The Honor of Spies

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

  Having someone say anything against anyone in the inner circle really "excites" the Fuhrer. He reserves that privilege to himself.

  "Let us say, Admiral, that U-405 leaves its current position the day after tomorrow, to meet with a submarine which would depart the pens at Saint-Nazaire at about the same time. How much time would it take it to make the rendezvous, take on the senior person to be smuggled into Argentina, and then sail to wherever it is in Argentina where that would happen?"

  "If you're looking for an answer to give the Fuhrer, Herr Reichsfuhrer, I can give you a rough one off the top of my head, and in ten minutes I can have von und zu Waching come up with estimates accurate within an hour or so."

  "Off the top of your head?"

  "Saint-Nazaire is--off the top of my head--about 6,000 nautical miles from Buenos Aires. Von Dattenberg and the U-405 are about 500 nautical miles from Buenos Aires. So we're talking about splitting 5,500 nautical miles. Presuming fuel consumption is not a problem, and it can sail on the surface, a U-405-class U-boat can make fifteen knots in ordinary seas.

  "Fifty-five hundred miles divided by fifteen is right at 370 hours. Say, two weeks, and a day or two to make the rendezvous. And that much, plus the extra 500 miles, back. Say thirty-two, thirty-three days from the order to go to put your imaginary very important officer on the beach."

  "Buenos Aires is that far?" Himmler asked incredulously.

  "That far, Herr Reichsfuhrer. As I said, von und zu Waching in ten minutes or so could come up with a more precise estimate."

  "I wonder if von Deitzberg will like his ocean voyage," Himmler said, smiling.

  This time Canaris did not--perhaps could not--suppress the look of surprise that crossed his face.

  "Yes, von Deitzberg will make this voyage," Himmler said. "For several reasons: One, I can report that to the Fuhrer. I had hoped to be able to tell him 'SS-Brigadefuhrer von Deitzberg has tested the transport mechanism,' but now I suppose it will be, 'My Fuhrer, as we speak SS-Brigadefuhrer von Deitzberg is personally testing the transport mechanism.'

  "The second reason is that once von Deitzberg has been smuggled into Argentina, he can straighten out the mess we both know exists there. We have to eliminate both the Froggers and that American OSS agent who's causing us all the trouble. What's his name?"

  "Frade, Herr Reichsfuhrer. Cletus Frade."

  "Yes, I'd forgotten. Frade has to be eliminated, and von Deitzberg is the man to do it, since no one else seems to be capable of doing it."

  "You're absolutely right, Herr Reichsfuhrer," Canaris said. "More coffee?"

  "I shouldn't. What is it they say, Canaris? 'The greatest pleasure is indulging one's nasty habits'?"

  "I've heard that, Herr Reichsfuhrer. When do you plan to put this into action?"

  "I'll tell von Deitzberg when he comes to the office. Give him a day to pack, settle things, and another day to get to Saint-Nazaire. You can deal with the navy, can't you, Canaris? I'd really hate to involve Grand Admiral Karl Donitz in this unless I have to."

  "I can deal with the navy, Herr Reichsfuhrer."

  Himmler nodded.

  "And now, before you corrupt me completely with your smuggled coffee, I'd better get back to work. Don't say anything to von Deitzberg, please. I want to see the look on his face when I tell him."

  [THREE]

  The Embassy of the German Reich

  Avenida Cordoba

  Buenos Aires, Argentina

  0910 25 August 1943

  "Herr Cranz is here, Excellency," Fraulein Ingeborg Hassell announced from the door.

  "Ask him to come in, please," Manfred Alois Graf von Lutzenberger said, not quite finishing the sentence before Karl Cranz shouldered past Fraulein Hassell into the room.

  "Heil Hitler!" he announced conversationally. "You wanted to see me, Herr Ambassador?"

  Von Lutzenberger barely acknowledged Cranz's presence.

  "No visitors, no calls, please, Ingeborg," he said, and then he rummaged in a desk drawer as his secretary left the room and closed the door. Finally, he found what he was looking for--a box of matches--and lit one of them, and then a cigarette.

  As he extinguished the match by waving it rapidly, he pointed to a sheet of paper on his desk with his other hand.

