The Honor of Spies

by W. E. B. Griffin; William E. Butterworth; IV

"What is your first--I almost said 'Christian'--name?"

  Stein looked at Frade again, and Frade nodded again.

  "Sigfried," he said, not very pleasantly. "Jewish first name Sigfried."

  "May I call you 'Sigfried'? Or would you prefer 'Major Stein'?"

  "Siggie is what people call me," he said finally.

  "Forgive me, Siggie," Mother Superior said. "I have to ask you this: Have you even done anything to her--said something cruel, or struck her, restrained her, anything like that?"

  "No, ma'am," Stein said. "Never. Not that I haven't been tempted." He heard what he had blurted and quickly added: "Sorry, I shouldn't have said that."

  Mother Superior made an It doesn't matter gesture with both hands.

  She said: "I thought I knew that when I looked into your eyes. You have very kind eyes. Siggie, if you're willing, you can be very important in bringing la Senora Fischer back to good health."

  "Excuse me?"

  "We don't have to get into the details now. I just need to know if you'd be willing to help."

  Stein looked at Frade, whose face showed nothing.

  "If it's all right with the major," Stein said finally, "then okay. I'll do what I can."

  "It would help, Siggie," Frade said. "Having her craz . . . like she is now isn't doing us any good."

  "Okay. Just tell me what you want me to do."

  "I'll have to give it some thought," Mother Superior said. "Knowing that you're willing to help will be useful."

  She turned to Delgano and Sawyer.

  "And you are?"

  They introduced themselves.

  "What is that you're drinking, Cletus?" Mother Superior asked.

  "Wine," Frade said. "They make it from grapes."

  "You've obviously had more of it than you should," she said.

  "You're right, Clete," Sawyer said. "Mother Superior would make a fine gunnery sergeant."

  "May I offer you a glass?" Clete said.

  "What is it?" she asked, and went to the bar, picked up the bottle, and examined the label.

  "This has to be vinegar," she said.

  Clete shook his head. He poured wine an inch deep in a glass and offered it to her.

  Surprising him, she took it, smelled it, took a small sip, swirled it around in her mouth, then swallowed. She pushed the glass to him.

  He poured three inches of wine into the glass.

  "'Take a little wine for thy stomach's sake,'" he said. "That's from Saint Timothy."

  "Yes, I know," she said. "You took that from there?"

  She indicated the wine rack.

  He nodded.

  "It's hard to believe, but that wine must have been there the last time I was in this room. The last time you and I were in this room."

  "I've never been in this room before in my life," Clete said.

  "Yes, you have. Your mother put you on that couch"--she pointed--"and then put two of those chairs"--she pointed again--"up against it so you wouldn't roll over and fall on the floor. You were a very active baby."

  Frade didn't say anything.

  "It was the night your mother and father took the train to Buenos Aires to take the Panagra flight to Miami. The train left at eight, so we had an early supper in here. That was the last time I saw you until you came to the convent today."

  Clete didn't reply.

  Mother Superior didn't quite gulp the wine, but the glass was nearly empty much sooner than Clete expected it to be. Clete picked up the bottle, but she put her hand over the glass.

  "I have to drive," she said.

  "Why don't you take a couple of bottles--hell, a dozen bottles--with you?"

  She didn't reply to that. Instead, she said, "I was just thinking that despite what you think, rather than coming here for the first time, you are really coming home. And that Casa Montagna, after waiting so long for that to happen, has really been expecting you, is prepared for you."

  What the hell is she talking about?

  Mother Superior turned to Dorotea.

  "How far are you along?"

  "Six months," Dorotea said.

  "I'll have a look at you tomorrow. Everything, so far as you know, is going well?"

  Dorotea nodded.

  Mother Superior went behind the bar, took two bottles of the Cabernet Sauvignon from the rack, and put them into her medical bag.

  "Sister Caroline is not impressed with the wisdom of Saint Timothy," Mother Superior said. "And I don't like to upset her."

  Clete chuckled.

