Death and Honor

[TWO]

As they walked into the house, Frade took Graham’s arm.

“Why don’t we go into the study?”

“How about in the morning?”

“Now would be better,” Frade said.

He started walking down the long, wide corridor toward what had been his father’s office, with Enrico trailing after him. After a moment’s hesitation, Graham followed them.

When Frade reached the door, he signaled to Enrico to sit in a leather armchair outside the office, then unlocked the door and went in. As Graham followed him inside, he saw that Frade had gone to a table lined with whiskey bottles.

“Close the door, please,” Frade said, then announced: “I’m having scotch. What can I fix for you?”

“I’ll have a scotch,” Graham said. “But we’re back to wouldn’t it be better to do this in the morning? When you’re . . . clearheaded?”

Frade looked at him for a moment until he understood, then chuckled.

“This is my first today, Colonel. There was water in my beer bottle. I didn’t want to set the wrong example for the troops.”

“Okay. Sorry. That puts us back to my thought that you would have been a good company commander.”

Frade didn’t reply. He handed Graham a stiff drink, then sat down at what had been his father’s desk.

He looked at Graham for a long moment, then shrugged.

“What do you want to hear first?” Frade said.

“Isn’t that obvious? What you made me come all the way down here to hear in person.”

“I thought maybe you’d ask, ‘So how’s Galahad these days?’ ”

“Okay, so how’s Galahad these days?”

“Major Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein is fine, thank you. He did not have to go to Valhalla after spreading himself—as an honorable officer and gentleman—all over the runway at El Palomar.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Frade did not respond directly. Instead, he said, “And when he told me why he was still among us, it came out that Admiral Wilhelm Canaris is one of the good guys—”

“Oh, come on, Frade!” Graham interrupted, thinking, My God, where did he get that? “The head of the Abwehr is a good guy? Somebody’s pulling your chain!”

“—which is why I wanted you to come down here,” Frade went on, immune to Graham’s sarcasm. “I didn’t want to send that in a message, for the obvious reasons. You really never know who’s reading your radio traffic, or whether somebody in the State Department is reading stuff in the diplomatic pouch before they send it over to the OSS.”

Graham looked at him in disbelief.

It was possible that something—anything from a train or airplane crash to a heart attack—would remove William J. Donovan from command of the OSS. That contingency had to be planned for. An immediate successor— someone who knew the most secret of all the secrets—would have to be named.

Two men had been selected.

One was Allen W. Dulles, who was running OSS operations in Europe from Switzerland. Dulles was the archetypical WASP Washington insider. A Princeton graduate, he was the grandson of John W. Foster, who had been secretary of State under President Benjamin Harrison, and the nephew of Robert Lansing, who had been President Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of State.

Dulles was very good at what he did, and superbly qualified. As a State Department officer, he had been stationed in Bern, Paris, Istanbul, Vienna, and Berlin.

The other man was Graham.

Graham had been genuinely surprised when Donovan told him that he had been chosen—with President Roosevelt’s approval—as one of the two men who were to be prepared to step in immediately as Donovan’s successor should that be necessary. Surprised because he was the antithesis of a WASP Washington insider. He was a Roman Catholic Texan of Mexican heritage who had graduated from Texas A&M, and his only connection with politics had been to support—and make substantial financial contributions to—the 1940 presidential campaign of Wendell L. Willkie, whom Roosevelt had soundly beaten.

To be prepared to take over from Donovan, the three met whenever they could find the opportunity. Dulles could rarely get to Washington, so what most often had happened was that Graham would meet with Donovan in Washington, and then Graham would travel to Europe—most often to Portugal, which had air service to Switzerland—and personally tell Dulles what Donovan thought he should know. He had told Dulles of the Manhattan Project, the ultrasecret program to develop an atomic bomb.

And Dulles would tell Graham what secrets he thought Donovan and his possible successor and no one else should know. Two of these secrets involved the identities of anti-Nazi Germans high in the hierarchy of the Thousand-Year Reich with whom Dulles was dealing.

One of these was a man named Fritz Kolbe, who provided Dulles with the identities of German spies around the world and had told him of the German development of a revolutionary German fighter aircraft, the Messerschmitt Me- 262, which, powered by a new type of engine—a “jet”—was capable of great speed and posed a real threat to the Army Air Forces’ plans to bomb Germany into submission.

And Graham had relayed to Donovan that Dulles was in contact with Vice Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the chief of the Abwehr, who was dedicated to the overthrow of Adolf Hitler, and there had even been vague talk about a plot to assassinate Hitler.

