[TWO]
Canoas Air Base Pôrto Alegre, Brazil 1935 17 July 1943
As Frade got out of the taxi, he saw that there were four military policemen in the guard shack at the brightly lit entrance to the base, two Brazilian and two American.
As he walked up to the shack, one of the Brazilian MPs stepped out of the booth and none too courteously inquired, “Señor?”
Well, I guess with this haircut, I look like a Latin American.
Is that good or bad?
His hairstyle had been among the other things that changed with marriage. Dorotea had announced that the trim—a crew cut he’d worn since his first haircut at the U.S. Navy Flight Training Facility at Pensacola, Florida—made him look like a criminal. His current cut hung over his collar and partially concealed his ears. He thought it made him look like a pimp, but he found that a newlywed, one giddy with love, will make all sorts of sacrifices to retain the affection of his bride.
He saw one of the American MPs glance at him, then dismiss him as unimportant.
“I would like to see Colonel Wallace. My name is Frade,” he said in Spanish.
Colonel J. B. Wallace, U.S. Army Air Forces, commanded the 2035th Training Wing—and the American portion of the Canoas Air Base—and Clete was reasonably sure that Colonel Wallace would be less than overjoyed to see him. But he had to establish contact with someone who knew who he was, and Wallace was the only name he knew or had been given.
And he couldn’t expect any immediate help from Colonel Graham. There had been no reply to the half-dozen messages Frade had just sent to Graham— one about the money being on its way to Lockheed’s account in California; another a report of progress on the registry of the Lodestars; then one asking that Graham arrange for him to get sent the airframe numbers of the planes that by then were en route to Brazil; two follow-up messages, then the final one saying that he would be aboard Varig Flight 525.
“Who, señor?”
“El Coronel Wallace. Norteamericano,” Clete said.
He knew there was enough similarity between Portuguese and Spanish that the MP understood him.
“There is no such person, señor,” the MP said.
Oh, shit. Now what?
He tried again. “El Coronel Wallace?”
The Brazilian MP shrugged.
“Then any American officer.”
“Tomás,” one of the American MPs asked in really bad Portuguese, “what did the señor say his name was?”
The Brazilian MP obviously didn’t understand.
“El Coronel Wallace,” he said, and shrugged to show he had no idea what the señor wanted.
“Hey, pal, you speak any English?”
Clete nodded, and said, “Frade.”
“Oh, shit,” the MP said. “Major Frade, U.S. Marine Corps?”
Clete nodded. “But I’d rather people didn’t know that.”
“You got some ID, sir?”
I have a very fancy gold badge identifying me as an OSS area commander. Even has a photo ID.
But I left it in my safe, as I am here masquerading as an Argentine.
Besides, I don’t think I’m supposed to show it to anyone anyway.
But next time, I’ll bring it. It would have solved this problem.
Clete shook his head.
“Just a minute, please, sir,” the MP said, and went into the guard shack.
In about sixty seconds, the MP came back out of the shack and repeated, “Just a minute, please, sir.”
Three minutes after that, the headlights of a 1942 Ford sedan appeared as it raced up to the guard shack. Frade saw that it had a covered plate on the front bumper, and a chrome pole on the right fender, covered with an oilcloth sleeve. He had just put everything together and concluded that this was the personal auto of a general officer when the proof came: Out jumped a young Air Forces captain wearing wings, a fur felt cap with a crushed crown, and the aiguillette of an aide-de-camp.
He looked at Frade, almost visibly decided the man in the rather elegant suit whose hair now covered the collar and most of his ears could not possibly be a major of Marines, looked at the MP, then back at Frade after the MP pointed to him.
“Major Frade?”
Clete nodded.
“You have some identification, sir?”
Clete shook his head.
It clearly was not the answer the captain hoped for.
“Sir, I’m General Wallace’s aide . . .”
“He got promoted, did he?”
“Sir, if you’ll come with me, please?”
He held open the Ford’s rear door.
Three minutes later, the Ford pulled into the driveway of a pleasant-looking Mediterranean-style cottage with a red tile roof. A neat little sign on the neatly trimmed lawn read: BRIG. GEN. J. B. WALLACE, U.S. ARMY AIR FORCES.
“If you’ll come with me, Major?” the aide asked, and led him into the house, then to a closed interior door, on which he knocked.
“Come in, please,” a male voice, somewhat nasal, called.
“Right in there, sir,” the aide said, opened the door, then closed it after Frade had passed through.
