But he was surprised to see that the Little Sisters of Santa María del Pilar were also on hand, represented by their Mother Superior. She was standing by a small bus, much like the one the Little Sisters of the Poor had had at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.
I wonder what that’s all about?
“Don Cletus?” a male voice behind him at the cockpit door said.
Clete turned and saw Inspector Peralta, one of the two Gendarmería Nacional officers who had been waiting for him at Jorge Frade when he’d “refueled.” The other officer was Subinspector Navarro. The best that Clete could figure was that Peralta was roughly the equivalent of a lieutenant colonel and Navarro a major. Inspector General Nervo’s orders to them had been simple: “Place yourself at Don Cletus’s orders and keep me posted—twice a day—on what’s going on.”
Frade made the introduction between Doña Dorotea and Inspector Peralta.
Then Peralta said: “With your permission, Don Cletus, rather than go directly to Estancia Don Guillermo, I will go to the Mendoza headquarters of the Gendarmería and have a talk with Subinspector Nowicki—he came to meet us; I see his car—and join you later. May I bring Subinspector Nowicki with me when I do?”
He’s being polite as hell, but he’s sure running the show.
“Of course.”
“Subinspector Navarro will escort you now with the trucks and men you see. If you would be good enough to show him the weapons cache, that would be helpful.”
Does that mean the weapons will then get loaded on the trucks, and bye-bye weapons cache?
Oh, stop it, for Christ’s sake! The next thing, you’ll be eyeing Mother Superior suspiciously.
What other choice do I have?
“I’ll have Rodríguez show him the cache as soon as we arrive.”
“Do you think four of my men will be sufficient to guard the aircraft, Don Cletus? Or shall I arrange for more?”
I never even thought about that. The Constellations in Buenos Aires, yeah. But not the Lodestar here.
You’re really on top of things, Señor Superspy!
“I’m sure that will be enough.”
“Then I’ll see you shortly,” Peralta said, saluted, and backed out of the cockpit door.
Clete looked at Dorotea.
“Good man,” he began before being interrupted by the voice of Mother Superior at the cockpit door.
“What in the world are you doing up here and in there?” she asked of Doña Dorotea, then turned to Don Cletus. “You really can be, can’t you, quite as stupid as your father?” She looked at Dorotea. “Well, come on!”
“Where am I going?” Dorotea said.
“To the convent. The original idea was to examine the German women and children. Now I’ll have to see what damage this husband of yours has caused to you.”
Dorotea nodded. “I told him that I didn’t think I should be sitting up here in my delicate condition.”
She waited until Mother Superior was glaring at Cletus and couldn’t see her face. Then, looking very pleased with herself, she smiled warmly at him and stuck out her tongue.
And then, with great difficulty, she started to hoist herself out of the copilot’s seat.
[THREE]
Casa Montagna
Estancia Don Guillermo
Km 40.4, Provincial Route 60
Mendoza Province, Argentina
1525 3 October 1943
Captain Madison R. Sawyer III had been playing polo—sort of—to pass the time when “Frade’s Lodestar,” as Sawyer thought of it, had buzzed the polo field.
He had found eight mallets—one of them broken, all of them old—hanging at various places on the walls of Casa Montagna, which had of course cut the number of players to three on each team, leaving one spare mallet.
Finding players and horses had posed no problem. When he had asked—at the morning formation of the former cavalry troopers of the Húsares de Pueyrredón now guarding Casa Montagna—if anyone happened to know how to play polo, every hand had shot up. The horses were not, of course, the fine polo ponies he had grown used to at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo. But even the worst of them seemed to have some idea what was expected of a polo pony.
The problem of no polo balls had been solved by purchasing at a very generous price three soccer balls—what the Argentines called footballs—from the children of peones who lived in the compound. He also promised to see that they would have replacement footballs just as soon as he could send someone into town to buy them.
The air-filled soccer balls of course behaved quite differently than a regulation solid-wood polo ball would have, but that just made the play more interesting.