Canaris’s and Kolbe’s activities were secrets as tightly held as was that of the atomic bomb.

And, Graham thought, looking at Frade, if I’m to believe what I’m hearing, Cletus Frade, a very junior and very amateur OSS operative on the pampas of Argentina, has uncovered the Canaris secret.

That’s incredible!

But maybe—even probably—he’s simply reporting gossip.

“I find that very hard to believe, Frade,” Graham said. “What do you know about Canaris?”

“He’s the head of German intelligence.”

“And you’re telling me he’s . . . sympathetic to the Allied cause?”

“That’s what I hear. From what you would call an absolutely reliable source.”

“And who would that be?” Graham demanded.

“Let me take it step by step,” Frade said.

“Okay.”

Frade took a sip of his drink, then began: “Himmler knows they’ve got a traitor in their embassy here. It’s pretty obvious. They couldn’t get that Operation Phoenix money into Argentina, and lost two of the best guys trying: Colonel Karl-Heinz Grüner, the military attaché who was also the Sicherheitsdienst guy, and Standartenführer Josef Goltz of the SS.

“So Himmler put SS-Brigadeführer Ritter Manfred von Deitzberg, his adjutant, into a Wehrmacht Generalmajor’s uniform and sent him down here to find the traitor.”

There had been a good many German names and titles in what Frade had said, and Graham realized that Frade had pronounced them correctly and with ease.

“Where’d you get the German?” Graham asked.

“Siggy Stein—Sergeant Stein—asked me if I didn’t think I should at least be able to understand some German, so he’s been teaching me.”

“And doing very well, I must say,” Graham said.

“There’s not really a hell of a lot to do here on the pampas,” Frade said. “There’s been plenty of time to try to learn German. I want to get back to that— not much to do—but later. Let me finish.”

“Sorry. Go ahead.”

“Von Deitzberg, who is smart, tough, and could charm the balls off a brass monkey, decided that maybe the captain of the Reine de la Mer knew something that hadn’t come out about (a) how come the Argentines knew where they were going to try to land all that money; (b) how much, if at all, the gottverdammt Amerikaners involved in (a) . . .”

Graham smiled at the “goddamned Americans” correctly translated and pronounced in German. Frade smiled back.

“. . . and (c) how come von Wachtstein, who was in the boat with Grüner and Goltz, didn’t also get his brains blown all over the beach of Samborombón Bay—”

“We got lucky there, didn’t we?” Graham interrupted.

“Yeah, we did. I fucked up there big-time; Argentines don’t believe the Scripture that says that vengeance is only the Lord’s. I should have known that Enrico and Sarjento Gómez would not pass up an opportunity to kill the Germans who ordered my father’s murder, tried to murder me, and in the process got Enrico’s sister’s throat slashed. We got lucky that Enrico knew von Wachtstein had nothing to do with my father’s murder and that he’s a friend of mine and, when he saw von Wachtstein in the boat, told Gómez.”

“I’m as much at fault about what happened on the beach as you are,” Graham said. “I didn’t come to Argentina for the first time yesterday. I know all about their concepts of vengeance and honor. I should have told Sawyer to watch those two.”

“Which would have made him curious why we wanted von Wachtstein kept alive, and we couldn’t tell him, could we? And even if we had told him that Enrico and Gómez had more on their minds than covering his ass while he was taking pictures, there was nothing Polo could have said or done to stop them.”

" ’Polo’?”

“Sawyer. He’s the only one who’s not bored out of his skull here,” Frade said, smiling. “He spends most of his time on horses, swinging a mallet at a willow-wood ball. He’s pretty good; he was a three-goal player before he joined the Army.”

“Who does he play with?” Graham asked.

“My father’s polo team. Of which, of course, my father was captain. San Pedro y San Pablo. I call them the Pedro y Pablo Hot Shots.”

“And how do you explain Sawyer to them?”

“Well, first of all, they live here. El Patron doesn’t have to explain anything to them. And Sawyer—and the others—are by no means the first people who have been guests here for extended periods while other people were looking for them. If you’re asking, ‘Am I putting the team at risk?’—no. The opposite, I would say. Most of the polo players are supervisors of some kind. Which means they run the gauchos who are my perimeter guard. Nobody gets close to this place without my having at least thirty minutes’—more often an hour’s— warning.”

“How about from the air?”

