If ONI hears that Admiral Canaris is working against the Nazis, God only knows what they would try to do with their fellow sailor. And what damage that could cause to what Dulles is trying to do.
Or, for that matter, to the OSS.
There’s nothing the Navy would like more than to send the chief of Naval Operations to Roosevelt and tell him they’ve got Canaris in their pocket. And, that being the case, shouldn’t the OSS be ordered to back off?
The problem is that there is only one man who can deal with Canaris, and he’s not in the Navy. At the first approach the Navy made to Canaris, he’d back off. Not only from the Navy but from Allen Dulles, too.
I can’t let Navy Intelligence put its toe in those waters.
“I think you’re dead wrong about that, Frade.”
“Then I’m sorry. What I was hoping you’d say would be that you would send somebody—Christ, there must be somebody in the OSS—who would know what to do down here.”
Nobody with your connections, unfortunately.
And, as a matter of fact, nobody that I can think of who could do a better job, including me.
Okay, Alejandro, truth time. Face the facts.
Your clever idea to send a young Marine officer—with absolutely no experience as an intelligence officer—down here wishfully thinking that maybe he could get his Argentine father to look more fondly on the United States has gotten completely out of hand.
For one thing, that mission is moot—El Coronel Frade is dead.
And it doesn’t really matter that young Frade probably can’t tilt the Argentine government toward us any more. Not impossible, but improbable. The bottom line here is that that isn’t nearly as important as the other things.
Frade is now involved in things far more important. It doesn’t matter how he got involved; the fact is that he knows about—is involved with—resistance to the Nazis by senior members of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht; the German navy; the head of Abwehr; the assassination plot against Hitler; Operation Phoenix; and the ransoming of Jews from concentration camps.
And while he’s so painfully right that he’s in over his head with all of this, the bottom line there is: So what? He’s involved.
“Major Frade, I want you to listen very carefully to what I’m about to say,” Graham said seriously.
Frade looked at him quizzically, nodded his head, but said nothing.
“That was an order,” Graham said. “To which, as a serving Marine officer, you are expected to reply, ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ ”
Graham saw the look on Frade’s face.
Is that contempt? Or amusement?
Probably both: Contemptuous amusement. Or amused contempt.
Frade said, “Aye, aye, sir.”
“Is something bothering you, Major?”
“ ‘Serving Marine officer,’ Colonel? So far as I know—with the exception of the Marine guards at the embassy—I’m the only Marine in Argentina. And God knows, I’m not functioning as a Naval Aviator. And as a serving Marine officer, I’m supposed to place myself at the orders of the senior officer of the Navy Department present. That would be Commander Delojo, and I have absolutely no intention of placing myself—or the Army officers, enlisted men, or Chief Schultz, who I do command—under Delojo’s orders.”
“Finished?” Graham asked.
Frade nodded. Then, a long moment later, when he realized Graham was waiting for the expected response, he said, “Yes, sir.”
“First, let’s straighten out the chain of command,” Graham said. “You are a Marine officer seconded to the Office of Strategic Services. As am I. I’m the senior Marine officer in OSS. That makes you subject to my orders. Clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
That reply was neither amused nor contemptuous.
I got through to him. At least a little.
A stray thought popped into Graham’s head.
The last time I thought of an amused contemptuous look on the face of Major Frade was when I went to the Documents Branch to pick up those absurd credentials Donovan ordered me to bring down here.
I knew that would be his understandable reaction to them.
But can I turn that around?
Christ, it’s worth a shot.
And I have to have him under control before I get into what he’s going to have to do now that he has stumbled into things he can’t control himself.
“You asked me to come down here at a time when I was planning to come anyway,” Graham said. That wasn’t true, but he saw that he had Frade’s attention.
Frade looked at him curiously, but said nothing.
“I’ll be back in a minute, Major,” Graham said. “While I’m gone, why don’t you give some serious thought to the chain of command you’d like to see in place here?”
“Sir?” Frade asked, but Graham was already at the door and didn’t reply.
“Very interesting,” Frade said after examining the leather folder holding the plastic-sheathed photo identification card and gold OSS badge. “What am I supposed to do with it? Show it to Colonel Martín?”
And there’s that sardonic look on his face. And I understand it.
“I can do without the sarcasm, Frade,” Graham said icily.
“Sorry,” Frade said, not sounding very contrite.
“You noticed, I hope, that in the rank block, you are identified as area commander. ”
“I saw that. What does it mean?”
“Just what it says,” Graham said.
Frade held both hands out, palms upward, signaling he had no idea what Graham was talking about.
“Let me explain,” Graham said. “You’re not the only officer around with command structure problems . . .”
I’m making this up as I go along.
"... and this new system is what Director Donovan and I—in consultation with the attorney general—came up with.”
“New system?”
“The Rules for the Governance of the Navy—or Army Regulations—just don’t provide for situations in the OSS where the best-qualified man to perform a function, or issue orders, is an officer—or often an enlisted man—junior to, and thus subject to the orders of, someone else in his unit.”
