I asked your grandfather to go down there to have a look around for me.
I have told him what you’re all up to, and look forward to him telling me how well you’re doing it.
Sincerely,
Harry S Truman
* * *
“Bernardo,” Frade said, as he tossed the note to General Martín, “you’ve always wondered where I acquired my skill as an intelligence officer. Now I can tell you. It’s in my genes. Say hello to my grandfather, Super Spy.”
X
[ONE]
4730 Avenida Libertador General San Martín
Buenos Aires, Argentina
1347 20 October 1945
Martha Howell looked up from the Truman note and at her father-in-law.
“Dad, where the hell did you get this?”
“One of the President’s Secret Service agents brought it to my apartment in the Hay-Adams.”
“That’s not what I was asking, and you know it.”
“Oh, you mean, ‘Why did Harry write it?’”
“‘Harry’?” she parroted incredulously. “You now call him Harry?”
“Well, not in public, of course. After all, Harry is the President.”
“The last time I heard you mention his name, Dad, you used language I can’t repeat in mixed company.”
“I don’t know where you got that,” the old man replied. “Harry Truman is a fine man. A fellow Thirty-third Degree Mason, among other things.”
“My God!” Martha said.
“Do you know what I’m talking about, General Martín?” the old man asked. “Freemasonry? Do they have that down here?”
“There are Masons here of course, Señor Howell,” Martín replied. “Many of our founding fathers—José de San Martín, Manuel Belgrano, and Domingo Sarmiento, for example, all presidents of the Argentine Republic—were Masons.”
“I didn’t know that,” the old man said. “I thought you were all Roman Catholics down here. No offense intended, Father Welner.”
“Most of us are,” Martín said.
“That’s something else you’re going to have to do, Cletus,” the old man said. “And, for that matter, you, too, Jimmy. See about getting into the Masons. You’re both old enough. I’m surprised your father, Jimmy, hasn’t talked to you already.”
“How the hell did we get on this subject?” Clete asked.
“Because he doesn’t want to explain that letter, or whatever it is, from President Truman,” Martha said.
“Nonsense,” the old man said. “What happened was that Harry—excuse me, President Truman—and I were having a little Tennessee pick-me-up in my apartment and I happened to mention that I’d bought the Constellation and was coming down here, and he said, that being the case, he wondered if I would do him a favor, and I said certainly. He is the President. How can you tell the President of the United States no?
“So he told me what you’re doing down here—”
“What did he tell you we’re doing down here?” Clete interrupted.
“What the hell do you think he told me? About keeping General Gehlen’s people out of the hands of the goddamn Communists is what he told me. My God, Cletus!”
“I’ll be a sonofabitch,” Clete said.
“Watch your mouth, Cletus,” Martha said. Then she had a second thought: “I never heard about any of this. Who is General Gehlen?”
“Harry also told me,” the old man went on, “that you’re looking for a German submarine, or submarines, that left Germany with uranium oxide aboard that he’s afraid the Russians will get their hands on.”
“I’m having trouble believing the President ran at the mouth like that,” Clete said.
“Well, Harry knows I’m not exactly a Commie in the closet. That probably had something to do with it.”
“And what exactly does the commander in chief want you to do for him here?” Clete asked.
“What he said, Cletus, is that while as far as he’s concerned you’ve been doing a first-class job down here, you can’t get away from the fact that you’re pretty young to be a lieutenant colonel. He said that when he was your age, he was a captain.”
“So?”
“What he said was that he would be more comfortable with this situation if someone a little older, a little more experienced, and with the wisdom that comes only with a lot of years . . .”
“I wonder who he had in mind?” Clete asked sarcastically.
“. . . had a look at everything,” the old man went on. “And, if needed, put a gentle hand on the tiller and got your boat back on the right course.”
The door opened and Antonio announced, “Captain von Dattenberg, Don Cletus.”
Jimmy snapped his head toward the door.