“We don’t get as much warning of somebody flying over,” Frade admitted. “But you would be surprised how far the sound of an aircraft engine carries in the pampas. And that’s not much of a threat anyway. Martín knows what we’re doing here—including that we have the radar—and doesn’t seem to care. What he worries about is my guys being loose in Argentina. So I don’t let them leave the estancia.”

Graham considered that, nodded, and then said, “Well, you don’t have to worry about Oberst Grüner and Standartenführer Goltz anymore.”

“What makes you think I was worried about them?”

“Weren’t you worried they’d have another shot at you?”

“That’s a given. If the SS-SD guys in the embassy ever have the chance to kill any of us, and one of Martín’s men isn’t actually watching them that moment, they’ll take it. That’s another reason I don’t let anybody leave the estancia. Tony Pelosi’s safer with his diplomatic passport. We don’t try to kill their guys with diplomatic status, and they don’t try to kill ours.”

“That doesn’t apply to what happened to Grüner and Goltz?”

“I think the Germans think they were killed by Argentines, getting revenge for my father. The proof seems to be that no Americans at the embassy have been killed, tit-for-tat. I was sort of hoping they’d get Delojo.”

“Your mouth sometimes—often—runs away with you, Frade. You can’t really mean that.”

“Yeah, I can. I don’t trust him. You want to hear the rest of this?”

Graham nodded.

“Where was I?” Frade said.

“Where were you? Himmler was sending his adjutant over here masquerading as a Wehrmacht general—”

“Von Deitzberg,” Frade confirmed, “who decided that somebody reliable should talk to the captain of the Reine de la Mer. So he went to Canaris and Canaris loaned him his liaison officer to the foreign ministry, a submarine officer slash intelligence officer named Boltitz, Korvettenkapitän Karl Boltitz. Boltitz speaks Portuguese, which was important because the captain of the Reine de la Mer didn’t speak German.

“So off von Deitzberg and Boltitz go to Portugal and talk to the captain of the Reine de la Mer. Boltitz smells a rat about von Wachtstein walking away— actually rowing away, I suppose—from the beach unhurt, but has no proof of anything. Von Deitzberg is very impressed with the way Boltitz has dealt with the Portuguese captain, and with the fact that Boltitz speaks Spanish; he doesn’t. So he goes back to Canaris and tells him that he wants to borrow him a little longer, to take him to Argentina with him. Canaris isn’t happy with that, but von Deitzberg is Himmler’s adjutant, and Canaris decides not to fight.

“So, off to Argentina, where Boltitz noses around—he’s clever as hell—and finds out that von Wachtstein tipped us off as to where the Reine de la Mer was going to put the money ashore. That he’s the traitor, in other words. Now, here’s where it gets interesting—”

“Interesting? So far this tale of yours sounds like a screenplay for a cheap spies-and-robbers movie.”

“Yeah, I know. Let me finish. Now, Boltitz is an officer and a gentleman. His father is a vice admiral. And he knows that so is von Wachtstein—that his father is a generalmajor. Now, when two officers and gentlemen are involved in something like this, there’s a set of rules, based on their code of honor.

“So Boltitz goes to von Wachtstein and tells him he knows what’s going on, and that he expects von Wachtstein to behave like an officer and a gentleman is supposed to in these kind of situations.”

“You’re not going to tell me he handed him a pistol with one cartridge and then left him alone?”

“It was a little more complicated than that,” Frade replied. “Boltitz went to von Wachtstein and told him that if he had a fatal crash—spread himself all over the runway—at El Palomar when he came back from Uruguay, Boltitz would not turn him in; the family’s honor would not be sullied, and his father would not be sent to a concentration camp. And von Wachtstein agreed to do it.”

“This is so bizarre I’m beginning to believe it,” Graham said.

“Of course, I’m only a temporary officer and gentleman by act of Congress for the duration plus six months,” Frade said, “but if it had been me . . .”

Graham chuckled.

“. . . I’d have said, ‘Heil Hitler, Herr Korvettenkapitän!’ then killed him and tossed his body into the River Plate.”

“What did he do?”

“He went to Lutzenberger.”

“The ambassador?”

Frade nodded and said, “Manfred Alois Graf von Lutzenberger, ambassador of the German Reich to the Republic of Argentina.”

“To confess? What?”

“Lutzenberger is also one of the good guys,” Frade said. “He and General von Wachtstein went to college together. He knows that von Wachtstein brought a hell of a lot of money here—and is getting more from Switzerland— for after the war.”

“What do you mean for after the war?”

“To send back to Germany, after we win the war, to make sure they don’t lose their land.”

