The Honor of Spies

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

  "Since we are still off the record, Cletus, I will admit that was brilliant, what you did at the airfield."

  "You are too kind, Alejandro."

  And it was.

  Colonel Graham actually orchestrated that entire arrival business like a symphony conductor.

  But, Alejandro, if you want to think I'm that clever, help yourself!

  "What did you say about borrowing money?"

  "My grandfather, who always knows a bargain when he sees one, has elected to make a substantial investment in South American Airways."

  "Wouldn't that make it a mostly North American-owned company?"

  "Not at all. As you know, I am an Argentine by birth. And many years ago, when he first started looking for oil in Venezuela, my grandfather became a citizen of that splendid South American country. Something to do with excessive taxes laid on foreigners. You know, dual citizenship. Like me. SAA is entirely owned by South Americans."

  Martin shook his head.

  "You're good, Cletus. This round goes to you."

  "That suggests there will be other rounds."

  "You and I both know there will be," Martin said.

  "All I can do is hope that your careful scrutiny of every little detail of our operations, which I fully expect will finally convince you that my motive in this is solely to make a lot of money. And, of course, to add a little prestige to the country of my birth."

  "You already have a lot of money."

  "Money is like sex, Alejandro," Frade said solemnly. "You can never get too much of it."

  Martin laughed, but then said: "I already warned you that I've learned you are most dangerous when you're playing the clown."

  "Can we turn to this 'you have to see me on a matter of life-and-death importance'?" Frade said. "I never clown about things like life and death."

  "Neither do I," Martin replied. "Okay. Here it is: The Germans may be planning to kidnap your father-in-law, your mother-in-law, and your brother-in-law, and exchange them for the Froggers."

  Frade didn't say a word.

  After a long moment, Martin said, "For God's sake, Cletus, don't pretend you don't have the Froggers."

  "What I was thinking was: How good is your source?"

  "It came from someone in a position to know," Martin said.

  "That's not the same thing as saying 'reliable' or 'very reliable,' is it? Where'd you get that, Alejandro?"

  "Next question?"

  "You've got somebody in the German Embassy?" Frade said, but before Martin could respond, he went on: "I don't understand why they would tell you that. Or, if this is true, why they haven't already done it. It's probably bullshit, which brings me back to: Why did they tell you?"

  "It may very well be, to use your word, bullshit. But, on the other hand, they just might be getting ready to kidnap your in-laws."

  "You've said 'may be planning' and 'just might be getting ready.' Which suggests to me that you don't have much faith in your source."

  Martin didn't reply for a long moment, then asked: "You're hearing this for the first time?"

  Frade nodded. "I never even thought of something like this as a possibility."

  "I'm surprised. You generally think of just about everything. Unless, of course, you have a reason for believing the Germans won't do anything to get the Froggers back."

  "Short of causing harm to me or anyone close to me, they're capable and probably willing to do anything to get the Froggers back." He stopped and smiled at Martin. " 'The Froggers.' There's that name again. Who are the Froggers, incidentally? I never heard of them."

  Martin shook his head in resignation. "Tell me," he said, "why won't they cause harm to you or people close to you?"

  "I thought I told you that."

  "Tell me again."

  "I told my beloved Tio Juan--and you were there, Alejandro, when I called him from my house on Coronel Diaz, right after they tried to kill Enrico and me--that I was giving him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't have time to call off his German friends, but that he'd better get right on the phone."

  "I remember that. But I don't remember hearing what it was that el Coronel Peron was supposed to tell the Germans that would make them reluctant to harm you."

  "Well, for one thing, there's photographs of my Tio Juan with the SS just before they shot up my house in Tandil. I don't think the Germans would like to see them plastered all over the front pages of La Nacion, La Prensa, et cetera."

  Martin's eyebrows rose.

  "Uh-huh," Frade said, nodding. "And then there are photographs of boats trying to smuggle crates from the Spanish-registered merchantman Comerciante del Oceano Pacifico onto the beach at Samborombon Bay. Taken from up close with one of those marvelous German Leica cameras. Some of those pictures show the German assistant military attache for air . . . What's his name?"

