“What made you change your mind?” Frade asked.
“Even if you don’t know it yet, the United States is the only hope the world has to stem the Communist hordes.”
“You haven’t changed your mind about Hitler?” Frade challenged.
“My position on that is a pox on both their houses,” Hanfstaengl said. “Goebbels and Himmler tried to have me murdered, as I suspect you know.”
“But I thought you were a good Nazi,” Frade said.
“Presumably you know what Lord Acton had to say about power. ‘Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ What happened in Germany is unequivocal proof of that.”
“Then you would say that Hitler and the people around him are corrupt?” Graham asked.
“Well, if the bastard hadn’t murdered his niece, with whom he was having an incestuous relationship, I would say that Hitler is probably less personally corrupt than those around him. He’s paranoid, of course. And an egomaniac. Those around him are corrupt beyond description.”
He paused and looked at Frogger.
“You are a professional soldier, Herr Oberstleutnant?”
Frogger nodded.
“Then certainly you must be aware that your peers hold the ‘Austrian corporal’ in deep contempt?”
Frogger didn’t reply.
“Let me put it to you this way, Herr Oberstleutnant: Germany has lost the war. The sooner it’s over, the fewer soldiers—and civilians—will be killed or mutilated for life. Have you heard that Goebbels has gone on Radio Berlin and advised people to leave? So the sooner Germany surrenders, the better for Germany.”
Hanfstaengl looked at Frogger for a response and got none. He shrugged as if he expected that reaction.
Then he coldly added: “Herr Oberstleutnant, if whatever Colonel Graham here is asking you to do will hasten the end of the war, then it is your duty to do so.”
“What they are asking me to do has nothing to do with ending the war, Herr Hanfstaengl,” Frogger said.
“Perhaps you can’t see how whatever he’s asking you to do has to do with hastening the end of the war, but I know Colonel Graham well enough to know that unless he thought it was about ending the war, or something nearly that important, he wouldn’t have brought you here to me.”
Frogger did not respond.
Without breaking eye contact with Frogger, Hanfstaengl said, “May I ask him a question, Alex?”
“Discreetly, Putzi.”
"Herr Oberstleutnant, does the term heavy water—”
“Stop right there, Putzi!” Graham said sharply.
“—mean anything to you? Because if it does, and you’re not giving Graham what he wants—”
“Shut up, Putzi!” Graham ordered loudly and furiously.
Graham looked at Frade. “Get Frogger the hell out of here. I knew this was a bad idea. . . .”
Hanfstaengl threw both hands up in a gesture of surrender.
“Herr Hanfstaengl, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Frogger said without conviction as Frade reached for him.
“Putzi, you sonofabitch!” Graham said bitterly.
The door from the corridor suddenly opened.
A burly man stepped inside. He held a Smith & Wesson revolver in his hand, the arm extended parallel to his leg. He looked quickly around the room.
“You can put that away, Dennis,” Franklin Delano Roosevelt said as he rolled his wheelchair through the doorway. “I know both of them well enough to know it’s mostly bark without much bite.”
No one in the room spoke for a moment.
“Mr. President,” Graham said finally. “Your friend has just been talking about heavy water.” His voice was tense with anger.
“I heard you would be here, Alex,” the President said, ignoring the outburst entirely. He paused to take a cigarette from a gold case and fit it into an eight-inch-long silver holder. Dennis, the man who had entered the room holding a revolver at his side, quickly produced a cigarette lighter.
Roosevelt took a puff and exhaled thoughtfully.
“As I was saying, Alex, I heard you were paying Putzi a visit, but I didn’t hear anything about these gentlemen.”
He waved the cigarette holder like a pointer at Frade, Fogger, and Fischer, who had all, without thinking about it, come to attention. Then the cigarette holder pointed at Frogger.
“May I ask who you are, sir?”
Frogger grew even more stiffly erect. He bowed and clicked his heels.
“Oberstleutnant Frogger, Wilhelm, Excellency!” he barked.