  "Enrico," Mother Superior said, "if you were to somehow wrap or box or whatever a half-dozen bottles of the wine so that it doesn't look like half a dozen bottles of wine, and put them in the van when I come here tomorrow, I would be grateful to you."

  "Si, Reverend Mother. I will do it."

  There was half an inch of wine left in Mother Superior's glass. She drained it and walked out of the room.

  "That is a very nice woman," Dorotea said.

  "That is a very tough woman," Frade said admiringly.

  He turned to Sawyer.

  "Do they teach Army officers how to lay in a machine gun? Fields of fire, that sort of thing?"

  "Only the brighter ones," Sawyer said. "Parachute officers, for example."

  "First thing in the morning, get with Enrico, see what's available, reconnoiter the area, and let me know what you think should be done."

  "Yes, sir," Sawyer said.

  "I have already done that, Don Cletus," Enrico said.

  "Okay, then show Captain Sawyer how things are done by the Husares de Pueyrredon."

  Enrico nodded.

  "When do we eat?" Frade asked.

  "Half an hour, Don Cletus."

  "Which I will spend writing the after-action report for Colonel Graham."

  "Do you have to do that tonight?" Dorotea asked.

  "Yeah, baby, I do."

  Sending the report was a three-stage process. First, Clete wrote it on a typewriter. Then he edited what he had written, using a pencil. Dorotea then took this and re typed it on the keyboard of the SIGABA device. This caused a strip of perforated paper, which now held the encrypted report, to stream out of the SIGABA. Siggie Stein, after making sure that the SIGABA device at Vint Hill Farms Station was ready to receive, fed the strip of paper to the Collins transceiver.

  Not quite a minute later, Stein reported that the message had been received in Virginia.

  Frade nodded. "Good. Now, let's eat."

  Clete had the same uncomfortable feeling--one of intrusion--as he entered the master suite--now his--of Casa Montagna that he had felt the first time he had moved into his father's bedroom in the big house on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.

  But now it was worse.

  There had been nothing of his mother's in the master suite at the estancia.

  Here, before a mirrored dressing table, were vials of perfume, jars of cosmetics, a comb, and a hairbrush with blond hair still on it.

  And that got worse.

  He pulled open a drawer in a chest of drawers and found himself looking at underwear that had to be his mother's.

  He slammed the drawer closed.

  Dorotea came out of the bathroom in a negligee.

  "There's a set of straight razors in there, and a mug of shaving soap," she announced. "All dried out, of course, but I put water in it. That might make it usable. Who knows?"

  Clete didn't reply.

  "It looks as if they expected to come back," Dorotea said.

  "Yeah."

  "I wonder what's in here?" Dorotea said, pulled open a door, and gasped. "Oh, God! Clete, look at this!"

  He went to the door and looked in.

  There was a crib, and infant's toys, and a table--he had no idea what they called it--where an infant could be washed and dried and have diapers changed. And shelves, with stacks of folded cotton diapers and a large can of Johnson's baby powder.

  "Jesus Christ!" he said, almost under his breath.

  "I wondered what s
he was talking about," Dorotea said.

  "What who was talking about?"

  "Mother Superior, when she said you were really coming home. That this house has really been expecting you, is prepared for you."

  He looked at her but said nothing.

  "She should have said for us," Dorotea said. "For us and our baby."

  She saw the look on his face.

  "I want to have our baby here, darling. I want to wash him in there, where your mother washed you, and change his nappy with your nappies."

  He tried to ask, "How can you be sure the baby's a him?"

  But only three words came out before he lost his voice, and his chest heaved, and he realized he was crying.

  Dorotea went to him, held him against her breast, and stroked his hair.

  [FOUR]

  Office of the Deputy Director for Western

  Hemisphere Operations

  Office of Strategic Services

  National Institutes of Health Building

  Washington, D.C.

  0720 15 August 1943

  A second lieutenant of the U.S. Army Signal Corps was sitting in one of the chairs in the outer office when Colonel A. F. Graham, uncommonly in uniform, came to work--as usual, before his secretary had gotten there.

