Top Secret Read online

  ALSO BY W.E.B. GRIFFIN

  HONOR BOUND

  HONOR BOUND

  BLOOD AND HONOR

  SECRET HONOR

  DEATH AND HONOR

  (and William E. Butterworth IV)

  THE HONOR OF SPIES

  (and William E. Butterworth IV)

  VICTORY AND HONOR

  (and William E. Butterworth IV)

  EMPIRE AND HONOR

  (and William E. Butterworth IV)

  BROTHERHOOD OF WAR

  BOOK I: THE LIEUTENANTS

  BOOK II: THE CAPTAINS

  BOOK III: THE MAJORS

  BOOK IV: THE COLONELS

  BOOK V: THE BERETS

  BOOK VI: THE GENERALS

  BOOK VII: THE NEW BREED

  BOOK VIII: THE AVIATORS

  BOOK IX: SPECIAL OPS

  THE CORPS

  BOOK I: SEMPER FI

  BOOK II: CALL TO ARMS

  BOOK III: COUNTERATTACK

  BOOK IV: BATTLEGROUND

  BOOK V: LINE OF FIRE

  BOOK VI: CLOSE COMBAT

  BOOK VII: BEHIND THE LINES

  BOOK VIII: IN DANGER’S PATH

  BOOK IX: UNDER FIRE

  BOOK X: RETREAT, HELL!

  BADGE OF HONOR

  BOOK I: MEN IN BLUE

  BOOK II: SPECIAL OPERATIONS

  BOOK III: THE VICTIM

  BOOK IV: THE WITNESS

  BOOK V: THE ASSASSIN

  BOOK VI: THE MURDERERS

  BOOK VII: THE INVESTIGATORS

  BOOK VIII: FINAL JUSTICE

  BOOK IX: THE TRAFFICKERS

  (and William E. Butterworth IV)

  BOOK X: THE VIGILANTES

  (and William E. Butterworth IV)

  BOOK XI: THE LAST WITNESS

  (and William E. Butterworth IV)

  BOOK XII: DEADLY ASSETS

  (and William E. Butterworth IV)

  MEN AT WAR

  BOOK I: THE LAST HEROES

  BOOK II: THE SECRET WARRIORS

  BOOK III: THE SOLDIER SPIES

  BOOK IV: THE FIGHTING AGENTS

  BOOK V: THE SABOTEURS

  (and William E. Butterworth IV)

  BOOK VI: THE DOUBLE AGENTS

  (and William E. Butterworth IV)

  BOOK VII: THE SPYMASTERS

  (and William E. Butterworth IV)

  PRESIDENTIAL AGENT

  BOOK I: BY ORDER OF THE PRESIDENT

  BOOK II: THE HOSTAGE

  BOOK III: THE HUNTERS

  BOOK IV: THE SHOOTERS

  BOOK V: BLACK OPS

  BOOK VI: THE OUTLAWS

  (and William E. Butterworth IV)

  BOOK VII: COVERT WARRIORS

  (and William E. Butterworth IV)

  BOOK VIII: HAZARDOUS DUTY

  (and William E. Butterworth IV)

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Copyright © 2014 by W.E.B. Griffin

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Griffin, W.E.B.

  Top secret : a clandestine operations novel / W.E.B. Griffin.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-698-16462-8

  1. Intelligence officers—Fiction. 2. Cold War—Fiction. 3. Espionage—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3557.R489137T725 2014 2014003817

  813'.54—dc23

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  26 July 1777

  “The necessity of procuring good intelligence is apparent and need not be further urged.”

  George Washington

  General and Commander in Chief

  The Continental Army

  FOR THE LATE

  WILLIAM E. COLBY

  An OSS Jedburgh First Lieutenant who became director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

  AARON BANK

  An OSS Jedburgh First Lieutenant who became a colonel and the father of Special Forces.

  WILLIAM R. CORSON

  A legendary Marine intelligence officer whom the KGB hated more than any other U.S. intelligence officer—and not only because he wrote the definitive work on them.

  RENÉ J. DÉFOURNEAUX

  A U.S. Army OSS Second Lieutenant attached to the British SOE who jumped into Occupied France alone and later became a legendary U.S. Army intelligence officer.

  FOR THE LIVING

  BILLY WAUGH

  A legendary Special Forces Command Sergeant Major who retired and then went on to hunt down the infamous Carlos the Jackal. Billy could have terminated Osama bin Laden in the early 1990s but could not get permission to do so. After fifty years in the business, Billy is still going after the bad guys.

