Victory and Honor

[ONE]

Executive Suite, South American Airlines Aeropuerto Coronel Jorge G. Frade Morón, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina 1725 16 May 1945

When the telephone on the desk of the managing director of South American Airways rang, Don Cletus Frade, with a grunt and some difficulty, took his feet from the desk and reached for it.

“Why do I think our diplomats may have finally decided to show up?” he asked of no one in particular.

There were six men in the room. Moments before the telephone rang, Frade had idly thought he couldn’t remember ever having seen so many people in his office. All but one of them were wearing some variation of the SAA flight crew uniform.

Chief Pilot Delgano was there, in the most spectacular version thereof. Frade was wearing the uniform of an SAA captain. Hans-Peter von Wachtstein and Karl Boltitz were wearing the only slightly less spectacular uniforms of SAA first officers. And Master Sergeant Siggie Stein was wearing the uniform of an SAA radio officer/navigator.

The man not in uniform was retired Suboficial Major Enrico Rodríguez, who, Clete had decided—after going so far as to put him in a steward’s uniform—was just not going to look like a member of an SAA flight crew no matter how he was dressed.

And Rodríguez could not be left behind. To the usual arguments he made when not taking him along somewhere came up for discussion he had added a new one: “Don Cletus, I spent a year in Germany when el Coronel, may he be resting in peace with your sainted mother and all the angels, was at the Kriegsschule. You, however, have never been there.”

Enrico Rodríguez was listed on the flight manifest as a “security officer.”

They had been waiting since one o’clock for the “Foreign Minister’s Relief Party” to show up, the last three hours of that time in the executive offices as a result of an executive decision by the managing director, who was in something of a pique at the time.

“Fuck it!” he said. “I’m not going to stand around here with my thumb up my ass waiting for these clowns any longer. We’ll go to the executive offices and have them send up coffee and something to eat.”

The executive offices were not quite the center of executive activity it sounded like. Managing Director Frade was now willing to admit he had been a little derelict in the execution of his duties when examining the architect’s drawings of the buildings to be erected at Aeropuerto Coronel Jorge G. Frade. Concerned primarily with the hangars, the control tower, and the maintenance and cargo-handling facilities, Frade had not realized until everything had been constructed and equipped that about half of the third floor of the terminal building was devoted to something called the “Executive Suite.”

The Executive Suite was further divided into an office for the managing director, an office for the chief pilot, a conference room, an office for their secretaries, a small kitchen, separate restrooms, and a reception area.

SAA also maintained offices in downtown Buenos Aires—two floors in the Anglo-Argentine Bank, the managing director of which was el Señor Humberto Valdez Duarte. El Señor Duarte was also Cletus Frade’s uncle and SAA’s financial director. Duarte supervised the day-to-day business activities of SAA from his office in the bank.

The result of this was that the Executive Suite of the SAA terminal was, in corporate parlance, “underutilized.” Neither Cletus Frade nor Chief Pilot Gonzalo Delgano had secretaries, and moreover Delgano had a small but adequate office off the flight-planning room in Hangar Two. He almost never went to the Executive Suite. Frade went there rarely, usually only when he wanted to change into—or out of—his SAA captain’s uniform. The company had issued him three uniforms, and he kept them in the Executive Suite.

It was in the Executive Suite that von Wachtstein, Boltitz, and Stein had been hastily outfitted with SAA uniforms. Clete had sensed that all three shared his opinion of the garish outfits, but they were too polite to say anything, and he hadn’t said anything either because he thought it would only serve to make a bad situation worse.

The truth was that while SAA pilots, from Chief Pilot Delgano down, thought their uniforms properly reflected their important role as dashing fliers, when Frade put on his uniform and looked into the mirror, he thought he looked like a tuba player in the Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus band—or maybe the guy driving the wagon holding the caged snarling tigers in the circus parade.

There were times, of course, when he had to wear it. Today, for one example. And, for another, when he was combining a scheduled Constellation flight with a training flight for pilots being upgraded from the left seat of a Lodestar to the right seat of a Connie, which meant passengers were aboard. And he wore it when flying to Lisbon, putting it on only after all other preflight activities had been accomplished and taking it off just as soon as he could when he had returned to Aeropuerto Jorge Frade.

“Who’s down there?” Frade said into his telephone, his tone incredulous, and, after there was a reply, said, “Send them up.”

He put the handset in the base and turned to the men in the room.

“Get your feet off the coffee table, Gonzalo. Your boss is on the way up. And so is the guy who thinks he’s mine.”

It was an open secret to those in the room that in addition to his role as SAA chief pilot, Gonzalo Delgano was a colonel of the Bureau of Internal Security. He had been keeping an eye on el Coronel Frade from the time he was a captain and ostensibly the pilot of el Coronel’s Beechcraft Staggerwing. Now he kept an eye on Cletus Frade and SAA.