  Lieutenant Leonard Fischer stood and more or less came to attention. He was holding a sturdy leather briefcase. Graham saw that he was attached to the briefcase with a handcuff and chain, and that one of the lower pockets of his uniform blouse sagged--as if, for example, it held a Colt Model 1911A1 .45 ACP pistol.

  "Good morning, Fischer," Graham said as he waved the young officer ahead of him into his office. "Dare I hope we have heard from Gaucholand?"

  "Yes, sir," Fischer said, and held up the briefcase.

  "And?"

  "That Marine has landed, sir, and the situation is well in hand."

  Graham smiled at him, waved him into a chair, and waited for him to detach the briefcase and unlock it. He took from it a manila envelope, stamped TOP SECRET in several places in large red letters, then got up and walked to Graham's desk and handed it to him.

  "I would offer you a cup of coffee, Len, but I don't think there is any."

  "Not a problem, sir."

  Graham tore open the envelope, took two sheets of paper from it, and started to read from them.

  From previous messages, Graham knew that BIS was Gonzalo Delgano, the Bureau of Interior Security man assigned to watch Frade and South American Airways; that Galahad (the courageous knight on the white horse) was Major von Wachtstein; that JohnPaul was Kapitan zur See Boltitz (after naval hero John Paul Jones); and that Tio Hank was Frade's Uncle Humberto Duarte, managing director of the Banco de Inglaterra y Argentina.

  If Tio Hank's going to confirm Grape history--that Frogger is a South African winegrower--that means Frade probably told him what's going on. I don't know if that was smart or not.

  But it's his call. I am sitting behind a desk in Washington.

  Why do I think Cletus had more than a little grape when he wrote this? Because that's the code name he gave Colonel Frogger?

  The question was answered in the next several paragraphs.

  Graham knew the Tourists were the Froggers, Tio Juan was Juan Domingo Peron, Sidekick was Suboficial Mayor Rodriguez, and Beermug was Staff Sergeant Stein.

  How in hell will he keep what must have been a hell of a firefight and six dead Germans from coming out?

  Jedgar, from J. Edgar Hoover, was el Coronel Martin of the BIS.

  Christ, they tried to kill him again!

  And he's right. Allen will be interested in the Argentine agricultural attache in Berlin.

  Unless he already knows him. Which is likely.

  Not only was he half in the bag when he started to write this, he obviously had a couple of belts while he was writing it.

  And the one thing I can't do is let Donovan see it.

  "It strays a little from the form and substance one expects from an official after-action report, wouldn't you say, Lieutenant Fischer?"

  "Just a little, sir."

  "Things like that tend to upset Director Donovan. So, what I'm going to do, just as soon as my secretary gets here, is dictate a synopsis . . ."

  As if on cue, the office door opened and his secretary, a gray-haired middle-aged woman, walked in.

  "Good morning, Colonel," she said.

  ". . . and send that to him," Graham finished. "Good morning, Grace. Would you get your pad and pencil, please?"

  "Before or after I get you your wake-up cup of coffee?"

  "Coffee won't be necessary. Lieutenant Fischer and I are going to have breakfast at the Army-Navy Club and put to rest those nasty rumors that the Army and Marine Corps don't talk to each other."

  She backed out of the office and returned a moment later with a steno graphic notepad in hand.

  "Interoffice memorandum, Secret, dictated but not signed, to the director," Graham dictated. "Subject: Major Cletus Frade, After-Action Report of. The Marine has landed, situation well in hand. Respectfully submitted."

  "Do I get to see it?" Grace asked.

  "Not only do you get to see it, but after you have it microfilmed and send that over to State for inclusion in today's diplomatic pouch to Mr. Dulles in Berne, you get to file it someplace where it can't possibly come to the attention of the director."

  She shook her head, and said, "Yes, sir."

  "Give the nice lady your briefcase, Len. And the pistol. We don't want to scare people at the Army-Navy Club."

  V

  [ONE]

  Fuhrerhauptquartier Wolfsschanze

  Near Rastenburg, Ostpreussen, Germany

  0655 19 August 1943

  Generalleutnant Graf Karl-Friedrich von Wachtstein--a short, slight, nearly bald, fifty-four-year-old--walked briskly down a cinder path from the Fuhrerhauptquartier bunker to the bunker in which Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel, Germany's senior military officer--he was chief of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht--had his quarters.

