The Honor of Spies

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Thank you,” Graham said. “Please have a seat, Colonel. There will probably be a reply. Can I offer you a little something?”

  “No, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  “Coffee, maybe?”

  “Yes, sir. If it wouldn’t be a problem,” Raymond said as he sat in one of the armchairs.

  Graham raised his voice. “Alice, it’s Maxwell House time in here.”

  “Coming right up!”

  Graham opened the envelope and removed the contents. He read it as far as the first paragraph before he knew he wasn’t going to like it.

  “Alice,” he called. “Belay the coffee in here! The colonel will take it in your office.” He looked at Raymond. “This is not quite what I expected. Would you mind . . .”

  Raymond was already on his feet.

  “Yes, sir,” Raymond said. “I understand, sir. I did the decryption myself. That message is a bit unusual, isn’t it, sir?”

  Again Graham felt his temper flare. This time he had an even harder time keeping it contained.

  What Raymond had said he shouldn’t have said, although it was true. “A bit unusual” was something of an understatement. But what had ignited Graham’s anger was that Raymond acknowledged that he had read the message during the decryption process.

  The only way to avoid that was for the individual actually writing the message to encrypt it, and then transmit it, himself, and for the recipient to personally receive and then decrypt it.

  Otherwise, any number of people who had no business being familiar with the message at all—secretaries, cryptographers, radio operators, typists—had a valid reason to read the message and thus become familiar with it.

  This system made necessary the use of code names for people and places and operations within the encrypted message itself. The theory being that if only the author and the recipient knew that “Tex” was Major Cletus Frade and

  “Aggie” was Colonel A. F. Graham, et cetera, the clerks, et cetera, involved in the transmission and receipt of the message who had read it would not know what they had read.

  “Yes, it is,” Graham replied, his temper under control. “This shouldn’t take long, Colonel. Thank you for your patience.”

  “Not at all, sir.”

  Lieutenant Colonel Raymond left the office, closing the door after himself.

  Dulles got up and walked to Graham’s desk and looked over his shoulder at the message.

  Graham knew what all the code names meant, but Dulles had to ask about some of them:

  “Pinocchio? Who’s that?”

  “He said ‘new Kraut buddy.’ Probably Gehlen.”

  “Pinocchio because his nose grows when he’s lying?”

  “What else, Allen?” Graham said.

  “Polo?”

  “Captain Madison R. Sawyer III, formerly Number Three on the Ramapo Valley polo team.”

  “The Brewery is where Frade has the Froggers?”

  “It’s his house in the vineyards of his Estancia Don Guillermo in the foothills of the Andes Mountains near Mendoza. He told me the entire Marine Raider Battalion couldn’t get up the mountain to take it.”

  Dulles chuckled, then asked, “Big-Z?”

  “SS-Brigadeführer Manfred von Deitzberg.”

  “Bagman?”

  “Sturmbannführer Werner von Tresmarck, who runs that obscene confidential fund operation; he’s light on his feet and does exactly what von Deitzberg tells him because otherwise he goes to Sachsenhausen with a pink triangle on his chest.”

  “That would tend to make him behave, I suppose. Sausage?”

  “Anton von Gradny-Sawz, first secretary of the German Embassy.”

  “Cavalry?”

  “Major Frade has declined to give me his name,” Graham said dryly. “But I suspect he’s Colonel Alejandro Martín of the BIS. I don’t think Frade has turned him, but I think it’s safe to say that Martín has decided that the gringos are less of a danger to Argentina than the Nazis. He’s been helpful. Very helpful.”

  “I presume ‘Bigtoys’ means the Constellations?” Dulles said.

  “What else could it mean? But what’s that about von Deitzberg being ordered to destroy them? Ordered by who?”

  “The only thing that comes to mind is that Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels is unhappy—for his propaganda purposes—with Argentina having better transport aircraft than Lufthansa,” Dulles said. “But I rather doubt that he has that much influence over Himmler, who would have to issue that order.”

