Frade continued to keep his mouth shut.
“I told the President (a) that I knew who Galahad was, and (b) I wasn’t going to tell him or Donovan either. Which predictably set off Wild Bill’s Irish temper. Then I told them why. I told them Galahad’s identity was too important a secret—right up there with the Manhattan Project, in my judgment—”
“The what?”
“The Manhattan Project. I’ll get to that in a minute. Far too important a secret to be shared with everyone in the intelligence community, and that if I didn’t identify Galahad for them, they could truthfully tell the Chief of Naval Operations, the Chief of Staff, and J. Edgar Hoover that they didn’t know.”
“You say you know it’s von Wachtstein. How do you know that?”
“Because I am privy to a secret known to no more than eight or nine Americans, one of whom, Cletus, is you.”
“What secret is that?”
“General von Wachtstein intends to assassinate Adolf Hitler,” Dulles said. “We are in communication. One of his co-conspirators is a chap, a lieutenant colonel, named Claus von Stauffenberg, Count von Stauffenberg, who is a close friend of young von Wachtstein.”
Jesus! He’s got to be who he says he is!
Otherwise, he couldn’t know any of this.
Frade, carefully choosing his words, said, “Peter told me he’d gone to see von Stauffenberg in Munich. But until just now, I thought this ‘regicide’ that his father was talking about was just wishful thinking.”
“It is not.”
“And they’re calling this operation the Manhattan Project?”
Dulles laughed.
“No, it is not. The Manhattan Project involves the development of a bomb of enormous power, incredible power. It involves nuclear energy and an element known as uranium. One of my jobs in Berne is to see how far along the Germans are with their development of what is now called an ‘atomic bomb.’ And to do whatever I can to throw a monkey wrench in their works. Whoever creates this bomb first is going to win the war. It’s as simple as that.”
“My God!”
“Indeed,” Dulles said. “And one of your tasks when you get back to Argentina, almost as your first priority, is to report immediately anything you hear about uranium or a superbomb or heavy water—”
“Heavy water?”
“I don’t understand much of this, but apparently when an extra atom, or several extra atoms, are added to water it becomes deuterium oxide—or ‘heavy water’—and this heavy water is somehow necessary to create a nuclear explosion. The Germans had a facility to make heavy water in Denmark. The British trained some Danes as commandos and sent them in to destroy the facility or render it inoperative. I’m not privy to the details, but their mission was successful and so set back the Germans somewhat.”
“This is all new to me.”
“It’s all new to all of us,” Dulles said. “Anyway, David Bruce told me that he’s just parachuted an OSS team into Denmark—run by a fellow Princetonian, Lieutenant Bill Colby, a chap about your age, Cletus—ostensibly to do commando-type things with the Norwegian resistance, but actually to see what the Germans are doing with their now partially destroyed heavy-water plant. So keep your eyes and ears open vis-à-vis anything nuclear but—importantly— without anybody noticing.”
Frade nodded.
“Now, the Germans—presuming they don’t develop their nuclear bomb before we do; and the indications are they will not—have lost the war. This is apparent to their senior officers, to everybody but Hitler. Most importantly, it is apparent to Admiral Canaris, chief of Abwehr intelligence. Which is why he’s been talking to me. That’s another secret to which you are privy, along with no more than perhaps a dozen others. Am I going too fast for you?”
“Yes, sir. You are. My head is spinning.”
“Well, then, let me finish, and when I have, I’ll try to clarify what you may not fully understand. All right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The question then becomes, when will they lose the war? The sooner the better, obviously. But there are some problems. For one thing, they are somewhat ahead of us in the development of jet fighter aircraft. Our XP-59A didn’t get into the air until the first of October 1942—”
“We have a jet fighter?” Clete blurted in surprise.
Dulles nodded. “—and is nowhere near operational. The German Messerschmitt Me-262, on the other hand, is near operational status.”
“Peter flew one,” Frade said, “in Augsburg. He said it went six hundred miles an hour and has thirty-millimeter cannons.”
“Your friend Peter has flown this aircraft?”
Frade picked up on something in Dulles’s voice.
“He’s my friend. He saved my life, okay?”
“You didn’t make any sort of a report of this test flight?”
Frade shook his head.
He said, “I just presumed we knew about it. Had spies. . . .”
His voice trailed off as he realized how lame that sounded.
Dulles’s eyes narrowed.
“Well, we don’t,” he said coldly. “If you can fit it into your busy schedule when you get back to Argentina, you might consider talking some more to your friend Peter about the Me-262. I’m sure the Army Air Forces would dearly love to hear what someone who has actually flown the Me-262 thinks about it.”
Frade did not reply.
“If the Germans can build enough of them quickly enough, they can inflict bomber losses on the Air Forces and the RAF to the point where the bombing will have to be called off. That would permit them to continue the war for an extended period. Under that circumstance, your delicate feelings about asking your friend about the Me-262 aren’t really important, are they?”
“Is that what you were thinking?” Frade asked.
“Isn’t that what you were thinking?”
