The Honor of Spies

by W. E. B Griffin

  “The truck then proceeded to this point”—Cortina pointed again—“on the road to Tres Arroyos. There is a field there in which Company B of the 10th Mountain Regiment had bivouacked overnight while on a road march exercise. The SS officer and his men left Señor Loche’s truck and got into two trucks belonging to Company B.

  “Cranz and Raschner conferred briefly with el Coronel Schmidt, commander of the 10th Mountain Regiment, and then everybody left. Herr Loche’s truck, carrying the Argentinos who had been on the beach, plus Cranz and Raschner, headed up National Route Two toward Buenos Aires—”

  He paused and pointed at another map.

  “—and twenty minutes ago passed this point. Thirty minutes ago, the Mountain Troop convoy passed this point—” He pointed at another map. “It seems logical to presume they are on their way home to San Martín de los Andes.”

  Cortina turned his back to the map.

  “Does el Coronel wish to add anything?”

  Martín said, “No. You covered everything very nicely. But the Inspector General might have a question.”

  “ ‘Might have a question’?” Nervo asked. “Jesus Christ! I don’t know where to start!”

  “Maybe at the beginning?” Martín asked.

  “How the hell did you know where and when the submarine was going to be in Samborombón Bay?”

  “An American friend told me.”

  “Your friend Frade?”

  “No. I understand Don Cletus is on his way to Lisbon.”

  “Another American friend, then. You are going to tell me who?”

  “He speaks Spanish like a Porteño, and wears—convincingly—the garb of a gaucho. There is a rumor that he is a U.S. Navy officer working for something called the OSS.”

  “And he’s a friend of yours?” Subinspector General Nolasco asked in credulously.

  Martín nodded.

  “How did your gaucho friend know about the submarine?” Nervo asked.

  “They had a radio device, called a radar, which allows them to see things on the River Plate almost to Uruguay. At night. Even through fog.”

  “And this machine is where, did you say?”

  “There’s a rumor it’s on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.”

  “You seem to have become very friendly with our American friends,” Nervo said.

  “I didn’t plan it, but that seems to be the way it’s turned out,” Martín admitted.

  “That’s what it looks like.”

  “You’re sure it was el Coronel Schmidt?”

  “Yeah. This is the second time he’s used his trucks to get Germans from Samborombón Bay to San Martín de los Andes. This time I think we have photographs of him.”

  “Think?”

  “The film should be at the Edificio Libertador by now, being processed.”

  “What’s in the wooden crate?” Nolasco asked.

  “Money or gold. Or diamonds, other precious metals. Probably some of each.”

  “A crate full?” Nolasco asked incredulously.

  “You didn’t tell him about Operation Phoenix, Santiago?”

  “He told me. I didn’t believe it,” Nolasco admitted.

  “Didn’t, or don’t?”

  “I’m starting to believe it.”

  “Then maybe you’d also believe that machine guns from el Coronel Schmidt’s Mountain Regiment are what just about took down Don Cletus’s house in Tandil.” He paused, then added: “And that there are photographs of el Coronel Juan Domingo Perón standing beside those machine guns.”

  “You asked me to back off from that, and I did,” Nervo said. “Perón was there, and you have pictures of him?”

  “Perón was there, and Don Cletus has pictures.”

  “You believe that?” Nervo said. “Not that I wouldn’t believe anything I heard about that degenerate sonofabitch.”

  “I believe it,” Martín said. “The question now becomes: Do you believe what Cortina just told you?”

  “Yeah, I believe it,” Nervo said. “You’re not smart enough to come up with this yourself.”

  “Thank you.”

  “The question I have is: What are you going to do with it?” Nervo said.

  “I know what I’m supposed to do with it.”

  “If you took this to Obregón, you and everybody connected with you would be dumped in the River Plate halfway to Montevideo,” Nervo said.

  El General de División Manuel Frederico Obregón was director of the Bureau of Internal Security.

