[THREE]
Plaza Pôrto Alegre Hotel Pôrto Alegre, Brazil 0830 18 July 1943
The Plymouth staff car that had come to the Canoas Air Base entrance the day before was sitting at the curb when Frade and Delgano came through the revolving door of the hotel.
An AAF sergeant was at the wheel today, and General Wallace’s aide-de-camp was leaning against the rear door.
The aide straightened when he saw Frade and Delgano, opened the door, then as they approached greeted them in really bad Spanish: “Good morning, Señor Frade. General Wallace hopes that you will take breakfast with him and Mr. Stevens.”
Frade picked up on both “Señor” and the poor Spanish, then wondered who the hell Mr. Stevens was.
“That’s very gracious of the general,” he replied in Spanish.
There were two men sitting with Brigadier General J. B. Wallace, U.S. Army Air Forces, at a table in a small room off the main dining room of the Canoas Air Base Officers’ Open Mess. Cletus Frade saw that one of the men was Allen W. Dulles and the other a smallish, stocky young man with a crew cut.
If I were a betting man, and I am, I’d bet he’s a second john, not long out of Officer Candidate School.
Wallace stood up, put out his hand, and asked as if he had never seen Frade before in his life, “Señor Frade?”
Frade nodded.
“I’m General Wallace, the base commander. And these gentlemen are Mr. Stevens, of the War Production Board, and Mr. Fischer, of the Collins Radio Corporation.”
Dulles was “Stevens” and the second lieutenant in civvies was Fischer.
They shook hands, and Frade introduced Delgano.
General Wallace waved them into seats, and two waiters appeared. One handed them menus while the other put a folding partition across the opening to the room to screen it off from the main mess.
Frade examined the menu.
I have no idea what this role-playing is all about, or who is supposed to be fooling who, but I am not going to be a good little boy and play an Argentine businessman who has only coffee and a roll for his breakfast.
Not when faced with an American menu like this.
I’ll play the part halfway; I’ll order all I want—but in Spanish.
When the Portuguese waiter looked to him for his order, Frade said in Spanish, “I’ll have grapefruit juice, please, a large glass of milk, a double stack of the buckwheat pancakes, a couple of fried eggs over easy, and a double order of the bacon on the side.”
The waiters’ eyes, and those of Delgano, widened.
“Mr. Stevens” smiled and asked, “Are pancakes common in Argentina, Señor Frade?”
Frade shook his head. “And, I am shamed to admit, we don’t have very good bacon, either.”
“I’ll have the same,” Dulles said to the waiter in Portuguese. “But just a regular order of pancakes and bacon, please.”
“What are pancakes?” Delgano asked.
“Bring him what Mr. Stevens is having,” Frade ordered in Spanish.
“My orders, Señor Frade,” General Wallace said when the table had been cleared of everything but coffee, “are to fully cooperate with the War Production Board in the movement of the Lodestar aircraft through Canoas Air Corps Base to Argentina. When we transfer title to you here, they will have been inspected by my maintenance people. They will be in tip-top shape, or as close thereto as we are able to get them.”
“That’s very kind of you, General.”
“Mr. Stevens didn’t seem to know if you or Señor Delgano will require any instruction in the operation of the Lodestar,” Wallace said. “The pilots who flew it here are available if you do.”
“Captain Delgano, who is chief pilot of South American Airways, has been checked out in the Lodestar,” Frade said with a straight face, “but I am one of those who believe there is no such thing as too much training. So we gratefully accept your kind offer, General.”
“Then why don’t I see if I can round up the pilots and have them come here to set that up?”
“And while you’re doing that, perhaps Mr. Stevens can let me know what has to be done about the documentation?”
“Good idea,” General Wallace said. “So if you will excuse me, gentlemen?”
Two middle-aged men, both wearing four-stripe epaulets identifying them as airline captains, appeared several minutes later.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” one of them said in Spanish. “I’m Captain McMurray of Lockheed. I understand someone needs a little time in the Lodestar?”
