Victory and Honor hb-6

by W. E. B Griffin

  Frade rolled down his window and commanded the driver of the lead jeep, “Drive around to the rear.”

  In the back of the building were parking spaces. One of the two nearest the door was empty. It had a neatly lettered sign: RESERVED FOR THE DIRECTOR.

  Frade pointed to it and ordered, “Pull in there, Tom.”

  After Tom parked, Clete told Peter and Karl to wait in the car and then got out.

  Two men in police-type uniforms came quickly—almost ran—from the building.

  Clete intercepted them and announced, “Colonel Frade to see Colonel Graham.”

  He did not offer his credentials. The security officers would know they weren’t bona fide.

  “That’s General Donovan’s parking spot, Colonel,” the shorter of the security officers said. “You—”

  “He told me to use it,” Frade cut him off, and started walking toward the building entrance.

  Then he had a sudden idea.

  He stopped, turned, and pointed to the jeep and weapons carrier.

  “Have those escort vehicles moved to the front of the building,” he ordered the security men.

  Frade heard them barking orders to the drivers of the MP vehicles as he entered the building. He came to two other security officers who were sitting behind a curved reception desk.

  “Colonel Frade to see Colonel Graham,” Frade announced. “I do not have an appointment.”

  One of the security guards automatically reached for a telephone and dialed a number.

  With a little bit of luck, Frade thought, Graham won’t be here.

  Then I will make sure the MPs have moved, and go back outside and see if there’s another way to get out of that parking lot.

  Frade could quite clearly hear the voice of the male who answered the call snap: “What?”

  Dammit—he’s here!

  “Who is this, please?” the security guard said into the phone.

  “Who did you expect to get when you called this number?” the voice on the phone demanded incredulously.

  “Colonel Graham, sir.”

  “Okay. You got him. What? ”

  “There’s a Marine officer here, Colonel. Lieutenant Colonel Frade. He says he doesn’t have an appointment—”

  “He damn sure doesn’t!” the voice said, then before hanging up added: “Send him up.”

  Colonel Alejandro Federico Graham, USMCR, the deputy director of the OSS for Western Hemisphere Operations, was standing in the corridor when Frade got off the elevator. He wore his usual immaculate uniform.

  “Well, look what the tide floated in!” Graham said in Spanish.

  “Mi coronel,” Frade said, and saluted.

  Graham returned the salute, shook his head, and said, still in Spanish, “We are Marines. Naval custom proscribes the exchange of hand salutes indoors unless under arms. Try to remember that in the future.”

  Then he gestured for Frade to follow him into his office.

  “I’m almost afraid to ask what you’re doing here,” he said, waving Frade into an inner office and then into a chair.

  “A personnel matter, mi coronel. A personal personnel matter.”

  “What kind of a personnel matter?”

  “I am in receipt, mi coronel, of a letter from the Finance Officer, Headquarters, USMC, informing me that inasmuch as I have not provided the appropriate proof that I have flown any aircraft the required four hours per month for the past twenty months, I am therefore not entitled to flight pay, and it will therefore be necessary for them to deduct the appropriate amount from my next check.”

  “¡Jesúcristo!”

  “And since I have not received any paycheck at all for the past twenty-some months, I thought I’d come and see if I couldn’t clear the matter up.”

  “Well, I’d probably be more sympathetic if I didn’t know how far removed from the welfare rolls you are, Colonel. What’s that phrase, ‘Rich as an Argentine’?”

  “That, mi coronel, is what they call the pot calling the kettle black.”

  Graham shook his head.

  “So, what really brings you up here, Clete?”

  “On the way back from Portugal with yet another load of Teutonic people carrying Vatican passports, as I sat there watching the needles on the fuel gauges drop, I wondered what was going to happen to Boltitz and von Wachtstein once the Germans surrendered.”

  “And?”

  “I thought that they would probably be loaded onto a troopship, returned to the former German Thousand-Year Reich, and then locked up in a POW enclosure until somebody decided their fate. If they survived that long.”