  JOHNNY REITZEL

  An Army Special Operations officer who could have terminated the head terrorist of the seized cruise ship Achille Lauro but could not get permission to do so.

  RALPH PETERS

  An Army intelligence officer who has written the best analysis of our war against terrorists and of our enemy that I have ever seen.

  AND FOR THE NEW BREED

  MARC L

  A senior intelligence officer, despite his youth, who reminds me of Bill Colby more and more each day.

  FRANK L

  A legendary Defense Intelligence Agency officer who retired and now follows in Billy Waugh’s footsteps.

  AND

  In Loving Memory Of

  Colonel José Manuel Menéndez

  Cavalry, Argentine Army, Retired

  He spent his life fighting Communism and Juan Domingo Perón

  OUR NATION OWES THESE PATRIOTS A DEBT BEYOND REPAYMENT.

  CONTENTS

  ALSO BY W.E.B. GRIFFIN

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  EPIGRAPH

  DEDICATION

  PROLOGUE

  PART I

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  [ FOUR ]

  [ FIVE ]

  [ SIX ]

  [ SEVEN ]

  [ EIGHT ]

  PART II

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  PART III

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  [ SIX ]

  PART IV

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[ THREE ]

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  [ NINE ]

  [ TEN ]

  PART V

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  [ SIX ]

  PART VI

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  PART VII

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  PART VIII

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  PART IX

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  PART X

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  PART XI

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  PART XII

  [ ONE ]

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  PART XIII

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  [ SEVENTEEN ]

  [ EIGHTEEN ]

  PROLOGUE

  Many in the intelligence community feel that the first American counter-fire shot in what became the Cold War occurred even before World War II was over—specifically when Major General Reinhard Gehlen contacted Allen W. Dulles. (Or Dulles contacted Gehlen; the details remain, more than half a century later, highly classified.)

  Gehlen was the German intelligence officer who ran Abwehr Ost, which dealt with the Soviet Union. Dulles was the U.S. Office of Strategic Service’s man in neutral Switzerland.

  Realizing Nazi defeat was inevitable, Gehlen feared both Soviet ambitions for Europe and specifically what the victorious Russians would do to his officers, his men, and their families.

  Gehlen struck a deal with Dulles. He would turn over to the OSS all his intelligence and assets. These included the identities of Soviet spies who had infiltrated the Manhattan Project and of Abwehr Ost agents inside the Kremlin. In exchange, Dulles would place Gehlen, his officers and men and their families—who faced certain torture and death at the hands of the Soviets—under American protection.

  Exactly who at the highest levels of the American government knew about Operation Gehlen, and when they knew it, also remains even today highly classified. It is obvious that General of the Army Dwight David Eisenhower, then Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, had to know about it.

  It seems equally obvious that President Franklin Roosevelt was not made privy to it. Not only was Roosevelt deathly ill at the time, but he and his wife, Eleanor, had made it clear that they did not regard the Soviet Union and its leader, Josef Stalin, as any threat to the United States. There was wide belief that there were Communists in Roosevelt’s inner circle.

  There were other problems, too.

  Roosevelt’s secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, was justifiably outraged by the monstrous behavior of the Nazis toward the Jewish people and unable to concede there existed “Good Germans” among the many “Bad Germans.” Morgenthau seriously advocated a policy that would have seen senior German officers executed out of hand whenever and wherever found. It was known that Gehlen was on the list of those German officers to look for.

  J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, posed other problems. Hoover had opposed the very formation of the OSS. He devoutly believed the FBI could do the job better. He made no secret of his loathing for OSS Director William J. Donovan. And vice versa. Hoover had been humiliated before the President when Donovan had turned over the names of Soviet spies in the Manhattan Project that Allen Dulles had turned up, and furious when Dulles had refused to name his source. Dulles of course couldn’t, as the source had been Gehlen. Not even Donovan knew of the Gehlen project until after President Roosevelt had died in the arms of his mistress in Warm Springs, Georgia.

  So far as Dulles was concerned, if Donovan knew, he would have felt duty bound to inform President Roosevelt. And that would have been the end of the secret; the Soviets would have learned of it within hours.

  When, on Roosevelt’s death, Vice President Harry S Truman became the thirty-third President of the United States, the former senator from Missouri had seen the President only twice after their inauguration and had never been alone with him.

  On Truman’s first day in office, Lieutenant General Leslie R. Groves, U.S. Army, went to see him in the Oval Office. Groves headed the Manhattan Project, and told Truman he thought he should know that the United States had a new weapon, the most powerful ever developed, called the “atomic bomb.”