“This General von Wachtstein thinks Germany’s going to lose?”

Frade nodded, and said, “More than that.”

“What more than that?”

“You speak German, right?”

“I can read and write it, but when I try to speak it, German-speaking people have a hard time trying not to laugh.”

Frade stood up and walked to the bookcases on one wall of the study. He took a firm grip on a shelf and tugged mightily. With a squeak, a section of the bookcase swung outward, revealing a wall-mounted safe. He worked the combination, spun a large stainless-steel wheel, and pulled the door open. From an inside drawer, he took an envelope and handed it to Graham.

“No, you can’t have this,” he said. “But I think you should read it. When my father read it, it brought tears to his eyes, and when I read it last week, it did the same thing to me.”

Graham took the envelope. The lined envelope was fine vellum, and so were the two sheets of paper it held.

Schloss Wachtstein

Pomern

Hansel—

I have just learned that you have reached Argentina safely, and thus it is time for this letter.

The greatest violation of the code of chivalry by which I, and you, and your brothers, and so many of the von Wachtsteins before us, have tried to live is of course regicide. I want you to know that before I decided that honor demands that I contribute what I can to such a course of action that I considered all of the ramifications, both spiritual and worldly, and that I am at peace with my decision.

A soldier’s duty is first to his God, and then to his honor, and then to his country. The Allies in recent weeks have accused the German state of the commission of atrocities on such a scale as to defy description. I must tell you that information has come to me that has convinced me that the accusations are not only based on fact, but are actually worse than alleged.

The officer corps has failed its duty to Germany, not so much on the field of battle, but in pandering to the Austrian corporal and his cohorts. In exchange for privilege and “honors,” the officer corps, myself included, has closed its eyes to the obscene violations of the Rules of Land Warfare, the Code of Honor, and indeed most of God’s Ten Commandments that have gone on. I accept my share of the responsibility for this shameful behavior.

We both know the war is lost. When it is finally over, the Allies will, with right, demand a terrible retribution from Germany.

I see it as my duty as a soldier and a German to take whatever action is necessary to hasten the end of the war by the only possible means now available, eliminating the present head of the government. The soldiers who will die now, in battle, or in Russian prisoner of war camps, will be as much victims of the officer corps’ failure to act as are the people the Nazis are slaughtering in concentration camps.

I put it to you, Hansel, that your allegiance should be no longer to the Luftwaffe, or the German State, but to Germany, and to the family, and to the people who have lived on our lands for so long.

In this connection, your first duty is to survive the war. Under no circumstances are you to return to Germany for any purpose until the war is over. Find now some place where you can hide safely if you are ordered to return.

Your second duty is to transfer the family funds from Switzerland to Argentina as quickly as possible. You have by now made contact with our friend in Argentina, and he will probably be able to be of help. In any event, make sure the funds are in some safe place. It would be better if they could be wisely invested, but the primary concern is to have them someplace where they will be safe from the Sicherheitsdienst until the war is over.

In the chaos which will occur in Germany when the war is finally over, the only hope our people will have, to keep them in their homes, indeed to keep them from starvation, and the only hope there will be for the future of the von Wachtstein family, and the estates, will be access to the money that I have placed in your care.

I hope, one day, to be able to go with you again to the village for a beer and a sausage. If that is not to be, I have confidence that God in his mercy will allow us one day to be all together again, your mother and your brothers and you and I in a better place.

I have taken great pride in you, Hansel.

Poppa.

Graham read the letter, then looked at Frade.

“Jesus Christ,” Graham said softly.

“Yeah.”

“And Whatsisname, the ambassador, is ‘our friend’?”

“Lutzenberger,” Frade furnished.

“How did you come by this letter?”

“From von Wachtstein. He needed help to deal with his money. I owed him.”

“What for?”

“He warned me they were going to bushwhack me, remember? That gave him a big IOU on me.”

“And are you helping him?”

“My Uncle Humberto is.”

Graham looked at him for amplification.

“Humberto Valdez Duarte,” Frade explained. “Managing director of the Anglo-Argentine Bank. He’s married to my father’s sister. It was their son—my cousin—who got himself killed at Stalingrad spotting artillery, when all he should have been doing was observing.”

“If their son was killed with the Germans at Stalingrad, why is he helping?”

“I suppose the real reason is he figured my IOU to von Wachtstein was a family debt of honor.”

“And you think he can be trusted?”