“I was thinking it was stupid of me not to have thought the AAF would want to hear about the Me-262,” Frade said. “And then that it really didn’t matter, because I don’t think he knows much beyond its performance, armament, and how hard or easy it is to fly. He didn’t get that much time in it, and he’s a pilot, not an engineer.”
Dulles considered that a long moment, then said, “You’re probably right. And anyway, we’ve gone off at a tangent.
“To backtrack: Putzi said that probably every senior Nazi knows the war is lost. Hitler is psychologically unable to face that, and the senior officers around him are not going to suggest it. But Bormann—who is probably the most powerful man after Hitler—does, or we wouldn’t have Operation Phoenix.
“The ransoming operation is probably simply a personally profitable sideline for senior officers of the SS, headed by von Deitzberg. Himmler—as always—is a mystery. I don’t have a clue as to whether he’s involved with the ransoming operation or not, or whether von Deitzberg is running it under his nose. The upper ranks of the SS, according to Canaris, are riddled with criminal types.
“The question of what to do about both came up at dinner, and was decided by the President, based on a number of factors. Starting with the ransoming operation, Roosevelt said the question was saving lives, however that could be done. Exposing the operation would serve only to ensure that all the Jews in the camps were exterminated.
“Similarly, exposing Operation Phoenix—which seems so incredible on its face that the Nazis could not only deny it but ridicule the accusation—would accomplish very little.”
“You’re saying you’re just going to let them continue?”
“I’m saying you are. With an important caveat. We want to know everything about it. We want the money traced from the moment it arrives in Argentina. We want to know what was bought with it, and from whom. The names of the Argentine—and Paraguayan and Uruguayan—officials who have been paid off. Everything.
“The thinking is that if we went to General Ramírez or General Rawson now with what we have, or what you might dig up, they would tell us to mind our own busin
ess. The Argentines are not convinced the Germans have lost the war.
“When Germany surrenders— How much do you know about the Casablanca Conference?”
“What I read in the newspapers, and that wasn’t much.”
“I was there,” Dulles said. “It started out almost as a propaganda stunt. Stalin didn’t want to come—which was the reason Churchill wanted it, so that he and Roosevelt could gang up on Stalin—and Chiang Kai-shek wasn’t invited.
“There was not much need for a conference between Churchill and Roosevelt; they were and are pretty much agreed on everything, which actually means just about everything Churchill wants.
“But there they were: Roosevelt—who is actually quite ill—looking chipper as he became the first President ever to leave the country during wartime, with his good friend Churchill.
“Three things were decided at Casablanca. Churchill lost two of the decisions. ”
“Excuse me?”
“Churchill wants to invade Europe through its ‘soft underbelly,’ meaning the Mediterranean coast of France. George Marshall wants to invade across the Channel. Roosevelt backed Marshall, so that’s where it will happen. Secondly, Charles de Gaulle will not meet an accident—”
“Who?”
“Colonel Charles de Gaulle. Great long drink of water? Who has appointed himself leader of the Free French?”
“Okay, I know who you mean. Accident?”
“Churchill thinks—and he’s probably right—that he’s going to be more trouble than he’s worth. But the President made it clear he would be very unhappy indeed if de Gaulle had any kind of an accident.
“And the third thing decided—the only decision made public—was that we are going to demand the unconditional surrender of Germany, Italy, and Japan. I personally thought that was a bad idea, as there is a chance that if General von Wachtstein and von Stauffenberg succeed in removing Hitler, an armistice could quickly be agreed upon. But that question was decided in Churchill’s favor.
“That’s bad, because it will extend the war, especially insofar as the Japanese are concerned. The Italians, if there weren’t so many German troops in Italy, would surrender tomorrow morning. The Germans will hang on as long as possible, but ultimately, they will surrender unconditionally.
“And what that means, under international law, is that the moment the Germans sign the surrender document, everything the German government owns falls under the control of the victors. Things like embassy buildings, other real estate, bank accounts. Are you following me, Cletus?”
“I hope so.”
“The moment the Germans surrender, our ambassador will call upon the Argentine foreign minister, present him with a detailed list of all German property in Argentina—which you will have prepared, to include bank account numbers, descriptions of real estate, et cetera—and inform him that we’re taking possession of it.
“The Argentine government may not like it, but it’s a well-established principle of international law, and it really would be unwise of them to defy that law. I rather doubt they will. Nations, like people, tend to try to curry favor with whoever has just won a fight.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“That your only comment?”
“What I’m thinking is that I’m in way over my head. Why don’t they send somebody to Argentina who has experience and knows what he’s doing?”
“Ask yourself that,” Dulles said.
“Because he wouldn’t have my contacts.”
“And because he would be more carefully watched than you are.”
“They’re watching me pretty carefully right now, as a matter of fact.”
“What have you done to cause that?”
“They suspect I had something to do with the disappearance of the commercial attaché of the German embassy and his wife. On the way up here, Delgano, who is ostensibly my chief pilot but who is—and he knows I know—a BIS agent, said he wouldn’t be surprised if I had them in my suitcase.”
“I don’t quite understand. You had something to do—”
“They showed up at Milton Leibermann’s door and said they wanted to ‘surrender’—”
“And Leibermann is?”