Delgano’s relief that Spanish was being spoken was evident.
Introductions were made and they left, taking Delgano with them.
Dulles waited until the folding partition screen had been replaced, then asked, “Is he a good pilot, Clete?”
“He’s a very good pilot, with far more multiengine time than I have. He’s also a better—”
He stopped, realizing he was about to say something that he shouldn’t: “intelligence officer.”
This earned him a small smile from Dulles.
“Let me make the proper introductions,” Dulles then said. “Major Frade, this is Lieutenant Fischer of the U.S. Army Signal Corps.”
“Sir,” Fischer said.
“How are you, Lieutenant?” Frade said.
“I think I should begin this by telling you Fischer has been cleared for Top-Secret Lindbergh,” Dulles said.
“He knows who Galahad is?” Frade blurted.
“Not yet,” Dulles said, “but if you think about it, he’s going to figure that out even if you and I don’t tell him. One of the problems no one talks about in this area is those people who encrypt and decrypt messages get to read them.”
Frade nodded.
“Colonel Graham found Lieutenant Fischer at Vint Hill Farms Station,” Dulles went on, and when he saw on Frade’s face that he had no idea what that was, he explained. “That’s the Army Security Agency base near Washington. The ASA does signal intelligence—intercepts, that sort of thing—and communications counterintelligence. And cryptography. That’s where Fischer primarily comes in; he’s an expert.”
Frade nodded.
“The original idea,” Dulles went on, “when Colonel Graham decided you needed better cryptographic equipment than you have was to get you something better from the ASA. They offered a SIGABA, and then the services of someone—Fischer here—to accompany the device to Argentina. The equipment is quite delicate, I understand.”
“So my commo man tells me,” Frade said.
“But then the situation changed a bit when Graham realized first that the President is determined to learn who Galahad is, on one hand, and, on the other, is quite concerned that the ransoming operation does not become known to people who shouldn’t know about it.”
“He knows about that, too?”
“Only in the most general of terms,” Dulles said. “But that brings us back to those who handle encrypted material get to read it. So when Colonel Graham and I discussed this, we decided that we had to bring Fischer on board, so to speak.”
“Can you explain that?”
“Once Fischer gets both the SIGABA device and the Collins transceivers up and running, he will return to Vint Hill Farms Station. All your communications vis-à-vis the ransoming operation, Galahad, and that regicide business we were talking about yesterday will, with their own code, be routed through Fischer at Vint Hill, and passed only to Colonel Graham and myself.”
“Not to General Donovan?”
“Colonel Graham and I will decide what General Donovan is to get in these areas.”
Frade pointed at Fischer. “For Christ’s sake, he’s a second lieutenant.” He paused and looked at Fischer. “Right?”
“Yes, sir,” Fischer said. “I’m eligible for promotion in sixty days.”
“And you don’t think Donovan is going to send some colonel out to Vint— whateverthehell—”
“Vint Hill Farms Station,” Dulles furnished.
&nb
sp; “—to stand Second Lieutenant Fischer at attention and tell him Donovan gets a copy of everything?”
“Both Colonel Graham and I have told General Donovan that if something like that happens, he and I will personally deliver our resignations to the President.”
“And,” Frade challenged, “you don’t think General Donovan could think of a way around that? ‘And not only will you give me a copy of everything, Second Lieutenant Fischer, but I order you not to tell anyone—including but especially Graham, Dulles, and Frade—that you’re going to do it.’ ”
“Actually, that potential problem occurred to Fischer,” Dulles replied. “And he came up with a rather clever simple means to let us know if that has happened. ”
Frade looked at Fischer and made a Come on, let’s hear it gesture.
“Yes, sir. Sir—”
“Whoa,” Frade interrupted. “No ‘sir.’ No ‘major.’ From right now.”
“Yes, si— What do I call you?”
“Clete. And you?”
“Len. Leonard.”