  "Galahad, maybe?"

  Frade, looking forward and showing no reaction, said, "'Galahad' ? Never heard that name, either. Now I remember: von Wachtstein. The photos--remarkably clear photographs, as I said--show von Wachtstein loading the bodies of the German military attache, Oberst Gruner, and his assistant, Standartenfuhrer Goltz, onto the Oceano Pacifico's boats. Very graphic photographs. Both men had been shot in the head. Blood and brain tissue all over them. And von Wachtstein."

  Martin exhaled audibly. He said, "Well, I suppose keeping those photographs out of the newspapers would tend to make the Germans reluctant to really make you angry."

  "And there are more."

  "If you have these photographs . . ."

  "I have them, and there's more."

  Martin raised his hand to interrupt him.

  "I can't help but wonder why you just don't give them to the press."

  "Next question?"

  Martin shrugged his acceptance of the rules.

  "I've changed my mind," Frade said thoughtfully a moment later. "But this is really off the record, Alejandro."

  Martin nodded.

  "President Roosevelt made the decision that as outrageous as Operation Phoenix is, and as despicable and disgusting as the SS-run Buy-the-Jews-Out-of-Extermination-Camps Operation is, as much as he would like to expose both operations to the world, the bottom line is that some Jews are being saved from the ovens. If it came out, no more Jews could be saved, and the Germans would probably kill the rest of the Jews as quickly as possible so there would be no proof, no witnesses."

  Martin exhaled audibly again. This time it sounded like a groan.

  "My orders are to keep track of where that money is going," Frade said. "So that when the war is over--"

  "That's an admission, you realize . . ."

  "Yeah. I realized that when I decided you had a right to know what's going on."

  "And the Froggers are giving you information, or at least names--that sort of thing--regarding the money from both Operation Phoenix and the other one? Does the other one have a name?"

  "The who? Never heard of them. And, no, the other filthy operation doesn't have a name."

  "Do the Germans know you know about the unnamed operation?"

  "They don't know how much we know about it."

  "How much do you know?"

  "A good deal. And when the war is over, when faced with the alternative of either telling us what we don't know or a hangman's noose, I suspect the slimy SS bastard running the operation in Montevideo will sing like a canary."

  "Montevideo?"

  Frade nodded.

  "Your sergeant was killed in Montevideo," Martin said.

  "Technical Sergeant David Ettinger," Frade said. "They stuck an ice pick in his ear in the garage of the Hotel Casino de Carrasco. More precisely, the SS bastard hired a local assassin--probably assassins--to do it. Ettinger was getting too close to that unnamed operation."

  "Has the 'SS bastard' a name?"

  "Why do you want his name?"

  "For my general fund of knowledge, Cletus."

  "There is a man in Montevideo who was offended by what hap
pened to David Ettinger . . ."

  "An American, perhaps?"

  Frade nodded.

  "Maybe in the OSS?"

  "Next question?" Frade said, and then went on: "This man believes in the Old Testament adage about an eye for an eye. But he was refused permission to take out the SS bastard. That's when they told us FDR had decided that he wanted the unnamed operation to continue, to save as many Jews as possible. To keep an eye on this SS bastard, but keep him in place. If you had his name, Alejandro, I don't know what you'd do with it."

  "I understand," Martin said. "If I were you, I wouldn't trust me with it either. Even if I gave you my word that I would keep it to myself, and pass on to you anything that came my way about him. And the unnamed operation."

  They locked eyes for a long moment.

  "Sturmbannfuhrer Werner von Tresmarck," Frade said. "He has diplomatic cover, of course. He's a homosexual. His wife is involved in it up to her eyeballs . . ."

  "I thought you just said he was homosexual."

  Frade nodded. "He is. That's how they keep him in line. He either does what they tell him, with absolute honesty, and keeps his mouth shut, or he winds up in a concentration camp with a pink triangle pinned to his suit."

  "And the wife?"

