W E B Griffin - Honor 2 - Blood and Honor

by Blood

  "I believe his primary motivation was that he saw his father's signature on the Purpose Page of Outline Blue, mi General."

  "That might explain his turning it over to me, or General Rawson, or Juan Domingo Per¢n, but not to you. From all we've heard of him, he's a profes-sional intelligence officer."

  "S¡, mi General, he is that."

  "And professional intelligence officers, I have been told, don't trust anyone without reason. Good reason. Does Frade have some reason, some good reason, to trust you?"

  "S¡, Se¤or."

  "Would you like to tell me what that is?"

  "I would prefer not to, mi General."

  Ramirez considered that for a long moment.

  "Very well, Coronel. But can you assure me Frade's cooperation was not based on your promise of cooperation in the future?"

  "Mi General, it is not at all uncommon for intelligence officers to make arrangements with their counterparts," Mart¡n said. "But I have offered Frade nothing more than that. I would not tell him anything I don't think he should know, and he would not expect me to."

  "He asked for nothing?"

  "He asked about an import permit for an airplane to replace the Beechcraft which is missing."

  Ramirez grunted. "This 'arrangement' between intelligence officers fasci-nates me. Could you give me an example?"

  "It has come to my attention that the Germans have ordered the assassina-tion of one of Frade's men. I told him that."

  "How did you come by that?" Querro asked.

  Mart¡n did not reply to Querro but looked at Ramirez.

  "I would say, Pedro," Ramirez said, "that you don't have the need to know that," he said, and turned to Mart¡n and asked, "You believe the Germans will kill this man?"

  "S¡, Se¤or, I believe they will try."

  "Certainly, you can do something to keep that from happening?"

  "Not very much, Se¤or. Only by providing him with protection, overtly, or covertly, mi General. And there would be no guarantee at-"

  "Do so."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Do so, Coronel. Do whatever you have to do to keep Frade's man from be-ing assassinated."

  "Se¤or, I couldn't provide one-fourth the protection that would be the min-imum required without it coming to el Almirante Montoya's attention. It would require many people, and a good deal of money."

  "The last Bureau of Internal Security budget I saw, Coronel, was anything but parsimonious."

  "Se¤or, what I was suggesting is that I could not order such an operation on my own authority. And to report that I was doing so on your orders..."

  "Would tell Montoya that we have been in touch? Is that what you're say-ing?"

  "S¡, mi General."

  Ramirez considered that for a moment.

  "Pedro, get el Almirante on the telephone, please. I'll tell him, Martin, that I have learned of this threat and authorize him to authorize you to do whatever is necessary to reduce the threat to zero."

  "Se¤or? Permission to speak, mi General?" Mart¡n said.

  "Frankly, Coronel, I am rapidly tiring of debating this with you. But go ahead."

  "Se¤or, I have reason to believe that the Germans have someone in BIS. If Almirante Montoya is aware that we know about this German decision, the Germans will learn that he knows."

  "The Germans have someone inside BIS?" Ramirez asked incredulously.

  "I believe so, Se¤or."

  "Well, so what if the Germans know we know? It might make them recon-sider."

  "It would also let them know we have someone in... in their embassy, Se¤or. My source would be compromised."

  "An important source? Important to the security of Argentina?"

  "S¡, Se¤or."

  "Shall I get el Almirante on the phone for you, mi General?" Querro asked. He had a telephone in his hand.

  Ramirez waved his hand, "no," and Querro replaced the receiver in its cra-dle.

  "With Argentina's interests as the criterion, Coronel, is this source worth this man's life?"

  "S¡, Se¤or. That would be my very reluctant conclusion."

  "You have no one you could assign to this?"

  "I had already planned to increase the surveillance on Frade and the others, mi General. But beyond that..."

  "And you have warned him, haven't you?"

  "S¡, Se¤or. And if anything else comes to my attention that I can tell him without putting my source at risk, I intend to tell it to him."

  "That would seem to be about all you can do under the circumstances," Querro volunteered.

  "Thank you very much, Mayor, for that astute observation," Mart¡n said, icily sarcastic.

  Ramirez looked between them.

  "About this aircraft import license Frade asked for," he said. "Would the import of an airplane for him, his use of an airplane, pose a serious threat to Ar-gentine security?"