Frade expected General Wallace. He got instead a white-haired civilian of about fifty who had a somewhat baggy suit, a bow tie, and a mustache that would have been Hitlerian had it not been almost white. He looked very much like the Reverend Richard Cobbs Lacey, headmaster of Saint Mark’s of Texas, an Episcopal preparatory school in Dallas at which a fourteen-year-old Clete had had a brief—five months—and ultimately disastrous association.
“Ah,” the man said. “Major Frade. I have just helped myself to some of the general’s whiskey. May I offer you one?”
It’s almost eight p.m. Why not?
“Thank you,” Frade said.
But who the hell is this guy?
The man walked to a table on which were bottles of whiskey, glasses, bottles of soda, and a silver ice bowl.
“What’s your preference, Major?”
“Is that Jack Daniel’s?”
“Indeed. And how do you take it?”
“Straight, with a couple of ice cubes.”
The man made the drink, then handed it to Clete and put out his hand.
“Allen Welsh Dulles,” he said.
“Cletus Frade.”
The man’s grip was firm.
“Yes, I know,” the man said. “How was your flight?”
“Very nice, thank you. Who are you?”
“I told you. My name is Allen Welsh Dulles.”
“That’s your name”—your three-part name, just like Richard Cobbs Lacey, and it’s for some reason vaguely familiar—“not who you are.”
Dulles smiled.
“We have mutual friends.”
“We do?”
“Your grandfather, for one.”
Clete’s eyebrows rose.
“That’s not precise,” Dulles said. He raised his glass. “Cheers!”
Clete tapped the glass and took a sip.
Taking this drink is probably not very smart.
This guy wants something from me, and I’ve already decided he’s smarter than I am.
What the hell is going on?
“Actually, my brother—John Foster Dulles—is an attorney in New York City. Among his firm’s clients are Cletus Marcus Howell and Howell Petroleum.”
“Is that so?”
“I’ve never had the privilege of meeting Mr. Howell—which I am led to believe is often an interesting experience—but nevertheless I relay, through my brother, your grandfather’s best wishes.”
Okay. Now I know what’s going on.
This guy wants to know who Galahad is.
As a friend of the Old Man, he thinks he’s got an in with me.
Fuck you, you three-name sonofabitch!
“And as does, of course, Alejandro Graham,” Dulles added.
Jesus!
“I had dinner with Alex several nights ago in Washington,” Dulles went on. “We have been friends for a long time.”
Frade didn’t reply.
“Major Hans-Peter Baron von Wachtstein,” Dulles said.
“Excuse me?”
“Is Galahad,” Dulles said.
That’s nothing but a guess.
“Who?”
Dulles smiled at him.
“Major Hans-Peter Baron von Wachtstein is Galahad,” Dulles said. “Which is something the FBI, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Army’s Chief of Intelligence, and of course SS-Brigadeführer Ritter Manfred von Deitzberg—and others—would dearly like to know.”
Jesus, he knows about von Deitzberg?
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Frade said.
Dulles smiled at him, then took a sip of his drink.
“Well, they won’t hear it from me,” Dulles said.
“Hear what from you?”
“The identity of Galahad.”
“We’re back to the fact that I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Dulles smiled at him.
“Let me tell you about my dinner with Alex Graham,” Dulles said. “Your drink all right? Need a little top-off?”
“My drink is fine, thank you.”
“It was in the Hotel Washington,” Dulles said. “You know it?”
Frade shook his head.
“Right around the corner from the White House,” Dulles said, “which is convenient when the President, as he did a couple of nights ago, wants to have a private dinner away from the White House.”
“The President?” Frade blurted.
“The Secret Service just rolls his wheelchair into a laundry van, drives it around the corner to the service entrance of the Washington, then rolls him through the kitchen in the basement to the service elevator, and on up to an apartment they keep for him there.”
“He can’t walk?” Frade blurted.
Dulles shook his head. “Not much farther than that door”—he pointed— “and that’s pretty exhausting for him.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Not many people do,” Dulles said. “Anyway, it was a small dinner. Just the President, Graham, Donovan, Putzi Hanfstaengl, and me.”
“Am I supposed to know who Putzi Haf . . . whatever you said . . . is?”