  “And that’s probably what will happen.”

  “So I figured I’d better come up here and get them.”

  “The injustice of the Nazis getting to go to Argentina, and the good guys getting locked up—and possibly worse—is that, more or less, what you were thinking?”

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking. We owe them, and you know it.”

  “You did give just a little thought to their being locked up at Fort Hunt and getting them out of there would be impossible?”

  “Next to impossible, mi coronel.”

  Graham raised an eyebrow. “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that at this moment, they’re sitting in my grandfather’s Cadillac, which is waiting in General Donovan’s reserved parking spot.”

  “You got them out of Fort Hunt?” Graham asked incredulously.

  Clete nodded.

  “I told them you wanted to talk to them; had sent me out there to fetch them.”

  “And what the hell do you plan to do with them now?” Graham said. But before Frade could reply, he asked, “Why the hell did you bring them here? To me?”

  “Well, the guy at Fort Hunt didn’t entirely believe me. So he took the path of least resistance.”

  “Explain that to me.”

  “He was afraid I was telling the truth, so that made him afraid to call you and check. And he was afraid I was a phony. So he sent a jeep and a weapons carrier loaded with MPs with me, to make sure I came here.”

  “And now what, Clete? Now that you’ve painted yourself into one hell of a corner?”

  “Well, I had the security guards order the MPs to the front of the building. If there’s another way to get out of the parking lot behind the building, I get in my car and we’re gone.”

  “To where?”

  “Gravelly Point.”

  “What did you do, fly your Red Lodestar into there?”

  “No. What I have is a South American Airways Constellation.”

  “You flew a Constellation into National Airport?”

  Clete nodded.

  “¡Jesúcristo!”

  “I’ve now got about fifteen hundred hours in Connies. I’m getting pretty good at it.”

  “And what do you want me to do? Bring you cigarettes and magazines when you’re in the Portsmouth Navy Prison?”

  “I want you to do what you know is the right thing,” Frade said seriously. “Help me get to the airport.”

  Graham exhaled audibly.

  He met Frade’s eyes, then spun around in his chair. Then he turned so that he was facing Frade again.

  “You’re way ahead of me, aren’t you, you clever bastard?” he said icily. “You know that if Donovan himself walked in right now, the chances of you being court-martialed—which you richly deserve—are damned slim. You know too much. And the same applies to me.”

  “I wouldn’t have come here if that light bird at Fort Hunt hadn’t sent the MPs with me. I had no intention of involving you in this at all.”

  “And what did you think was going to happen when you got away with it? If you got away with it?”

  “I’m going to drop off my resignation from the Corps at the embassy in Buenos Aires the day I get back. Then I’m going to disappear in Argentina. I saw Mr. Dulles in Lisbon. He said I’m going to have to decide what to do, and what I’ve decided is to disappear. I’m getting pretty good a
bout helping other people disappear there.”

  “You can’t just resign from the Corps, you goddamned fool! You’ll get out of the Corps only when the Corps permits you to get out of the Corps!”

  Frade stared at Graham and thought, I wondered about that. He’s probably right—if I wasn’t also an Argentine citizen.

  Graham picked up one of the telephones on his desk and dialed a single number.

  “Security chief, please,” he said, then looked at Frade and added, “Sit there, Colonel, and don’t say one goddamn word.”

  Well, Frade thought, I tried.

  At least I didn’t tell Beth I was going to get Karl.

  “This is Graham. There are two MP vehicles from Fort Hunt in front of the building. Go out there and find whoever’s in charge and bring him up here.”

  He hung up the phone.

  He turned to Frade and said, “Continue to sit there with your mouth shut, Colonel. I have no interest in hearing anything you might be tempted to say.”

  He waited ten seconds, then said, “The proper Marine officer’s response to that, Colonel, is ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ And for the moment at least, you are still a serving officer in the Corps.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  An MP captain, this one festooned with all the proper MP accoutrements, came into the office three minutes later. He saluted.