  Wolfsschanze held fifty bunkers--ugly buildings with eight- and ten-foot-thick concrete walls and roofs. Wehrmacht engineers had begun--in great secrecy and on a cost-be-damned basis--the construction of "Wolf 's Lair" in 1940. A 3.5-square-kilometer area in the forest east of Rastenburg in East Prussia had been encircled with an electrified barbed-wire fence and minefields.

  Next came the erection of another barbed-wire enclosure inside the outer barrier. Only then, within this interior barrier, had construction begun of the artillery-proof and aerial-bomb-proof bunkers. The compound had its own power-generating system, a railway station with a bomb-proof siding for the Fuhrer's private train, an airstrip (between the inner and outer fences), several mess halls, a movie theater, and a teahouse.

  An SS-hauptsturmfuhrer and two enlisted men, all armed with Schmeisser machine pistols, stood outside the heavy steel door to Keitel's bunker.

  "Generalleutnant von Wachtstein to see the generalfeldmarschall. I am ex pected."

  The hauptsturmfuhrer clicked his heels and nodded to one of the enlisted men, who walked quickly to the steel door and pulled it open, standing to attention as von Wachtstein walked into the bunker.

  Von Wachtstein found himself in a small room. An oberstleutnant, a stabsfeldwebel, and a feldwebel, who had been sitting behind a simple wooden table, jumped to their feet.

  The oberstleutnant gave the straight-armed Nazi salute.

  "Good morning, Herr General," he said. "You are expected. If you would be so good as to accompany the stabsfeldwebel?"

  Von Wachtstein followed the warrant officer farther into the bunker to another steel door, which he pulled open just enough to admit his head. He announced, "Generalleutnant von Wachtstein, Herr Generalfeldmarschall."

  "Admit him."

  The door was opened wider. Von Wachtstein marched in, came to attention, and gave the Nazi salute.

  Keitel, a tall erect man who was not wearing his tunic, had obviously just finished shaving
; there was a blob of shaving cream next to his ear and another under his nose.

  "Well?" he demanded.

  "Reichsmarschall Goring, Herr Generalfeldmarschall, reports there is some mechanical difficulty with his aircraft, and there is no way he can get from Budapest here before three this afternoon, or later."

  Keitel considered that a moment.

  "In this regrettable circumstance, von Wachtstein, I see no alternative to you informing the Fuhrer. He will, of course, want to know of this incident as soon as possible."

  "Jawohl, Herr Generalfeldmarschall."

  The "incident" was the suicide of Generaloberst Hans Jeschonnek, chief of the general staff of the Luftwaffe, who had shot himself just after midnight.

  Among his other duties, Jeschonnek, Goring's deputy, had been charged--personally, by the Fuhrer--with the protection of the rocket establishment at Peenemunde. Hitler believed that once rocket scientist Wernher von Braun "worked the bugs out" of the V2 missile, it would cow the English into suing for peace.

  The V2, which had a speed of about a mile a second, carried 1,620 pounds of high explosive in its warhead. It had a range of two hundred miles, enough to reach large parts of England. The bugs that Hitler expected von Braun to soon work out concerned navigation. The best accuracy obtained so far was that half of all missiles launched could be reasonably expected to land within an eleven-mile circle.

  The rockets considerably annoyed the British, but they didn't by any means cow them. Their solution to the problem was to ask the Americans to destroy Peenemunde with B-17 bombers, as Peenemunde was too small a target to be seen by their Lancaster bombers at night.

  Jeschonnek was not only unable to stop the Americans, whose bombs just about destroyed the Peenemunde installation, but made things far worse for himself by deciding that a large formation of fighter aircraft near Berlin were American and ordering the Berlin antiaircraft to shoot them down. The attack had knocked nearly one hundred of them from the sky.

  Unfortunately for the Reich, they turned out to be German fighter planes. When Jeschonnek learned of this, he put his pistol in his mouth and blew his brains all over the concrete walls of his bunker quarters.