“I’d be surprised if you did. Putzi Hanfstaengl—Ernst is his name; we just call him ‘Putzi’—is a German. He was at Columbia with Roosevelt and Donovan. Got pretty close to Hitler. He was smart enough to get out just in time— before they were going to see he had a fatal accident. As an enemy alien in the U.S., he’s under arrest, of course. The Army has posted guards on him in his quote cell end quote at the Washington, which just happens to be down the corridor from the President’s apartment. Staff Sergeant Ernst Hanfstaengl—same name as his father, you might note—is in charge of that guard detail. So far Putzi hasn’t tried to escape.”
“This all sounds . . . fantastic!”
“And I have barely begun, Major Frade. You sure you wouldn’t like me to refresh your drink?”
“I think that would be a very bad idea, Mr. Dulles.”
“Please call me ‘Allen.’ And if I may, I’d like to call you ‘Cletus.’ ”
“I could no more call you Allen, sir, than I could call Colonel Graham by his first name.”
“Give it a shot. It may not be as difficult as you might think. But may I call you ‘Cletus’?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you. Well, the reason Putzi was there was because we were talking about the war against Germany—”
“Who the hell are you?” Frade blurted.
“I do, in Bern, Switzerland, what you are doing in Buenos Aires. I keep an eye on the Germans and try to make trouble for them. I’m the OSS station chief in Switzerland.”
That’s it! Graham told me about a Dulles!
So this could all be true, of course.
But it could also be some sort of trap.
Have I admitted Galahad is von Wachtstein?
Cletus, ol’ pal, you’re way in over your depth here.
“The regional commander?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re the OSS regional commander?”
“I suppose you could phrase it that way. But I concentrate on the German and Italian high commands. The sabotage and espionage, that sort of thing, is run by David Bruce out of London.”
I’ve got a badge. All my people have badges.
How come you don’t?
What have I got to lose by asking?
“I don’t suppose you have your credentials handy, do you, Mr. Dulles?”
“Excuse me?”
“Your credentials. Your badge.”
“Now I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then how do I know you’re who you say you are?”
“I suppose you’ll just have to take my word for it. May I continue?”
Frade raised both hands in a Have at it gesture.
“Your name came up,” Dulles went on. “We talked of other things, of course, but your name came up.”
Frade didn’t reply.
“The President said that Alex had a loose cannon running around in Argentina, who—believe it or not—refused to share the name of his mole in the German embassy in Buenos Aires with his commander in chief.”
Frade continued to keep his mouth shut.
“I told the President (a) that I knew who Galahad was, and (b) I wasn’t going to tell him or Donovan either. Which predictably set off Wild Bill’s Irish temper. Then I told them why. I told them Galahad’s identity was too important a secret—right up there with the Manhattan Project, in my judgment—”
“The what?”
“The Manhattan Project. I’ll get to that in a minute. Far too important a secret to be shared with everyone in the intelligence community, and that if I didn’t identify Galahad for them, they could truthfully tell the Chief of Naval Operations, the Chief of Staff, and J. Edgar Hoover that they didn’t know.”
“You say you know it’s von Wachtstein. How do you know that?”
“Because I am privy to a secret known to no more than eight or nine Americans, one of whom, Cletus, is you.”
“What secret is that?”
“General von Wachtstein intends to assassinate Adolf Hitler,” Dulles said. “We are in communication. One of his co-conspirators is a chap, a lieutenant colonel, named Claus von Stauffenberg, Count von Stauffenberg, who is a close friend of young von Wachtstein.”
Jesus! He’s got to be who he says he is!
Otherwise, he couldn’t know any of this.
Frade, carefully choosing his words, said, “Peter told me he’d gone to see von Stauffenberg in Munich. But until just now, I thought this ‘regicide’ that his father was talking about was just wishful thinking.”
“It is not.”
“And they’re calling this operation the Manhattan Project?”
Dulles laughed.
“No, it is not. The Manhattan Project involves the development of a bomb of enormous power, incredible power. It involves nuclear energy and an element known as uranium. One of my jobs in Berne is to see how far along the Germans are with their development of what is now called an ‘atomic bomb.’ And to do whatever I can to throw a monkey wrench in their works. Whoever creates this bomb first is going to win the war. It’s as simple as that.”
“My God!”
“Indeed,” Dulles said. “And one of your tasks when you get back to Argentina, almost as your first priority, is to report immediately anything you hear about uranium or a superbomb or heavy water—”
“Heavy water?”