Frade nodded. “I think he was forced to face the fact that his son was a fool. But he’s not going to do anything to hurt me. Or von Wachtstein.” He paused and chuckled, then added: “I’d bet my life on it.”

“You realize, I suppose, that not only should you have shown me this letter long before this—”

“I thought about that. And decided not to pass it on. I didn’t know what would be done with the information, and I didn’t want General von Wachtstein getting hung on a butcher’s hook as a traitor because of something I’d done.”

“That sort of decision is not yours to make, Major Frade.”

“I generally make all my own decisions,” Frade said. “Deferring only to people I know are smarter than me.”

“Officers senior to you are presumed to be smarter than you.”

“That hasn’t been my experience.”

Graham realized that he was dangerously close to losing his temper, and that would make matters even worse.

“This helping von Wachtstein conceal his money over here, I hope you’re aware, could be considered as treating with or giving aid and comfort to the enemy.”

“I hope that wasn’t a threat.”

“It was a simple statement of fact, Frade.”

Neither said anything for a moment, then Graham asked, “What happened when von Wachtstein went to the ambassador? Let’s get back to that.”

“He told him—this is almost a quote—to be careful when he came back from Uruguay; he needed him. Actually, he said, ‘Germany needs you.’ ”

“Why was von Wachtstein flying to Uruguay in the first place?”

“They have a Fieseler Storch. Like a Cadillac version of the Piper Cub. He goes over there all the time, carrying stuff, people, et cetera.”

“And then what?”

“Lutzenberger calls Boltitz in and shows him a letter from Canaris, which says Boltitz is to regard any orders from Lutzenberger as if they came personally from him.”

“And the orders from Lutzenberger were to lay off von Wachtstein?”

“That, too, of course. But, more importantly, admitting—without actually coming out and saying it—that he’s part of the whole resistance to the Nazis, and probably part of—at least a supporter of—the plot to kill Hitler.”

“And then von Wachtstein told you what had happened?”

“He flew out here, with Boltitz, in the Storch. They both told me.”

“And then you sent me the radio?”

Frade nodded.

“Frade, I can only hope that you appreciate what dangerous ground—what thin ice—you’re walking on,” Graham said seriously.

“I can only hope that you appreciate your OSS guy down here is in way the hell over his head.”

“Is that another shot at Commander Delojo?”

“I was talking about me.”

“Commander Delojo is the Argentine OSS station chief,” Graham said. “He’s my OSS guy down here.”

“Then I can only hope you appreciate your OSS guy down here is not only in way over his head, but isn’t working exclusively for the OSS.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“He’s an Annapolis ring-knocker, a lifer, who still has dreams of being captain of a battleship. He is not going to do anything that might displease the Navy Department, and, conversely, is going to do anything he thinks will please them—get him his battleship—like sending them anything about what the OSS is doing down here that they might like to know. He scares the hell out of me.”

“I don’t believe that he’s that way.”

“If Delojo knew anything about what I’ve just told you, it would be in the next diplomatic pouch to the Office of Naval Intelligence. And Christ only knows what they would do with it.”

God damn it! He’s right.

That wasn’t considered before—what the hell, the Navy’s on the same side in this war—but it should have been. And by me.

Well, as soon as I get back to Washington, I’ll get Delojo out of here.

If ONI hears that Admiral Canaris is working against the Nazis, God only knows what they would try to do with their fellow sailor. And what damage that could cause to what Dulles is trying to do.

Or, for that matter, to the OSS.

There’s nothing the Navy would like more than to send the chief of Naval Operations to Roosevelt and tell him they’ve got Canaris in their pocket. And, that being the case, shouldn’t the OSS be ordered to back off?

The problem is that there is only one man who can deal with Canaris, and he’s not in the Navy. At the first approach the Navy made to Canaris, he’d back off. Not only from the Navy but from Allen Dulles, too.

I can’t let Navy Intelligence put its toe in those waters.

“I think you’re dead wrong about that, Frade.”

“Then I’m sorry. What I was hoping you’d say would be that you would send somebody—Christ, there must be somebody in the OSS—who would know what to do down here.”

Nobody with your connections, unfortunately.

And, as a matter of fact, nobody that I can think of who could do a better job, including me.

Okay, Alejandro, truth time. Face the facts.

Your clever idea to send a young Marine officer—with absolutely no experience as an intelligence officer—down here wishfully thinking that maybe he could get his Argentine father to look more fondly on the United States has gotten completely out of hand.

For one thing, that mission is moot—El Coronel Frade is dead.