The other reference was obviously to Richmond C. Flowers, USA, the military attaché at the American Embassy who was de jure but not de facto the senior OSS officer in Argentina.

The same question ran through both Frade’s and Delgano’s minds: I wonder what the hell this is all about.

El General de Brigada Martín, in civilian clothing, came into the office first, followed by Colonel Flowers and two muscular young men, also in civilian clothing, one of them carrying a bulging leather briefcase that clearly was stuffed full.

Frade thought: Clever fellow that I am, I suspect that those two are Marine guards.

How do I know? They’re muscular, bright-eyed—and nobody else in Buenos Aires has haircuts like that.

I wonder what the hell this is all about. . . .

“Good afternoon,” Martín said.

“Bernardo, if you’ll tell me who told you we were up here,” Frade said as he stood up, “I’ll have him dragged down Runway 28—that’s the long one—by his testicles.”

“Actually, it was a rather good-looking young woman,” Martín said, smiling.

“Then by her ears,” Frade said. He turned to Colonel Flowers. “Good afternoon, sir. I believe you know everybody?” Then, looking at the two muscular young Marines, he added, “Semper fi, guys.”

The younger of the two smiled back and said, “Semper fi, sir.”

Colonel Flowers raised his eyebrows.

Clete shrugged. “You know what we say, Colonel. Once a Marine, always a Marine.”

Colonel Flowers looked uncomfortable. He had known Kapitän zur See Boltitz and Major von Wachtstein when they had been respectively the Naval attaché and the assistant military attaché for air of the German Embassy.

Clete thought: And by now you’ve heard that I plucked them from durance vile at Fort Hunt.

“What’s going on?” Martín asked.

“Actually, we were just talking about you,” Frade said.

“Really?” Martín said as he walked around the room, shaking hands and exchanging embraces.

Flowers shook hands wordlessly with everyone.

“I said something to the effect that if el General was here we could ask him what this swap-the-diplomats mission is really all about,” Frade said.

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Martín said, walking finally to Clete, where he hugged his shoulder.

“May I say how elegant you all look in your uniforms?” Martín asked.

“Only if you say it without smirking,” Clete said, then added: “You really don’t know what’s going on? Or where our passengers are? I told Humberto to tell my Tío Juan we wanted to leave no later than four-thirty.”

“Colonel Frade, may I have a moment with you?” Colonel Flowers asked.

“Certainly. May we use your office, Gonzalo?”

“Certainly.”

When they had gone into the adjacent office, Flowers said, “Sergeant, leave the briefcase, please, and wait for me in the corridor.”

One of the Marines handed Flowers the briefcase, then both Marines left the office, closing the door behind them.

Flowers put the briefcase on the desk, then sat down in an armchair before it.

He looked at Clete and said, “May I ask where you’re going?”

Why not tell him?

“The Foreign Ministry has chartered a Connie to take a crew of Argentine diplomats to Germany and bring back the ones who are there.”

“Sort of a rescue mission?”

“I suppose you could say that. They were in Berlin while the Russians took it. That couldn’t have been much fun.”

“You’re going to Berlin?”

Frade nodded. “I’m flying the airplane. The mission will be led by someone from the foreign ministry.”

“And you’re taking the two Germans with you?”

“If you’re talking about von Wachtstein and Boltitz, Colonel, you’re getting into areas I’m not at liberty to discuss with you.”

That earned Frade the cold, tight-lipped expression he expected, but Flowers did not respond directly.

“I have half a million dollars for you,” Flowers said.

Half a million bucks? Frade thought. No shit?

Oh! Talk about government efficiency! It’s been damn near a year since I sent that invoice to Washington.

The actual idea of billing the OSS had been triggered by Doña Dorotea, who had been dealing with managers of various Frade enterprises going over their bills. She’d asked Clete, “Who’s going to pay for all the money we’re spending on the OSS? Us?”

After a moment’s hesitation, he had replied, “Who else?”

Then he’d realized that Dorotea’s question was one he had not previously considered. It had not taken him long at all, after his father had been assassinated and he had inherited everything he thought of as “el Coronel, Incorporated,” to stop thinking about money. He had other things on his mind, for one thing, and for another, the well of Frade cash seemed to be as inexhaustible as the pool of water at the bottom of Niagara Falls.

What happened next started out the next day as simple curiosity: How much am I spending on various things of interest to the OSS? And why the hell am I?

He had been astonished with his first, really rough partial estimate.

Over the next week or so, he prepared a more thorough listing of his expenses and losses on behalf of the OSS. The latter started with what it had cost him to repair—actually rebuild—the house at Tandil, which had been machine-gunned literally to rubble by troops of Colonel Schmidt’s Tenth Mountain Regiment.

When he had a more or less complete listing of things the OSS should have paid for but hadn’t, it was twenty-six pages in length.