“Okay, Len: How are you going to keep Donovan from standing you tall?”
“There’s no way I can do that, but if it happens, when I open the net in the morning . . .”
“Explain that, please.”
“There will be a regular contact every day at a time to be determined. First, the contact is established. Then there is a brief gibberish message, encoded, to test the SIGABA and its signal operating code. You know, something like ‘Mary had a little lamb’; ‘There is nothing to fear but fear itself’; ‘Lucky Strike Green has gone to war’; ‘Play it again, Sam’ . . .”
“Okay, I get the picture.”
“If I have been compromised, I send yesterday’s gibberish as the test encryption. ”
Frade thought it over and said what he had been thinking.
“That’d work. But how do we know you’d do it?”
“Two reasons. One, I’m a Jew, and I think the President is right. If this ransoming operation gets out, no more Jews will be able to get out of German concentration camps. . . .”
“You told him about that?” Frade challenged Dulles.
Dulles nodded. “He would have come to know anyway.”
Frade raised his eyebrows, then looked at Fischer.
“And reason two?”
“Colonel Graham made certain threats about what would happen to me if I betrayed the trust he was placing in me. I believe him, and I’m a devout coward.”
Frade said nothing for a long moment.
“What are you thinking, Cletus?” Dulles asked, finally.
“I was thinking that Len and I already have something in common,” Frade said. “I think we both wish we had never heard of any of this. Or of the fucking OSS.”
Dulles’s face showed no expression.
After a long moment, Dulles said, “There is one other thing.”
He stopped and leaned to the side of his chair. After a moment, Frade understood he was reaching for something. Something he probably had in a briefcase.
Dulles came up with a leather case containing a camera and slid it across the table to Frade.
“What’s this?”
“It’s a thirty-five-millimeter camera,” he said. “Specifically, a Leica I-C.”
“German?” Clete asked as he opened the case.
“German,” Dulles confirmed.
“It looks brand new.”
“It is. I bought it—actually, I bought three; all they had—in a camera store in Zurich a week or so ago.”
“What am I supposed to do with it?”
“When you’re in Argentina, I want you to take Len to see Herr and Frau Frogger,” Dulles said. “While he is with them, I want you to take a picture of Len with them. I want one of the Froggers to be holding that day’s La Nación newspaper.”
What the hell is this all about?
“Am I allowed to ask what this is all about?”
“Take at least a half-dozen shots, then change film and take another half-dozen. When you’ve done that, have the film developed. You have someplace where that can be done discreetly, I suppose?”
“I’m sure I can find one.”
“Then give one set of the negatives to Len, who will bring them to the United States when he returns. The other set is to be given to Commander Delojo at the embassy with instructions to send them in the diplomatic pouch, eyes-only Colonel Graham.”
“If I gave a roll of film to that sonofabitch, there would be prints at the Office of Naval Intelligence before Graham got the negatives. Didn’t Graham tell you about him?”
“Colonel Graham said that you weren’t especially fond of Delojo.”
“Delojo doesn’t know I have the Froggers. And I don’t want him to know. If Graham wants the ONI to have copies of these pictures—and learn I have the Froggers—I guess I can’t stop him. But I’m not giving Delojo any pictures. And what the hell are they for, anyway?”
“I have a feeling that the Froggers may be of some genuine use to us in several areas. I haven’t given it a good deal of thought so far, beyond thinking it would be very interesting if someone called on Oberstleutnant Frogger at Camp Clinton and showed him the photograph of his parents.”
“You’re sure he’s there?”
Dulles nodded.
“I sent a message last night, after we met. I got the confirmation just before we came here. He’s fully recovered from his wounds, and is regarded as a Class III, which I found interesting.”
“What’s a Class III?”
“I have no idea. I presume Colonel Graham thought I knew. I don’t. I sent a message asking for an explanation, but there’s been no answer, and now there’s no time for one.”
“Why not?”
“Because my plane leaves in about an hour, and I want to go to the base store—what do they call it?”
