Empire and Honor Read online

  * * *

  UNDERSIGNED BELIEVES WE ARE GETTING ABSOLUTE TRUTH FROM SUBMARINE AFTER HIS MEETING WITH GALAHAD, AND THAT HE WILL PROVIDE FURTHER ANSWERS TO ALL QUESTIONS WHEN THERE IS OPPORTUNITY TO ASK.

  HOOVER INFORMED IRISH OF CREDIBLE PLOT TO ASSASSINATE TIO JUAN. IRISH, BELIEVING EVEN UNSUCCESSFUL ATTEMPT WOULD TRIGGER CIVIL WAR, ORDERED ARREST OF TIO JUAN FOR HIS OWN PROTECTION. HE IS BEING HELD IN SECRET LOCATION KNOWN TO UNDERSIGNED, WHO IS TAKING NO REPEAT NO ACTION.

  URGENTLY REQUEST FULLEST DOSSIERS ON SS OFFICERS LISTED IN TEX-0014.

  TEX

  TOP SECRET–PRESIDENTIAL

  * * *

  “Send it,” Frade ordered.

  Schultz tore the tape hanging from the SIGABA and then inserted it into another slot of the machine. He then pushed the TRANSMIT button again. The SIGABA began to slowly suck the tape into its innards. No more than sixty seconds later, there was a ping sound and the tape began to eject.

  “It’s there, boss,” Schultz announced. “Now what?”

  “I’m going to get out of my Mexican bus driver’s uniform, have a shave and a shower, and then—God knows I’ve earned it—a strong drink.”

  “‘Mexican bus driver’s uniform’?” Schultz parroted.

  “That’s a long story that’ll have to wait until I get out of it.”

  “I’ll wait until I get acknowledgment of receipt, and then close up,” Schultz said.

  —

  Frade came back into the library ten minutes later, now wearing khaki trousers, a polo shirt, and Western boots. Schultz was still sitting at the SIGABA.

  “Acknowledgments from both places in Germany,” he announced. “But not from the White House.”

  “That’s good enough,” Frade said. “What I want is the dossiers. Shut it down. God only knows where Dulles might be, but the White House switchboard will find him.”

  “How are they going to get the dossiers to us?” Schultz asked. “Sixteen dossiers is a lot to feed through the SIGABA.”

  “Mattingly will think of something,” Frade said.

  “Tell me about your Mexican bus driver’s uniform.”

  Frade began to do so, and by the time he had finished, Schultz had shut down the Collins and the SIGABA and closed the section of bookcase. There now was not even a suggestion that something was hidden behind it.

  Frade, meanwhile, had pulled another section of the bookshelves open, this time revealing a well-stocked wet bar.

  He was making drinks, pouring from a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black, when a buzzer sounded.

  “Now what the hell?” Frade muttered.

  “It’s probably Doña Dorotea,” Schultz said, and went to a telephone—an Argentine copy of the U.S. Army EE-8 Field Telephone—hidden behind a row of books.

  —

  There was no gate to the enormous Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, just a sign reading BIENVENIDO!

  This was not to say the estancia went unguarded. At least two of the more than two hundred gauchos working the estancia around the clock always had the entrance in sight. If a vehicle entering the property was not known to them, it would be stopped by gauchos on horseback suddenly appearing somewhere on the eight-kilometer road between the BIENVENIDO! sign and the Big House complex.

  If the vehicle was known to be welcome, the gaucho who made this decision would ride to the nearest field telephone—all of the phones were mounted six feet up in eucalyptus trees; the gauchos disliked having to dismount—and call the Big House.

  “It’s an embassy car,” el Jefe announced as he returned the telephone to its hiding place.

  “I wonder what Tony wants?” Frade asked rhetorically.

  Frade couldn’t think of anyone else from the U.S. embassy who would come to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo either unexpectedly or uninvited.

  Major Anthony J. Pelosi, CE, USAR, now an assistant military attaché of the embassy, had come to Argentina in 1942 as a second lieutenant, accompanying then–First Lieutenant Cletus Frade, USMCR.