  “Captain,” Graham said, almost cordially, “I’ll see to it that the prisoners get back to Fort Hunt. I can see no need for you to wait around here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s all, Captain,” Graham said. “You are dismissed.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The captain left and closed the door.

  “That’s all, Colonel Frade,” Graham said. “You are dismissed.”

  Clete stood, and, remembering what Graham had said about Naval custom proscribing the exchange of hand salutes indoors unless under arms, didn’t.

  He met Graham’s eyes for a moment, then marched toward the door.

  “Clete,” Graham called.

  Frade turned.

  “You were right, Clete. Wild Bill will throw one of his famous Irish fits when he hears about this, but that’ll be the end of it. We both know too much, and he is fully aware that we do.”

  “I hope that’s the case, sir.”

  “Please present my compliments to Kapitän Boltitz and Major von Wachtstein. And my best regards to Doña Dorotea.”

  “I’ll do that, sir. Thank you.”

  “Maybe we’ll see one another one day. Strange things happen in this business we’re in. Belay that. Were in.”

  “Were in, sir?”

  “The reason Donovan’s parking spot was so conveniently open for you is that he’s over in the Pentagon begging General Marshall not to shut down the OSS this afternoon.”

  “But if they shut down the OSS right now, what about . . .”

  “All the ongoing projects? Several of which you’re running?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “God only knows, Colonel Frade. Have a nice flight. Vaya con Dios.”

  [SIX]

  Washington National Airport Arlington, Virginia 1705 10 May 1945

  The public address loudspeakers of South American Airways Constellation Ciudad de Córdoba blared in the passenger compartment: “Passenger von Wachtstein to the cockpit. Passenger von Wachtstein to the cockpit.”

  Hans-Peter Baron von Wachtstein made his way up the aisle and entered the cockpit.

  “Sit there, Hansel,” Frade said in German, pointing to a jump seat. “Don’t touch anything, and pay attention. You might learn something.”

  Von Wachtstein sat down and strapped in.

  “National,” Frade said in English into his microphone, “South American Double Zero Two rolling.”

  Frade advanced the throttles to takeoff power.

  “Gear up and locked. Flaps to zero,” Chief Pilot Gonzalo Delgano reported a few minutes later.

  Frade pointed out the window, and von Wachstein looked, then nodded. They were passing over the White House.

  Then Frade looked at von Wachtstein and said, “This ends your flight-deck familiarization of the Connie for now.”

  As Peter unbuckled his harness, Clete gestured with his thumb toward the passenger compartment.

  “Karl and Beth . . .”

  “What about them?” von Wachtstein said.

  “Go back there, Hansel, and throw ice water on Romeo and Juliet before they embarrass my aunt Martha and everybody else with a shameless exhibition of their mutual lust.”

  “Ah,” von Wachtstein said. “Too late.”

  II

  [ONE]

  Aeropuerto Coronel Jorge G. Frade Morón, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina 1235 11 May 1945

  Washington, D.C., was a long way—just over five thousand miles—from Buenos Aires. It had been necessary for South American Airways Double Zero Two Ciudad de Córdoba to refuel at Belém, Brazil, after a nine-hour flight from Washington. Refueling had taken two hours. Then it had been a just-over-eight-hour flight to Buenos Aires.

  The Ciudad de Córdoba completed its landing roll and turned off the runway onto a taxiway. A tug—it had been surprisingly easy to convert John Deere tractors, ones fitted with enormous double tires for use in rice fields, into aircraft tugs powerful enough to move Constellations—painted in SAA’s powder blue and gold color scheme came down the taxiway toward the Constellation.

  The Connie stopped, then shut down its engines as the ground crew backed up the tug to it and connected to the front landing gear.

  The tug dragged the airplane to the tarmac, past three enormous hangars, and then pushed the Connie, tail first, into the center hangar.

  “It would seem, Gonzalo,” the pilot said solemnly to his first officer, “that we have once again cheated death.”