“I don’t understand much of this, but apparently when an extra atom, or several extra atoms, are added to water it becomes deuterium oxide—or ‘heavy water’—and this heavy water is somehow necessary to create a nuclear explosion. The Germans had a facility to make heavy water in Denmark. The British trained some Danes as commandos and sent them in to destroy the facility or render it inoperative. I’m not privy to the details, but their mission was successful and so set back the Germans somewhat.”
“This is all new to me.”
“It’s all new to all of us,” Dulles said. “Anyway, David Bruce told me that he’s just parachuted an OSS team into Denmark—run by a fellow Princetonian, Lieutenant Bill Colby, a chap about your age, Cletus—ostensibly to do commando-type things with the Norwegian resistance, but actually to see what the Germans are doing with their now partially destroyed heavy-water plant. So keep your eyes and ears open vis-à-vis anything nuclear but—importantly— without anybody noticing.”
Frade nodded.
“Now, the Germans—presuming they don’t develop their nuclear bomb before we do; and the indications are they will not—have lost the war. This is apparent to their senior officers, to everybody but Hitler. Most importantly, it is apparent to Admiral Canaris, chief of Abwehr intelligence. Which is why he’s been talking to me. That’s another secret to which you are privy, along with no more than perhaps a dozen others. Am I going too fast for you?”
“Yes, sir. You are. My head is spinning.”
“Well, then, let me finish, and when I have, I’ll try to clarify what you may not fully understand. All right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The question then becomes, when will they lose the war? The sooner the better, obviously. But there are some problems. For one thing, they are somewhat ahead of us in the development of jet fighter aircraft. Our XP-59A didn’t get into the air until the first of October 1942—”
“We have a jet fighter?” Clete blurted in surprise.
Dulles nodded. “—and is nowhere near operational. The German Messerschmitt Me-262, on the other hand, is near operational status.”
“Peter flew one,” Frade said, “in Augsburg. He said it went six hundred miles an hour and has thirty-millimeter cannons.”
“Your friend Peter has flown this aircraft?”
Frade picked up on something in Dulles’s voice.
“He’s my friend. He saved my life, okay?”
“You didn’t make any sort of a report of this test flight?”
Frade shook his head.
He said, “I just presumed we knew about it. Had spies. . . .”
His voice trailed off as he realized how lame that sounded.
Dulles’s eyes narrowed.
“Well, we don’t,” he said coldly. “If you can fit it into your busy schedule when you get back to Argentina, you might consider talking some more to your friend Peter about the Me-262. I’m sure the Army Air Forces would dearly love to hear what someone who has actually flown the Me-262 thinks about it.”
Frade did not reply.
“If the Germans can build enough of them quickly enough, they can inflict bomber losses on the Air Forces and the RAF to the point where the bombing will have to be called off. That would permit them to continue the war for an extended period. Under that circumstance, your delicate feelings about asking your friend about the Me-262 aren’t really important, are they?”
“Is that what you were thinking?” Frade asked.
“Isn’t that what you were thinking?”
“I was thinking it was stupid of me not to have thought the AAF would want to hear about the Me-262,” Frade said. “And then that it really didn’t matter, because I don’t think he knows much beyond its performance, armament, and how hard or easy it is to fly. He didn’t get that much time in it, and he’s a pilot, not an engineer.”
Dulles considered that a long moment, then said, “You’re probably right. And anyway, we’ve gone off at a tangent.
“To backtrack: Putzi said that probably every senior Nazi knows the war is lost. Hitler is psychologically unable to face that, and the senior officers around him are not going to suggest it. But Bormann—who is probably the most powerful man after Hitler—does, or we wouldn’t have Operation Phoenix.
“The ransoming operation is probably simply a personally profitable sideline for senior officers of the SS, headed by von Deitzberg. Himmler—as always—is a mystery. I don’t have a clue as to whether he’s involved with the ransoming operation or not, or whether von Deitzberg is running it under his nose. The upper ranks of the SS, according to Canaris, are riddled with criminal types.
“The question of what to do about both came up at dinner, and was decided by the President, based on a number of factors. Starting with the ransoming operation, Roosevelt said the question was saving lives, however that could be done. Exposing the operation would serve only to ensure that all the Jews in the camps were exterminated.
“Similarly, exposing Operation Phoenix—which seems so incredible on its face that the Nazis could not only deny it but ridicule the accusation—would accomplish very little.”
“You’re saying you’re just going to let them continue?”