One of the soccer balls had lasted about ten minutes in play and a second just a few minutes more. The third soccer ball—and the mallets, which surprised him—had endured the stress of play for two chukkers when the flaming red Lodestar had flashed over the field.
Sawyer had decided there was time for one—possibly two—more chukkers before Frade arrived from the aircraft, and they had played two more.
He had just had time to dismount and reclaim his Thompson submachine gun and his web belt holding his .45 Colt when the nose of the Lincoln Continental appeared at the end of the field.
He had not expected the brown vehicles of the Gendarmería Nacional, and was a little worried until he saw Frade climb out from behind the wheel of the Lincoln.
“Subinspector Navarro, this is my deputy, Capitán Sawyer,” Frade began the in troductions.
Sensing that he was expected to do so, Sawyer saluted.
“I’ll explain this all later,” Frade then said to Sawyer. “But right now, I want you to show Subinspector Navarro the weapons cache and explain the perimeter defense to him—”
“You make it sound as if we’re going to be attacked,” Sawyer interrupted.
“That’s a strong possibility,” Frade said, then went on: “These gentlemen are Señor Körtig and Señor Möller. They will be joined shortly by their wives and children. In the meantime, Enrico’s going to—where’s Stein?”
Sawyer looked around and then pointed. Stein was walking toward them from the house.
Clete waited until he had joined them, then, after introducing Körtig, Möller, and Subinspector Navarro to “Major” Stein, he asked where Señor Fischer was.
“With his father. You need him?”
“No. What I want you to do is ask him to stay with his father until I send for him.”
Stein’s raised eyebrows showed his surprise, but he didn’t say anything.
“Then,” Frade continued, “find the housekeeper and tell her (a) to prepare some of the rooms in one of the outbuildings for the Körtigs and the Möllers. That’s two wives and three children—adolescents. They’ll be staying here awhile. And (b) to prepare something to eat for everybody; we haven’t had anything since breakfast.”
“Where are the wives and children?” Stein said.
“With Mother Superior getting a physical; they should be here in forty-five minutes or an hour.”
“Doña Dorotea didn’t come with you?”
“She’s with them. Captain Sawyer is going to show Subinspector Navarro the arms cache and the perimeter defense. He and another Gendarmería officer will need rooms in the big house, and we’ll need rooms for eight gendarmes in whatever outbuilding she wants to put the Möllers and the Körtigs. Enrico is going to take Señor Möller and Señor Körtig to the bar. As soon as you can, bring any messages from Mount Sinai to me there.”
“No messages from Mount Sinai, Major,” Stein said. “You expecting one?”
A very long one. When you don’t know what the hell you are doing, ask somebody who presumably does.
And Graham has certainly had enough time to send me my orders.
Clete said: “The SIGABA’s up at Vint Hill Farms?”
Stein nodded. “With a net check every hour.”
“Well, in that case, there’s nothing for Señor Möller and Señor K
örtig and me to do but have a glass of wine while we wait for the ladies,” Clete said. “Or hear from Mount Sinai. Or for the sky to fall. Whichever comes first.”
[FOUR]
Office of the Deputy Director for Western Hemisphere
Operations
Office of Strategic Services
National Institutes of Health Building
Washington, D.C.
1715 3 October 1943
Allen W. Dulles entered Graham’s office carrying a well-stuffed briefcase and a small, nearly square package wrapped in cheap gray paper and tied with frazzled string.
Whatever that is, he brought it from London. Among other things they don’t have in Merry Old England these days is decent wrapping paper and string.
Dulles set the package on Graham’s desk and then reached across the desk to shake his hand.
“How was the flight?” Graham asked.
“Long and uncomfortable. The daily courier left without me. I came on a standard Douglas C-54. Via Shannon, Ireland; Gander, Newfoundland; and Westover, in Massachusetts. That’s a long way to ride sitting on unupholstered seats or trying to sleep on a pile of mail bags on the floor.”