  They had been charged by the OSS with a dual mission: blowing up a “neutral” merchant ship or ships known to be replenishing German submarines in Samborombón Bay, and with attempting to make contact with the man the OSS believed would become the next president of the Argentine Republic, and then to attempt to make this man tilt as far toward the United States as he was then tilting toward the Third Reich.

  Lieutenant Pelosi had been well qualified for his task. His family in Chicago had been demolishing buildings in the Windy City for more than a century. Tony at the age of twelve had “taken down” his first structure—a 120-foot-tall grain elevator—with trinitrotoluene charges.

  Lieutenant Frade, who had been flying fighter aircraft off Fighter One on Guadalcanal, had only one qualification to accomplish his mission: The man the OSS believed was about to become president of Argentina was his father.

  Frade could never remember having seen el Coronel Jorge G. Frade. All he knew about him was that his grandfather never referred to him except as “that sonofabitch,” or more commonly, “that miserable three-star Argentine sonofabitch.”

  Frade later learned that the OSS never had any real hope that either mission would be accomplished, but had decided that giving it a try was well worth putting the lives of an Army second lieutenant and a Marine Corps first lieutenant at risk.

  Against odds, they succeeded. And within a year, Frade was a captain and Pelosi a first lieutenant. Frade had been awarded the Navy Cross—the nation’s second-highest award for valor—and Pelosi the Silver Star—the third-ranking medal for valor. The citations accompanying the medal were more than a bit vague and obfuscatory. Sinking neutral merchant vessels in neutral waters posed a number of diplomatic problems.

  And el Coronel Jorge G. Frade was murdered by the SS as he drove across his Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler had ordered his assassination to make the point to the Ejército Argentino officer corps that growing too close to the Americans would not be tolerated.

  It didn’t work.

  Cletus Frade, who had made his peace with his father only six weeks before, fell heir not only to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo—which was slightly larger than New York City, all of it, Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx, and Brooklyn, too—but also to everything else that made up what Frade thought of as “El Coronel, Inc.”

  This probably would have been enough for the OSS to decide to keep him in Argentina, but what settled the question once and for all was Allen Welsh Dulles’s pronouncement, echoed by Colonel Alejandro Graham—the OSS deputy directors for Europe and the Western Hemisphere, respectively—that they had never encountered anyone who seemed more born to be an intelligence officer than Cletus Frade.

  Frade was named OSS commander for Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay.

  Then Frade had arranged for Pelosi to be assigned to the American embassy. For one thing, it made his presence in Argentina legitimate. For another, Pelosi kept him abreast of what was going on in the embassy.

  —

  Fifteen minutes after the field telephone call, one of the maids came into the library carrying a small silver tray. He looked at her curiously, but picked up what the tray held, an engraved calling card.

  * * *

  Bosworth Stanton Alexander

  Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary

  of the

  President of the United States of America

  to

  The Republic of Argentina

  * * *

  “Heads up, Jefe,” Frade called, and when Schultz looked at him, went on, in Spanish, “Please show the ambassador in.”

  He had heard there was a new ambassador, but knew nothing beyond that.

  The first impression Frade had of Ambassador Alexander was that he looked like Allen W. Dulles. He was younger and had no mustache, as did Dulles, but was built about the same and wearing the same kind of single-breasted suit and button-down-collar shirt and bow tie that Dulles habitually wore.
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br />   “Thank you, Colonel, for receiving me without notice,” the ambassador said.

  He sounds like Dulles, too. Pure Boston.

  “Welcome to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, Mr. Ambassador,” Frade said as he walked toward Alexander.

  He realized the hand he wanted to extend held his whisky glass, then moved the glass.

  Alexander’s handshake was firm.

  “May I offer you . . . ?” Frade asked, holding up his whisky glass.

  “Very kind of you,” the ambassador said.

  “Jefe,” Frade ordered in Spanish. “See what the ambassador will have.”

  “A little of that Jack Daniel’s, if you please, Lieutenant Schultz,” the ambassador said in perfect Spanish. “Over ice.”