“That finally occurred to somebody, did it?” Frade asked.
“So we’ve developed our own OSS command structure, which gives the necessary lawful authority to the individual who should have it, regardless of his rank in his service. At the moment, there are four grades: special agent, senior agent, supervisory agent, and area commander.”
Frade pursed his lips thoughtfully.
Not sardonically. Have I got him?
If I don’t blow this, I just may have.
“Just about everybody in the field will be a special agent,” Graham went on. “Again, without regard to their actual rank in their branch of the service. Those with greater responsibility will hold the higher ranks. I can readily see where a lieutenant—for that matter, a sergeant—will be a senior agent. Frankly, I don’t think that many sergeants will be supervisory agents, but if that becomes necessary, it will happen. The important thing about the new system is that it gives lawful authority to those we think should have it.”
“Ashton’s a good man, but he doesn’t know half as much about communications or the radar as Chief Schultz,” Frade said. “Or Siggy Stein.”
“In that case, if you want to, you could designate Chief Schultz as a senior agent. That would give him the lawful authority over the others he needs.”
Frade didn’t reply.
He’s obviously giving this some thought. Which means he’s swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.
“What are you thinking, Frade?”
“That maybe I better apologize for what I was thinking when you handed me this Junior G-Man’s badge. This’ll work, Colonel.”
“My badge reads theater commander. That outranks an area commander.”
Where the hell did I get that?
“I was afraid it would,” Frade said. “What do I call
you, ‘theater’? Or ‘commander’? ”
“ ‘Sir’ will do nicely. This is strictly for internal use. You understand that?”
Frade nodded. “You have these for the other guys?”
“Special agent badges and ID cards for everybody, plus about a dozen blanks—already signed—for the ID cards. When you decide who’ll be what, you can fill them out. I also have some senior and one supervisory thingamabobs that go on the badges.”
When I took everything away from those morons in Documents, it was to keep them from falling into the wrong hands. I never dreamed they’d be used.
Thank God I didn’t have time to destroy them.
“Let me think about it,” Frade said.
“Certainly. Now, there’s two other things we have to talk about.”
“Okay.”
“There are three really significant secrets, Frade, that only very few people know about. By very few people, I mean Director Donovan, Allen W. Dulles, and me.”
“Who’s Dulles?”
“The senior OSS man we have in Switzerland. Like me, a theater director.”
Frade nodded.
“One of them is actually two,” Graham said. “That’s Operation Phoenix and the ransoming of Jews from concentration camps.”
Frade nodded again.
“The second is that Dulles is in contact with Admiral Canaris, and that means with the plan to assassinate Hitler.”
Frade nodded again. “And the third?”
There was absolutely no reason that Frade should know of the Manhattan Project.
“You don’t have the Need to Know,” Graham said.
“Fine with me, as long as it’s not going to happen here.”
“I can assure you it’s not going to happen here,” Graham said.
“So why is this business about Canaris such an important secret?”
“You make me another drink, and I’ll tell you.”
“. . . So, essentially all I have to do is make sure that nobody talks about Canaris.”
“That and keep me posted up to the minute on anything, anything at all, that touches on Canaris,” Graham said. “That’s even more important, if possible, than keeping me up-to-date minute by minute about anything else you learn—no matter how unimportant it seems to you.”
“That’s not a problem. There are only two people who know about Boltitz and Canaris—”
“You and who else?” Graham demanded.
“Dorotea.”
“Why in hell did you tell your wife?”
“She was there when von Wachtstein and Boltitz told me. She knows everything. ” He paused, then added: “About everything. The radar, Operation Phoenix, what happened on the beach. Everything.”
“I don’t like that.”
Frade didn’t reply, which Graham correctly interpreted to mean that Frade didn’t much care if he liked it or not.
“And, presumably, you intend to tell her about this conversation?”
“I’d rather have her trusting me to tell her everything than have her suspect I’m keeping something from her and then having her snooping around where she shouldn’t be trying to figure out what that is.”
And he’s probably right about that, too.
“And, of course, Schultz will have to know. He handles the encryption.”
“Only him?”
“He taught me how, in case I had to do it sometime, but he does the encryption. And decryption.”
“Keep it that way.”
Frade nodded.
He didn’t say, “Aye, aye, sir.”
But there was no sarcastic smile on his face when he nodded. He accepted the order. I’m going to have to be satisfied with that.
The sardonic smile will come back now when I tell him that President Roosevelt wants him to set up an airline.
Graham began: “Now, to the second reason I was coming down here before you sent for me . . .”
He saw that Frade was listening attentively.
“Is this airline supposed to be a cover for what we’re doing down here?” Frade asked when Graham had finished.
There’s no wiseass smile on his face.
“Obviously, it would be. But I don’t think that’s the primary purpose the President had in mind.”
“Then what’s he after?”
“He didn’t confide that in me. He doesn’t have to. He’s the commander in chief. And, actually, I haven’t talked to him. He told Donovan, and Donovan told me to do it.”
