The Honor of Spies Read online

Graham’s remark What Allen and I were discussing when you burst uninvited in here was how little we could get away with telling you had quietly enraged him. He hadn’t actually taken a deep breath and counted to ten to avoid blowing up, but he had told himself that he had to be careful. Blowing up—no matter how justified—would have been counterproductive.

  “You are going to tell me, aren’t you, Allen, exactly what it is you don’t want Vice President Wallace to pass on to our Russian allies?”

  Dulles met his eyes.

  “Reluctantly, Bill, I will,” Dulles said. “Alex and I had just agreed that the President will inevitably ask you what was going on in the Hotel Washington, and that it would be best if we prepared you for the question.”

  “And what was going on at the Hotel Washington? You don’t mean with Putzi Hanfstaengl?”

  Both Dulles and Graham nodded.

  Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl was another Columbia University classmate of President Roosevelt and Director Donovan.

  The scion of a wealthy Munich publishing family, he had been attracted to Hitler and National Socialism in its early days. Among other things, Hanfstaengl had loaned Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi party propagandist, the money to start up the Völkischer Beobachter, the official newspaper of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.

  He became part of Hitler’s inner circle, but as he became progressively more disenchanted with Hitler and the Thousand-Year Reich, Hitler became progressively more disenchanted with Hanfstaengl. A friend warned Hanfstaengl that he was about to have an SS-engineered accident, and Hanfstaengl fled Germany.

  In the United States, Hanfstaengl looked up Roosevelt and Donovan. Both helped him get settled, and he began working in the family’s New York office. When war came, he was automatically an enemy alien. Under the law, and especially because of his known ties to the Nazi regime, he was required to be incarcerated as a threat to national security.

  On the other hand, Hanfstaengl’s judgment of how senior Nazi officials and top-ranking military officers would react in a given circumstance was obviously of great value to Roosevelt. But equally obviously, Hanfstaengl could not be seen wandering around the White House, and picking his brain would be difficult if he were locked up somewhere in the Arizona desert with the other German threats to American National Security.

  The solution proposed by Donovan and ordered executed by the commander in chief saw Hanfstaengl incarcerated under military guard in a suite in the Hotel Washington, a stone’s throw from the White House. The guard was U.S. Army Sergeant Egon Hanfstaengl, who called his prisoner “Poppa.”

  Roosevelt would visit his old pal by having his wheelchair rolled into a laundry truck at the White House. The truck would then drive to the basement service entrance of the Hotel Washington, and Roosevelt would then be wheeled through the kitchen to an elevator operated by a Secret Service agent and taken to Hanfstaengl’s suite.

  “What were you doing with Hanfstaengl?” Donovan demanded. “And who was there?”

  “Originally, myself,” Graham said. “And Howard Hughes. And Cletus Frade. And a German lieutenant colonel named Frogger. And then the President came in.”

  “What the hell is this all about?” Donovan snapped. “And start at the beginning.”

  His control then suddenly disappeared.

  “You took Cletus Frade to see Hanfstaengl?” he demanded as spittle flew. “And some German officer? You better have a goddamned good reason.”

  Dulles said softly: “How about a chance—admittedly not a very good one, but a chance—to eliminate Hitler? To remove Der Führer permanently from this vale of tears?”

  It was a long moment before Donovan replied.

  “I can’t believe that either of you, even half in the bag as you are, would joke about something like that.”

  “We’re not,” Graham said simply. “And if you can keep your Irish temper under control, Bill, I’ll tell you what has happened.”

  “Have at it,” Donovan snapped.

  “Hoover’s head man in Buenos Aires—a fellow named Milton Leibermann, who learned to speak Spanish when he was an FBI agent in Spanish Harlem—defied J. Edgar’s strict orders to have no contact with the OSS down there by bringing to Cletus Frade the commercial counselor of the German Embassy and his wife, who had deserted their posts and come to him asking for asylum.”

  “Why did he do that?” Donovan asked.

  “You mean this guy Frogger?” Graham said. “According to Frade, he thought he was being thrown to the wolves by the SS people in the embassy. When the Froggers were ordered home to Germany, they took off.”