  “He’s another asshole who thinks Hitler and the Nazis are saving the world from the Antichrist,” Nolasco said bitterly.

  “That thought, both of those thoughts, have run through my mind,” Martín said.

  “What about taking it to Rawson?” Nervo said. “Lauffer?”

  It was obvious that Lauffer was choosing his words before speaking them.

  “I really like General Rawson,” he said. “He’s a good man, but . . .”

  “Not very strong, right?” Nervo said sarcastically.

  Lauffer did not respond directly.

  “Just now, I was thinking that if I went to him with this, the first thing he’d do would be to ask General Obregón what he thought.”

  “In that case, you and Martín both would be swimming with your hands tied behind you in the River Plate,” Nervo said.

  “What does your American OSS friend, Don Cletus, suggest should be done about this?” Nolasco said. “Obviously, he knows about it. And—I just thought of this—since he does know, why doesn’t he just take it to the newspapers? Here and everyplace else in the world?”

  “What the Americans have decided to do is wait until the war is over and then grab all the money the Germans have sent here, and the things the Germans have bought with it.”

  “How are they going to know about all that?” Nolasco said.

  “I would suspect, Pedro, that the Froggers are telling them,” Nervo said sarcastically. He looked at Martín. “Frade does have the Froggers, right?”

  Martín nodded.

  “You know where?”

  Martín nodded again.

  “Where’s where?”

  “In for a penny, in for a pound, to quote the beloved headmaster of our beloved Saint George’s School, Santiago,” Martín said. “They’re at Frade’s Casa Montagna in Mendoza.”

  “And, presumably, the weapons el Coronel Frade cached there for the coup d’état are still there?”

  Martín nodded.

  “You two are Saint George’s Old Boys?” Lauffer asked.

  They nodded.

  “Me, too.”

  “I know what,” Nervo said, deeply sarcastic. “Let’s call Father Kingsley-Howard and tell him what we’re all up to these days.”

  They all laughed.

  “So what are we going to do?” Martín asked.

  Nervo said: “I shall probably regret this as long as I live—which under the circumstances may not be long—but I vote to go along with Don Cletus. Do nothing, but keep an eye on the miserable bastards. Especially on our own miserable—and sometimes degenerate—bastards.”

  No one said anything.

  “The reason I say that is that I can’t think of anything else we can do,” Nervo added.

  “Neither can I,” Martín admitted. Then he looked at Lauffer. “Lauffer?”

  “I think we should pool our intelligence,” Lauffer said. “I’m sure that each of us knows something the others should.”

  Martín considered that a moment.

  “You’d be the one to do that. If Santiago and I started getting chummy, people would talk.”

  “Perhaps, Comisario General,” Lauffer said, “you’d be able to find time in your busy schedule to take lunch with me one day at the Círculo Militar? El Presidente eats there three or four times a week, and of course while I have to accompany him, I am rarely invited to share his table.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Capitán. Call me anytime you’re free.”

  Xr />
  [ONE]

  The North Atlantic Ocean

  North Latitude 35.42, West Longitude 11.84

  1300 28 September 1943

  On the night of 28 September 1943, 678 bombers of the Royal Air Force—312 Lancasters, 231 Stirlings, and 24 Wellingtons—plus five B-17s of the 8th U.S. Air Force, filled the skies over the German city of Hannover and dropped their mixed loads of high-explosive and incendiary bombs.

  Halfway across the world, the Wewak area of New Guinea was attacked by forty U.S. Army Air Force B-24s. Twenty-nine P-38 Lockheed Lightning fighters accompanied the B-24s and shot down eight Japanese fighter aircraft without loss to themselves or the bombers they were protecting.

  And, since just after noon on 28 September, Captain Archer C. Dooley Jr., commanding officer of the 94th Fighter Squadron, USAAF, had been flying his P-38, at an altitude of 22,000 feet, in lazy circles over the North Atlantic Ocean. He was about 100 miles south of the southern tip of Portugal and 200 miles west of the Straits of Gibraltar.