And it doesn’t really matter that young Frade probably can’t tilt the Argentine government toward us any more. Not impossible, but improbable. The bottom line here is that that isn’t nearly as important as the other things.

Frade is now involved in things far more important. It doesn’t matter how he got involved; the fact is that he knows about—is involved with—resistance to the Nazis by senior members of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht; the German navy; the head of Abwehr; the assassination plot against Hitler; Operation Phoenix; and the ransoming of Jews from concentration camps.

And while he’s so painfully right that he’s in over his head with all of this, the bottom line there is: So what? He’s involved.

“Major Frade, I want you to listen very carefully to what I’m about to say,” Graham said seriously.

Frade looked at him quizzically, nodded his head, but said nothing.

“That was an order,” Graham said. “To which, as a serving Marine officer, you are expected to reply, ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ ”

Graham saw the look on Frade’s face.

Is that contempt? Or amusement?

Probably both: Contemptuous amusement. Or amused contempt.

Frade said, “Aye, aye, sir.”

“Is something bothering you, Major?”

“ ‘Serving Marine officer,’ Colonel? So far as I know—with the exception of the Marine guards at the embassy—I’m the only Marine in Argentina. And God knows, I’m not functioning as a Naval Aviator. And as a serving Marine officer, I’m supposed to place myself at the orders of the senior officer of the Navy Department present. That would be Commander Delojo, and I have absolutely no intention of placing myself—or the Army officers, enlisted men, or Chief Schultz, who I do command—under Delojo’s orders.”

“Finished?” Graham asked.

Frade nodded. Then, a long moment later, when he realized Graham was waiting for the expected response, he said, “Yes, sir.”

“First, let’s straighten out the chain of command,” Graham said. “You are a Marine officer seconded to the Office of Strategic Services. As am I. I’m the senior Marine officer in OSS. That makes you subject to my orders. Clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

That reply was neither amused nor contemptuous.

I got through to him. At least a little.

A stray thought popped into Graham’s head.

The last time I thought of an amused contemptuous look on the face of Major Frade was when I went to the Documents Branch to pick up those absurd credentials Donovan ordered me to bring down here.

I knew that would be his understandable reaction to them.

But can I turn that around?

Christ, it’s worth a shot.

And I have to have him under control before I get into what he’s going to have to do now that he has stumbled into things he can’t control himself.

“You asked me to come down here at a time when I was planning to come anyway,” Graham said. That wasn’t true, but he saw that he had Frade’s attention.

Frade looked at him curiously, but said nothing.

“I’ll be back in a minute, Major,” Graham said. “While I’m gone, why don’t you give some serious thought to the chain of command you’d like to see in place here?”

“Sir?” Frade asked, but Graham was already at the door and didn’t reply.

“Very interesting,” Frade said after examining the leather folder holding the plastic-sheathed photo identification card and gold OSS badge. “What am I supposed to do with it? Show it to Colonel Martín?”

And there’s that sardonic look on his face. And I understand it.

“I can do without the sarcasm, Frade,” Graham said icily.

“Sorry,” Frade said, not sounding very contrite.

“You noticed, I hope, that in the rank block, you are identified as area commander. ”

“I saw that. What does it mean?”

“Just what it says,” Graham said.

Frade held both hands out, palms upward, signaling he had no idea what Graham was talking about.

“Let me explain,” Graham said. “You’re not the only officer around with command structure problems . . .”

I’m making this up as I go along.

"... and this new system is what Director Donovan and I—in consultation with the attorney general—came up with.”

“New system?”

“The Rules for the Governance of the Navy—or Army Regulations—just don’t provide for situations in the OSS where the best-qualified man to perform a function, or issue orders, is an officer—or often an enlisted man—junior to, and thus subject to the orders of, someone else in his unit.”

“That finally occurred to somebody, did it?” Frade asked.

“So we’ve developed our own OSS command structure, which gives the necessary lawful authority to the individual who should have it, regardless of his rank in his service. At the moment, there are four grades: special agent, senior agent, supervisory agent, and area commander.”

Frade pursed his lips thoughtfully.

Not sardonically. Have I got him?

If I don’t blow this, I just may have.

“Just about everybody in the field will be a special agent,” Graham went on. “Again, without regard to their actual rank in their branch of the service. Those with greater responsibility will hold the higher ranks. I can readily see where a lieutenant—for that matter, a sergeant—will be a senior agent. Frankly, I don’t think that many sergeants will be supervisory agents, but if that becomes necessary, it will happen. The important thing about the new system is that it gives lawful authority to those we think should have it.”

