“Getting back to what I said at the beginning, the bad news here is that when the OSS is inevitably disbanded, Team Turtle personnel will be reassigned. That almost certainly means everyone will be assigned to the Office of the Military Attaché—in other words, to Colonel Flowers.
“And as soon as the OSS is disbanded—and probably before, possibly as soon as tomorrow—Colonel Flowers is going to try to assume authority over all of you.”
“Fuck him,” Tony Pelosi blurted.
“Please permit me to associate myself with Major Pelosi’s position,” Major Ashton said.
That earned them some chuckles.
“While orders are orders,” Dulles said, “there is a loophole here: Until the OSS is formally disbanded, and until Colonel Flowers is ordered to assume command, so to speak, the status quo will prevail. He will not have the legal authority to issue orders to any of you.
“I think, however, that he will try. If he fails, he will have lost nothing. If he succeeds, the advantages to him are obvious. Victors write history. He will write the history of why the plan to have Operation Phoenix assets seized failed, and Colonel Frade’s gross incompetence—and perhaps his disloyalty—will be the reason.”
“Mr. Dulles,” Lieutenant Oscar Schultz asked, “two questions.”
“Shoot, Jefe,” Dulles said.
Jefe—“chief” in Spanish—made reference both to the Brooklynborn Schultz’s former status as a Navy chief radioman and to what he was called by the workers of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo. Fluent in Spanish, Schultz often could be found in what he called his gaucho outfit—a broad-brimmed black hat, loose white shirt with billowing sleeves, billowing black bombachas tucked into calf-high soft black leather boots, and a wide silver-studded and buckled leather belt carrying a fourteen-inch knife in a silver scabbard.
“Make that three questions,” the old sailor said. “But if I get the right answer to question one, I won’t have to ask the other two.”
Dulles, Frade, and Ashton immediately took Jefe’s meaning.
Frade and Dulles laughed.
Ashton said, “Good thought!”
Schultz pulled his wicked knife from its scabbard, looked at it admiringly, then began, “A quick and simple fix for this problem—”
“Sorry, Jefe,” Dulles interrupted. “As General of the Army Eisenhower was denied permission by President Roosevelt to remove a problem named Charles de Gaulle by shooting him, this deputy director of the OSS herewith denies you permission to remove a problem named Colonel Richmond C. Flowers by shooting or any other lethal means.”
“I was afraid you’d say that,” Schultz said, his tone genuinely disappointed, and slipped his blade back in the scabbard.
That caused general laughter.
“Even though,” Dulles added, “the gentleman in question clearly deserves it.”
More laughter.
“And your other two questions?” Dulles asked.
“How much time do we have before they shut down the OSS?”
“I really don’t know,” Dulles replied. “Much depends on what happens in the Pacific. Or, more precisely, President Truman’s perception of what will happen there. If he thinks that the war will continue for some time, he may decide that the OSS might prove useful and not shut us down immediately. On the other hand, if he thinks the Emperor will surrender—or seek an armistice, or something unexpected happens . . .”
Dulles met Frade’s eyes for a moment.
Clete thought: He’s talking about that superbomb, that “atomic” bomb!
“. . . in the near term, he may decide the OSS is no longer needed.”
Schultz was not satisfied with that answer.
“Time frame?” he pursued.
“From tomorrow to possibly as late as October or November. Sorry, Jefe, that’s really the best I can do.”
“And what are our priorities during that time?”
“Right now there are two. I’m not sure which priority is most important; both could be. Immediately, I would lean toward protecting the Gehlen operation. Because if President Truman hears about it—especially via Treasury Secretary Morgenthau—he will very likely order that the OSS be shut down that instant. And then probably order the arrest of everybody concerned with the Gehlen operation.
“I think that alone explains the absolute necessity for keeping it a secret. But let me express further how important it is: A moment ago, I said that you could not take out Colonel Flowers despite his having proven to be a danger to the OSS. That said, if Colonel Flowers were to learn of the Gehlen operation, and was about to pass what he had learned, or even thinks he had learned, on to anyone—”
“Then we could shoot him?” Schultz interrupted.