He saw a tall, slim, hawk-featured man in nice-looking civilian clothing that seemed just a little too large for him.
But he saw no Elsa.
Where is she?
And why did she come here with this sonofabitch?
“Come on in, Willi,” Frade called. “The ladies are just leaving.”
Frade waited until all the women but Dorotea had left.
Cronley kept his eyes on the door until it was closed. He still didn’t get a glimpse of Elsa.
Von Dattenberg saw Boltitz and walked quickly to him.
“I’m delighted to see you, Karl.”
“And you, Willi.”
They stiffly shook hands.
“Willi, this is Subteniente Cronley,” Frade said. “I think you know everybody else.”
Von Dattenberg advanced on Cronley and offered his hand.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen an American officer in uniform before, Lieutenant,” he said in English.
“I speak German,” Cronley said.
“His mother’s from Strasbourg,” the old man said. “That’s where he got the German. My mother was from New Orleans, which means we can do this in French, Cajun, Spanish, or English. Any language but German. I don’t want to miss anything.”
“And this,” Frade said, continuing in English, “is my grandfather.”
Von Dattenberg shook his hand and said, “My honor, sir.”
“My grandfather, Willi, has been sent by President Truman, who is very interested in the five hundred sixty kilograms of uranium oxide that was on U-234 when she sailed for Japan from Narvik.”
“Your grandfather?” von Dattenberg said, surprised.
“Yeah, my grandfather,” Clete replied. “What can you tell us?”
“The only thing I can tell you for certain is that I think uranium oxide being on U-234 is nothing more than a rumor.”
“Karl,” Clete said, “tell him.”
“It’s not a rumor, Willi. Did you know Kurt Schrann?”
Von Dattenberg nodded. “The fellow you had directly commissioned, right?”
“He was second engineer officer on U-234. He was among those who Kapitän Schneider . . .”
“Good man,” von Dattenberg said.
“. . . allowed to leave the boat in Narvik before they sailed. I ran Kurt down in Bremen. He wouldn’t lie to me. He said the coordinates for the landfall were also furnished, in code, to U-405.”
“Not to me,” von Dattenberg said.
“Then why would this guy say that they were?” Clete asked.
“I don’t know,” von Dattenberg replied thoughtfully. “The only coded coordinates I had in my safe were the rendezvous coordinates.”
“What are they?” Jimmy Cronley asked.
Von Dattenberg gave him an annoyed look.
Cronley interpreted it to mean: Who the hell are you, Subteniente, to be asking questions?
When von Dattenberg didn’t reply immediately, Frade asked, not pleasantly, “Well, what are they?”
“During the war,” von Dattenberg began, “we were following Admiral Doenitz’s Wolfpack tactic, and when the Kriegsmarine learned of the location of an Allied convoy, we would receive orders by radio to rendezvous at a certain point—”
“You’d be
ordered to rendezvous at Point A, or somesuch,” Cronley interrupted. “I mean, they didn’t radio you the actual coordinates, right?”
“The Atlantic Ocean, Subteniente, is enormous,” von Dattenberg said.
“I think everyone knows that, Willi,” Frade said unpleasantly. “Answer his question.”
“Have I done something to offend you, Oberstleutnant Frade?” von Dattenberg asked.
“As a matter of fact,” Frade said evenly, “I’m having a little trouble believing that the captain of a submarine would not know that he had been given a set of coded coordinates for something as important as U-234’s Argentine landfall. And I’ve been wondering if you’re back to that officer’s honor bullshit.”
“Take it easy, Clete,” Cronley said. “Maybe he didn’t know what they were.”
“How could he not know?” Frade snapped.
“Because they didn’t want him to know unless it was necessary.”
Clete looked at Jimmy a long moment, then turned to von Dattenberg.
“Answer Cronley’s question, Willi. Now I forget what it was. . . .”
“I asked if the Kriegsmarine radioed the actual coordinates of a rendezvous point,” Cronley said. “Or whether you got a message saying ‘Rendezvous Four’ or ‘Rendezvous 219’ or something like that.”