  During that time, he had seen no other aircraft except the six other P-38s in the flight. Nor had he seen any ships of any kind on the ocean beneath him. Nor had he heard over his earphones what he had been told to expect: a Morse code transmission of three characters, dit dit dit, dit dah, dit dah. The code stood for S, A, A, and Captain Dooley had no idea what that meant either.

  The silence in his earphones probably explained why the needle of a newly installed dial, labeled SIGNAL STRENGTH, on his instrument panel hadn’t moved off its peg. The signal-strength indicator was connected to something else newly installed on the nose of his P-38, above the 20mm cannon and four .50-caliber machine guns. It was an antenna, in the form of a twelve-inch-diameter circle.

  The antenna reminded Archie Dooley of the chrome bull’s-eye mounted on the hoods of 1941 and 1942 Buick automobiles. And it caused him to think that he was now flying a Lockheed Roadmaster. Two years earlier, Archie’s idea of heaven was to get Anne-Marie Doherty, wearing her Saint Ignatius High School cheerleader outfit, into the backseat of a 1942 Buick Roadmaster convertible. Neither was available to him in this life.

  A Marine full bull colonel had impressed upon Captain Dooley—as they watched a guy who looked just like Howard Hughes install the antenna on Dooley’s P-38—that the antenna was classified Top Secret, as was his mission, and that he was to take those secrets to his grave.

  Further, the full bull colonel said, Dooley was forbidden to tell any of the pilots who would fly the mission with him anything more than he absolutely had to—which had not proved difficult, as he had only a very little knowledge to share:

  He was to lead his flight to a position off the tip of Portugal, where he was to fly slow circles at 21,000 feet until the radio-direction-finding system detected the Morse code transmission of the letters S, A, A. He was then to fly to the source of the transmission, using the signal-strength meter as a sort of compass. The closer he got to the source of the transmission, the higher the needle on the signal-strength meter would rise.

  On arrival at the source of the transmission, he would receive further orders.

  While flying in slow circles waiting for the SAA signal, he would use new techniques—primarily low airspeed and fuel leaning—to increase the Lockheed Lightning’s “dwell time.” These techniques had been developed, the full bull colonel had told him, by Charles A. Lindbergh.

  Captain Dooley was to “dwell” until he heard the transmission or until, in his judgment, he had only enough fuel, plus twenty minutes, to return to Sidi Slimane. In the latter eventuality, he would head for Sidi Slimane, and as he got closer, he was to listen for another Morse code signal—dit dit dit, dit dit dit, dit dah dit dit, which stood for S, S, L—and would use this signal to find his way home.

  And then, all of sudden, there it was: dit dit dit, dit dah, dit dah.

  The needle on the signal-strength meter quivered, as if it was trying to get off the peg.

  Archie turned the Lightning’s nose a shade to the right.

  The needle—No question about it, he thought—came off the peg. Not far off, but off.

  Then it fell back toward the peg.

  Archie turned the nose a shade farther to the right.

  The needle moved up again.

  Archie held that heading.

  The needle didn’t move.

  And then, a moment later, it edged upward again.

  And this time it didn’t fall back.

  “Mother Hen to all Chicks. Form a V, below and behind me. Check in.”

  “Chick Three, I have you in sight.”

  “Chick Six on the tail of Three.”

  One by one, the others all checked in.

  When Archie looked at the signal-strength meter, it was holding still.

  Or maybe moving a little toward the center?

  The compass showed they were headed toward the North African coast.

  What the hell?

  “Mother, where the hell are we going?”

  “Maintain radio silence, goddamn it!”

  Sixty seconds later, the needle was unmistakably headed back toward the peg.

  Goddamn it! Now what?

  Archie edged the nose to the right.

  The needle dropped farther.

  He edged the nose to the left.

  The needle started to rise.

  He held that course.

  The needle continued to rise.

  And then the needle began to drop.