“The FBI guy in Buenos Aires.”
“The FBI chap in Berne seems to think I am invisible,” Dulles said.
“Leibermann is a good guy. We work well together. Anyway, he brought them out to the estancia, and we’re hiding them until somebody tells me what to do with them.”
“On your estancia?”
“On another one I’d never heard of ten days ago. They’re safe.”
“And Leibermann has reported this to the ambassador? And/or the FBI?”
Frade shook his head.
“Why did they . . . ‘surrender’?”
“They wanted Leibermann to get them to Brazil so they could be interned. Leibermann thinks, and I agree, that they were afraid to go back to Germany because von Deitzberg or Cranz—Frogger’s replacement, actually an SS-OBERSTURMBANNFÜHRER—HAVE not been able to identify von Wachtstein as the spy and are going to hang it on Frogger.”
“This man’s name is Frogger?”
“Wilhelm Frogger. His son and namesake—he had three sons; two got themselves killed—is an oberstleutnant who got himself captured with the Afrikakorps. He’s now in a POW camp in the States.”
“They’ve probably got him in Camp Clinton,” Dulles said, almost to himself.
“Excuse me?”
“This chap in the Afrikakorps?”
“Yeah. I think so. Do tank officers wear big black berets?”
Dulles nodded.
“Then he was—is—a tank officer,” Frade said. “What’s Camp Clinton?”
“A POW camp in Mississippi. We sent a lot of Afrikakorps officers there— including, significantly, General von Arnim. It’s where we plan to hold all German general officers and the more important staff officers.”
Frade’s face showed he had no idea who General von Arnim was.
“Hans von Arnim,” Dulles explained. “He took over the Afrikakorps from Erwin Rommel. He surrendered what was left of it when Tunisia fell. In early May.” He paused and chuckled. “Starchy chap. About so tall”—he held his hand out to indicate a short height—“with a Hitlerian mustache and a large—forgive me—Semitic nose.”
“You know him?” Frade asked in surprise.
“I went to Tunisia to see him. I’m afraid I got nowhere with him.”
Dulles paused thoughtfully again, then asked, “You didn’t report this to Colonel Graham?”
“I sent him half a dozen messages and never got a reply. So I guessed he was out of Washington, and I didn’t want somebody else reading about Frogger if Graham wasn’t there.”
“What are you doing with these people now?”
“One of my sergeants—Stein, good guy, smart, Jewish, got out of Germany just before they would have packed him off to Sachsenhausen or someplace— is trying to convince them that the only way he can keep me from shooting and burying them in an unmarked grave on the pampas is for them to come up with something I can use. Starting, for example, with a manning chart of their embassy. If he lies about that, von Wachtstein will be able to tell.”
“And if he’s not lying, then what?”
“Then I will see what else I can get out of him.”
“I’m sure you can see how valuable this man could be in providing the information about German assets I mentioned.”
No, Stupid here didn’t even think about that.
“Mr. Dulles, I have to tell you that that never entered my mind.”
Dulles looked at him a moment and smiled.
“As you said, your head’s been spinning. I’m sure that the potentially vast importance to us of this man Frogger would have occurred to you sooner or later.”
Frade shook his head.
“And if he is?” Dulles went on. “Lying to you, I mean. Then what?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to kil
l them, but they know too much—about Leibermann, Stein, me, et cetera—to turn them loose.”
“Don’t kill them just yet, please, Clete. Let me give this some thought.”
Frade looked at Dulles and saw that he was smiling.
“Did I say something that amused you, Mr. Dulles?”
“A minute ago you said something that amuses me now.”
“What was that?”
“Something to the effect that you’re in over your head and why don’t they send someone to Argentina who knows what he’s doing.”
“That’s funny?”
“Alex Graham said, vis-à-vis you, something to the effect that the first impression you give is of a dangerously irresponsible individual who should not be trusted out of your sight. And then, depending on how much experience one has with really good covert intelligence officers, quickly or slowly comes the realization that one’s in the company of a rare person who seems to be born for this sort of thing.”
My face feels flushed.
Am I blushing?
Jesus H. Christ!
“That sounds almost like a compliment,” Frade said after a moment.
“I’m sure it was intended as one,” Dulles said.
“Does that mean you’re going to tell me what this airline business is all about?”
“Alex and I talked about that, and Colonel Donovan told me he’d asked the President. No one knows anything except that Franklin Delano Roosevelt thinks it’s a good idea, and that he was pleased to learn of your remarkable progress in getting one going.”
“Jesus!”
“Your glass is nearly empty, Cletus.”
“I don’t know if another’s a good idea.”
“We’re through for today. We’ll talk again in the morning. You can get a really nice American breakfast at the officers’ club here. Half past eight, shall we say?”
“I’ve got Delgano with me.”
“Oh, bring him. Tell him I’m an assistant consular officer trying to straighten out your problems with Brazilian immigration.”
He saw that Frade was looking at him curiously, as if trying to guess if he was kidding or not.
“That story will explain where you have been now, and where you will be after we have our breakfast.”
“That being the case, sir, I think I will have another little taste.”
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