“There were five sheets of rendezvous points,” von Dattenberg said. “Twenty rendezvous points to a page, for a total of one hundred. As I was saying before, the Atlantic Ocean is enormous—we needed that many possible rendezvous sites.”
“So the message said, in effect, ‘Rendezvous Point 55’?” Cronley said.
“Actually, the messages were in three parts,” von Dattenberg explained. “The first identified, by line number, the rendezvous point. For example, if it was Rendezvous Point 55, the first part of the message would be ‘3-15’. The ‘3’ meaning page three of the five pages, and the ‘15’ being the fifteenth set of coordinates on page three. The second part of the message would be a date and time block. That was an order to be at the rendezvous point no later than, say, seventeen hundred hours on the twentieth. In that case, the second part of the message would be 1700-20.”
“And the third part?” Cronley said.
“The third part would be the code. Are you familiar, Subteniente, with nautical map coordinates?”
“A little,” Cronley said.
“You know that longitude and latitude are written—to pull one out of the air—S50.62795, W60.56676. That means 50 degrees, 62795 seconds south latitude and 60 degrees 56676 seconds west longitude. That would be in the South Atlantic, several hundred miles north of the Falkland Islands.”
“Okay,” Cronley said.
“The code would read ‘5258.’ That would be an instruction to change the south latitude to S52 and the west longitude to W62. That would be a point—if I can still do this in my head—about one hundred miles southwest of the Falklands.”
“Do you remember, Kapitän,” Cronley asked, “getting one of these lists of rendezvous points just before you sailed from Narvik?”
Von Dattenberg nodded. “You think the landfall coordinates are on that list?”
“Did you turn it over to General Martín?” Cronley asked.
“Yes.”
“But, Jimmy, what good would it do?” Frade asked. “There was never a message about it. We don’t have any idea which of the one hundred rendezvous points it would be, and we don’t have the third part of the message, the code.”
“We do it backwards,” Cronley said.
“What the hell does that mean?” Frade demanded.
“On the airplane,” Cronley explained, “when I first heard anything about any of this, Kapitän Boltitz said—”
“Karl, please, Jimmy,” Boltitz said. “We’re all friends here.”
That was for you, Cletus, Cronley thought.
For as much as accusing von Dattenberg of being a liar.
Was that on purpose? Or does Clete have a burr under his saddle about von Dattenberg?
“Thanks, Karl,” Cronley said. “Okay, you said the guy in Bremen told you the landfall was just north of the Magellan Strait. We know pretty well where that is, what its coordinates are.”
“Yeah,” von Dattenberg said thoughtfully. “Subteniente, you’re thinking of the seconds, am I correct?”
Cronley nodded. “We need charts of that area, good charts—”
“And of course the list of rendezvous points,” von Dattenberg said. He looked at Frade. “Can we get them here?”
“The list of rendezvous points from U-405 is in my safe at the Edificio Libertador,” General Martín said.
“With the charts from U-405?” von Dattenberg asked.
Martín nodded.
“Can we get them here?” Cronley asked.
Martín got out of his chair and, moving carefully without aid of his crutches, walked to a sideboard. He picked up the telephone and dialed a number.
“General,” Cronley called as Martín waited for someone to answer. “Your—the Argentine army’s—maps of the area also would be helpful.”
Martín nodded.
They listened to the one-sided conversation.
“You are supposed to answer before the third ring,” Martín said sternly, and then before a reply could be made, went on: “Write this down. Go to the Topographic Service and get every map, in every scale, they have on the coast from Río Gallegos down to San Sebastian Bay . . .
“Yes, I know that’s going to be a lot of maps . . .
“If they ask what we want them for, tell them it’s a matter of national security . . .
“Madre de Dios! If I don’t tell you what I want them for, Major, then you can truthfully tell them you have no idea what the chief of the Bureau of Internal Security wants them for, only that he has the authority to demand them immediately and is doing so . . .