In it, he had tried to err on the side of frugality—for example, he billed the OSS two hundred fifty dollars an hour for the “business use” of the Red Lodestar. That was half the ballpark figure SAA used for estimating the per-hour cost of flying SAA Lodestars on their routes.

He also had decided that ten dollars a day was a more than fair price for the OSS to pay for each “contract security operative”—the pressed-into-service ex-troopers of the Húsares de Pueyrredón.

Then, just as he had been genuinely surprised to see how often he’d used the Red Lodestar for OSS business, he really had been surprised to see how large his private army had grown. And how much it had cost to feed it and move it around.

At least a dozen times during the preparation of the invoice, he told himself that he was just wasting his time.

All this is going to do is piss off Donovan and Graham.

But, on the other hand, what if I didn’t have access to the overstuffed cash box of el Coronel, Incorporated?

It isn’t fair for the OSS to expect me to spend my own money doing things for the OSS—especially since doing things for them usually results in people trying to kill me.

When he was ready to hand the invoice to Tony Pelosi to be sent to Washington, he had second—or perhaps fiftieth—thoughts about actually sending it. But finally—What the hell, why not?—he typed a brief note, then signed it: 16 Jun 1944

Dear General Donovan:

Detailed invoice enclosed.Please remit sum of $503,508.35 at earliest convenience.Respectfully,

Cletus H. Frade

Major, USMCR

And he handed the note and the invoice to Pelosi, who saw that they were put in the next possible diplomatic pouch.

When there had been no reply of any kind in two weeks, Clete had decided that Donovan or Graham, or both, were either really pissed at him or were ignoring him, or both, and that he’d simply made a fool of himself. Again.

He’d had no regrets. It had been interesting to see how much being a spy was costing him. The invoice showed he had dipped into el Coronel’s cash box on behalf of the OSS for a little more than half a million dollars.

Now, Frade glanced at the briefcase on the desk and thought, Better late than never!

Frade then looked at Flowers. “I thought that might have money in it.”

“Of course you did,” Flowers said stiffly, handing Frade an envelope.

Frade opened it. It contained a single sheet of paper that read: The Embassy of the United States of America Buenos Aires, Argentina

Colonel Richmond C. Flowers

Military Attaché

16 MAY 1945

The undersigned acknowledges receipt of $500,000 (Five Hundred Thousand Dollars Exactly) in lawful currency of the United States from Colonel Richmond C. Flowers, USA.

Cletus H. Frade

Lieutenant Colonel, USMCR

Frade thought, And more fucking government efficiency!

They shorted me almost four thousand dollars!

Oh, well. Better the bulk of it than nothing at all.

Flowers then extended his fountain pen.

“Please sign that,” he said.

Frade did so, handed pen and paper back, then, nodding at the briefcase, asked, “It all fit in there? Half a million dollars?”

“You may count it if you wish, but I assure you it’s all there.”

Frade nodded, opened the briefcase, and looked into it. It held five bricks of bills, each about the size of a shoe box, wrapped in some sort of oiled paper, which was translucent enough so that he could see stacks of one-hundred-dollar bills.

“Where’d you get it?” Frade said. “The Bank of Boston?”

“It came by diplomatic pouch,” Flowers said.

Frade said nothing.

“You of course may keep the briefcase,” Flowers went on, “until it’s convenient for you to drop it off at the embassy.”

“Thank you,” Frade said, then had an irreverent thought and said it aloud: “It would be really bad form for me to walk out of here carrying all that money in my arms like so much Kleenex.”

“I think I have the right to an explanation, Colonel Frade,” Flowers said. “That’s a great deal of money. What are you going to do with it?”

“Sorry, Colonel, you just don’t have the need to know.”

Did I say that because I didn’t want to get into a long explanation of where and how I’ve been spending the OSS’s money?

Or because I really dislike him?

“Sooner or later, Colonel Frade, you’re simply going to have to accept that as the senior OSS officer down here, I do have the need to know about whatever you’re doing.”

Frade shrugged and in an agreeable tone said, “I hope you understand that I’m just obeying my orders, Colonel. It’s nothing personal.”

Flowers met Frade’s eyes, and Frade thought he could actually see steam coming out of Flowers’s ears.

Then Flowers cleared his throat and changed subjects.

“There is something else I would like to discuss with you, Colonel Frade.”

“Yes, sir?”

“As you know, I wear several hats. I am both the military attaché here as well as the senior OSS officer in Argentina. While that latter role is, of course, known to the assistant chief of staff for intelligence, it is not known by any of the other military attachés in South America. They don’t have, as you like to say, the need to know.”

Why do I think he’s rehearsed this speech?

No. What Colonel Pompous has done is to write it down and then nearly memorize it.

Which makes it important to him.

So where the hell is he going with it?

“Periodically, once every three months or so, the assistant chief of staff, intelligence—ACofS G-2—convenes a conference of military attachés in South America. My absence from such conferences would raise questions, obviously, so I attend.