  The ambassador smiled shyly. “I’ve seen el Jefe’s photograph,” he said. “So let’s get that out of the way. I know a good deal—not everything, of course, but a good deal—more about you than an ambassador usually does about the American citizens whose well-being and property he is charged with protecting.”

  Schultz made the drink and handed it to the ambassador.

  He raised it. “The United States of America, gentlemen, and our President.”

  Schultz and Frade raised their glasses, and they all sipped.

  “I’m sure you’re curious about the sources of my information,” the ambassador said.

  “I can’t imagine why you’d think that,” Frade said.

  Alexander smiled shyly again.

  “I hardly know where to begin,” Alexander said. “Well, at his request, I paid a courtesy call on Treasury Secretary Morgenthau shortly after I was confirmed by the Senate. He seems to feel that you are facilitating the movement of Nazis from Germany to Argentina, which understandably distresses him.”

  “Mr. Ambassador . . .” Frade began.

  Alexander cut him off with a raised palm. “I’m not asking you for confirmation or denial.”

  “Where did you see my photograph?” Schultz asked.

  “Your photo, Lieutenant, and yours, Colonel, were in the dossiers given to me by the Navy. Since word hasn’t yet reached you—I asked my naval attaché to hold off on contacting you—you have both been relieved of your assignment to the now defunct Office of Strategic Services and are now assigned . . . as unassigned officers to the Navy Department—the Navy uses very strange terminology, as you may have noticed—with temporary duty station, the U.S. embassy, Buenos Aires.

  “The Navy has directed my naval attaché to issue the appropriate orders to you to return you to the United States for reassignment or relief from active duty.

  “The War Department has done very much the same thing for the Army personnel formerly assigned to OSS Western Hemisphere Team 17, code name Team Turtle. Specifically, Majors Maxwell Ashton the Third and Anthony J. Pelosi, Master Sergeants William Ferris and Sigfried Stein, and Technical Sergeant Jerry O’Sullivan. They are now assigned to Fort Meyer, Virginia, with temporary duty station at the embassy here.”

  Frade thought: He recited all that from memory. And without a pause.

  “That’s the bad news,” Alexander went on. “I’ve learned that it’s often best to get to that right away. The good news is—this seemed to surprise both my military and naval attachés—that as the ambassador, I am the senior officer of the United States in Argentina, which means that they can comply with their orders from the War and Navy departments only with my permission. I have not given either of them permission to contact you, or to order any of you anywhere.

  “Next, and this is, I would say, a mixture of good and bad news, I had dinner just before I left with President Truman, Rear Admiral Sidney W. Souers, and my old friend Allen Dulles. Just the four of us.

  “An unnamed intelligence operation called, for convenience, Operation East was discussed. To save time, let me say I became privy to the President’s opinion of the enormous value of the intelligence we’ve received and, it is to be hoped, will continue to receive from General Gehlen.

  “I am also aware of the price of General Gehlen’s cooperation. More important, I was made aware of the enormous damage to the President—indeed, the nation—disclosure of any details of Operation East would cause.

  “Allen Dulles told me, Colonel Frade, that you are the best natural intelligence officer that he has ever known, so I don’t have to waste our time by going into details, but let me touch briefly on just a few problems.

  “Secretary Morgenthau’s suspicions that we are facilitating the movement of Germans known to be Nazis to sanctuary in Argentina are well founded. Nothing is going to cause him to stop looking for proof.

  “FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover would love to be able to hold something like Operation East over the President’s head.

  “As would the Argentines, if only to justify their frankly disgusting relations with the Nazis in the past and now.

  “As would the Soviet Union. I think you take my point.

  “The priority obviously is the protection of the President. The President, therefore, obviously could not have ordered you to proceed with this unauthorized and highly illegal project that you call Operation East.

  “As the President’s ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary, the same is true of me. We have never met. I was never here, and you have not been, nor will you ever go, to the embassy.

  “I may, however, on my own, or when a little bird whispers in my ear that I should, travel to visit my fellow ambassadors in Chile, Uruguay, and Brazil. My staff tells me that South American Airways provides the best service. I also understand that South American Airways, as a courtesy and mark of respect, often offers traveling ambassadors a tour of the aircraft cockpit while in flight.”