  “Maybe it came from Hitler; Goebbels has influence with him.”

  “I just don’t know,” Dulles said.

  “Now, that’s worrisome,” Dulles said.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “The question is who turned whom.”

  “My God, Allen! He’s a Marine with the Navy Cross! What I meant was that he told him ‘just about everything.’ ”

  Dulles looked as if he was about to reply but then had changed his mind.

  “Well, I can make a good guess who he means by ‘Princeton,’ ” Allen W. Dulles, BA Princeton ’14, MA Princeton ’16, said, smiling. “But the Valkyrie business is worrisome.”

  “You did get that message? That Martín has someone in the Argentine Embassy in Berlin?”

  “And I have been working on it, so far unsuccessfully.”

  Graham nodded thoughtfully, then said, “Are you going to pass around that the Argentines know about Valkyrie?”

  “I’ll have to think, very carefully, about that. All of those involved do not have von Stauffenberg’s courage and determination; if they heard this they’d be likely to pull back. I wish there was some way I could get to Argentina and discuss the players with Colonel Frogger, but I don’t see how I could arrange that.”

  “We can ask Frade to ask him, Allen.”

  “Let’s put that on the back burner for the moment.”

  Graham nodded.

  “Why Renfrew?” Dulles said.

  “After the movie.”

  Renfrew of the Royal Mounted had been a surprisingly successful B movie of 1937 starring James Newill as Sergeant Renfrew, of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who pursued the evildoers, assisted by his dog, a German shepherd named Lightning.

  “Why not Dick Tracy?” Dulles said. “Renfrew must’ve meant something to Frade.”

  “Who,” Graham replied, “was (a) still not much more than a boy when that movie came out, and (b) was almost certainly fairly well lubricated when he wrote this message.”

  “Is there an Argentine equivalent of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police?” Dulles pursued.

  After a moment, Graham said, “Yeah. The Gendarmería Nacional.”

  “Would you care to wager a small amount that Renfrew has something to do with the Gendarmería Nacional?”

  “If he’s a pal of Cavalry, he probably runs the Gendarmería Nacional,” Graham said. “Don’t let this go to your head, but for a Princetonian you’re pretty clever.”

  “And are you going to reward me with another taste from our Pinch bottle?”

  “I thought you would never ask,” Graham said, and rose from his desk and went to the coffee table where he poured scotch whisky in glasses for both of them.

  Dulles sat in Graham’s chair and resumed reading.

  Graham returned with their drinks, set them on the desk, and then went to take one of the chairs in front of his desk to move it next to Dulles.

  “That makes sense,” Dulles said. “On both counts. The one thing Argentina doesn’t need is a Spanish-type civil war, and all the ingredients for one are there, just waiting for someone to strike a match.”

  “Yeah. And wouldn’t the Chileans and the Brazilians like that?”

  Dulles raised his eyes to Graham’s and answered the unspoken question in them:

  “I really didn’t think Frade would find out,” Dulles said.

  “But you didn’t tell me.”

  “I planned to.”

  “He said, lamely.”

>   “Honest to God, Alex, I forgot.”

  “ ‘Tomorrow morning,’ ” Dulles said. “That means this morning, right?”

  “Western Union service has been a little slow,” Graham said sarcastically. “If he left Buenos Aires—probably, almost certainly, in his Lodestar—at, say, oh nine hundred, he’s been there for hours. It’s about a four-hour flight.”

  “His Lodestar? A prerogative of being managing director of South American Airways? Very nice.”

  “No. It is his personal Lodestar. His father had a Staggerwing Beechcraft. Our Cletus borrowed it, then got shot down in it dropping flares out of it to illuminate the Reine de la Mer so the USS Devil-Fish could put a torpedo into her.

  “Our commander in chief was so delighted that he made our Cletus a captain, gave him another Distinguished Flying Cross—which he deserved—and then ordered the Air Corps to immediately replace the lost Beechcraft. Not just via some flunky: Roosevelt ordered General Hap Arnold, the Chief of Staff of the Air Corps, to personally see to it.