“I’m saying you are. With an important caveat. We want to know everything about it. We want the money traced from the moment it arrives in Argentina. We want to know what was bought with it, and from whom. The names of the Argentine—and Paraguayan and Uruguayan—officials who have been paid off. Everything.
“The thinking is that if we went to General Ramírez or General Rawson now with what we have, or what you might dig up, they would tell us to mind our own business. The Argentines are not convinced the Germans have lost the war.
“When Germany surrenders— How much do you know about the Casablanca Conference?”
“What I read in the newspapers, and that wasn’t much.”
“I was there,” Dulles said. “It started out almost as a propaganda stunt. Stalin didn’t want to come—which was the reason Churchill wanted it, so that he and Roosevelt could gang up on Stalin—and Chiang Kai-shek wasn’t invited.
“There was not much need for a conference between Churchill and Roosevelt; they were and are pretty much agreed on everything, which actually means just about everything Churchill wants.
“But there they were: Roosevelt—who is actually quite ill—looking chipper as he became the first President ever to leave the country during wartime, with his good friend Churchill.
“Three things were decided at Casablanca. Churchill lost two of the decisions. ”
“Excuse me?”
“Churchill wants to invade Europe through its ‘soft underbelly,’ meaning the Mediterranean coast of France. George Marshall wants to invade across the Channel. Roosevelt backed Marshall, so that’s where it will happen. Secondly, Charles de Gaulle will not meet an accident—”
“Who?”
“Colonel Charles de Gaulle. Great long drink of water? Who has appointed himself leader of the Free French?”
“Okay, I know who you mean. Accident?”
“Churchill thinks—and he’s probably right—that he’s going to be more trouble than he’s worth. But the President made it clear he would be very unhappy indeed if de Gaulle had any kind of an accident.
“And the third thing decided—the only decision made public—was that we are going to demand the unconditional surrender of Germany, Italy, and Japan. I personally thought that was a bad idea, as there is a chance that if General von Wachtstein and von Stauffenberg succeed in removing Hitler, an armistice could quickly be agreed upon. But that question was decided in Churchill’s favor.
“That’s bad, because it will extend the war, especially insofar as the Japanese are concerned. The Italians, if there weren’t so many German troops in Italy, would surrender tomorrow morning. The Germans will hang on as long as possible, but ultimately, they will surrender unconditionally.
“And what that means, under international law, is that the moment the Germans sign the surrender document, everything the German government owns falls under the control of the victors. Things like embassy buildings, other real estate, bank accounts. Are you following me, Cletus?”
“I hope so.”
“The moment the Germans surrender, our ambassador will call upon the Argentine foreign minister, present him with a detailed list of all German property in Argentina—which you will have prepared, to include bank account numbers, descriptions of real estate, et cetera—and inform him that we’re taking possession of it.
“The Argentine government may not like it, but it’s a well-established principle of international law, and it really would be unwise of them to defy that law. I rather doubt they will. Nations, like people, tend to try to curry favor with whoever has just won a fight.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“That your only comment?”
“What I’m thinking is that I’m in way over my head. Why don’t they send somebody to Argentina who has experience and knows what he’s doing?”
“Ask yourself that,” Dulles said.
“Because he wouldn’t have my contacts.”
“And because he would be more carefully watched than you are.”
“They’re watching me pretty carefully right now, as a matter of fact.”
“What have you done to cause that?”
“They suspect I had something to do with the disappearance of the commercial attaché of the German embassy and his wife. On the way up here, Delgano, who is ostensibly my chief pilot but who is—and he knows I know—a BIS agent, said he wouldn’t be surprised if I had them in my suitcase.”
“I don’t quite understand. You had something to do—”
“They showed up at Milton Leibermann’s door and said they wanted to ‘surrender’—”
“And Leibermann is?”
“The FBI guy in Buenos Aires.”
“The FBI chap in Berne seems to think I am invisible,” Dulles said.
“Leibermann is a good guy. We work well together. Anyway, he brought them out to the estancia, and we’re hiding them until somebody tells me what to do with them.”
“On your estancia?”
“On another one I’d never heard of ten days ago. They’re safe.”
“And Leibermann has reported this to the ambassador? And/or the FBI?”
Frade shook his head.
“Why did they . . . ‘surrender’?”
“They wanted Leibermann to get them to Brazil so they could be interned. Leibermann thinks, and I agree, that they were afraid to go back to Germany because von Deitzberg or Cranz—Frogger’s replacement, actually an SS-OBERSTURMBANNFÜHRER—HAVE not been able to identify von Wachtstein as the spy and are going to hang it on Frogger.”