“That’s a very tough call to make, Jefe, and we would have to be absolutely sure the Gehlen operation was in imminent danger of being compromised. But . . .”
“Understood,” Schultz said, nodding.
Dulles added, “Colonel Frade, I think it important that you understand that.”
“I understand,” Clete said. “And what I want everyone else to understand is that we are not going to take out Colonel Flowers until I am sure we have to. I’ll make that decision. Everybody got that?”
There were nods and mumbles of “Got it” and “Okay.”
“Not good enough,” Clete said. “You will respond, Mr. Schultz, by saying, ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Army personnel will respond by saying, ‘Yes, sir. I understand the order.’”
There was something in the tone of his voice that discouraged either wisecracks or insubordination.
“Aye, aye, sir,” Schultz said.
This was followed by multiple, overlapping, replies of “Yes, sir, I understand the order.”
“Thank you,” Frade said. “Please continue, Mr. Dulles.”
“The second problem falls under what I mentioned earlier,” Dulles said, “about the dangers unique to the end of a war. There has been a great deal of confusion—and, at times, outright chaos—leading up to the Germans agreeing to surrender unconditionally. And now afterward. Accordingly, the intelligence that we have, and continue to gather, is all over the chart. Some of it is solid and reliable. And some is so wild that it boggles the mind.”
“Let’s hear the wild stuff,” Pelosi said.
Schultz, sitting next to Pelosi, looked at him and chimed in: “Yeah, I’d like to hear something worse than the news that we’re being disbanded and taken over by our worst nightmare.”
There were a couple chuckles.
“I’ll save the outrageous for later,” Dulles said. “But I will say now that it fits with some of what you’ve already dealt with—specifically the Phoenix program, which of course we know existed and therefore lends some credibility to the wildest of scenarios. And it shares the common thread of U-boats still at sea—possibly as many as sixty submarines, but maybe only twenty. Our intelligence, as I said, is all over the chart. We know a great deal about some of these subs, almost nothing about others. And knowing nothing means we haven’t the first idea if their crews plan to follow orders to surrender their vessels and crews—or if they have their own plans, either missions meant to be executed at war’s end, or perhaps instances of every man for himself—or, in this case, every vessel for itself. Of all these U-boats, however, we are particularly interested in two, U-234 and U-977.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Dulles,” Boltitz interrupted. “With regard to U-234, if memory serves, she’s a Type XB U-boot, a minelayer pressed into service as a cargo carrier—long range, able to cover more than eighteen thousand nautical miles if running on the surface. And I know that U-977 is a Type VIIC.”
Dulles grinned. “I take it you have a connection with submarines, Karl?”
Boltitz nodded. “Peter and I. We know Kapitänleutnant Wilhelm von Dattenberg well. He was master of U-405, also a VIIC.”
“The last information I have,” Dulles said, “is that von Dattenberg still is her captain. How do you two know him?”
Von
Wachtstein offered: “Peter and I were together in school at Philipps University in Marburg an der Lahn.”
“And,” Boltitz added, “I served five patrols under von Dattenberg.”
“I wasn’t aware that you had been a submarine officer, Karl,” Dulles said.
“I went from U-boots to Admiral Canaris’s staff. I thought at the time that my father was responsible. I now believe Willi von Dattenberg was. I found out that he was—he and his father were—close to Canaris. But if that’s the case, how did Willi escape the SS after the failure at Wolfsschanze?”
“Karl,” Dulles said, his tone almost that of a kindly schoolmaster, “the SS isn’t—wasn’t—nearly as infallible as they would have people believe.”
“I’ve had that thought, too, sir,” Boltitz said. “It’s what permits me to think that the possibility my father may have escaped their net isn’t for certain pissing into the wind.”