“In whose presence Hanfstaengl has been—” Graham began, only to be shut off by Roosevelt’s extended palm.
Roosevelt’s cigarette holder was now aimed at Frade.
“Before anyone tells me, let me guess. You’re Cletus Frade.”
“Yes, I am, Mr. President.”
“I’m pleased that you finally have found time to come to Washington,” Roosevelt said. He turned to Frogger. “Mr. Frade is an interesting man, Colonel. At one time, he was a distinguished fighter pilot. Now he’s an intelligence officer who knows the names of the German officers who are planning to—how do I put this?—permanently and irrevocably remove Chancellor Hitler from office. Information he refuses to share with me, as difficult to believe as that may be.”
He paused and looked at Frade for a long moment.
FDR then went on: “And I have no idea, Colonel, why he’s brought you here to see my old friend Hanfstaengl. I’m not at all sure he’d tell me if I asked. But I do know that he would not have done so unless he thought it was rather important.”
He took another pull at his cigarette, then looked at Frogger as he slowly exhaled the smoke through his nostrils.
“The reason, Mr. Frogger, that I don’t insist that Frade share everything he knows with me is that he enjoys my absolute confidence. You might wish to keep that in mind in your dealings with him.”
The President kept his eyes locked with Frogger’s for a long moment, then swiveled the wheelchair to face Hanfstaengl.
“This would seem to be a poor time for a visit, Putzi, wouldn’t it? I’ll come back another time.” He paused, then said, “Good evening, gentlemen,” and swiveled his wheelchair around so that he faced the door.
The Secret Service agent was just able to get to the door and open it as Roosevelt rolled up to it. And then the President was through it and gone.
A long moment later, Frade said without thinking, “Jesus H. Christ!”
“Is it true, Mr. Frade?” Frogger asked. “That you know the names of those officers who plan to . . . remove . . . der Führer?”
“If it were true, why the hell should I tell you?”
“If it was not true, you would have said it was, to elicit my support,” Frogger said.
Frade just looked at him.
“Mr. Frade,” Frogger said after a moment, “does the name Oberstleutnant Claus Graf von Stauffenberg mean anything to you?”
Frade didn’t reply.
“Perhaps you’re not as good an intelligence officer as your President Roosevelt seems to think you are, Mr. Frade. The look in your eyes answered my question.”
They locked eyes.
“As the imminent and inevitable collapse of the Afrikakorps became apparent, ” Frogger said, “von Stauffenberg was trying to arrange my transfer to Germany. I’m rather surprised my name has not come to your attention.” He paused, then went on: “Under the changed circumstances, Mr. Frade, I will of course do whatever it is you want me to do.”
“For the moment, Colonel Frogger, I’ll go along with you,” Graham said. “It will take a day or two for me to verify your connection with von Stauffenberg. If you’re lying, I’ll have you shot.”
“I understood that, Colonel, when I gave you von Stauffenberg’s name.”
“Fischer, take him back to Bolling. Put him on the Constellation. If he tries to escape, if he tries anything, kill him,” Graham ordered.
[FIVE]
/>
Bolling Air Force Base Washington, D.C. 2205 6 August 1943
The Constellation was not only plugged into a ground-power generator but was also connected with something Frade had never seen—a flexible pipe connected to a truck-mounted air-conditioning unit. Graham had told him that it had been specially made to cool the President’s Sacred Cow while the aircraft waited for him on a typical torrid Washington summer day.
Frade was sitting—drinking coffee with Howard Hughes—near the rear door, through which the eighteen-inch-diameter flexible hose was delivering a steady blast of icy air. Frogger was seated about in the middle of the passenger compartment. He was no longer handcuffed. Fischer was sitting across the aisle from him, and two of Howard’s Saints were sitting on the aisle just forward of Frade. Frogger wasn’t going anywhere.
There were MPs armed with Thompson submachine guns at the foot of the stairs, and just inside the door were two men in suits who Frade supposed were either Secret Service agents or from the OSS.