  "Inge. She is not homosexual. That's what they call an understatement. She was sort of a high-class hooker in Berlin after her first husband was killed in Russia. She was given the choice between marrying this guy and keeping an eye on him, or going to work in a factory. Inge is feathering her own nest with what she can skim from the unnamed operation money."

  "If I didn't know better, I'd think someone--Galahad probably--also knows Senora von Tresmarck and has been gossiping about her to you."

  "I don't know anybody named Galahad. I thought I told you that."

  Martin smiled. He was silent for a long moment. Then, quietly, he said, "If I understand you, Cletus, until I told you about this kidnapping of the Mallins, you thought you had sort of an arrangement, an armistice, with the Germans."

  "An uneasy armistice, but yeah. They would be very unpopular in Berlin if they got themselves declared persona non grata and got kicked out of Argentina. So--I thought--they'd be willing to just let things stand as they are while they're waiting for their ultimate victory."

  "Then what's this kidnapping about?"

  "Now you sound as if you believe it's serious."

  "I'm not prepared to ignore it. Are you?"

  "So if you're not prepared to ignore it, what are you doing about it?"

  Martin, obviously considering his answer, took a long moment before re plying.

  "I've got people on them," he said finally. "All of them. Including your fa ther-in-law."

  "Which might tip our German friends that you know of the plan, and wonder where you got your information," Frade said.

  Martin did not reply, but after a moment shrugged his agreement.

  "How about this?" Frade suggested. "Tomorrow morning, I take my mother-in-law and the boy to Mendoza . . ."

  "I heard you had Dona Dorotea at Casa Montagna," Martin said. "What's that all about?"

  "Next question? And how come you know about Casa Montagna?"

  "Next question?"

  "As I was saying, I'll put some people from the estancia on my father-in-law," Frade said. "Conspicuously. Four guys--all ex-Husares--in a station wagon with 'Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo' painted on the doors. He won't like it, but I don't think he wants to go to Mendoza, and I'm sure he doesn't want to be kidnapped."

  "Is he going to be at Dona Claudia's little party?"

  "Reluctantly, I think."

  "This is none of my business, but why doesn't he like you?"

  "You mean, what prompted him to tell his wife--he didn't know I was in the house, of course--'I curse the day that depraved gringo sonofabitch walked through our door!'?"

  "He actually said that?"

  "It may have something to do with me going to be the father of his first grandchild."

  "But why 'depraved'?"

  "That probably has something to do with me marrying his daughter."

  "His opinion of you doesn't seem to bother you much."

  "It bothers me a lot, even when I think that a married man--married to a really great woman like Dorotea's mother--who had a mistress doesn't have a hell of a lot of right to ride up on the high horse of righteousness."

  "You know the mistress? Ex-mistress?"

  "Why does that make me think you know her?"

  "I wouldn't know her, Cletus, if she walked into Dona Claudia's party on the arm of a diplomat."

  Frade nodded at Martin. Somehow, the nod expressed thanks.

  [FIVE]

  Office of the Ambassador

  The Embassy of the German Reich

  Avenida Cordoba

  Buenos Aires, Argentina

  0930 20 September 1943

  Major Hans-Peter von Wachtstein walked into the office carrying a thick sheaf of eight-by-ten-inch photographs. He was in civilian clothing. Gunther Loche, carrying a nearly identical stack of photographs, followed him.

  Von Wachtstein laid the photographs on Ambassador von Lutzenberger's desk and motioned for Loche to do the same thing. Then von Wachtstein came to attention, clicked his heels, gave the Nazi salute, and said, "Heil Hitler!"

  Loche tried and almost succeeded in doing the same simultaneously.

  Ambassador von Lutzenberger returned the salute.

  Commercial Attache Karl Cranz glowered at von Wachtstein.

  Anton von Gradny-Sawz demanded, "Where in the world have you been?"

  There was no expression on the face of the naval attache, Kapitan zur See Karl Boltitz.

  Von Wachtstein pointed to the two stacks on von Lutzenberger's desk.

