The 34th Degree

TO THE AMERICAN MINISTER.
37

D ulles regarded him warily as they sat in front of the fireplace in the spacious club room of the Herrengasse flat. The Swiss station chief, known simply as Number 110 in the OSS message codebook, was younger than Andros had expected, a dapper fellow in his forties with slicked-back dark hair and a round, intelligent face. He was wearing an elegant silk bathrobe and leather slippers and was smoking a pipe.

“You’re certain you weren’t followed?”

Dulles’s sour expression made it plain that he did not appreciate receiving unexpected guests in the middle of the night, especially those with manure on their shoes. He seemed to regard Washington’s brutish intrusions into his delicate operations here in neutral Switzerland with visible disdain. Andros had felt unwelcome from the moment he walked through the door, and he resented it.

“You never know,” said Andros, loosening his tie and lighting a Varga.

Dulles shook his head. “This is another one of Wild Bill’s crazy ideas run amok,” he said. “Donovan’s attitude is to try anything that has even the slightest chance of working. His disregard for standard operating procedures is reckless. Reckless.”

The words did little to reassure Andros. “So you don’t think Prestwick’s plan will work?”

At the mention of Prestwick’s name, Dulles removed the pipe from his gaping mouth and stared. “Did you say Prestwick? Good Lord, don’t tell me he’s behind this!”

Andros wasn’t sure what to say, so he tapped his Varga over an ashtray and shrugged. “You know him?”

“The man used to report to me when I headed our OSS offices in New York,” Dulles explained. “Our psychological chief, Dr. Henry Murray of Harvard, spoke of him when he shared with me his fear that the whole nature of the functions of OSS is particularly inviting to narcissistic characters.”

“Narcissists?”

“You know, those types attracted to sensation, intrigue, the idea of being a mysterious man with secret knowledge.”

That certainly described Prestwick, Andros thought. Indeed, he was beginning to get the impression that outside of the sensible Dulles, the entire organization must be filled with Prestwicks-those paranoid misanthropes who read too many spy thrillers and whose tendencies toward the unconventional bordered on the psychotic.

“Now you must tell me what they told you,” Dulles went on, looking very grave. “What did Donovan and Prestwick say was your reason for coming to Switzerland?”

“You mean my cover?” asked Andros. “I’m here on a humanitarian mission to secure the safe passage of Red Cross food and medical supplies to the suffering people of Greece.”

“That’s not any sort of cover at all. The Germans would see through that in a second.” Dulles frowned. “You mean they didn’t tell you?”

Andros had a sick feeling in his stomach. “Tell me what?”

Dulles sighed. “Publicly, your ambitions may be humanitarian, Chris, but privately, you’re here in Bern for more selfish reasons. Specifically, you’re here to unblock Andros Shipping funds. Andros Shipping is a Swiss corporation, is it not? And quite a few Andros ships sail under Swiss registry?”

Andros, bristling with anger, could see once again that the OSS knew a lot more about him and his family than he knew about them. “My grandfather didn’t feel his funds were secure in Greece,” he explained, “considering the constant political turmoil.”

“Even Switzerland wasn’t safe enough for the Swiss when it looked like the Nazis were going to invade a few years back,” Dulles replied. “The banks transferred their assets and national gold reserves to New York. At the time, America was officially neutral. But Washington was concerned that many so-called Swiss corporations were nothing more than fronts for Nazis like Baron von Berg. Hence Executive Order