do. I'm broke, Tanya. Know where am I supposed to get money to live on?

Not out of my purse, please close it, Florian?

All right, all right? Where is it? Hey? What's this?

What?

Where you get these?

What?

Florian?

These American cigarettes?

I got them at the tavern who from from a job soldier? A job so yeah, he had taken them off an American prisoner war and.

A job gave them to you?

Yes?

Why not?

Are you accepted them?

Naturally? I accepted them?

Where So now my noble sister is accepting gifts from the enemy. Either you had a great change of heart on you or else?

Else?

What?

Or else.

You?

And beginning the very next night, I flirted with every job sailor who came into lead chains. I kept my mouth closed and my ears open. I used every trick I knew to persuade them to talk, and when it became necessary, I used something else, a little white pills that Charlie had given me.

Nama to drink.

But the evening is young Dad, Come on, come on, let's drink it close to the Emperor. Stand up. Of course, you can't get you. Come on, that's it, nah, to this son of Heaven, his Imperial majesty.

Drink.

Oh it was so easy, Charlie, he was out cold. I just reached into his pocket and they were his papers.

No, I'm sorry, not a soul.

He put the papers back, of.

Course, after I'd copied them. Here's the information.

Am I doing, Charlie? I knew I was doing well, and as time went on, I did even better. We would hear reports on Charlie's radio a Jap ships, torpedo and song in Chinese waters, and Charlie would say, that.

Was the baby you told me about last week. Chuck up another one for Tanya, the scourge of the Jab merchant marine.

I was proud, and I was happy, and I believe my father and mother and sisters knew and that they were proud too. And then came the night I went straight from lee Chen's tavern to Charlie's house to tell him what I'd heard.

Takoa Maroo. Huh. That's one of the nips biggest ships I know, Charlie.

And she's carrying industrial machinery to Yokohama, one of those factories they've stripped in fu Chau.

Sure about the sailing time, quite sure?

Tomorrow night at ten o'clock.

God enough, I'll tip off the sub dride away and they'll be laying for if she isn't traveling in convoy.

She isn't check and they'll get her.

Like a sitting duck.

It's late, Tanya, better get going.

I'll see you tomorrow, Charlie.

During the day, I'm going down to Tonhose Junk on the river. I'll be back here by evening.

Good night, Charlie.

Let me see if the coast is clear. Okay, go ahead, good night.

Late.

The streets were dark and deserted.

I would have taken a rickshaw home, but it was too late for that, so I walked, or rather I tried to walk, but it was hard to keep myself from running. I told myself I was a fool to be afraid. The streets were safer than in broad daylight. There was no one on them. There was no one who could possibly I stopped. I thought I heard footsteps, someone walking behind me.

I turned.

There was no one there, at least I couldn't see anyone. I started walking faster, and I grabbed the revolver that Charlie had given me, and then I heard.

The sound again. This time I stopped. The world around.

There was a street lamp behind me, and I saw a shadow on the wall of the building.

The shadow of a man.

Was there.

Come up and show me who you are.

If you don't not shoot, Take it easy time, Florian. You wouldn't want to shoot your own brother with you?

Florian? What are you doing here? Where will you follow me?

Oh?

Just curious, that's all. I've been wondering for quite a while what you were up to?

Quite a while.

I've seen you go to that place several times. I even took the trouble to find out who lives there. It's an old Furday called Charlie.

That's right, Charlie does live there. He's sick.

Oh, he's sick. Is just just an error of mercy?

Huh, exactly, an errand of mercy? You what as if you didn't believe me?

Of course i'd believe you. I certainly don't think you're in love with you, oh boy? And what other reason would you have to visit him?

We walked the rest of the way home together.

I was sure he didn't believe me, But I couldn't go back to Charlie to warn him, not without getting florry and more suspicious in the morning, I thought, But then I remembered that Charlie would be on Tonghaw's junk on the river in the morning. Leechen's Stabborn opened at noon the next day. The minute I walked in, I knew something was wrong. There were too many Japanese soldiers, far too many. They sat at the bar drinking, They

Chen, why are there so many of them?

Lie Chen, Maybe your plather can't tell you.

Tanna, my brother he and back home.

He said, you come back see him.

I knew then that I was sick with anger and shame.

But I was sicker still when I saw him sitting alone in that back room, when I saw this smirking triumph on his face.

Good morning, Tanya, that's your sick friend this morning. Don't stand and stay. I haven't done anything so terrible. After all, one spy more or less.

How much did they pay you, Florian?

Quite a bit, it seems if known for a long time there was one operating in Canton. They haven't been able to get their hands.

On him until you betrayed him.

Yes, yes, they still haven't found him. There are some soldiers waiting for him over at this place where you went last night. I mean, and there's a crowd of them here. They about me pick him up pretty soon.

Didn't you get a bonus for betraying me too?

Or I might have, but I wouldn't sell out my own sister.

I kept you under clear.

I told you helped me spottle.

Thank you, Florian.

I'm not at all Danya.