“Ashton’s a good man, but he doesn’t know half as much about communications or the radar as Chief Schultz,” Frade said. “Or Siggy Stein.”

“In that case, if you want to, you could designate Chief Schultz as a senior agent. That would give him the lawful authority over the others he needs.”

Frade didn’t reply.

He’s obviously giving this some thought. Which means he’s swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.

“What are you thinking, Frade?”

“That maybe I better apologize for what I was thinking when you handed me this Junior G-Man’s badge. This’ll work, Colonel.”

“My badge reads theater commander. That outranks an area commander.”

Where the hell did I get that?

“I was afraid it would,” Frade said. “What do I call you, ‘theater’? Or ‘commander’? ”

“ ‘Sir’ will do nicely. This is strictly for internal use. You understand that?”

Frade nodded. “You have these for the other guys?”

“Special agent badges and ID cards for everybody, plus about a dozen blanks—already signed—for the ID cards. When you decide who’ll be what, you can fill them out. I also have some senior and one supervisory thingamabobs that go on the badges.”

When I took everything away from those morons in Documents, it was to keep them from falling into the wrong hands. I never dreamed they’d be used.

Thank God I didn’t have time to destroy them.

“Let me think about it,” Frade said.

“Certainly. Now, there’s two other things we have to talk about.”

“Okay.”

“There are three really significant secrets, Frade, that only very few people know about. By very few people, I mean Director Donovan, Allen W. Dulles, and me.”

“Who’s Dulles?”

“The senior OSS man we have in Switzerland. Like me, a theater director.”

Frade nodded.

“One of them is actually two,” Graham said. “That’s Operation Phoenix and the ransoming of Jews from concentration camps.”

Frade nodded again.

“The second is that Dulles is in contact with Admiral Canaris, and that means with the plan to assassinate Hitler.”

Frade nodded again. “And the third?”

There was absolutely no reason that Frade should know of the Manhattan Project.

“You don’t have the Need to Know,” Graham said.

“Fine with me, as long as it’s not going to happen here.”

“I can assure you it’s not going to happen here,” Graham said.

“So why is this business about Canaris such an important secret?”

“You make me another drink, and I’ll tell you.”

“. . . So, essentially all I have to do is make sure that nobody talks about Canaris.”

“That and keep me posted up to the minute on anything, anything at all, that touches on Canaris,” Graham said. “That’s even more important, if possible, than keeping me up-to-date minute by minute about anything else you learn—no matter how unimportant it seems to you.”

“That’s not a problem. There are only two people who know about Boltitz and Canaris—”

“You and who else?” Graham demanded.

“Dorotea.”

“Why in hell did you tell your wife?”

“She was there when von Wachtstein and Boltitz told me. She knows everything. ” He paused, then added: “About everything. The radar, Operation Phoenix, what happened on the beach. Everything.”

“I don’t like that.”

Frade didn’t reply, which Graham correctly interpreted to mean that Frade didn’t much care if he liked it or not.

“And, presumably, you intend to tell her about this conversation?”

“I’d rather have her trusting me to tell her everything than have her suspect I’m keeping something from her and then having her snooping around where she shouldn’t be trying to figure out what that is.”

And he’s probably right about that, too.

“And, of course, Schultz will have to know. He handles the encryption.”

“Only him?”

“He taught me how, in case I had to do it sometime, but he does the encryption. And decryption.”

“Keep it that way.”

Frade nodded.

He didn’t say, “Aye, aye, sir.”

But there was no sarcastic smile on his face when he nodded. He accepted the order. I’m going to have to be satisfied with that.

The sardonic smile will come back now when I tell him that President Roosevelt wants him to set up an airline.

Graham began: “Now, to the second reason I was coming down here before you sent for me . . .”

He saw that Frade was listening attentively.

“Is this airline supposed to be a cover for what we’re doing down here?” Frade asked when Graham had finished.

There’s no wiseass smile on his face.

“Obviously, it would be. But I don’t think that’s the primary purpose the President had in mind.”

“Then what’s he after?”

“He didn’t confide that in me. He doesn’t have to. He’s the commander in chief. And, actually, I haven’t talked to him. He told Donovan, and Donovan told me to do it.”

“Maybe he wants to stick it into Juan Trippe and Pan American Grace,” Frade said.

“Why would you want to say that?”

“My grandfather hates Roosevelt, but he says he’s smarter than hell. What was the name of that Italian family who went around poisoning everybody who got in their way? Machi-something.”