  "The only person who's seen that is Schneider," von Lutzenberger said. "He had it waiting for me when I came in this morning."

  Consular Officer Johann Schneider, a twenty-three-year-old Bavarian, was actually an SS-untersturmfuhrer, the equivalent of second lieutenant. He was the first of his lineage ever to achieve officer status, and the first to receive education beyond that offered by the parochial school in his village.

  He gave full credit for his success to Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and the tenets of National Socialism. He believed he had been selected for his assignment to Buenos Aires--instead of being posted to one of the SS-regiments on his graduation from officer candidate school at Bad Tolz--because his superiors recognized in him a dedicated officer of great potential.

  He was never disabused of this notion by any of his superiors in Germany or Buenos Aires. But the truth was that he had been sent to Argentina because he was a splendid typist. The then-senior SS officer in Buenos Aires, Karl-Heinz Gruner--ostensibly the military attache, who wore the uniform of a Wehrmacht oberst but was actually an SS-standartenfuhrer--had confessed to Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler that he had had quite enough of menopausal females and needed a classified files clerk who could type as well as any woman and could be told to work all night, every night, without breaking into tears.

  A sympathetic Himmler had ordered an underling to see what was available for Oberst Gruner at Bad Tolz, and four days later newly commissioned SS-Untersturmfuhrer Schneider had boarded a Lufthansa Condor in Berlin. Thirty-eight hours later, he reported to Gruner in Buenos Aires.

  To keep his new typist/classified file clerk happy--Schneider had immediately made it clear that he believed his Argentine assignment was to assist Gruner in high-level intelligence activities--Gruner had permitted Schneider to think of himself as an unofficial member--or perhaps a probationary member--of the SS-Sicherheitsdienst, or Secret Service.

  Whenever he saw Schneider chafing at the bit over his clerical functions, Gruner ordered him to secretly surveille certain members of the embassy staff, most of them unimportant except for First Secretary Anton von Gradny-Sawz.

  This was because Gruner neither liked von Gradny-Sawz nor fully trusted him. He didn't think men who had changed sides could ever be fully trusted.

  Von Gradny-Sawz's primary--if not official--function around the embassy was what Gruner and Ambassador von Lutzenberger thought of as "handling the canapes"; neither was willing to trust von Gradny-Sawz with anything important, but he was good with the canapes.

  As von Gradny-Sawz was fond of saying, his family had been serving the diplomatic needs of "the state" for hundreds of years. The implication was the German state. The actuality was that von Gradny-Sawz had been in the diplomatic service of the German state only since 1938.

  Before then--before the Anschluss had incorporated Austria into the German Reich as Ostmark--von Gradny-Sawz had been in the Austrian Foreign Service. The ancestors he so proudly spoke of had served the Austro-Hungarian Empire for hundreds of years.

  Having seen the handwriting on the wall before 1938, von Gradny-Sawz had become a devout Nazi, made some contribution to the Anschluss itself, and been taken into the Foreign Service of the German Reich.

  Ambassador von Lutzenberger, who understood how sacred the canape-and-cocktails circuit was to the diplomatic corps, had arranged for von Gradny-Sawz's assignment as his first secretary. Von Gradny-Sawz could charm the diplomatic corps while he attended to business.

  The secret reports on von Gradny-Sawz that Schneider gave to Gruner showed that the first secretary divided his off-duty time about equally between two different sets of friends. The largest group was of deposed titled Eastern European blue bloods, a surprising n
umber of whom had made it to Argentina with not only their lives but most of their crown jewels. The second, smaller group consisted of young, long-legged Argentine beauties whom von Gradny-Sawz squired around town, either unaware or not caring that he looked more than a little ridiculous.

  SS-Oberst Gruner was now gone, lying in what Schneider thought of as a hero's grave in Germany beside his deputy, SS-Standartenfuhrer Josef Luther Goltz. They had been laid to eternal rest with all the panoply the SS could muster, after they had given their lives for the Fuhrer and the Fatherland on the beach of Samborombon Bay while trying to secretly bring ashore a "special shipment" from a Spanish-registered ship in the service of the Reich.