“That’s the price of having to respond to the call of your master’s voice,” Graham said. “How did that go?”
“First, let me open this,” Dulles said, nodding at the package and fishing in his pocket.
After a moment, Graham reached into a desk drawer, came up with a pair of scissors, and handed them to Dulles.
“What’s in there that’s so important?” Graham said.
“My original thought was to give it to you, but I now realize I need it more than you do. I wish that I was unwelcome at the White House.”
He finally got the paper off the box, then pulled from it an odd-looking bottle—there were dimples in the glass.
The label read HAIG & HAIG FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD SCOTCH WHISKY.
“Where the hell did you get that? I thought it had all disappeared, like dinosaurs,” Graham said, and then he pushed the lever on his intercom. “Alice, ice and glasses. You won’t believe what Mr. Dulles has brought us!”
Alice Dulaney walked in a minute or so later—Dulles was still struggling to remove the champagne-bottle-like wire netting from the neck of the bottle—with three glasses, a bucket of ice, and a water pitcher on a tray.
Although she had resisted—for reasons Graham did not pretend to understand—a more impressive title than “secretary,” she was far more important to Graham—and thus to the OSS—than her title suggested.
In Graham’s absences—and he spent more time away from his office than in it—she spoke with his authority. This meant she had to be privy to all secrets, official and otherwise.
In certain circumstances, however—like this one, with only Allen Dulles in Graham’s office—she dropped her “I’m nothing more than a simple secretary” masquerade and said, “Yes, thank you. Don’t mind if I do. Where the hell did you get that? I haven’t seen any of that for years.”
She then took the bottle from Dulles and expertly got rid of the wire and pulled the cork. As if they had rehearsed the routine, Dulles put ice cubes in a glass, which Graham then held up so Alice could splash whisky into it. This was repeated three times. Finally, they tapped glasses.
After his first sip, Dulles said, “Nice. David Bruce told me he would tell me where I could buy two bottles if I promised he could have one of them. I naturally agreed.”
Colonel David Bruce was the OSS station chief in London.
“And?” Graham said.
“I went to the store in the embassy, where they have cases of it stacked to the ceiling. They are willing to part with two bottles—only—per month for ‘special friends of the embassy.’ David had already had his ration.”
“You should have pulled rank on Bruce,” Alice said. “You’re the deputy director for Europe; he works for you.”
“That thought ran through my mind, but I decided in the end that if I did, the next time I was in London he wouldn’t share his knowledge of important things with me.”
“You know, I’ll bet Frade has cases of this stacked up somewhere,” Alice said.
“Remind me to ask him,” Graham said. “And speaking of Señor Loose Cannon?”
“I called Vint Hill Farms Station a couple of minutes ago,” she said. “All I got was a runaround. I was going to raise hell, but I realized that maybe the reason we don’t have his after-action report is because he hasn’t gotten around to sending his after-action report.”
“Do we know if he made it back to Buenos Aires?” Dulles asked.
“Just that. And we got that from the Associated Press wire that said the first SAA flight from Lisbon had arrived.”
Graham shook his head, took a sip from his glass, and said, “God, this is good whisky!”
“The President knew he’d made it to Lisbon,” Dulles said. “He was pleased.”
“Pleased because Frade managed to get there or because he knew Juan Trippe would be greatly annoyed?” Graham asked.
“Either or both,” Dulles said.
“Who else was there?” Graham asked.
“You would know if you had been there. Weren’t you invited?”
“I told the director he was at Vint Hill Farms,” Alice said. “He didn’t seem terribly disappointed.”
“Wallace, Hoover, and Morgenthau,” Dulles said. “Plus the First Lady.”
“That explains why the director wasn’t disappointed,” Graham said. “Wouldn’t you say?”