  “Interesting, but I was asking about the FBI agent.”

  “He told Frade he had no place to hide them,” Graham explained, “and he thought Frade could use them—or we could—to help keep track of all that Operation Phoenix money. So Frade took them. And told Allen about having them when they met at the Canoas Air Base in Brazil.”

  “You met with Cletus Frade in Brazil?” Donovan asked. He was visibly angry, and now his voice was icy. “Funny, I never heard about that, Allen. Another of those things you decided I didn’t have to know?”

  Dulles’s eyes tightened.

  “I seem to recall, Bill, that the ‘condition of employment’ you mentioned before gave me the authority to run Europe as I see fit. Is that your recollection as well?”

  Donovan didn’t reply.

  “My understanding was that it did,” Dulles said. “And operating on that premise, I didn’t think I had to have your permission to meet with Cletus Frade, or to tell you that I had until I decided it was appropriate.”

  Dulles let that sink in for a moment, then went on: “One of the players in Operation Valkyrie is Galahad’s father.”

  Donovan knew that Operation Valkyrie was the code name used by disaffected members of the German High Command to identify their plan to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

  Donovan said: “I suppose that since you and Alex have decided that neither I nor the commander in chief can be trusted with Galahad’s identity, you’re not going to identify his father either.”

  “Only that he is a generalleutnant on Hitler’s inner staff who sees him on a daily basis,” Dulles said.

  “Bill,” Graham said, “we’d be willing to trust you with both names if we knew you wouldn’t run to the President with them. It boils down to the same thing. Things leak from the Oval Office, and we simply can’t take that risk with this.”

  “I know you don’t think much of the FBI,” Donovan said. “But J. Edgar Hoover’s more competent than you give him credit for being. The President has ordered him to find out who Galahad is. And sooner or later, he will.”

  “Possibly,” Dulles said. “And if that happens, I’ll know that Valkyrie has been compromised and will take the appropriate action.”

  After a moment, Donovan asked, “Are you going to tell me what you and Frade discussed in Brazil?”

  “When Frade told me about the Froggers, I thought we might suddenly have been struck with good fortune. It was the same surname as one of the players in Valkyrie. I couldn’t be sure—and I couldn’t find out while I was in Brazil—so what I asked Frade to do was have a photograph of himself taken with his Froggers, and to stand by, so to speak, for further orders.

  “I did not tell him what I hoped, and he did not learn until yesterday, that Lieutenant Colonel Wilhelm Frogger, the Froggers’ sole surviving son, a Valkyrie conspirator, had been captured when General von Arnim surrendered the Afrikakorps and was now in the senior officers’ POW camp in Mississippi.

  “When I had that information, I brought Frade to the United States.”

  “You didn’t think,” Donovan asked, more than a little sarcastically, “that Frade suddenly coming up here from Argentina might look a little suspicious?”

  “What Allen did, Bill, was have Lloyd’s of London cancel the insurance of South American Airways,” Graham said. “Otherwise known as Franklin Roosevelt’s Stick It to Juan T
rippe Airline.”

  “I don’t think that’s funny, nor do I understand,” Donovan said.

  “South American Airways—Frade—was informed that inasmuch as SAA’s pilots did not hold an internationally recognized Airline Transport Rating, they were forced to cancel SAA’s insurance,” Dulles explained. “This caused, as I suspected it would, a furious—and always resourceful—Cletus Frade to deal with the situation in his own way. What he did was load a dozen SAA pilots on one of his Lodestars and fly them to the Lockheed plant in Burbank to take the necessary examinations and get their ratings. And incidentally, to take back to Argentina a half-dozen of those ‘surplus’ Lodestars.”

  Graham picked up the story: “Howard Hughes and I were waiting for him in his hotel room at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood. The next morning, the SAA pilots—including Frade—were dropped off one at a time at SAA Lodestars to meet the examination pilots. Frade was dropped off last, at a Constellation, where Howard and I were again waiting for him.