  “Cletus, you know damned well I don’t like it when you say that,” Delgano said as he unfastened his harness, stretched in his seat, and then stood.

  “Well, you may be happy with near-empty tanks—maybe ten minutes left—but I’m always concerned.”

  Delgano snapped his head around to examine the fuel gauges.

  They showed there was considerably more fuel remaining than ten minutes.

  “Gotcha!” Frade cried happily.

  Delgano shook his head and left the cockpit.

  Frade looked out the window. The Connie was the only airplane in the hangar, but there were a number of automobiles, most of them large and chauffeur-driven.

  Frade waited until the REAR DOOR light glowed red and then he killed the MASTER POWER switch and left his seat.

  By the time he walked through the passenger compartment he was the last person in it.

  When he stood on the platform at the head of the ladder, the first thing he looked for was the couple he often in the past called—to their great annoyance—Hansel und Gretel.

  When he found them, his throat tightened and his eyes teared.

  Hansel—Hans-Peter Baron von Wachtstein—had his arms around Gretel—the former Alicia Carzino-Cormano—in a bear hug that suggested neither had the slightest intention of ever breaking the embrace in their lifetimes.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a shrill whistle. He knew it well, including the time it had brought three taxis to a dead halt at once during rush hour on Avenida 9 de Julio. His wife made it by squeezing her tongue tip with two fingertips, then quickly exhaling. It was a skill Clete had never mastered, either as a Boy Scout when all the other members of Troop 36, Midland, Texas, could do it with ease, or after his marriage, when he had tried even harder to learn how.

  He found her standing near the foot of the stairway.

  Doña Dorotea Mallín de Frade, who had just turned twenty-two, was the image that came to mind when one heard the phrase “classic English beauty.” She was tall and lithe, blond, and had startlingly blue eyes and a marvelous milky smooth complexion.

  Standing off to the right was Enrico Rodríguez and another m
an who looked very much like him. They both cradled Remington Model 11 twelve-gauge riot shotguns in their arms as they kept a wary eye on everybody in the hangar. The other man, former Sargento Rodolfo Gómez, had, like Rodríguez, retired from the Húsares de Pueyrredón. He now was rarely more than fifty feet from Doña Dorotea and her children—and usually closer.

  Clete was not wearing his Marine Corps uniform, nor his SAA captain’s uniform. He was far less formally attired in khaki trousers, a yellow polo shirt, battered Western boots, and a wide-brimmed Stetson hat once the property of his late uncle James Fitzhugh Howell—who for almost all of Clete’s life was the only father Clete had known.

  Frade went quickly down the stairs and embraced his wife.

  Dorotea put her mouth close to his ear and whispered: “You done good, my darling. And do I have a reward for you in mind!”

  “You mean maybe two empanadas and a beer?” he asked, teasing.

  “Maybe afterward,” Dorotea said, flicked her tongue in his ear, and broke their embrace.

  Then something caught his eye. Three men were walking up to them.

  One of the men wore a clerical collar and was fond of referring to himself as a simple priest. This was not precisely the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Clete had once thought of the Reverend Kurt Welner, S.J.—a bespectacled, slim, fair-skinned man who’d lost most of his light brown hair and looked to be in his forties—as the éminence grise behind the throne of the Cardinal Archbishop of Argentina and the official chair of the president of the Argentine Republic, whose confessor he was.

  Events over the last twenty-odd months had caused Frade to add to that the throne of the Papal Nuncio to Argentina, and to conclude that if Welner was not de jure Pope Pius XII’s man in Argentina, he held that role de facto. Well, maybe not directly, but through one or more of the most senior cardinals in Pius XII’s inner circle.

  At dinner one night in Lisbon, Allen W. Dulles had told Frade that when dealing with Welner—or any other Roman Catholic clergyman of importance—the thing to keep in mind was that they understood their first priority was to preserve the Roman Catholic Church and always acted accordingly.