  "Since six this morning, Herr von Gradny-Sawz, I have been up to my ears in chemicals in the photo lab. As you can see, there are a great many photographs."

  "There were a great many photographs in the press, von Wachtstein," Cranz said. "Presumably you've seen them?"

  "No, sir."

  "Have a look, von Wachtstein," Cranz said, and pointed to the conference table. There were at least a dozen newspapers spread out on it. On the front pages of all of them were photographs--sometimes just one, more often two and even three or four--of what had happened at Aeropuerto Coronel Jorge G. Frade the previous afternoon.

  Just about all of them had a photo of the SAA Constellation coming in for a landing. And there were shots of the Constellation as it taxied up to the hangar with Argentine flags flying from holders at the cockpit windows. Others showed Gonzalo Delgano saluting General Rawson, of Rawson embracing Delgano, of Rawson, hands on hips, looking up with admiration--maybe even awe--at the enormous airplane.

  "Take a look at that one, von Wachtstein," Cranz said, pointing to a photo of a beaming General Rawson embracing Cletus Frade. He then read aloud the cutline under one of the photos:

  " 'The President of the Republic embraces Don Cletus Frade, Managing Director of South American Airways. Frade is the son of the late and beloved Coronel Jorge G. Frade, whose monument is now the airport named in his memory, from which the new aircraft will soon begin to fly to Europe.' "

  He paused, looked at von Wachtstein, and challenged, "Well?"

  "Excuse me, Herr Cranz?"

  "Wouldn't you say you've been wasting your time, 'up to your ears in chemicals ,' printing photographs that were already spread across the front page of every goddamn newspaper in Argentina?"

  Von Wachtstein's face tightened, but his voice was under control when he said, "With respect, Herr Cranz, I don't think our engineers could do much with newspaper photographs of the Constellation."

  "What did you say?" asked von Gradny-Sawz.

  "I'm sure our engineers will be very interested in the photographs I took of the Constellation."

  "Why?"

  "Because it is the fastest, largest long-range transport aircraft in the world," von Wachtstein said.

&n
bsp; "You're not suggesting that it is a better aircraft than our Condor?" von Gradny-Sawz pursued.

  Help came from an unexpected source:

  "Obviously, von Gradny-Sawz, it is," Cranz said. "Von Wachtstein is suggesting our engineers will want to know as much about it as they can learn."

  "I didn't think about that," von Gradny-Sawz said.

  "Obviously," Cranz said dryly. "And he's right. It is going to be a problem for us in several areas. Propaganda Minister Goebbels is going to be very unhappy when this story--these pictures--appears in newspapers all over the world. And the Americans will make sure that it does."

  "But it's not a new airplane," von Gradny-Sawz argued.

  "Yes, it is, you Trottel !" Cranz snapped. "And it has never before (a) been in the hands of anyone but the Americans or (b) used to transport people across the Atlantic from a third-rate country--"

  "More people and faster," von Wachtstein interjected.

  Cranz nodded and went on: "Suggesting that the Americans have so many of them they can spare some for Argentina."

  If von Gradny-Sawz took offense at being called a Trottel--which translated variously as "moron," "clown," but most often as "blithering idiot"--there was no sign of it on his face.

  Cranz continued: "If this comes to the attention of the Fuhrer--they try to spare him distractions, but I suspect this distraction will come to his attention--I suggest that it is entirely likely that the Fuhrer will order that it be shot out of the sky . . ."

  "It's an Argentine aircraft," Ambassador von Lutzenberger said.

  Cranz glared at him for a moment. Then he admitted, "Good point. Which means he's likely to order its destruction without the services of the Luftwaffe. In other words: here, by us."

  "Well, then, I guess that's what we're going to have to do," von Gradny-Sawz said solemnly. "Destroy it here, on the ground."

  Cranz glowered at him for a long moment but in the end did not reply directly. Instead, he turned to von Wachtstein.

  "What I'm having trouble understanding, Major von Wachtstein, is why the arrival of this airplane, this whole business of Argentina getting an aircraft capable of flying across the Atlantic Ocean, came as such a surprise to you."