“I have just returned from such a conference, this time held in Rio de Janeiro. The ACofS G-2 personally presided. The subject was our role now that Germany has surrendered. And, as part of this, the role of the OSS for the rest of the war and afterward was discussed.”

Aha! Question answered.

This might be interesting.

Frade said: “And what did you and the ACofS G-2 conclude?”

Flowers’s face showed that he hadn’t expected questions during his speech. He almost visibly thought about answering the question and then decided to go with the rehearsed speech.

“It is the opinion of the ACofS G-2 that (a) General Marshall will order the dissolution of the OSS in the time frame between today and the successful termination of the war against the Empire of Japan and (b) that it would be in the national interest for the OSS simply to be folded, so to speak, into Army Intelligence.”

“How long do you think it will be before we can successfully terminate the war against the Empire of Japan?” Frade asked.

There was an element of sarcasm in Frade’s parroting of the “successful termination” phrase. It went right past Flowers.

“A number of factors affect that, actually,” Flowers said. “For example, the main Japanese islands are under daily bombardment by B-29 aircraft.”

“Germany also was under daily aerial bombardment,” Clete replied. “We still had to cross the Rhine and take Berlin before they surrendered.”

“There are other factors,” Flowers said almost condescendingly.

Does that mean he knows about the atomic bomb?

The ACofS G-2 certainly does—Army Intelligence must have counterintelligence agents swarming all over the Manhattan Project—but I can’t believe ACofS G-2 would tell Flowers anything about it.

If there’s anyone who doesn’t have a need to know his name is Flowers.

Let’s find out.

Frade said: “You’re talking about the Los Angeles Project? Right?”

Flowers’s face showed that the Los Angeles Project—which Frade, of course, had just invented—was news to him.

“Or maybe the Manhattan Project?” Frade pursued.

“One or the other,” Flowers said. “Probably both.”

Colonel, you’ve never heard of the Manhattan Project until just now, Clete thought, and was still—with difficulty—resisting the temptation to ask Colonel Flowers whether he thought the New Orleans Project—or maybe the Sioux Falls Project—was also going to affect the successful termination of the war against the Empire of Japan.

But then Flowers asked: “So, do you agree?”

What?

“With what?”

Flowers went on: “That it would be in the national interest for the OSS to be simply folded into Army Intelligence.”

“After the successful termination of the war against the Empire of Japan, you mean?”

The sarcasm again sailed right over Flowers’s head.

“Then or now,” Flowers replied. “Would you agree that the OSS should be folded into Army Intelligence? Surely, you’ve thought about that.”

“Not until just now. You’re sure, Colonel, that the OSS is about to be—what?—dissolved?”

“Well, Frade. I got that, I told you, directly from the ACofS G-2. And he would certainly know, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Did the ACofS G-2 say why they’re going to abolish the OSS?”

It took Flowers a moment to come up with a reply, but finally he said, “Because it will not be needed.”

“Then why fold it into Army Intelligence?” Frade asked innocently.

Flowers started to reply—his mouth was actually open—and then he had an epiphany and it caused him to lose his temper.

“You arrogant sonofabitch!” Flowers blurted, spittle flying from his lips. “If you think you can make a fool of me, you’ve got another think coming!”

“Did I say something that offended you, Colonel?”

“You knew all about this, didn’t you? And don’t lie to me, Frade. Colonel Donovan told you, didn’t he?”

“Told me what?”

“That the OSS is to be dissolved.”

Frade held up his right hand, pinkie and thumb touching, three fingers extended.

“Boy Scout’s Honor, I have never discussed this with Wild Bill.”

Flowers glared at him, his face flushed with anger.

Frade went on: “And with respect, sir. It’s not Colonel Donovan. It’s General Donovan. Wild Bill’s a major general now. I’m surprised you didn’t know that.”

Flowers was red-faced, and Frade could see steam coming out of his ears again.

“You ever hear, Frade, that he who laughs last laughs best? I’m going to have your ass sooner or later. Count on it!”

“Yes, sir. I’ll tell General Donovan you said that, when I tell him you told me the ACofS G-2 told you that the OSS is going to be dissolved and that you and he are agreed that it should be folded into Army Intelligence.” Frade paused, then gave in to temptation: “With the help of the Los Angeles Project, and maybe even the New Orleans Project.”

Flowers took a moment to take control of himself.

“The war is about over, Colonel Frade. We’ll all eventually go home. But when you get off the ship, or the airplane, or whatever returns you to the Zone of the Interior, you will be in handcuffs, on your way to a general court-martial and the Army prison at Fort Leavenworth!”

“Maybe I can get General Donovan to represent me at the court-martial. I understand he’s a pretty good lawyer.”

Flowers wordlessly turned and marched out of the office, slamming the door after him.