“And while they are collecting the maps, go to the safe and take out all the documents we have from U-405 . . .
“Yes, all of them . . .
“And when you have them all, bring them to Don Cletus Frade’s house on Libertador . . .
“Yes, the one across from the racetrack . . .
“I know you’ll need a truck. I don’t care if it takes three trucks. Just do it. And make sure the truck, or trucks, are guarded. By our people . . .
“How large a guard detail? You’re a major. You figure that out.”
He slammed the handset into the base and turned to Major Habanzo.
“That was Marinelli,” he said, and then asked rhetorically, “How did that idiot ever get assigned to BIS?”
“Calm down, Bernardo,” Frade said. “What might have been off-loaded from U-234—operative word ‘might’—is the stuff from which they make atomic bombs, not an actual atomic bomb. There’s not going to be a mushroom cloud from an atomic explosion in the Strait of Magellan.”
Martín snapped his head to face Frade.
“Cletus,” he said icily, “I am not going to permit anything—anything—connected with atomic bombs to be brought into Argentina, whether it’s a bomb or ‘the stuff from which they make atomic bombs.’”
“Okay, I can understand that, Bernardo. But why don’t you take a couple of deep breaths, count to twenty, and calm down? I don’t know what Cronley is talking about and I don’t think you do either.”
“I think Cronley is suggesting that he has a method to determine the landfall of U-234, and I think that Kapitän von Dattenberg agrees with him. Am I wrong, Subteniente?”
“Let me answer for the subteniente, General,” von Dattenberg said. “He has a theory that will be difficult—almost impossible—to explain—at least quickly—without having both the suitable charts—maps—and the list of rendezvous sites in hand. I suggest that we wait until we have them. There is no need for any hasty actions.”
Martín, Frade thought, is about to jump all over him. He just about lost it a moment ago.
I never saw him lose control—or al
most lose it, and almost losing control is like being a little bit pregnant—like that before.
I wonder why he’s so excited about the uranium oxide?
Jesus, Stupid! You know why!
In real life, unlike the movies, people don’t take a bullet in the upper leg and then take an aspirin, or a drink, and then forget about it. God only knows how much morphine he’s been taking.
It’s surprising he makes any sense at all.
“Why don’t we go upstairs and watch the races—they just started—while we wait?” Dorotea said.
“What?” Martín snapped.
His face clearly showed both confusion—What the hell is she talking about, “races”?—and annoyance—Why is this female inserting herself into this?
Doña Dorotea flashed him a warm smile.
“While we’re waiting for your people to bring the maps and the list of rendezvous points, Bernardo,” she said.
Oh, Jesus! Clete thought, waiting for Martín’s reaction.
When it came, it wasn’t what Clete expected.
“I think that’s a splendid idea,” Martín said. “All we’re doing until the maps and list of rendezvous points arrive is spinning our wheels. And, frankly, I’m a little tired. I can’t imagine why. A few minutes’ rest is probably just what I need.”
[TWO]
Jimmy Cronley really didn’t know what to think about Clete’s “house,” except that it wasn’t exactly a house. It was enormous, certainly a lot bigger than the house in Midland where Clete had grown up, and, for that matter, far larger and more impressive than Cletus Marcus Howell’s house on Saint Charles Avenue in New Orleans, which, after he’d gone there with Clete when he was twelve or thirteen, was what he thought of when he heard the word “mansion.”
This place looked more like a library, or a museum, or maybe a city hall or a courthouse than it did a house in which real people actually lived. The stone and iron fence around it looked more substantial than the one the United States government had built around the gold vault at Fort Knox.
Neither did Jimmy know what to really think about Clete’s wife. The first thing he had thought when he met Dorotea at the airport was that Clete finally had been snagged by one of the long line of long-legged blondes to whom Clete had been attracted—and vice versa—as far back as Jimmy could remember.
Empire and Honor Page 37