  “The Air Corps didn’t happen to have any Staggerwing Beechcrafts in stock—I think they stopped making them in 1940—but they had an order from the President, relayed through General Arnold, to replace the aircraft lost in South America. So they took a Lodestar intended as a VIP transport and sent that to Brazil, where it was painted with the same identification numbers of the Staggerwing—and in Staggerwing Red—and notified me that the ‘plane’ was ready. I told our Cletus to go get what I thought would be another Staggerwing.

  “He did. And when he got to Brazil, he saw the Lodestar as a good way to get the radar and its crew into Argentina. So, with about two hours of instruction in how to fly it, he did just that. Without a copilot.

  “And made it. When I heard about it, I caught the next Panagra Clipper and went down there and reamed him a new anal orifice for being so stupidly arrogant as to think he was that good a pilot.

  “Frankly, my heart wasn’t in that. What I was hoping was that the ass-chewing would make him think twice the next time he wanted to do something so off the wall.”

  “And did that work?”

  “You’ve met him, Allen, what would you say?”

  Dulles looked at Marine Corps Colonel A. F. Graham and with a straight face said, “I would say that Major Frade is a typical Marine officer,” then returned his attention to the message.

  “Man from the Delta?” Dulles asked.

  “Oberstleutnant Frogger,” Graham replied. “Frogger’s son. We got him out of the VIP POW camp in the Mississippi Delta.”

  “And he’s at the Brewery?”

  Graham nodded.

  “So what are we going to tell Frade to do?”

  “We are not going to tell him anything, Allen. You blew your right to tell him anything when you didn’t tell him—or me, so that I could tell him—about the phony sergeant major. And, on that subject, is there anything else you think Frade or I should know?”

  “No, Alex, there isn’t.”

  “Until about five minutes ago, that would have been good enough. Now I’m not sure.”

  Dulles’s face tightened.

  Graham didn’t back down. “Goddamn it, we had an agreement—no secrets, nothing that could be misunderstood between us.”

  “Yes, we did. And I broke it. By oversight, not intention, but I broke it and I said I was sorry.”

  Graham didn’t reply.

  “What would you like me to do, Alex? Get on my knees and beg forgiveness? Commit suicide?”

  “Good thoughts,” Graham said. “How about getting on your knees and committing hara-kiri on the White House lawn?”

  “As reluctant as I am to correct an always correct military man such as yourself, I have to tell you—presuming you are talking about self-disembowelment—the proper term for it is seppuku.”

  “They taught you that at Princeton, did they?”

  “Indeed they did.”

  “In that case, go seppuku yourself, Allen.”

  They smiled at each other.

  “So what are you going to tell Frade to do?” Dulles asked.

  “Watch and listen, Allen. But first get out of my chair.”

  Dulles got up and Graham sat down.

  He pushed the lever on his desk intercom device.

  “Alice, would you ask Colonel Raymond to come in, please?”

  Graham rummaged in his desk drawer and came up with a book of matches.

  Raymond appeared almost instantly at the door. Alice stood behind him.

  “Sir?”

  “Colonel, can you assure me that there are no copies of this message in some file cabinet—or anywhere else—at Vint Hill Farms Station?”

  “Yes, sir, I can.”

  “There will be a brief reply to this one. Alice, please write this down—not in shorthand—so that Colonel Raymond can take it back to Vint Hill, send it, and then burn it—repeat burn it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Alice said.

  “ ‘Pinocchio did not lie. Princeton didn’t think you are as smart as you are. Use your best judgment. Keep me advised. Graham, Colonel, USMCR.’ Read it back, please, Alice.”

  She did so.

  “Now give it to Colonel Raymond to make sure he can read your writing.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I can read it fine, sir,” Raymond said a moment later.

  “Get that out immediately when you get back to Vint Hill Station, please.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That will be all, then, Colonel. Thank you.”

