He greeted René Malevergne soberly, however, when the Frenchman finally got his wish of seeing the “adjutant of the official representative of the American government.” Gruenther was surrounded by a cordon of British officers and a translator who put the Frenchman immediately on his guard. Malevergne was eager to tell his story directly to the American, and he proceeded as best as he was able to present his bona fides to Gruenther. “Colonel,” he said, again getting the rank wrong, “Colonel Eddy wrote a letter when I left Tangier that was to have been given to me at Gibraltar to serve as an introduction to you. Monsieur Morris, who handled this affair, assured me that the letter would follow by diplomatic channels and that it would be in London at the same time as I. Where is that letter, Colonel?” Of course, Malevergne couldn’t have known that Gruenther had just been upbraided in a cablegram by the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff about his presence in London. He couldn’t have known that his name—or, more accurately, his occupation as the river pilot at Port Lyautey—was being bandied about at the highest levels of command; or that there was still some uncertainty about whether or not he was who he purported to be.
What do You think about Twelve Desperate Miles (2012)?