  "No, Se¤or. And there are other aircraft available to him."

  "Can you obtain the permit for him?"

  "It might be difficult, mi General," Mart¡n said. "And it would be impossi-ble to keep quiet. There would be curiosity about BIS asking for an aircraft im-port permit for Se¤or Frade."

  "So you're saying it would be ill-advised."

  "On the way here from the estancia, in the airplane, I thought of an irregu-lar way to accomplish it."

  "By 'irregular' you doubtless mean 'illegal,'" Ramirez said.

  "S¡, Se¤or."

  "How illegal?"

  "Aircraft registration numbers are painted on the tail and on the wing. When an aircraft lands somewhere, the airport authorities write down these numbers and put them in a file. Afterward, they are seldom, if ever, seen again by human eyes."

  "Oh?"

  "It occurred to me that if someone wished to paint the registration numbers of an already registered aircraft on another aircraft-in other words, to substi-tute aircraft-I very much doubt anyone would notice."

  "Unless the original aircraft showed up," Ramirez said thoughtfully.

  "I don't think that's likely in this case," Mart¡n said.

  "Wouldn't the name of the manufacturer of the aircraft appear somewhere?"

  "Both el Coronel Frade's missing aircraft and the aircraft Se¤or Frade wishes to bring into Argentina were manufactured by Beech."

  "Then there would be no problem at all, is that what you're saying?"

  "There is one small problem. El Coronel Frade's missing airplane had one engine. The other aircraft has two."

  "Well, you're a very resourceful fellow, Coronel," Ramirez said. "A little thing like the number of engines shouldn't be too difficult for you to deal with."

  "Another thought occurred to me, mi General: If something goes wrong when Outline Blue is executed, an aircraft that can fly six, and in a pinch, eight, people to Uruguay might be nice to have."

  "Your resourcefulness never ceases to amaze me, Coronel," Ramirez said.

  [TWO]

  Office of the Director

  The Office of Strategic Services

  Washington, D.C.

  1930 11 April 1943

  "Come on in, Alex," Colonel William J. Donovan, a stocky, well-tailored man in his fifties, said, looking up from his desk. "What have you got?"

  Colonel A. (Alejandro) F. (Fredrico) Graham, USMCR, laid a large, torn-open manila envelope on Donovan's desk and settled himself in a green leather armchair.

  Donovan went into the envelope and extracted a slightly smaller envelope, also recently torn open. It was stamped TOP SECRET in red letters, top and bottom, on both sides. From this he extracted three stapled-together sheets of paper.

  The first sheet of paper was a U.S. Government Inter-Office Memorandum. It was from the Chief of Naval Intelligence and addressed to the Deputy Direc-tor for Western Hemisphere Operations, Office of Strategic Services, and an-nounced that transmitted herewith by officer courier was nondecrypted message N-45-7643 (no copies made) of a communication received from Sta-tion Aggie at 1505 hours 13 April 1943.<
br />
  The second sheet of paper contained many lines of apparently meaningless five-letter words (e.g., AKLQE MXCBI PISLA TDEQF).

  The third sheet of paper was stamped TOP SECRET in red, top and bottom, and was headed: DECRYPTION OF USN # N-45-7643. Donovan tore that from the top two sheets and dropped them, plus the two manila envelopes, into one of two wastebaskets at the side of his desk. This one held a white paper bag on which was printed in several places, in four-inch-high red letters, the phrase BURN TOP SECRET BURN.

  Donovan's expression clearly intended to convey to Graham the idea that his time was too valuable to waste tearing unimportant pieces of paper from im-portant pieces of paper, and that Graham should have performed this bureau-cratic task himself.

  If Colonel Graham felt rebuked, he offered no apology. And there was no sign on his face that he regretted annoying Colonel Donovan.