“Maybe he wants to stick it into Juan Trippe and Pan American Grace,” Frade said.
“Why would you want to say that?”
“My grandfather hates Roosevelt, but he says he’s smarter than hell. What was the name of that Italian family who went around poisoning everybody who got in their way? Machi-something.”
“Machiavelli,” Graham furnished.
“Right. My grandfather says Roosevelt is Machiavellian. Trippe has South America sewn up as far as airlines go—hell, he’s got the world sewn up. So give him some competition. Cut him down to size.”
“That’s pretty far-fetched, Frade.”
On the other hand, it may be right on the money.
I have no idea what Roosevelt was thinking when he came up with this airline idea or what it’s supposed to accomplish.
Frade chuckled.
“What’s funny?” Graham asked.
“I was just thinking: What does Donovan’s badge say, ‘world commander’?”
“I suppose. Either that or ‘friend of the President.’ Can this airline be done, Frade?”
Frade nodded.
“I’ll have to set up a company, and get some partners. . . .”
“Who, for example?”
“My Uncle Humberto—that is, the Anglo-Argentine Bank. And the proper officials in the ministry of transportation; things work much faster down here if the official with the rubber stamp has a piece of the action. And maybe— maybe hell; absolutely—my Tío Juan.”
“El Coronel Juan Domingo Perón?”
“He told me he wants me to think of him as my loving uncle,” Frade said, shaking his head in what could have been either disbelief or disgust. “If I can get him on board—and I think I can; he needs the money—that will keep Martín off my back.”
He looked at Graham for a moment, then went on: “Not that I’m going to use this airliner for anything of which Martín might disapprove. You understand that, right?”
“You’ll use it for any purpose the President or I direct.”
“You want to blow my contacts with Canaris, von Wachtstein’s father, and the rest of it?”
“Of course not.”
“Then it has to be kept as far away from the OSS as I can keep it.”
“Understood.”
We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.
If there is some OSS need for these airplanes, we’ll damn well use them for it.
Frade said: “Varig has got a bunch of Lodestars. Where’d they get them?”
“I have no idea.”
But I would not be at all surprised if Roosevelt was involved.
Frade raised an eyebrow, then drained his glass and said, “Lockheed must have some kind of operation in Brazil. Americans, I mean. Engineers, mechanics. And somebody in charge. What about having Lockheed send the guy in charge down here to try to sell Don Cletus Frade their airplanes? No mention of the OSS, of course, or that I’m an American. I’m a rich Argentine who Roosevelt, for his own reasons, wants to be nice to, and already gave me one Lodestar to prove it. And can get Don Cletus export licenses to buy some more now that I want to start an airline?”
“Sounds good, but slow down. All I really know about this is that Donovan—the President—wanted to know if it could be done—”
“You made it sound like an order.”
Graham ignored the interruption. He went on: “—and now that you tell me you think it can, I’ll get into the details when I get back to Washington.”
&nb
sp; “When’s that going to be?”
“I’d like to leave tomorrow.”
“This airline’s that important, is it?”
“No. But everything else you’ve told me is. I want to get back to Washington as quickly as I can.”
“Okay.”
“And the sooner I get back, the sooner I can get a replacement for Commander Delojo down here.”
That didn’t produce the reaction Graham expected.
“I’d rather you leave him where he is,” Frade said. “Just watch him. And I’ll have Ashton and Pelosi watch him. And don’t tell him about this agent business with the badges. I’d rather have him there than somebody I don’t know. I told Delojo if he snoops around here or my people, I’ll kill him. I think he believes me. A new guy might not.”
“Your call,” Graham said.
These credentials really got to him.
And when you’re on a roll . . .
“There’s the oath of office to be administered to your officers and men,” Graham said. “It’s too late—and there’s been too much beer—to do that tonight. First thing in the morning?”
“Fine,” Frade said.
He also swallowed that hook, line, and sinker.
“I’d like to do it in the field,” Graham went on, “rather than here. Would that cause problems?”
“Where they are now is about five kilometers from here. Except Schultz, who never leaves the radar. But he can leave that for an hour or so. What I could do is tell him to meet us at the house, and you and I could go there.”
“Fine.”
“You up to riding a horse, Theater Commander, sir?”
“Do I have to remind you that I’m a Texan and an Aggie?”
“Okay. Breakfast at seven-thirty, then we’ll ride out there.”
“Seven-thirty. And now I’m going to go to bed. It’s been a long day.”
“Yeah,” Frade agreed.
Before he took a shower and went to bed, Graham sat at the desk in his room and tried to recall the words of the oath an officer swore when he accepted the commission. He started to write them down. He had a good memory, but he knew when he looked at what he had written that he didn’t have it all, and that what he did have was not right.
It doesn’t matter. I’ll change the wording anyway.
[THREE]
Casa Núrmero Veintidós Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo Near Pila, Buenos Aires Province Republic of Argentina 0925 5 July 1943
Death and Honor Page 12