Frade was still looking thoughtfully at the door—I don’t think pissing him off was the smart thing to do—when Enrico came through it.

“The diplomats are arriving, mi coronel.”

“Whatever happened to ‘Don Cletus,’ Enrico?”

“The diplomats are arriving, Don Cletus, mi coronel.”

“Now, in German. If you don’t get it right, you can’t go.”

Enrico got it right.

“Well, I guess you get to go.”

“Danke, Herr Oberst.”

[TWO]

General Martín, Chief Pilot Delgano, and Master Sergeant Stein were all at the Executive Suite windows with Leica C-II 35mm cameras and snapping pictures of the diplomats climbing the stairs to the Ciudad de Rosario.

“Anybody interesting?” Clete asked as he looked down at the tarmac.

“One man,” Martín said. “Rodolfo Nulder.”

“Who is he?” Frade asked.

“He was at the military academy with el Coronel and el Coronel Perón, and later at the Kriegsschule with your father,” Enrico announced, and matter-of-factly added: “Then he was cashiered for being a pervert and a liar.”

“What was that all about?” Clete asked.

“Young girls on the estancia,” Enrico said.

“Your father told el Coronel Perón that he never wanted to hear the name Rodolfo Nulder spoken again, and told el Coronel Perón that if Nulder ever put foot on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo again he would kill him.”

“Bernardo?” Frade asked.

“I think Rodríguez summed it up pretty well,” Martín said dryly.

Frade thought: Wonder what my father thought of Tío Juan’s taste for young girls?

Would he have approved of me calling my godfather a degenerate sonofabitch and then throwing him out of Uncle Willy’s—my—house?

Martín added: “El Señor Nulder is now the director of security at the Secretariat of Labor and Retirement Plans.”

“And this lying pervert is going to Germany with the diplomats why?” Frade said.

Martín shrugged. “I have no idea, but that may be why they were so late getting here. They didn’t want anyone to see Nulder getting on the airplane, so they waited until it was dark.”

“And you have no idea why this sterling character is going to Germany?” Frade pursued.

Martín shook his head. “Not long ago, over drinks at the officers’ casino at Campo de Mayo, I had a chat with el Coronel Sánchez of General Ramírez’s staff. He just happened to mention that he’d had a conversation with el General in which el General mentioned that with so much on my plate, he was sure I was wasting my time and assets on investigating things at the Secretariat of Labor and Retirement Plans. ‘Perón and his people are perfectly able to take care of that sort of thing themselves.’”

“You were told to back off?” Clete asked more than a little incredulously.

Martín repeated: “I was told that it was General Ramírez who had mentioned he hoped I wasn’t wasting my time and assets on the Secretariat of Labor and Retirement Plans.”

“You never happened to mention that to me.”

Martín smiled. “I like you, Cletus. And I love my wife. But there are some things I never mention to either one of you.”

“Taking pictures of this guy is backing off?” Clete said.

“Don Cletus Frade, master of the indelicate observation,” Martín said with a smile.

“And I don’t suppose you would be heartbroken if we kept an eye on him for you while we’re over there, would you?”

“You know I’m always interested in anything you have to tell me.”

“If this guy went to the Kriegsschule with my father . . .”

“He probably knows a good number of senior German officers,” Martín finished for him. “Some of whom might wish to come here now that their services are no longer required.”

“So this whole thing is an excuse to bring a planeload of Nazis here?” Clete wondered aloud.

“Another planeload of Nazis, you mean?” Martín asked.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, mi general,” Clete said. “Unless you’re suggesting that some of the priests, brothers, and nuns who SAA has ferried here for the Vatican—and traveling on Vatican passports—weren’t who they claimed to be.”

Martín said: “One thought that occurred to me is that if there was an important Nazi—or Nazis, plural—who wished to spare themselves a long and hazardous trip on a submarine to come here . . .”

“They could come in the comfort that SAA offers to all its passengers?” Clete finished for him.

“It’s a thought,” Martín said.

“Bernardo, did you hear the rumor that Hitler did not kill himself and his wife, but was flown out of Berlin in a Fieseler Storch?”

“Delgano mentioned that he’d heard that,” Martín said. “Do you believe it?”

“No, I don’t. But this thought of yours makes sense.”

“Are you going to try to see General Gehlen while you’re in Germany?” Martín asked, and then, before Clete could answer, went on: “Maybe he would have some thoughts on all this.”

“No one seems to know where he is, but I’m going to try to find him.”

“To what end?”

“I’ll play that card when someone deals it,” Clete said. “We made a deal with him. Nobody’s told me the deal is off.”

“Bring him here?”

“If that’s the only option to keep him out of the hands of the Russians.”

“He’d have a Vatican passport?”

“The others traveled that way.”

“Clete,” Delgano said, “Peralta just showed up; looks like he’s headed here.”