“We all devoutly pray the same, and that you’re standing at the rail with your back to the wind,” Dulles said. “I think your submarine experience may prove to be quite valuable. It might well be something Colonel Frade’s defense counsel can use when he is court-martialed for breaking you out of Fort Hunt.”
This produced a round of chuckles and laughter.
“All right,” Dulles went on, “I was about to say, ‘Talking about submarines, starting at the beginning,’ but I just realized I don’t know where the beginning is. So, starting with what we do know: We know with some certainty that when Grand Admiral Doenitz issued the cease hostilities order on May fourth, sixty-three U-boats were at sea. Five of them complied with their orders to hoist a black flag and proceed to an enemy port to surrender, or to a neutral port to be interned.
“We have unreliable information that forty-one of them have been scuttled by their crews, possibly to prevent the capture of whatever may be onboard in something called Operation Deadlight. We don’t know how many were actually sunk, and we have no boat identification.
“Assuming these subs were either surrendered and/or sunk, that means forty-six from sixty-three leaves us seventeen U-boats unaccounted for.
“These could be part of another intel report—one of somewhat dubious reliability—that says a total of twenty submarines sailed from ports in Norway, primarily Bergen, for Argentina, between May first and May sixth.”
“That many?” Frade said. “And we know nothing about them?”
Dulles shook his head. “Not really. We have no identification of which boats are supposed to have done this. And if true, that’s quite a sizable operation.
“But what we do know with some certainty is that U-234 sailed from Narvik on April sixteenth, two weeks before these twenty are supposed to have headed for Argentina. The mission of U-234 was a special one”—he glanced at Karl—“and I think it may explain the presence of Vizeadmiral Boltitz in Norway.”
“Mr. Dulles, can you elaborate on that?” Karl said.
“We suspect your father may have gone there to take control of the U-boat—and particularly its cargo—to keep her from sailing after the bomb took out Hitler.”
“What the hell is aboard that sub?” Frade said.
“According to our information, U-234 was bound for Japan with a varied and very interesting cargo, some of which was either not listed on the manifest at all or listed under a false description. That is to say, in addition to a ton of mail—which, of course, almost certainly includes cash and diamonds—we’re told that U-234 took aboard five hundred sixty kilograms of uranium oxide. And passengers included both Nazi and Japanese officers, as well as certain scientists, two of whom the OSS was actively pursuing prior to the German surrender.”
“What’s that about?” Ashton asked. “That uranium?”
Dulles met Frade’s eyes for a moment before replying, “German scientists have been working on what might be called ‘an explosives amplifier.’ I don’t know much more than that about it . . .”
The hell you don’t! Frade thought.
You told me that uranium is what’s in the atom bomb.
“. . . except that we really don’t want the Japanese to get their hands on it. What I do know is that we can’t permit U-234 to get to Japan. And General Smith and I are agreed that it can’t get there.”
“General Smith?” Ashton asked.
“General Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhower’s chief of staff,” Dulles clarified, and then saw something on Ashton’s face. “Why did you just nod understandingly, Ashton? Who else did you think I might be talking about?”
Ashton looked mildly uncomfortable, glanced at Frade, then shrugged. “Actually, until just now, I was wondering why the OSS deputy director for European operations had come to this backwater of the war. ‘He must certainly have more important things on his plate right now.’”
“And now you think you understand?” Dulles said.
“At first, I thought your purpose, sir, forgive the vulgarism, was to cover Eisenhower’s ass vis-à-vis the Gehlen operation. He’s privy to it, isn’t he?”
“Is that what you understood?” Dulles asked softly, ignoring the question. “That was your analysis?”
“Yes, sir. That is, until you mentioned that half-ton of uranium oxide and then General Smith. I would guess that General Smith is one of the very few officers privy to the secret of the atomic bomb. That’s really why we have to take out U-234, isn’t it?”
Dulles glanced at Cletus Frade, then said, “Major Ashton, tell me what you know about—what did you say?—an ‘atomic’ bomb.”
“I know the Germans were trying to build one, and I know that we are.”
“And how did you come into this information, Major Ashton?” Dulles asked softly.