  “Yes, sir,” Raymond said, came to attention, and saluted. Graham returned it. Raymond did a crisp about-face and marched out of the office.

  When he was gone, Graham said, “Now that it’s a done deed, I will listen to your comments.”

  “I don’t think you had any other choice,” Dulles said. “At the moment, we have absolutely no control over what Frade will do or won’t do, even if we knew what to tell him to do.”

  “Great minds take similar paths,” Graham said. Then he struck a match and, holding Frade’s message to him over his wastebasket, set the message on fire.

  [FIVE]

  Casa Montagna

  Estancia Don Guillermo

  Km 40.4, Provincial Route 60

  Mendoza Province, Argentina

  1650 3 October 1943

  Mother Superior had made it plain that she regarded Clete Frade’s treatment of the mother of his unborn child as the despicable behavior to be expected of someone who had obviously inherited his father’s insanity. But, aside from that, Mother Superior had been so cooperative that Clete suspected she had been given her marching orders from whoever in the hierarchy of Holy Mother Church had the authority to order a Mother Superior around.

  One of the most important things she had done was to calm Señora Möller and Señora Körtig—and, as important, the children. She spoke fluent German, which made things easier.

  “The first thing we have to do,” Mother Superior told them, “is get you to speak Spanish, and the best way to do that, of course, is to get you in school. We run a bus up here every morning to take the children who live here to our school. It’s inside the convent. And then, of course, it brings them home after school. Is there any reason, Don Cletus, they couldn’t do that tomorrow?”

  Frade thought, Translation: Would it be safe to do that?

  Clete had looked at Inspector Peralta and saw that he was looking at Subinspector Nowicki, who after a thoughtful moment made a subtle thumbs-up gesture, which caused Inspector Peralta to nod in Clete’s direction.

  Translation: The Gendarmería Nacional can and will protect the bus.

  “I can’t think of one,” Clete said. “It sounds like a very good idea.”

  “And for the first few days,” Mother Superior said, “I suggest that it would be a very good idea if Señora Möller and Señora Körtig came to school, too. Would that be all right?”

  As long as I’ve got their husbands under my thumb here, why not?<
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  “I think that would be a very good idea,” Clete said.

  “And now, so as to leave you gentlemen to your wine, I suggest that I take the ladies and the children to their apartments. I’ll see what things they’ll need for school, and answer any questions they might have.”

  “I think the fathers would like to be in on that,” Clete said. “Would that be all right?”

  “I think that would be a very good idea,” Mother Superior said.

  “Would you like to come along, Dorotea?” Mother Superior asked.

  “What I think I am going to do is have a little lie-down,” Dorotea said. “I’m tired from the flight.”

  Translation: I am now going to stand behind a partially open door and listen to what the men will say that they probably wouldn’t say if I was in the room.

  “Well, I can certainly understand why you’re tired,” Mother Superior said, flashing Clete an icy smile.

  A minute later, Clete saw that the bar held men only. Stein was missing.

  He’s sitting on the SIGABA and waiting—probably in vain—for the graven-on-stone messages from Mount Sinai.

  What was it Graham said about the more people knowing about a secret the less chance there is that it will remain a secret?

  I trust Nervo and Martín. I trust Inspector Peralta because Nervo trusts him. And I suppose I can trust Subinspector Navarro because he works for Peralta.

  That’s a hell of a lot of people being told a hell of a lot of secrets.

  Not to mention the local Gendarmería boss, Subinspector Nowicki. I don’t know him, or where he comes from.

  “Don Cletus, did Inspector General Nervo tell you I can read faces?” Inspector Peralta asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I can look at a face and tell what that person is thinking,” Peralta said seriously.

  What the hell is this?

  “Really?”

  “Would you like me to tell you what you’re thinking?” Peralta said, and then went on without giving Clete a chance to reply. “Who the hell are all these people? How the hell do I know I can trust them? Am I close?”