  Donovan started to read the decrypted message:

  TOP SECRET

  DECRYPTION OF USN #N-48-?643

  URGENT TOP SECRET

  PROM STACHIEP AGGIE 1555 GREENWICH 11APR43

  MSG NO 0001

  TO ORACLE WASHDC

  EYES ONLY FOR DDWHO GRAHAM

  1. SARNOFF HAS DEVELOPED HIGHLY RELIABLE INFORMATION THAT AT LEAST ONE GERMAN-JEWISH MALE INCARCERATED IN SACHSENHAUSEN CONCENTRATION CAMP WAS RELEASED AND PERMITTED TO LEAVE GERMANY AND PROCEED TO ARGENTINA POSSIBLY VIA URUGUAY FOLLOWING PAYMENT OF SUBSTANTIAL AMOUNT OF MONEY TO GERMAN AGENT, OR REPRESENTATIVE OF GERMAN AGENT, IN URUGUAY.

  "This is from Argentina, right? Judging from that very cute 'Station Chief Aggie' business?" "Right."

  "This just came in?" "It was sent at five minutes to four Greenwich time. That's one in the afternoon Buenos Aires time, and eleven in the morning our time. For once the Navy brought it over here in a hurry."

  "You're not going to change that 'Aggie' business now that we have a new station chief down there?"

  "(a) We don't have a new station chief down there, for one thing, (b) I don't think I'd change it if we did. What's wrong with it?"

  "What do you mean we don't have a new station chief down there? What's Delojo?"

  "Commander Delojo is the titular station chief," Graham said. "And I have-we have-complied with Roosevelt's order that we identify the station chief to the Ambassador and the FBI, also known as the Legal Attach‚."

  "And Frade?"

  "Frade is Frade. I was a little vague about who has the actual authority. If the Ambassador and the FBI think Delojo's the station chief, fine. I think we can also safely assume that someone down there will let the Argentines know- by accident or on purpose-that the Naval Attach‚, Delojo, is the OSS station chief. With a little bit of luck, the Argentines may decide he really is, which would take some of the pressure off Frade. But I want Frade running things."

  "You can't do that, for God's sake, Alex. You can't be a 'little vague' about who has the actual authority."

  "Wait a minute, Bill," Graham said coldly. "After the fiasco your pals caused running their own war down there, we made a deal. So long as I tell you everything I'm doing down there, which is what I'm doing now, Argentina is my pie, and nobody-including you-puts their fingers in it. I either run it, or you get somebody else to run it, and I go back to running my railroad."

  Before he went on active duty, Colonel Graham was the president of either the second- or the third-largest railroad in the United States-depending on the factors used to make the determination. While he had a good deal of respect for Colonel Donovan, he was no more awed by him than by any other lawyer who had made a fortune on Wall Street.

  "Don't be touchy, Alex," Donovan said.

  "Sometimes you have a short memory span," Graham said. "Read on."

  Donovan dropped his eyes to the message, and almost immediately asked, "Who's Sarnoff?"

  "His name is Ettinger. Detailed to us from the Army's CIC. He's a Spanish Jew whose family had a Berlin branch. Or vice versa. Before he went into the Army, he worked for Dave Sarnoff at RCA. Electrical engineer, and according to Dave, a damned good one."

  "Yeah," Donovan said, and resumed reading.

  2. SARNOFP HAS REASON TO BELIEVE THAT AS MANY AS SEVERAL THOUSAND JEWS HAVE BEEN RANSOMED. DEVELOPMENT OP INFORMATION IS EXTREMELY DIFFICULT. MEMBERS OF REFUGEE AND PREEXISTING ARGENTINE JEWISH COMMUNITIES ARE EXCEEDINGLY RELUCTANT TO TALK, EVEN THOUGH MEMBERS OF REFUGEE COMMUNITY WERE WELL KNOWN TO SARNOFF IN GERMANY, AND ARE AWARE MOST OF HIS FAMILY HAS GONE INTO CONCENTRATION CAMPS.

  " 'Several thousand' have been gotten out?" Donovan said. "You believe this, Alex?"

  "Ettinger is a very clever fellow," Graham said. "Yeah, I believe it, and so does Cletus Frade, or he wouldn't have sent that."

  "If Mr. Hoover has heard anything about this, he hasn't felt the urge to say anything about it to me," Donovan said.

  "Or anybody here I asked-at least anyone here who felt I had the need to know," Graham said.

  Donovan dropped his eyes to the message again.