“This man’s name is Frogger?”
“Wilhelm Frogger. His son and namesake—he had three sons; two got themselves killed—is an oberstleutnant who got himself captured with the Afrikakorps. He’s now in a POW camp in the States.”
“They’ve probably got him in Camp Clinton,” Dulles said, almost to himself.
“Excuse me?”
“This chap in the Afrikakorps?”
“Yeah. I think so. Do tank officers wear big black berets?”
Dulles nodded.
“Then he was—is—a tank officer,” Frade said. “What’s Camp Clinton?”
“A POW camp in Mississippi. We sent a lot of Afrikakorps officers there— including, significantly, General von Arnim. It’s where we plan to hold all German general officers and the more important staff officers.”
Frade’s face showed he had no idea who General von Arnim was.
“Hans von Arnim,” Dulles explained. “He took over the Afrikakorps from Erwin Rommel. He surrendered what was left of it when Tunisia fell. In early May.” He paused and chuckled. “Starchy chap. About so tall”—he held his hand out to indicate a short height—“with a Hitlerian mustache and a large—forgive me—Semitic nose.”
“You know him?” Frade asked in surprise.
“I went to Tunisia to see him. I’m afraid I got nowhere with him.”
Dulles paused thoughtfully again, then asked, “You didn’t report this to Colonel Graham?”
“I sent him half a dozen messages and never got a reply. So I guessed he was out of Washington, and I didn’t want somebody else reading about Frogger if Graham wasn’t there.”
“What are you doing with these people now?”
“One of my sergeants—Stein, good guy, smart, Jewish, got out of Germany just before they would have packed him off to Sachsenhausen or someplace— is trying to convince them that the only way he can keep me from shooting and burying them in an unmarked grave on the pampas is for them to come up with something I can use. Starting, for example, with a manning chart of their embassy. If he lies about that, von Wachtstein will be able to tell.”
“And if he’s not lying, then what?”
“Then I will see what else I can get out of him.”
“I’m sure you can see how valuable this man could be in providing the information about German assets I mentioned.”
No, Stupid here didn’t even think about that.
“Mr. Dulles, I have to tell you that that never entered my mind.”
Dulles looked at him a moment and smiled.
“As you said, your head’s been spinning. I’m sure that the potentially vast importance to us of this man Frogger would have occurred to you sooner or later.”
Frade shook his head.
“And if he is?” Dulles went on. “Lying to you, I mean. Then what?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to kill them, but they know too much—about Leibermann, Stein, me, et cetera—to turn them loose.”
“Don’t kill them just yet, please, Clete. Let me give this some thought.”
Frade looked at Dulles and saw that he was smiling.
“Did I say something that amused you, Mr. Dulles?”
“A minute ago you said something that amuses me now.”
“What was that?”
“Something to the effect that you’re in over your head and why don’t they send someone to Argentina who knows what he’s doing.”
“That’s funny?”
“Alex Graham said, vis-à-vis you, something to the effect that the first impression you give is of a dangerously irresponsible individual who should not be trusted out of your sight. And then, depending on how much experience one has with really good covert intelligence officers, quickly or slowly comes the realization that one’s in the company of a rare person who seems to be born for this sort of thing.”
My face feels flushed.
Am I blushing?
Jesus H. Christ!
“That sounds almost like a compliment,” Frade said after a moment.
“I’m sure it was intended as one,” Dulles said.
“Does that mean you’re going to tell me what this airline business is all about?”
“Alex and I talked about that, and Colonel Donovan told me he’d asked the President. No one knows anything except that Franklin Delano Roosevelt thinks it’s a good idea, and that he was pleased to learn of your remarkable progress in getting one going.”
“Jesus!”
“Your glass is nearly empty, Cletus.”
“I don’t know if another’s a good idea.”
“We’re through for today. We’ll talk again in the morning. You can get a really nice American breakfast at the officers’ club here. Half past eight, shall we say?”
“I’ve got Delgano with me.”
“Oh, bring him. Tell him I’m an assistant consular officer trying to straighten out your problems with Brazilian immigration.”
He saw that Frade was looking at him curiously, as if trying to guess if he was kidding or not.
“That story will explain where you have been now, and where you will be after we have our breakfast.”
“That being the case, sir, I think I will have another little taste.”