  It is also known that both Allen Dulles and General Donovan met privately with Truman in the very early days of his presidency. Many believe that Truman was made privy to Operation Gehlen during one of those meetings.

  Shortly afterward, in mid-July 1945, Truman met with Stalin in Potsdam, near Berlin. He told the Russian dictator of the atomic bomb. When Stalin showed no surprise, Truman decided this confirmed what Donovan had told him—that J. Edgar Hoover had not been able to keep Russian espionage out of the Manhattan Project.

  Truman ordered General George C. Marshall to shut off all aid to the Soviet Union.

  Right then. That afternoon.

  The OSS—often with the assistance of the Vatican—within days began to send many of “the Gehlens” to Argentina. Others were placed in a heavily guarded OSS compound at Kloster Grünau, a former monastery in Schollbrunn, Bavaria, which had been provided by the Vatican. These actions could not have happened without Truman’s knowledge and approval.

  On August 6, 1945, the United States obliterated Hiroshima, Japan, with an atomic bomb. Three days later, a second atomic bomb obliterated Nagasaki.

  On September 2, 1945, a formal surrender ceremony was performed in Tokyo Bay, Japan, aboard the battleship USS Missouri.

  World War II was over.

  Argentina, which had declared war on the Axis only in March, was one of the victors, although not a single Argentine soldier or sailor had died in the war and not one bomb or artillery shell had landed on Argentine soil. And now Argentina, as a result of supplying foodstuffs to both sides, was richer than ever.

  Argentina’s role in World War II, however, was by no means over.

  When, as early as 1942, the most senior members of the Nazi hierarchy—as high as Martin Bormann, generally regarded as second in power only to Hitler, and Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler—realized the Ultimate Victory was not nearly as certain as Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels had been telling the German people, they began in great secrecy to implement Operation Phoenix.

  Phoenix would establish refuges in South America—primarily in Argentina and Paraguay—to which senior Nazis could flee should the Thousand-Year Reich have a life shorter than they hoped. National Socialism could then rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes.

  Vast sums were sent to Argentina, some through normal banking channels but most in great secrecy by
submarine. The U-boats also carried crates of currency, gold, and diamonds and other precious stones. Senior SS officers were sent to Argentina—some of them legally, accredited as diplomats, but again most of them secretly infiltrated by submarine—to purchase property where senior Nazis would be safe from Allied retribution.

  The Allies knew of Operation Phoenix and had tried, without much success, to stop it. Their concern heightened as the war drew to a close. They learned that when Grand Admiral Doenitz issued the Cease Hostilities order on May fourth, sixty-three U-boats were at sea.

  Five of them were known to have complied with their orders to hoist a black flag and proceed to an Allied port to surrender, or to a neutral port to be interned. There was reliable intelligence that an additional forty-one U-boats had been scuttled by their crews to prevent the capture of whatever may have been on board.

  That left at least seventeen U-boats unaccounted for. Of particular concern were U-234, U-405, and U-977. They were Type XB U-boats—minelayers, which meant that with no mines aboard they could carry a great deal of cargo and many passengers for vast distances.

  There was credible intelligence that when U-234 sailed from Narvik on April 16—two weeks before the German capitulation—she had aboard a varied cargo, some of which was either not listed on the manifest at all or listed under a false description. This included a ton of mail—which of course almost certainly hid currency and diamonds being smuggled. It also included Nazi and Japanese officers and German scientists as passengers. And something even more worrisome: 560 kilograms of uranium oxide from the German not-quite-completed atomic bomb project.

  It was only logical to presume that U-405 and U-977 were carrying similar cargoes.

  A massive search by ship and air for all submarines—but especially for U-234, U-405, and U-977—was launched from France, England, and Africa, and by the specially configured U.S. Army Air Forces B-24 “Liberator” bombers that had searched for submarines since 1942 from bases in Brazil.

  The searches of course were limited by the range of the aircraft involved and, as far as the ships also involved in the searches, by the size of the South Atlantic Ocean once the submarines had entered it.

  There were some successes. Submarines were sighted and then attacked with depth charges and/or aircraft bombs. While it was mathematically probable that several of the submarines were sunk, there was no telling which ones.

  The concern that the U-boats—either certainly or probably—had uranium oxide aboard and were headed for Japan was reduced when the Japanese surrendered on September 2, 1945. But that left Argentina as a very possible destination.