  “We flew to the Jackson Army Air Base in Mississippi. En route, we told Frade what was going on. We drove out to Camp Clinton and met with Oberstleutnant Frogger. He’s one starchy sonofabitch, incidentally, who would only recite his name, rank, and serial number even after we showed him the pictures of Frade with his parents.

  “We told him that we would protect his family from the Germans, even eventually allow them to come to the States, if he could talk them into helping Frade keep track of where the Operation Phoenix money was going. He professed to know nothing of Operation Phoenix, but he agreed to come with us to Washington ‘to meet someone who would confirm that Operation Phoenix existed.’

  “We took him to see Putzi. Frogger knew who Putzi was, of course, and was impressed, as I thought he would be. And then we threw Galahad’s name at Frogger and told him we knew he was involved with Valkyrie. He was still adjusting to the shock that we knew about Valkyrie when the door opened and a Secret Service agent wheeled in the President.”

  “My God!” Donovan said. “And?”

  “We got lucky again,” Graham said. “Roosevelt didn’t say much beyond ‘You must be Major Frade’ to Cletus, and then he left. I had the feeling that while he didn’t have any idea what was going on, he’d better give me the benefit of the doubt.”

  “You didn’t tell him?” Donovan asked.

  Graham shook his head. “And, amazingly, he didn’t ask. That’s what you’re going to have to do, Bill: come up with a story to explain to Roosevelt what we were doing there that does not, repeat not, even hint about Operation Valkyrie.”

  Donovan, who did not at all like being bluntly told what he was going to have to do, nevertheless did not lose his temper.

  “And then?” Donovan asked.

  “Frogger came on board, said he’d do whatever we asked.”

  “And now there is a secret within a secret,” Dulles said. “Frogger will go to Argentina to help Frade with Operation Phoenix. That’s a secret. But his primary role will be to help me help the Valkyrie conspirators.”

  “How are you going to get him to Argentina?” Donovan asked. “And don’t you think he’ll be missed at Camp Clinton, both by the Army and the Germans?”

  “He’s now in Las Vegas, Nevada,” Graham said. “As soon as the Documents people can come up with what he needs to prove that he’s a South African named Fischer—the whole nine yards, passport, driver’s license, clothing, even suitcases—and we can get it out there, he’ll be flown—probably by Howard, in a Constellation—to Canoas and wait there for Frade to appear and get him into Argentina.”

  “How’s Frade going to do that?”

  “Frade is very resourceful,” Dulles said. “He’ll think of something.”

  “Frade gives new meaning to the term ‘loose cannon,’” Donovan said. “And what about the POW camp? What happens there?”

  “At 2300 last night, the camp commander reported to the local authorities, the provost marshal general, and the FBI that Oberstleutnant Frogger cannot be found and must be presumed to have escaped.”

  “Clever,” Donovan said. “But J. Edgar will blow a fuse when he finds out he’s been spending what he calls his ‘finite resources’ trying to find a German POW we have.”

  Dulles shrugged. “I don’t want Hoover to know that. Now. Or ever. I want the FBI looking in every nook and cranny for Colonel Frogger.”

  “If I didn’t know better, that might sound like an order,” Donovan said, his voice tense.

  “If you’re not willing to go along with that, I’ll go see the President, right now, and make my case,” Dulles said. “This has to be kept secret, Bill.”

  “Second the motion,” Graham said.

  After a very perceptible pause, Donovan said, “Okay. I’ll go along. I’m not sure if I’m doing so because I think you’re right, or because there is a certain appeal to the thought of J. Edgar being increasingly humbled by not being able to find an escaped POW, or because I really don’t want the President to have proof that the both of you are half in the bag before five o’clock in the afternoon.”

  Neither Graham nor Dulles replied.

  “This is where I usually say ‘keep me posted,’” Donovan said. “But that would be a waste of breath with you two, wouldn’t it?”

  He pushed himself out of his chair and walked out of the office.