“Machiavelli,” Graham furnished.

“Right. My grandfather says Roosevelt is Machiavellian. Trippe has South America sewn up as far as airlines go—hell, he’s got the world sewn up. So give him some competition. Cut him down to size.”

“That’s pretty far-fetched, Frade.”

On the other hand, it may be right on the money.

I have no idea what Roosevelt was thinking when he came up with this airline idea or what it’s supposed to accomplish.

Frade chuckled.

“What’s funny?” Graham asked.

“I was just thinking: What does Donovan’s badge say, ‘world commander’?”

“I suppose. Either that or ‘friend of the President.’ Can this airline be done, Frade?”

Frade nodded.

“I’ll have to set up a company, and get some partners. . . .”

“Who, for example?”

“My Uncle Humberto—that is, the Anglo-Argentine Bank. And the proper officials in the ministry of transportation; things work much faster down here if the official with the rubber stamp has a piece of the action. And maybe— maybe hell; absolutely—my Tío Juan.”

“El Coronel Juan Domingo Perón?”

“He told me he wants me to think of him as my loving uncle,” Frade said, shaking his head in what could have been either disbelief or disgust. “If I can get him on board—and I think I can; he needs the money—that will keep Martín off my back.”

He looked at Graham for a moment, then went on: “Not that I’m going to use this airliner for anything of which Martín might disapprove. You understand that, right?”

“You’ll use it for any purpose the President or I direct.”

“You want to blow my contacts with Canaris, von Wachtstein’s father, and the rest of it?”

“Of course not.”

“Then it has to be kept as far away from the OSS as I can keep it.”

“Understood.”

We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

If there is some OSS need for these airplanes, we’ll damn well use them for it.

Frade said: “Varig has got a bunch of Lodestars. Where’d they get them?”

“I have no idea.”

But I would not be at all surprised if Roosevelt was involved.

Frade raised an eyebrow, then drained his glass and said, “Lockheed must have some kind of operation in Brazil. Americans, I mean. Engineers, mechanics. And somebody in charge. What about having Lockheed send the guy in charge down here to try to sell Don Cletus Frade their airplanes? No mention of the OSS, of course, or that I’m an American. I’m a rich Argentine who Roosevelt, for his own reasons, wants to be nice to, and already gave me one Lodestar to prove it. And can get Don Cletus export licenses to buy some more now that I want to start an airline?”

“Sounds good, but slow down. All I really know about this is that Donovan—the President—wanted to know if it could be done—”

“You made it sound like an order.”

Graham ignored the interruption. He went on: “—and now that you tell me you think it can, I’ll get into the details when I get back to Washington.”

“When’s that going to be?”

“I’d like to leave tomorrow.”

“This airline’s that important, is it?”

“No. But everything else you’ve told me is. I want to get back to Washington as quickly as I can.”

“Okay.”

“And the sooner I get back, the sooner I can get a replacement for Commander Delojo down here.”

That didn’t produce the reaction Graham expected.

“I’d rather you leave him where he is,” Frade said. “Just watch him. And I’ll have Ashton and Pelosi watch him. And don’t tell him about this agent business with the badges. I’d rather have him there than somebody I don’t know. I told Delojo if he snoops around here or my people, I’ll kill him. I think he believes me. A new guy might not.”

“Your call,” Graham said.

These credentials really got to him.

And when you’re on a roll . . .

“There’s the oath of office to be administered to your officers and men,” Graham said. “It’s too late—and there’s been too much beer—to do that tonight. First thing in the morning?”

“Fine,” Frade said.

He also swallowed that hook, line, and sinker.

“I’d like to do it in the field,” Graham went on, “rather than here. Would that cause problems?”

“Where they are now is about five kilometers from here. Except Schultz, who never leaves the radar. But he can leave that for an hour or so. What I could do is tell him to meet us at the house, and you and I could go there.”

“Fine.”

“You up to riding a horse, Theater Commander, sir?”

“Do I have to remind you that I’m a Texan and an Aggie?”

“Okay. Breakfast at seven-thirty, then we’ll ride out there.”

“Seven-thirty. And now I’m going to go to bed. It’s been a long day.”

“Yeah,” Frade agreed.

Before he took a shower and went to bed, Graham sat at the desk in his room and tried to recall the words of the oath an officer swore when he accepted the commission. He started to write them down. He had a good memory, but he knew when he looked at what he had written that he didn’t have it all, and that what he did have was not right.

It doesn’t matter. I’ll change the wording anyway.