  What the hell! Is that goddamned transmitter moving, or what?

  He moved the nose and the needle stopped dropping, then began to slowly rise.

  “Mother, there’s an—”

  “Radio silence, goddamn it!”

  “—airplane, a great big sonofabitch, at eleven o’clock, maybe two thousand above you.”

  Archie looked up and found it.

  “Chicks, follow me, above and behind.”

  The needle was now almost at the maximum peg.

  Archie edged back on the stick and advanced his throttles.

  It’s a Constellation, that’s what it is.

  Another one. The Marine full bull colonel and the guy who looked like Howard Hughes had flown into Sidi Slimane in one.

  But this one isn’t one of ours! There’s no bar-and-star on the fuselage!

  “Mother, what the hell is that? No American insignia.”

  “Above me and behind. And for the last fucking time: radio silence!”

  Archie caught up with the Constellation and drew parallel to it.

  He saw that painted on the three vertical stabilizers were identical flags, the design of which Archie could not remember ever having seen.

  The fuselage was boldly lettered SOUTH AMERICAN AIRWAYS.

  Archie pulled next to the cockpit, and a voice—an unquestionably American voice—came over his earphones: “Hello there, Little Lockheed. Where the hell have you been? I was getting a little worried you were lost.”

  “What the hell is going on here?” Archie blurted.

  “The general idea,” the voice said calmly, “is that you are to escort us into Portuguese airspace and keep the bad guys from shooting us down.”

  “Are you American, or what?”

  “The bad guys can be recognized by the Maltese crosses on their wings and fuselages,” the voice said. “You seen anything like that flying around up here?”

  “Negative.”

  “Okay. Get above and behind me. You might want to put one or two of your little airplanes below and ahead of me on this course. I’ll let you know when you can go home. Probably in twenty minutes or so.”

  [TWO]

  Room 323, Hotel Britania

  Rua Rodrigues Sampaio 17

  Lisbon, Portugal

  1845 28 September 1943

  The reception of South American Airways Flight 1002 at Lisbon’s Portela Airport had been strange.

  Clete Frade had turned the P-38 Lightnings loose as soon as he was sure he was inside Portugues
e airspace, then tuned one of the radio-direction-finding sets to the signal he was told would be transmitted from the Collins in the American Embassy.

  He found that signal without trouble and homed in on it. When he tuned the second RDF to the frequency of the transmitter on Portela Airport, he didn’t get a signal for a long time, and when it finally came on it was weak.

  He was by then close enough to try contacting the Portela tower by radio, and that worked immediately. A crisp, British-accented voice quickly gave him the weather and the approach and landing instructions.

  The landing was uneventful, and on the landing roll, the fuel gauges showed that he had enough fuel—more than two hours—remaining with which he could fly to Madrid or, for that matter, to Sidi Slimane.

  That means we had a substantial tailwind.

  And that means we will probably have a substantial headwind on the way home.

  An ancient pickup truck with a FOLLOW ME sign in Portuguese, Spanish, and English had met them at the end of the landing roll and led them to the terminal. There, a farm tractor had pulled a wooden stairway—obviously brand new, painted in SAA red, and with the SAA legend on it—up to the airplane.

  Two buses pulled up. A Portuguese immigration officer then came on board the Constellation and told the passengers to deplane and board the buses. When that had happened, more Portuguese came aboard and thoroughly, if courteously, examined the Constellation.

  Then the crew—which included the extra SAA pilots and flight engineers, for a total of twelve people—went down the stairs, boarded the buses, and were taken to an office at the rear of a terminal building.

  The aircraft’s documents, plus the passports and flying certificates, were not only carefully examined but also photographed. And then finally the crew members themselves were photographed, as prisoners are photographed, in frontal and side views while holding chalkboards with their names handwritten on them.

  Then their luggage was searched rather thoroughly.

  And then they were released.

  “Welcome to Portugal, gentlemen,” a smiling immigration officer had said, and pointed to a door.