  Specifically, both had been shot in the head by parties unknown, although there was little doubt in anyone's mind that Cletus Frade of the American OSS had at least ordered the killings, and more than likely had pulled the trigger himself.

  Schneider had gone first to Ambassador von Lutzenberger and then, when SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer Karl Cranz had arrived in Buenos Aires to replace Gruner, to Cranz offering to personally eliminate Frade, even if this meant giving his own life to do so.

  Both told him, in effect, that while his zeal to seek vengeance for the murders of Gruner and Goltz was commendable and in keeping with the highest traditions of SS honor, the situation unfortunately required that everyone wait until the time was right to eliminate Frade.

  They told him the greatest contribution he could make to the Final Victory of the Fatherland was to continue what he was doing with regard to handling the classified files, the dispatch and receipt of the diplomatic pouches, and the decryption of the coded messages the embassy received from the Ministry of Communications after they had received them from the Mackay Cable Corporation.

  Neither told him that was sort of a game everyone played. The Mackay Corporation was an American-owned enterprise. They pretended that they did not--either in Lisbon, Portugal, or Berne, Switzerland--make copies of all German traffic and pass them to either the OSS or the U.S. Embassy. And the Germans pretended not to suspect this was going on.

  Important messages from or to Berlin were transmitted by "officer courier," which most often meant the pilot, copilot, or flight engineer on the Lufthansa Condor flights between the German and Argentine capitals.

  And when these messages reached the Buenos Aires embassy, they were decoded personally by Ambassador von Lutzenberger or Commercial Attache Cranz, not Schneider. Schneider had no good reason--any reason at all--to know the content of the messages.

  Cranz picked up the message and read it:

  Cranz looked at von Lutzenberger.

  "You said Schneider had this waiting for you when you came in this morning?"

  Von Lutzenberger nodded.

  "A Condor arrived in the wee hours," he said. "Our Johann met it, and the courier gave him that."

  "When did you start letting 'Our Johann' decode messages like this?"

  "It came that way," von Lutzenberger said, and handed Cranz two envelopes. "The outer one is addressed to 'The Ambassador'; the inner one said 'Sole and Personal Attention of Ambassador von Lutzenberger.' "

  "Interesting," Cranz said as he very carefully examined both envelopes.

  "It could be that they were preparing to send it as a cable, and then for some reason decided to send it on the Condor," von Lutzenberger suggested.

  Cranz considered that for a long moment.

  "If a Condor was coming, that would keep it out of the hands of Mackay," Cranz said, and then wondered aloud, "Not encrypted?"

  Von Lutzenberger shrugged.

  "Maybe there wasn't time; the Condor may have been leaving right then. And that brings us to the question: 'What the hell is this all about?' "

  "Questions," von Lutzenberger corrected him. " 'Who is this senior officer?' 'What is he going to do once he gets here?' And most important: 'What are we going to do about this?' "

  Cranz nodded, signifying he agreed there was more than one question.

  "Was there anybody interesting on the Condor?"

  "Businessmen, two doctors for the German Hospital. No one interesting."

  "Which means the Condor could have been held at Tempelhof."

  "Unless that might have delayed the Condor a day, and they wanted to get this to us as soon as possible."

  "Which brings us back to: 'What are we going to do about it?' " Cranz said.

  "Unless you have some objection, or better suggestion, what I'm going to do is tell Schneider that he is to tell no one anything about the message for me. Then I'm going to call Gradny-Sawz in here as soon as he comes to work, show him this, and tell him that he is to tell no one about it, and that he is responsible for getting the identity card, the driver's license, et cetera, and the apartment."

  "And not bring Boltitz and von Wachtstein in on this?"

  "And not bring anyone else in on this, anyone else. Then, if it gets out, we will know from whom it came."

  Cranz considered that for a long moment, then nodded.

  "Raschner?" he asked.

  "That's up to you, of course. But I can see no reason why he has to be told about this now."

  After a moment, Cranz nodded again.

  [FOUR]

  Aeropuerto Coronel Jorge G. Frade

  Moron, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

  1545 30 August 1943

  First Lieutenant Anthony J. Pelosi, Corps of Engineers, AUS, who was an assistant military attache of the United States Embassy, stood outside the door of Base Operations and watched as a South American Airways Lodestar turned on final, dropped its landing gear, and touched smoothly down on the runway.