Dulles locked eyes momentarily with Frade again.
Frade shook his head to deny responsibility.
“Clete didn’t tell me, sir,” Ashton said.
“Clete didn’t even come close to it,” Technical Sergeant Jerry O’Sullivan offered. “All he told any of us was to keep our eyes and ears open to any mention of uranium, and to tell him immediately if we heard anything at all.”
“And, except for this one instance with Niedermeyer, we didn’t hear anything,” Ashton said.
“Niedermeyer?” Dulles said.
“Oberstleutnant Otto Niedermeyer—the first of two of Oberstleutnant Gehlen’s officers to arrive in Argentina—is the source of my information, sir.”
Ashton looked from Dulles to Frade, then back to Dulles, and went on: “Clete sent Jerry and me to San Martín de los Andes to see what, if anything, we might get Niedermeyer to tell us. Cutting to the chase, after we’d had a couple of drinks—more than a couple; in vino veritas, so to speak—I asked him why he thought you, sir, had trusted Colonel Gehlen. He replied, words to this effect, because Gehlen had given you the names of the Russian spies operating in the Manhattan Project, which he told me was the code name for our attempt to build an atomic bomb.”
“And once in possession of this information, what did you do with it?” Dulles asked evenly.
“I took it to Clete.”
“And?”
“Clete told me I was not to mention it to anyone, and then he sent me back to San Martín de los Andes to tell Niedermeyer that if Clete ever heard Niedermeyer had told this story—or anything at all about the Manhattan Project—to anyone else, Clete personally would shoot him.”
Dulles locked eyes with Frade again. Frade’s face showed that he was pleased with Ashton’s report of his “atomic bomb” behavior.
Dulles shrugged, shook his head, and exhaled audibly.
He then said: “Another masterful double cliché has suddenly popped into my brain: As no secret is safe if more than one person knows it, I guess we have to accept that the cow has escaped through the open door of the barn and there is no point in trying to get it back in.
“The truth is that Argentina is no longer a backwater of this war. As I started to say a moment ago, General Smith—and, yes, he is priv
y to the Manhattan Project—and I are agreed that we simply cannot permit U-234 to reach Japan. There are other reasons for me being here—despite other important things on my plate—but based on what credible information we have, sinking or, in an ideal world, capturing U-234 is perhaps the most important reason of all.
“And the reason Argentina is no longer a backwater is because General Smith and I agree again that U-234 cannot reach Japan without refueling at least once and that any refueling will have an Argentine connection.
“Naval experts at Eisenhower’s headquarters have suggested a scenario involving those twenty submarines which are alleged to have sailed for Argentina from Norway during the period from May first to May sixth.
“This scenario proposes that the subs are tankers. Manned by as few people as possible, they would rendezvous with U-234 at either a planned location or one determined by radio contact with her. The fuel would be transferred, the crew of the tanker submarine would transfer to U-234, and then the tanker submarine would be scuttled.”
Dulles looked at Boltitz.
“Karl, your opinion of this?”
Boltitz looked at Dulles, nodded, and after a moment’s thought said: “I’m not saying it couldn’t be done. But I can see a number of problems with it. As you would expect, refueling a submarine at sea is not anywhere near the same thing as an automobile pulling up to a service station. There would have to be large-capacity pumps and a substantial quantity of hose aboard either U-234—which, considering how much cargo she is carrying, seems unlikely—or on each of the tanker submarines. Are that many pumps available, that many hoses, in Norway? I rather think not.
“Further, transfer at sea between submarines is hazardous. There would be considerable risk that U-234 would be damaged in the process—either by collision or fire or explosion.
“U-234 does have aboard enough fuel to bring her from Norway to Argentina—a distance of some seven thousand nautical miles—presuming she cruised at best speed to conserve fuel, which means quite slowly.
“That problem, the great distance between Europe and here, is what made the replenishment ship program necessary. And, as we well know, replenishment ships are no longer available, thanks to parties who shall remain nameless.”
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