One of them stepped around the air-conditioning hose and onto the stairs, then a moment later came to where Frade and Hughes were sitting.
“Colonel Graham would like to see you, gentlemen,” he said.
They went down the stairway and got into the backseat of the Packard limousine.
“I haven’t heard from Allen Dulles,” Graham began the moment Hughes had pulled the door closed after them. “No telling where he is, or when I’ll hear from him. But I think Frogger’s telling the truth, so I think we should get this show on the road.”
“Vegas?” Hughes said.
Graham nodded.
“Las Vegas?” Frade asked.
Graham nodded again.
“I think it might be helpful if I knew what’s going on,” Frade said more than a little sarcastically.
“Ignoring your tone of voice, I will tell you,” Graham said. “By now the word is out that we took Frogger to see Hanfstaengl.”
“The word’s out to who?” Frade said. “And, for Christ’s sake, by who?”
“You might want to write this down, Major,” Graham said. “There is no such thing as hole-proof counterintelligence. I’m going on the assumption that among the Hotel Washington’s staff are some people who are generously compensated for reporting to the Spanish embassy, the Mexican embassy, the Argentine embassy—yeah, Clete, the Argentine embassy—and even the British embassy about who goes to see Putzi Hanfstaengl and even more generously compensated if they can provide photographs of the visitors. So we have to get Frogger out of town as quickly as possible.”
“To Las Vegas?”
“Las Vegas is in the middle of nowhere,” Graham explained. “The Las Vegas Army Airfield was established there because it offers a lot of room in which aerial gunners can be trained. What most people don’t know is that across a ridge line or two is another air base, no name, where we conduct tests of various things we don’t want anybody to know about. Don Bell’s jet airplane, for one, and some other things about which you don’t have the Need to Know.
“Frogger can be held there without anybody seeing him, and with virtually no chance of his getting away. There’s no way to walk away, and his chances of getting away in a car are slim to none.
“One of your Lodestars is en route to that air base now, carrying a flight crew for the Constellation—men who know not to ask questions. You and Howard will fly the Lodestar back to Burbank, you having completed your pilot training.
“As soon as I hear from Allen Dulles, Frogger will be flown, with Fischer and two of my men, in the Constellation to Canoas Air Base in Brazil. It’ll be up to you to get him from there to Argentina—any problems with that?”
Frade shook his head.
“And you will fly one of your SAA Lodestars to Argentina. Okay? The managing director of SAA having gotten his ATR first. Still with me?”
Frade nodded.
“By the time you’re ready to move Frogger from Brazil, we’ll get him into civilian clothing and get him a passport. Probably South African.”
Graham looked between them.
“Any questions?”
Both Frade and Hughes shook their heads.
“Okay,” Graham said, “then have a nice flight.”
XVI
[ONE]
Aeropuerto El Alto La Paz, Bolivia 1230 11 August 1943
The airfield at La Paz left a good deal to be desired. The single runway was short and paved with gravel. The customs officials who met the SAA Lodestar were in ill-fitting khaki uniforms and expected to receive—and did—a little gift in appreciation of their professional services.
The fuel truck was a 1935 Ford ton-and-a-half stake-bodied truck—not a tanker—sagging under the weight of a dozen fifty-five-gallon barrels of aviation fuel. The pump was hand-cranked.
There was a small silver lining to that, however. When Frade examined the barrels, he saw from the intact paint on the openings that they hadn’t been opened since leaving the Howell Petroleum Refinery in Louisiana. The fuel would be safe to use.
Cletus Howell Frade did not mention to Gonzalo Delgano his connection with Howell Petroleum.
The weather station was “temporarily” out of communication with anybody else, which meant that they would have to rely on the weather report they’d gotten just before taking off from Guayaquil, Ecuador, not quite six hours before. That one had reported good weather all over the eastern half of South America, and from what they’d seen in the air, the report was valid.