  Frade met his eyes and thought, Where we could have a little chat . . .

  Ambassador Alexander stopped, smiled shyly again, and asked, “Would you say that covers everything?”

  “Yes, sir, I would say it does.”

  “I have not presumed to suggest how you should deal with your men, Colonel, but I think I should point out that they are all entitled to go home. They have been here since 1942, and the war—at least, World War Two—is over.”

  Frade said, “What I have been thinking—”

  Alexander again shut him off with a raised palm.

  “If I don’t know what you’re thinking, Colonel, then I could not relate that, either inadvertently or in answer to a question, could I?”

  “Point taken.”

  “One last thing,” Ambassador Alexander said. “I told my secretary I was going to Mar del Plata to see about renting a house for two weeks at the beach. My driver is sure to report to General Martín of the BIS that I stopped off here en route. Is that going to pose any problems, do you think?”

  “You have an Argentine chauffeur?” Frade asked, surprised.

  “Why not? I have nothing to hide. If I use one of the Marine guards to drive me, General Martín has to have someone follow me.”

  “I don’t think there will be any problems, Mr. Ambassador, no matter what your driver might tell General Martín,” Frade said.

  “That’s good to know,” Alexander said.

  He finished his drink in two healthy swallows, went to Frade and Schultz, wordlessly shook their hands, and walked out of the library.

  [THREE]

  Hotel Cóndor

  San Carlos de Bariloche

  Río Negro Province, Argentina

  1545 10 October 1945

  Large, double-pane windows in the suite on the top—sixth—floor of the hotel provided a splendid view of Lake Nahuel Huapi and, beyond that, the foothills of the Andes Mountains.

  There were three middle-aged men in the “sitting” area. They were gathered around a low table that was just about covered with hors d’oeuvres, bottles of wine, champagne, and spirits.

  El Coronel Hans Klausberger of the Tenth Mountain Division was in full uniform, but did not exactly cut a military figure. He was portly and rather short.

 
One of the others—Señor Franz Mueller, who owned the Hotel Cóndor—was elegantly dressed in a double-breasted suit. Compared to him, the third man, SS-Brigadeführer Ludwig Hoffmann, wearing the best suit he had had in Germany, and which he had put on shortly before getting off U-405, looked positively dowdy.

  Hoffmann had just reached for another—his fifth—piece of prosciutto wrapped around a melon chunk when there was a knock at the door. Señor Mueller went to the door, unlocked it, and admitted another elegantly dressed middle-aged man.

  “We were about to give up on you, José,” Mueller said.

  Señor José Moreno was the assistant managing director of the Banco Suisse Creditanstalt S.A.

  “I had some difficulty getting the libreta de enrolamiento for Herr Hoffmann,” Moreno said.

  “But you have it?” el Coronel Klausberger asked.

  Moreno’s face showed he didn’t like the colonel talking to him as if he was a subordinate.

  Before answering, Moreno went to the table, politely asked, “May I?” and then helped himself to a glass of wine. He ate a prosciutto-wrapped chunk of melon. And then another.

  Finally, Moreno nodded at Klausberger.

  “Of course I have it,” Moreno said. “And then Aeroposta Argentina canceled my flight. They apparently have no aircraft capable of reaching another airfield if they can’t land here because of the weather.”

  “But you are here,” Hoffmann said.

  “Brigadeführer Hoffmann?” Moreno asked. “Pardon my bad manners, sir. Welcome to Argentina.”

  He walked to Hoffmann and they shook hands.

  “Oberst Klausberger has been telling me that under the circumstances, it would be best not to refer to me by my rank,” Hoffmann said.

  “That was stupid of me,” Moreno said. “It won’t happen again.”

  Hoffmann’s acknowledgment of the apology—a brief nod—was that of a general officer acknowledging an apology for a blunder by his aide-de-camp. Moreno didn’t like that very much either.

  Moreno decided that while courtesy is often important, tolerating discourtesy is often taken as an admission of subordination, and he had no intention of letting Hoffmann think he was in a position to order him around.