Captain Mario Peralta was a member of the second crew. If he had had any questions about First Officers von Wachtstein and Boltitz replacing the SAA pilots originally scheduled for the flight, Clete hadn’t heard about them. That suggested to Clete that Peralta was taking his orders from Gonzalo Delgano both as an SAA pilot and as somebody else who also worked covertly for Martín.

“It would appear that your mission of mercy and compassion is ready to go,” Martín said.

“You told me one time you had a man in Berlin,” Frade said.

Martín nodded.

“José Ruiz,” he said. “We were at the Academy together.”

“He’s the military attaché?”

“The financial counselor,” Martín said.

“And he’ll be coming back with us?”

Martín nodded again.

“He might be useful,” Frade said.

“So I told Gonzalo,” Martín said. “Anything else I can do?”

“As a matter of fact,” Frade said, and handed him the briefcase he’d gotten from Colonel Flowers. “I forgot to leave my wife her allowance. Would you get this to her, please?”

Martín took the briefcase. It was much heavier than he expected.

“What’s in here besides her allowance—bricks?”

“Nothing. I’m probably more generous to my wife than you are to yours.”

Martín looked at the briefcase suspiciously but didn’t reply.

“Go on. Have a look. You were going to anyway, the first chance you had. If you look now, you can apologize for doubting me.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Martín lifted the flap of the briefcase and looked inside.

“¡Madre de Dios!” he softly exclaimed a moment later.

“Gotcha! Now you can apologize.”

“What’s this for?” Martín asked.

“El General Bernardo Martín, master of the outrageous personal question. One man should never ask another why he is giving his wife a little pocket change for her purse.”

“Forgive me,” Martín said sarcastically.

The two looked at each other and smiled.

“Clete, be careful,” Martín said. “I don’t think the most dangerous part of this will be flying across the Atlantic Ocean.”

“Great minds walk the same paths,” Frade said, then shook Martín’s hand and walked out of the Executive Suite of South American Airways.

[THREE]

Aboard Ciudad de Rosario Approaching Val de Cans Airfield Belém do Pará, Brazil 0135 17 May 1945

Captain Cletus Frade had been at the controls of the Constellation Ciudad de Rosario as she took off from Aeropuerto Coronel Jorge G. Frade, breaking ground at 1832. Mario Peralta was in the right seat.

As soon as the aircraft reached cruising altitude, he had turned the plane over to Peralta and sent another SAA backup pilot to the cockpit. Then he crawled into one of the two crew bunks and closed his eyes.

Three minutes later, Siggie Stein shook his shoulder.

“Don’t shoot the messenger, Colonel. Your Collins is out.”

A dozen Collins Radio Corporation Model 7.2 transceivers and SIGABA encryption systems had been acquired for Team Turtle at Stein’s suggestion—“Trust me, they’re six months ahead of state of the art”—from the Army Security Agency at Vint Hill Farms Station in Virginia. They were to provide secure communication with the ASA—and thus with the OSS—from anywhere in Argentina.

They were “installation systems,” which translated to mean they were designed for use in a communications center, rather than “mobile,” which would have meant installation in a truck.

One day at Estancia Don Guillermo, Clete had idly commented that he wished he could have the communications capability in the Red Lodestar.

“If you want to take a chance on me really blowing one up, I can have a shot at it,” Stein had replied matter-of-factly. “Maybe el Jefe will have some ideas on how to do it.”

Clete had remembered then—and only then, which embarrassed him—that Colonel Graham had told him that when being interviewed by OSS experts to see if he was qualified to be the radar man on Team Turtle, they had reported that Stein knew more about the transmission of radio waves than they did.

And that Stein and former Chief Radioman Oscar Schultz, USN, had become instant buddies when they started talking about communications equipment in a cant only the two of them understood.

Two weeks later, a SIGABA and Collins 7.2 were up and running in the Red Lodestar. Clete had not been surprised when a similar installation in SAA’s first Constellation had worked well in Argentina. But he had been surprised—perhaps awed—when the system had worked in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean and later on the ground at Lisbon.

Frade sat up in the crew bunk and said, “Siggie, I don’t want to go to Germany without it. I won’t go to Germany without it. What’s wrong with it? Belay that. I wouldn’t understand. Can you fix it, or are we going to have to go back to Buenos Aires for another one?”

“I think I can fix it if you can get me into the radio shop at Belém. Your call. It’ll take me a couple of hours to get another system out of the warehouse at Jorge Frade.”

“And to fix it at Belém?”

“Thirty minutes, if I’m right about what’s wrong.”

“Did Mother Superior teach you how to pray, Sergeant Stein?”

“She didn’t have to. I’m a Jew. We pray a lot.”

“Start now,” Frade ordered.

He had then lain back down and closed his eyes.

Ten minutes after that, he opened them again, sat up, pushed himself off the bunk, and went looking for Stein, Boltitz, and von Wachtstein. He found them sitting in the seats for the backup crew, trying to doze.