  II

  [ONE]

  4730 Avenida Libertador

  Buenos Aires, Argentina

  1525 12 August 1943

  When Cletus Frade came down the stairs into the basement garage of the mansion, he looked—and felt—both very tired and upset. He also felt grimy. He was wearing the same clothing—except for underwear that he had changed twice—he had put on forty-odd hours before in Los Angeles: a polo shirt and khaki trousers, and battered Western boots. Once he had arrived in Argentina, where it was winter, he had added a fur-collared leather jacket, the breast of which had sewn to it a leather patch bearing a stamped-in-gold representation of Naval Aviator’s wings and the legend C. H. FRADE 1LT USMCR.

  Except for maybe six hours spent on the ground taking on fuel, buying food (usually sandwiches), visiting some really incredibly foul gentlemen’s rest facilities, and changing his linen, he had been either at the controls of a Lockheed Lodestar or catching what sleep he could lying in the aisle between the seats in the passenger compartment.

  Finally, the Lodestar had touched down, twice, in Argentina.

  The first time had been at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, where he had dropped off Mr. Wilhelm Fischer, a South African, and where Frade’s wife had told him the bad news:

  That she had gone to Casa Chica the previous afternoon with provisions for Sergeant Stein and the others and found only a nearly destroyed Casa Chica, large pools of blood on the airstrip, and nothing and nobody else. Stein was gone, and so were Suboficial Mayor Rodríguez, the Froggers, The Other Dorotea, and the dozen ex-Húsares de Pueyrredón peones who were supposed to be guarding the place.

  There hadn’t been time then to do anything about that. The SAA Lodestar was due at Aerodromo Jorge Frade in Morón in an hour—he had sent a telegram from Brazil announcing their Estimated Time of Arrival—and if it didn’t land more or less on time, el Coronel Martín, who Frade was sure would be there to meet him, would suspect that the Lodestar had landed somewhere else. For example, at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.

  And taking into account what Dorotea had told him had happened at Casa Chica, it was also quite possible that Martín would be waiting at Jorge Frade with a warrant for his arrest as at least a conspirator in the kidnapping, or whatever it might be called, of the Froggers.

  Clete Frade did the best with what he had. And what he had was his own Lodestar and someone who could fly it—SAA’s chief pilot, Gonzalo Delgano. Delgano would not be suspected by Martín of having anything to do with the Froggers because Delgano was actually a BIS major charged by Martín with keeping an eye on Frade.

  Frade had somewhat turned Delg
ano. The day before, during a fuel stop at La Paz, Bolivia, he had appealed to Delgano. And Delgano had, if not changed sides, then—after praying for guidance and being swayed by his concept of a Christian Officer’s Code of Behavior—decided that he was morally obliged to help Frade smuggle Herr Fischer/Oberstleutnant Frogger into Argentina aboard the Lodestar.

  If the whole thing had blown up—and it looked as if it had—and everything came out—as it inevitably would—Delgano was in deep trouble. But neither Frade nor Delgano thought el Coronel Martín would be waiting at Jorge Frade with handcuffs for both of them. With a little bit of luck, Delgano could just go home from the airfield.

  Or get in a car and drive to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo and fly the Frade Lodestar, with Oberstleutnant Frogger and the others of Frade’s OSS team, across the River Plate to sanctuary in Uruguay.

  Frade had ordered that everything the OSS owned on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo be prepared for demolition and for all the OSS personnel to be prepared to get on the Lodestar at a moment’s notice.

  Then he and Delgano had flown the SAA Lodestar to Aerodromo Coronel Jorge Frade in Morón, where neither was surprised to find el Coronel Martín waiting for them.

  Not with handcuffs, but with the announcement that el Coronel Perón had some new information regarding the missing Froggers that he wished to discuss with Frade, and he thought that it would be a good idea for Frade to hear what he had to say.

  “Not in the next couple of days, Don Cletus. Right now,” Martín had said. “I’m afraid I must insist. You can follow me to the house on Libertador and then go home.”

  “How am I going to follow you?”

  Martín pointed toward one of the hangars. Frade looked and saw Suboficial Mayor Enrico Rodríguez standing beside one of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo’s Ford station wagons.

  On the way to the house on Libertador, Enrico had told Frade what had happened at Casa Chica, told him that the Froggers were safe and well protected in one of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo’s casas, and shown him a thick stack of photographs that Sergeant Stein had taken at Casa Chica.