“The PX?” Fischer furnished.
“Close, but not correct. The Air Forces calls their stores something else. In any event, I need toothbrushes and toothpaste and hair tonic.” He stood up and put out his hand. “So, gentlemen. It’s been a pleasure meeting both of you. And we’ll be in touch, of course.”
And when they had shaken hands, Dulles walked out of the room.
[FOUR]
El Palomar Airfield Campo de Mayo Military Base Buenos Aires Province, Argentina 1115 19 July 1943
“El Palomar, South American Airways Zero Zero One,” South American Airways Chief Pilot Gonzalo Delgano said into his microphone.
His co-pilot, Señor Cletus Frade, restrained a smile.
I am learning. If I hadn’t let him sit in the left seat for this, he never would have forgiven me.
“South American Zero Zero One, Palomar.”
“Palomar, South American Zero Zero One is at two thousand meters, twenty-five kilometers from your station, indicating three hundred forty kph.”
“Zero Zero One, Palomar. What is your airspeed?”
“Palomar, I repeat. Indicated airspeed is three four zero kilometers per hour. I repeat, three four zero kilometers per hour. Request approach and landing instructions. ”
If you said “three four zero” one more time, Gonzalo, you would have popped the buttons on your shirt.
“Gear is down and locked, Captain,” co-pilot Frade reported. “You have twenty-degrees of flap. We are indicating one hundred twenty-five kph.”
“That was a very fine landing, Captain,” the co-pilot said. “If I may be permitted to say so. What we call a greaser.”
“Actually, for an aircraft of this size, it’s not at all that hard to fly, is it, Cletus?”
“It’s not an easy one to fly, Gonzalo,” Frade said seriously.
Captain Delgano beamed.
I have made a friend for life.
But how that will, of course, affect our professional relationship in the other profession we practice—but don’t talk about—remains to be seen.
Frade’s good feeling disappeared sixty seconds later
when he looked out the cockpit window and saw the welcoming party waiting for them. It included— in addition to Suboficial Mayor Enrico Rodríguez, Retired, the Horch, and a Ford ton-and-a-half stake-bodied truck with ESTANCIA SAN PEDRO Y SAN PABLO painted on the doors—two Argentine officers, El Coronel Juan D. Perón and El Teniente Coronel Alejandro Martín.
How the hell did they know we were coming?
And what the hell do they want?
They knew we were coming, Stupid, because your new friend for life called the Argentine embassy in Rio de Janeiro—
Or maybe there’s an Argentine consulate in Pôrto Alegre—
Or maybe Martín has one of his guys in Pôrto Alegre and my pal for life Gonzalo just happened to run into him in the lobby of the hotel.
—and told him, them—somebody—when we were leaving and when we expected to arrive.
And what our welcoming party wants—or at least Martín wants—is to see what interesting things I’m smuggling into Argentina.
And then, to cover his ass—or perhaps he wanted a witness when he caught me smuggling something into Argentina—Martín called Perón, and Tío Juan called the estancia and told Enrico.
The radios I can explain.
But how do I explain the SIGABA device?
Frade waved cheerfully out the window to Perón and Martín as Delgano taxied the Lodestar up to the hangar South American Airways had rented until the hangars—and the runways—being built in Morón were completed.
Frade was first out the door.
“Where’s the brass band?” he called as he walked to Perón and Martín. “You two are all we get? No crescendo of trumpets, no roll of drums?”
The intended humor failed. Both Martín and Perón looked confused.
He kissed Tío Juan, then—what the hell!—Martín.
“A pleasant flight, Cletus?” Perón asked.
Delgano answered for him.
“Two hours and sixteen minutes from Pôrto Alegre, mi coronel,” he proclaimed. “At an average speed of three hundred forty!”
“That fast? You were trying to set a record?”
“No, actually, we didn’t try to do anything but get here safely,” Frade said.
“It is a beautiful machine,” Perón said.
Death and Honor Page 31