  3. INFORMATION DEVELOPED SO FAR INDICATES RANSOM OPERATION (HEREAFTER LINDBERGH) OPERATING WITH SACHSENHAUSEN (POSITIVE) AND BELSEN (PROBABLE) BUT SARNOFF BELIEVES OTHER (PERHAPS ALL) CONCENTRATION CAMPS MAY BE INVOLVED.

  4. INASMUCH AS VACUUM HAS CLOSE TIES TO BUENOS AIRES JEWISH COMMUNITY STRONG POSSIBILITY EXISTS THAT VACUUM IS AWARE OF LINDBERGH. POSSIBILITY EXISTS THAT FURTHER INVESTIGATION BY SARNOFF MIGHT HINDER VACUUM INVESTIGATION. REQUEST DIRECTION.

  "Vacuum is Hoover, right?" Donovan asked. "The FBI?"

  "Right," Graham said. "As in Hoover vacuum cleaner, sucking things up down there. That very cute code name was your idea, as I recall."

  This earned him a dirty look from Donovan, who for a moment seemed about to respond, then changed his mind and resumed reading.

  SS-SD STANDARTENFšHRER JOSEF GOLTZ (HEREAFTER BLACKSUIT) ARRIVED BUENOS AIRES BY LUFTHANSA 9 APRIL. SARNOFF BELIEVES HIGHLY PROBABLE THAT BLACKSUIT MISSION INVOLVES LINDBERGH WHICH COULD NOT OPERATE WITHOUT INVOLVEMENT OF HIGHLY PLACED GERMAN

  OFFICIALS.

  RELIABLE SOURCE (HEREAFTER CAVALRY) INFORMED STACHIEF BLACKSUIT TODAY ORDERED ELIMINATION OF SARNOFF ONLY REPEAT SARNOFF ONLY AS PRIORITY PROJECT. CAVALRY BELIEVES BLACKSUIT PROBABLY ORDERED ASSASSINATION OF WHITEHORSE.

  "Whitehorse is... was... Frade's father, right?" Donovan asked. "Who's this reliable source, 'Cavalry'?"

  "I can only guess. The Ambassador messaged that the red carpet was really rolled out for Frade when he arrived in Argentina. The War Minister, General Ramirez, met his plane and took him to the place where they had his father laid out in state. It could be Ramirez, but I doubt it. Ramirez was Infantry, and Frade's calling whoever it is 'Cavalry.' Maybe General Rawson. He was Cav-alry, and he and Colonel Frade were close. Whoever it is, it's somebody high enough up to have access to their intelligence about German activities. Which also means they must have somebody in the German Embassy."

  Donovan considered that, nodded, and went on reading.

  STACHIEF BELIEVES BLACKSUIT SPECIAL INTEREST IN SARNOFF MAY ALSO BE DUE SARNOFF'S QUESTIONING SHIPPING INTERESTS WHICH MIGHT INVOLVE NEW GROCERYSTORE ACTIVITIES.

  IF FURTHER INVESTIGATION OF LINDBERGH BY SARNOFF IS DIRECTED REQUEST AUTHORITY TO DISCUSS AND POSSIBLY EXCHANGE INFORMATION WITH VACUUM. ABSENT DIRECTION TO CONTRARY SARNOFF WILL CONTINUE INVESTIGATION OF LINDBERGH.

  STACHIEF BELIEVES OPERATION OVERTURN WILL CONTINUE DESPITE LOSS OF WHITEHORSE. MEETING OF OVERTURN LEADERS THIS WEEKEND SUGGESTS STRONG POSSIBILITY OF EXECUTION IN NEAR FUTURE.

  STACHIEF END

  "Do we have anything on this Blacksuit?" Donovan asked.

  "We have Goltz listed as Himmler's liaison officer to Mart¡n Bormann-to the Nazi party," Graham replied. "Longtime Nazi. I think we have to presume that (a) Frade's source is reliable and (b) this fellow has given orders to take out Sarnoff... Ettinger. I'm surprised."

  "Why are you surprised? They took out the entire team we sent down there before we sent Frade's team."

  "I'm surprised that
Blacksuit ordered the elimination of Ettinger only. You picked up on that?" Donovan nodded. "Why not the whole team? The team poses the same threat it did before to their replenishment vessel. So why only Ettinger?"