He beckoned for them to follow him back into the sleeping section, motioned for the doors to the cockpit and the seating area to be closed, and then began, “We have a small problem. Belay that. We have a few small problems, plural.

“The Collins 7.2 is out. We can’t do without it. Siggie thinks he can fix it if he can get into the Army Air Forces’ radio maintenance facility at Val de Cans. The problem there is they may not let him in. The only reason we’re going in there is because the Argentine Foreign Ministry leaned on somebody. The Collins 7.2 is a classified American radio, and they’re going to wonder what the hell SAA is doing with one.”

“Show them the phony OSS credentials,” Stein suggested.

“The problem there—the problems—are that they are phony and that after I used them to get Karl and Hansel out of Fort Hunt, there’s a good chance that the Army has spread the word to be prepared to arrest on sight Area Commander C. Frade of the OSS.”

“So, what are you going to do?” von Wachtstein asked.

“Hansel, when you were a little boy back in the Schloss, did you ever act in a play?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know, in a play, like Hansel und Gretel?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Try to remember what your teacher taught you. You’re going back on the stage when we get to Val de Cans. The play is called ‘Here come the mysterious, all-powerful heroes of the Office of Strategic Services.’ Starring Cletus Frade, All-American Boy. Now here’s how it’s going to work.”

He told them.

Karl Boltitz asked dubiously, “Cletus, do you really think that’s going to work?”

“It’ll either work or we’ll add new meaning to the Army Air Corps’ song.”

He then sang, “We live in fame or go down in flames, nothing can stop the OSS Air Corps . . .”

Frade now was standing between the pilot and copilot seats. The lights of the huge Brazilian airfield were in sight.

Mario Peralta had been in the pilot’s seat during the seven-hour flight from Buenos Aires, as Clete had instructed, and another SAA backup pilot was flying as copilot.

“Give it to him, Mario,” Frade ordered, “and then let me sit there.”

Peralta did as ordered, but it was obvious he had been looking forward to making the approach and landing himself.

When Frade had strapped himself in and put on the headset, he gave another order, this time to the copilot: “I’ll take it. You go back and send von Wachtstein up here.”

“Sí, señor,” the copilot said, his tone making it clear that he also had been looking forward to the approach and landing.

I knew that was going to piss them off. So why did I do it?

Because Peter needs more landing practice, and I’m the most qualified person to sit in the left seat to keep him out of trouble while he does it.

So fuck the both of you.

“Sit down, Hansel, and strap yourself in.”

Von Wachtstein complied.

“You feel qualified to land this?”

Von Wachtstein considered the question and then nodded.

“Got the checklist?”

Von Wachtstein nodded again.

Frade keyed the microphone.

“Val de Cans tower, this is South American Airways Double Zero Nine. This is a Lockheed Constellation. I am ten miles south, at five thousand feet, indicating Two Nine Zero. Request approach and landing.”

“SAA Double Zero Nine, I have you on radar. Descend on present course reporting when at three thousand feet.”

“You have the aircraft, First Officer,” Clete said, and took his hands off the yoke.

“He sounded like an American,” von Wachtstein said.

“This is an American air base,” Frade replied. “One of our smaller ones.”

After they touched down, von Wachtstein looked around in awe, and said, “One of your smaller airfields?”

They were trailing a FOLLOW ME jeep down a taxiway lined on both sides as far as they could see with far-too-many-to-count four-engined Consolidated B-24 bombers parked wingtip to wingtip.

“The larger ones are really crowded,” Clete replied.

“What’s going on here?”

“This base served two major roles,” Clete said. “One, as a home base for B-24s looking for submarines and German—or allegedly neutral—merchant vessels, and, two, as a jump-off point for aircraft headed for Europe via Sierra Leone in West Africa.”

“There’s another Connie,” von Wachtstein said as they came close to the transient aircraft tarmac.

The airplane bore the markings of the U.S. Army Air Forces.

Frade thought: I wonder what the hell that’s doing here?

Did Graham or Dulles—or even Donovan—come down here to see me?

If that’s the case, the odds are I’m not going to like what they have to say.

As ground handlers wanded the Ciudad de Rosario into a parking spot beside the other Connie, Frade picked up his microphone again.

“Val de Cans tower, this is South American Airways Double Zero Nine. I’m sitting on the transient tarmac. Can you get a ladder out here to the cockpit door before, repeat before, you put a ladder up to the passenger door?”

“No problem, South American Double Zero Nine. Where’d you get the American accent?”

[FOUR]

The flight-planning room was deserted except for an Air Forces lieutenant and a plump sergeant. They were sitting at sort of a counter. A weather map and a flight schedule chart were mounted on the wall behind them.

“Sorry,” the sergeant greeted them, more or less courteously, “but this is for Americans only.”

“Not a problem,” Frade said, then looked at the officer. “Are you the AOD, Lieutenant?”