They both were tired. It had been a very long flight. They’d left Burbank at six in the morning on August ninth and flown nonstop to Mexico City. They’d taken on fuel there and flown on to Guatemala City, whose airfield was downtown and surrounded by hills. The final approach was a dive at the threshold.
Frade and Delgano spent the night in Guatemala City in a charming old hotel, which apparently had not replaced the mattresses since they were first installed. But nevertheless both had overslept. They had planned to leave at six a.m., but it was a few minutes after eight before they broke ground on the next leg, to Guayaquil, Ecuador.
They didn’t want to try to go any farther, so they spent the night there, just about on the equator, which meant tropical temperatures and hordes of biting insects—many of them mosquitoes—that the somewhat ragged mosquito nets did little to discourage.
The next morning, they were wide awake at five a.m. and took off for La Paz as intended, at six a.m., without availing themselves of anything more than coffee for breakfast.
It had been a nearly six-hour flight, and as soon as they could after landing they headed for the airport restaurant.
The tableware was dirty, the papas fritas limp and greasy, and the lomo— filet mignon—was thin and had the tenderness of a boot sole.
“I don’t mean to be critical, Gonzo, but I have had better lomo,” Frade said as he pushed his plate away and reached for another piece of bread.
“Patience is a virtue, as you may have heard. In just a matter of hours, Cletus, my friend, we will be in Argentina, where, as you have learned, the women are beautiful and the beef magnificent.”
Delgano saw something in Frade’s eyes.
“What?” he asked.
“Gonzo, we have to talk.”
“I thought this would be coming.”
“Truth time?” Frade asked.
“That’s always useful. But one of the truths here is that I’m afraid we have different loyalties.”
“Different isn’t the same as opposing.”
“Would your admitting that you are a serving officer—a major—of the U.S. Corps of Marines attached to the OSS be the kind of truth you’re talking about?”
“Not really,” Frade said. “Colonel Martín has known that for some time, and so have you, Major Gonzalo Delgano of the Ethical Standards Office of the Bureau of Internal Security.”
Delgano considered that and nodded. He then said: “Colonel Martín also believes that you know a good deal more than you�
�re admitting about the disappearance of the Froggers. Are you going to tell me the truth about that? Is that what this is all about?”
Frade nodded.
“You kidnapped them?” Delgano asked.
“No. They came to me. I didn’t kidnap them.”
“We wondered about that. Kidnapping a German diplomat and his wife would have been very dangerous, and we couldn’t understand why you would do something so foolish.”
“Frogger had been ordered back to Germany. He was afraid he was suspected of being a traitor.”
“Colonel Martín considered that. He has a hard time believing Frogger is Galahad.”
“He’s not. And, yeah, Gonzo, I realize that when I say he’s not, I’m admitting there is a Galahad. Truth time.”
Delgano smiled wryly.
“Colonel Martín thinks Galahad is Major von Wachtstein,” Delgano said.
“Does he?”
“I didn’t really expect you to admit something like that,” Delgano said. “Why did Frogger go to you?”
“He didn’t. When he decided that he had to run, he went to somebody else, who brought the Froggers to me.”
“Are you going to tell me who that ‘somebody else’ is?”
“No,” Frade said simply.
“So why did you take them? Knowing how dangerous for you that would be?”
“I’d like to say because I’m a Good Samaritan, but I won’t. I’m not, and you wouldn’t believe it anyway. The truth is that my friend had no place to hide them and I couldn’t let them go. The Germans would learn who brought them to me, for one thing. And, for another, I got word that the SS had decided that Frogger knew too much and had put out an order to kill him—both of them; the wife, too—wherever and whenever found.”
“So what are you going to do with them?”
“This is where telling the truth gets uncomfortable.”
“Do you have any choice?”
Frade shook his head. After a moment, he said, “Do you remember having breakfast with a man called Stevens, an assistant consular officer, when we were at Canoas?”
Delgano nodded.
“Well, he solved my problem of what to do with the Froggers. He’s not an assistant consular officer at the embassy in Rio de Janeiro.”
Death and Honor Page 53