  Pelosi was in uniform and could have posed for a U.S. Army recruiting poster. He wore "pinks and greens," as the Class "A" uniform of green tunic and pink trousers was known. The thick silver cord aiguillette of an attache hung from one of his epaulettes. His sharply creased trousers were "bloused" around his gleaming paratrooper boots.

  Silver parachutist's wings were pinned to the tunic. Below the wings were his medals--not the striped ribbons ordinarily worn in lieu thereof. There were just three medals: the Silver Star, the National Defense Service Medal, and the medal signifying service in the American Theatre of Operations.

  Pelosi was one of the very few officers--perhaps the only one--to have been awarded the nation's third-highest medal for valor in combat in the American Theatre of Operations. There was virtually no combat action in the American Theatre of Operations. The citation for the medal was rather vague. It said he had performed with valor above and beyond the call of duty at great risk to his life in a classified combat action against enemies of the United States, thereby reflecting great credit upon himself, the United States Army, the United States of America, and the State of Illinois.

  He could not discuss--especially in Argentina--what he had done to earn the Silver Star.

  Pelosi had earned the medal while flying in a Beechcraft Staggerwing aircraft piloted by then-First Lieutenant Cletus H. Frade, USMCR. What they had done--getting shot down in the process--was illuminate with flares a Spanish-registered merchant vessel then at anchor in Samborombon Bay.

  Illuminating the ship, which was then in the process of replenishing the fuel and food supplies of a German submarine, had permitted the U.S. submarine Devil Fish to cause both the submarine and the ship to disappear in a spectacular series of explosions.

  All of this naval activity--German, Spanish, and American--was in gross violation of the neutrality of the Republic of Argentina. Samborombon Bay, on the River Plate, was well within Argentine waters. After some lengthy consideration, the government of Argentina decided the wisest course of action was to pretend the engagement had never happened.

  But of course the story had gotten out. The officers with whom Lieutenant Pelosi had shared an official lunch for military and naval attaches of the various embassies at the Officers' Casino at Campo de Mayo--the reason he was wearing his uniform--knew not only the story but also of Pel
osi's role in it.

  No one had mentioned it, of course, but it sort of hung in the air. Pelosi had been understandably invisible to the German naval attache, Kapitan zur See Boltitz; the German assistant military attache for air, Major Hans-Peter Baron von Wachtstein; and to their Japanese counterparts.

  Peter von Wachtstein had managed to discreetly acknowledge Tony Pelosi while they were standing at adjacent urinals, and some Argentine officers--all naval officers but one--had been quite cordial, as had the Italian naval and military attaches. That, Tony reasoned, was probably because King Victor Emmanuel had bounced Il Duce and had the bastard locked up someplace.

  South American Airways Lodestar tail number 007 was wanded into a parking spot beside almost a dozen of its identical brothers.

  The rear door opened and Sergeant Major Enrico Rodriguez (Ret'd) came down the stairs, carrying his shotgun. When he saw Pelosi, he smiled.

  "Don Cletus will be out in a minute," he announced. "I have to find a truck."

  Pelosi asked with hand gestures if he could go into the aircraft. Enrico replied with a thumbs-up gesture, and as he walked away, Pelosi marched toward the aircraft and went inside.

  The chief pilot of South American Airways, Gonzalo Delgano, and the managing director of the airline, Cletus Frade, were in the passenger compartment. Pelosi saw that all but two of the seats had been removed. There were two enormous aluminum boxes strapped in place.

  Delgano was in uniform: The uniform prescribed for SAA captains was a woolen powder blue tunic with four gold stripes on the sleeves, darker blue trousers with a golden stripe down the seam, a white shirt with powder blue necktie, and a leather brimmed cap with a huge crown. On the tunic's breast were outsized golden wings, in the center of which, superimposed on the Argentine sunburst, were the letters SAA.

  Chief Pilot Delgano, as was probably to be expected, had five golden stripes on his tunic sleeves and the band around his brimmed cap was of gold cloth.