“You would have enjoyed it,” Dulles said. “Hoover and Wallace got into it. J. Robert Oppenheimer had complained to Wallace that Hoover was ‘harass ing’ his atomic scientists. Hoover said that it was his responsibility to root out spies wherever they might be found. Morgenthau chimed in and said he was worried the Germans were going to spy on the Manhattan Project, and then Hoover blurted he was more worried about the Russians than the Germans, which annoyed Wallace and Eleanor. Eleanor pointedly reminded Hoover that the Russians were our allies and wouldn’t do anything like that.”
“What was the alleged purpose of this meeting of minds?” Graham asked.
“I really think Roosevelt wanted to know how South American Airlines was doing. He really knows how to hold a grudge.”
“God save us if Wallace or Morgenthau finds out we’re using it to move Nazis to South America,” Alice said. “And why.”
“Good God!” Graham exclaimed. “Don’t say that aloud, even in here!”
“I didn’t hear Alice say anything,” Dulles said evenly, eyeing his drink. “Did you say anything, Alice?”
“Not that I can remember,” she said.
“You’re telling me Roosevelt ordered you from Bern just to ask about SAA?” Graham asked.
“That’s all I can come up with. The only other question I was asked was about the ransoming of the Jews. Morgenthau asked me.”
“And what did you say?”
“I told him that all I knew was that it was still operating, but that I didn’t have any details. I suggested you might.”
“Thanks a lot,” Graham said.
One of the telephones on Graham’s desk rang. Alice walked to the desk and answered it.
“Colonel Graham’s office. Mrs. Dulaney speaking.” There was a brief pause, and then she added, “Send him up, please.”
She put the phone down.
“Vint Hill Farms has been heard from,” she said.
Then she quickly picked up her glass from the coffee table and walked out of the office.
“There is a Colonel Raymond from Vint Hill Farms for you, Colonel,” Mrs. Alice Dulaney, now back in her secretary role, formally announced from the office door.
“Show him in,” Graham said as he set down the glass he was holding and lowered his feet from where they had been resting on the open lower right-hand drawer of his desk.
Allen W. Dulles was now sitting on a couch facing a small coffee table, from which he lo
wered his feet. He set his glass down on the table.
This has to be Frade’s after-action report, Graham thought. I guess it took him this long to get everything sorted out.
Lieutenant Colonel James Raymond, Signal Corps—a tall, ascetic-looking man in his late thirties—marched into Graham’s office, stopped two feet from Graham’s desk, and saluted. He wore a web belt from which dangled a holstered Colt Model 1911A1 pistol. His left wrist was handcuffed to a somewhat scruffy leather briefcase.
Graham returned the salute, although he wasn’t in uniform, and he didn’t think even the Army exchanged salutes unless both the saluter and the salutee were in uniform.
“Lieutenant Colonel Raymond, sir. From Vint Hill Farms Station.” Raymond then looked at Dulles, then back at Graham, making it a question.
“Well, he may look like a Nazi,” Graham said, “but actually, Mr. Dulles is the OSS deputy director for Europe and has all the appropriate security clearances. What have you got for me, Colonel?”
“I have a message from Tex for you, sir. I apologize for the delay.”
Graham wagged his fingers in a Let’s have it gesture, then asked, “What caused the delay?”
“It came in last night, sir, but neither the colonel nor I, sir, was immediately available to decrypt it.”
“And only you or the colonel is able to do that?”
“Plus, of course, Lieutenant Fischer,” Lieutenant Colonel Raymond said. “And he isn’t available.”
Graham realized his temper was about to flare.
You could have sent the still-encrypted message over here, rather than wait hours until they found you, Colonel. Believe it or not, we could have decrypted it here.
“Well, Fischer’s on his way back, Colonel,” Graham said, finally and calmly. “The last word I had was that he’ll probably be here tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Colonel Raymond said.
Graham watched as Raymond first freed himself from his handcuff, then unlocked the briefcase, took from it a large manila envelope—stamped TOP SECRET—and then took from that a business-size envelope—also stamped TOP SECRET—and handed that to Graham.
The Honor of Spies Page 47