By the way, I can pay you back some of the money I lifted from your purse. After all, if it weren't for you, I wouldn't be sitting ready now with a couple of hundred yen even the score. Huh, Why you say?

There was so much I could have said, but I didn't waste the time. Only one thing mattered now Charlie was still free. I swore, by the memory of my mother and father that I would keep him free. It was a half hour before I managed to slip away from me chins unnoticed. Charlie had introduced me to Tongue Hall, and I had been aboard his junk the week before, so the gorillas on guard around the board recognized me.

That led me to a cabin. It's Doanya, Charlie.

Anya, I thought you were tongue Ho. He just wanted to show the me, the courier from Hong Kong, some sort of important not.

As important as the news I I have for you. I poured it all out and he listened thoughtfully.

I found the transmitter, of course, but that's not good to them.

Couldn't they use it to send false messages?

Without the code book?

The subs would know the messages were funny, they'd figure out what had happened.

But where is the codebook?

Right here?

Charlie, Then there's no reason why you can't escape.

Oh no, that I can see my usefulness and Canton is over. Yeah, they'll pull out both of us. You'll take me with you, sure, Tomhoe will take us up rivert here he is now. I hope that courier's report was better than the news Tanya brought me Tongho.

It was about captive American flyers, Charlie.

What about them?

We'll tell them have been brought into contound. They're being sent to prison camps in Japan. They sell tonight aboard the Coca Maru.

Takota Marule, Charlie.

That's the ship I told you about last night.

It's the ship already of the subs a torpedo, well, torpedo our own men, then, Charlie, I.

Will if I don't count amand the order.

Gotta let them know the flyers are aboard.

You gotta let the chip go through.

You cannot tell them, Charlie, you cannot get to the transmitter. I have to Japanese soldiers.

They're waiting for you.

I get past them somehow shortly.

No, don't go back there. They'll kill you if you.

Do, and they'll kill those flyers if I don't. There are fifty of them, there's only one of me.

I said I would go back to it. I said he would need help getting past the jumps. I said I wouldn't leave Canton without him. And in the end, because I let them no choice, he allowed me to stay at his side. He told me his plans before we left the boat.

Be waiting for me in the room downstairs. But we won't go that way. There's a trap door and the ceiling of the radio room. If we can get into the building next door and out under the roof, we'll be able to jump over under my building. We may get in and send the message without even letting them Nowhere there.

A half hour later we were creeping up the stairs of the building next door. A few minutes later we stood huddled on the edge of the adjoining roof.

All right, that's jump. Try to land us quietly as she can, and.

Then flatten our stomachs. We crawled toward the trap door and tried open it to rusty hinges, and lowered ourselves into the radio room. Charlie sat down at the transmitter, his cold book in his hand. I went to the door, my revolver and mine.

Have you made contact with them, Charlie?

They answered downstairs.

No, not yet, Charlie.

Hurry, yes, but if you, Charlie, yes, listen, someone coming upstairs, two of them, at least maybe three.

Okay, get going down. No click, I through the trap door and over the roof, does a order. I'll be right behind you. I made contact. Now all I have to do is finish the message. Now get out of here.

It was a lie.

It was the only liar that Charlie ever told me. And I crossed the roof and looked behind me, and he wasn't there. I went down the stairs next door and out onto the street, and he still wasn't there. I moved quickly through the crowd, still looking back, still waiting, and still hoping.

And then he had pulled the lever that destroyed the transmitter.

Later, a long time later, I learned that the Kotamaro had passed safely through the submarines with fifty American flyers aboard. Charlie had sent his message in time. He had performed this last service for the OSS, The last but one, I mean.

The very last, had been.

To die for it.

And once again the report of another OSS agent closes with the words mission accomplished. Listen again next week for another true adventure from the files of the OSS on.

Cloak and Dagger.

Heard in Today's Cloak and Dagger Adventure as Charlie was Ian Martin, Tanya ran A, Raven Florian, Arnoldmarsh. Others were Ralph Bell, Raymond Dwood, Johnson, Carl Weber and Guy Repp. Script was written by Kenfield and music was under the direction of John Guard. Sound effects by Max Russell and Frank Lucker. Engineering Don Evan. Today's OSS Adventure was based on the book Plunk and Dagger by Corey Ford and

Three Times Mean Good Times on NBC.

Welcome Back. This is a very different episode in the way that it's open. You know, usually you have the OSS as in Getting the Mission. Here, you're just kind of waiting for the OSS angle to come in. This time we get a story that is told from the perspective of a local working for the OSS. It's a very earthy story for the era. It also touches on the brutality of the Japanese government, which is part of the reason why so many people were willing to allig

In those intervening weeks.

And after that we will have a couple of anthology episodes that tie into the Oss theme before getting to our next series, which will be Counterspot. Well, now it is time to thank our Patreon supporter of the day, and I want to thank Douglas, Patreon supporter since January, currently supporting the podcast at the secret Agent level of four dollars or more per month. Thanks so much for your support, Douglas, And that will do it for today.