Frade was wearing the red-striped powder-blue trousers of an SAA captain, but had replaced the SAA tunic with a fur-collared leather jacket on which was a leather patch with Naval Aviator Wings and the legend FRADE, C H ILT, USMCR. He also had replaced the ornate, high-crowned SAA uniform cap with the Stetson hat his uncle Jim had been wearing when he dropped dead in the Midland Petroleum Club.

The lieutenant, whose face showed his confusion at what stood before him, shook his head and then asked, “You’re from that Argentine airliner?”

“Figured that out, did you?” Clete said. “How about getting the AOD down here for me?”

Clete, who had done many tours as an AOD—aerodrome officer of the day—understood that at a little after two in the morning most AODs would be curled up on a cot and would tend to be annoyed if awakened to deal with anything less than the field being attacked by Martians. And AODs were usually senior to the officer in charge of the flight-planning room.

One of the stage directions Director Frade had issued to his cast was that when he issued an order, the reply would be in the same language used to issue the order. So, when he next said in German, “Hansel, you and Karl take a look at the weather map,” von Wachtstein replied, “Jawohl, Herr Oberst.” Then both headed for the weather map behind the counter.

This tended to further confuse the lieutenant and the sergeant. But the former retained enough of his composure to proclaim, “Hey, you can’t go back there!”

“Don’t be absurd, Sergeant,” Frade said.

“The colonel told you to get the AOD down here, Lieutenant,” Siggie Stein snapped. “Do it.”

“Easy, Siggie,” Frade said.

Frade then extended to the lieutenant the credentials identifying him as an OSS area director.

“Not only weren’t we here, but I didn’t show you that,” Frade said. “Understood, Lieutenant?”

The lieutenant was clearly dazzled by the spurious credentials.

“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant said. “Sergeant, go get Major Cronin.”

Frade impatiently gestured for the lieutenant to return his credentials. The lieutenant hastily did so.

Major Cronin, a nice-looking young officer wearing pilot’s wings, appeared two minutes later, looking somewhat sleepy eyed.

“You’re off that Argentine Constellation, right?” he said.

“Correct,” Frade said. He extended his credentials. “Take a quick look at that, please, Major, and then forget you ever saw it or us.”

Major Cronin looked, then said, “Yes, sir. And what can Val de Cans do for the OSS?”

“You can start, Major, first things first, by getting someone from your radio maintenance section familiar with the Collins 7.2 transceiver up here to assist my communications officer. The 7.2 in my Connie needs service.”

Major Cronin looked confused. “Excuse me, sir . . . what do I call you?”

“‘Sir’ will do just fine,” Frade said.

“Sir, I’m a little confused. The Collins 7.2 is a fixed-station communications device. Are you sure that’s what you have in your aircraft?”

“Trust the colonel, Major, when he says we have one in our airplane,” Stein said.

“Yes, sir,” the major said, and then turned to the lieutenant. “Charley, why don’t you run over to the radio shack and get someone familiar with the 7.2 over here.”

“Better yet, Lieutenant,” Stein said, “why don’t I go with you to the radio shack?”

“Yes, sir,” the major and the lieutenant said in chorus.

“All right, sir?” Stein asked.

“Carry on, Stein,” Frade ordered.

Von Wachtstein and Boltitz returned from the weather map.

“Looks pretty good, Clete,” von Wachtstein announced in German. “A couple of minor storms to the south. The winds aloft will be on our tail.”

“Danke schön,” Frade replied.

Von Wachtstein and Boltitz then moved behind Frade and took up positions roughly like that of Parade Rest.

The major and the lieutenant looked intently at them.

“I presume you have been officially informed,” Frade said, “that the SAA Constellation is bound for Germany to relieve the Argentine diplomatic staff in Berlin.”

“We’ve been expecting you, Colonel,” the major said.

“Please do not use my rank,” Frade said.

“Sorry, sir.”

“That mission of compassion and mercy, however, is not the only reason I and these members of my staff are going to Germany. The second mission is unknown, as is my association with the OSS, to the Argentine diplomats, and I wish it kept that way. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” the major and the lieutenant again said together.

“I wish to discuss the second mission with the officer, or officers, commanding the B-24 submarine hunting group. Is that one officer or two?”

“Actually, sir, it’s four. In the wing, there are two antisubmarine groups here, and a third, the 480th, at Port Lyautey, in Morocco. Three group commanders, colonels, and the brigadier general who commands the wing, sir.”

“The general is where?” Clete asked.

“Here, sir. In his quarters.”

“Let’s start with him. Would you get him on the phone, Major, offer my apologies for waking him up, and ask him to come down here?”

“Yes, sir. And who do I say, sir, wishes to see him?”

“Tell him anything you wish, so long as you don’t mention the OSS.”

“Can I mention South American Airways?”

“Why not?”