Victory and Honor hb-6 Page 3

  So far, so good. Still on a roll . . .

  “Presumably, Captain, you’re in charge of security?” Frade asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I will be here no more than three hours,” Frade said. “I’ll be loading five passengers. Three of them may already be here. I’ll get the ones who are not. I don’t want anyone to get near my aircraft.”

  “Yes, sir,” the captain said. “I understand.”

  Frade gestured toward Enrico. “Sergeant Major Rodríguez here is under strict orders to keep the aircraft secure.”

  Clete noticed that Enrico read between the lines—that he was going to stay with the airplane and not accompany Clete—and was both surprised and glad that Enrico did not protest being left behind.

  “Yes, sir,” the captain repeated. “There won’t be any problem.”

  “We didn’t get any heads-up about this,” one of the civilians, a starchy heavyset man in a cheap suit, charged in an officious tone.

  “Of course you didn’t,” Frade said. “You’re from the airport, right?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “We’ll require fuel, of course. And enough food for a dozen people for a ten-hour flight. In Marmite cans. You can bill that to the OSS, right?”

  “I’d have to have authorization.”

  “From whom?”

  “From the OSS.”

  “Then you just got that authorization,” Frade said. “Now, has anybody seen a chauffeur-driven 1940 Cadillac?”

  “As a matter of fact,” the MP captain said, “there’s a car like that in the parking lot.”

  Frade turned to the civilian from the airport.

  “See what you can do about a real ladder or stairs to get up there,” he said, pointing to the Constellation’s rear door. “I’m not sure my passengers will want to climb a rope ladder.”

  “I’m sure I can come up with something,” the man said.

  As Clete approached the custom-bodied Cadillac, his grandfather’s chauffeur got out and opened the rear door. Tom, a silver-haired black man, had been driving Cletus Marcus Howell around Washington for as long as Clete could remember.

  The Cadillac had a gasoline ration sticker affixed to its windshield. The otherwise glistening door had stripes of dull black tape on it, obviously to cover something on the door. Until that morning, the door had shown a legend required by the Office of Price Administration.

  There had been gasoline rationing in the United States since early 1942, not because there was any shortage of gas but because there was a critical shortage of rubber to make tires.

  A fairly complicated distribution system had been set up. At the bottom end were ordinary citizens who received two gallons of gas a week. At the top were politicians, from local mayors to members of Congress, who got all the gasoline they said they needed. Ordinary citizens got an “A” sticker, whereas congressmen and other important politicians got an “X” sticker.

  In between were those who were issued “B” or “C” or “D” stickers. “B” meant the car was being driven by someone essential to the war effort; somebody driving to work in a tank factory, for example. A “B” sticker was worth eight gallons a week. “C” stickers were worth as many gallons of gas as clergymen, doctors, and “others essential to the war effort” could convince the ration board to give them. “D” was for motorcycles, which got two gallons per week.

  There was a “C” on the windshield of the custom-bodied Cadillac, which was registered in the name of the Howell Petroleum Corporation. Cletus Marcus Howell was chairman of the board of Howell Petroleum, and he had been more than a little annoyed that he had to go to a ration board and beg for gas so that he could conduct the business of Howell Petroleum, whose oil wells and refineries in Texas, Louisiana, and Venezuela were turning out many millions of gallons of gasoline every day.

  But he had put up with the regulations of the Office of Price Administration because he thought of himself as a patriotic American, and because his only grandson, Cletus Howell Frade, a Marine hero of Guadalcanal, was still serving his country.

  He had, however—almost literally—gone through the roof when the Office of Price Administration decreed that passenger vehicles enjoying the privilege of extra gasoline because they were being used for business had to paint the name of that business and its address on doors on both sides of said vehicle, so that the citizenry would know that no one was getting around the system. The Office of Price Administration had helpfully provided the size of the lettering and the color that had to be used.

  The dull black stripes on the door of the Cadillac had been applied to conceal the legend painted in canary yellow that was prescribed by the Office of Price Administration: Howell Petroleum Corp.

  16th & H Streets, NW

  Wash., DC

  Sixteenth and H Streets Northwest was the address of the Hay-Adams Hotel, where Cletus Marcus Howell kept an apartment—and the Cadillac—for use when he was in Washington. It was across from the White House.

  The universally loathed gas rationing had ended almost immediately after the Germans had surrendered unconditionally on May 7, 1945. As soon as that news had reached Cletus Marcus Howell, at his home in New Orleans, he had telephoned Tom, the chauffeur, and told him to cover the goddamn door sign immediately, until the door could be repainted.

  “Nice to see you again, Mr. Clete,” Tom said.

  “Nice to see you, too, Tom.”

  “Where we going?” Tom said as he got in behind the wheel.

  “Fort Hunt,” Clete replied from the backseat. “You know where it is?”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “You weren’t supposed to have heard of it, Tom.”

  “Where is it?”

  “I haven’t a clue. Somewhere around Alexandria.”

  [FOUR]

  Fort Hunt Alexandria, Virginia 1405 10 May 1945

  Finding Fort Hunt, it turned out, wasn’t at all difficult. Surprisingly, there had in fact been a highway sign with an arrow pointing the way.

  Getting into Fort Hunt was another story.

  One hundred yards off the highway, there had been another sign, this one very large: STOP AND TURN AROUND NOW

  RESTRICTED NATIONAL DEFENSE ESTABLISHMENT

  ENTRANCE TO FORT HUNT STRICTLY FORBIDDEN

  WITHOUT PRIOR CLEARANCE

  TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED

  BY ORDER OF THE COMMANDING GENERAL

  MILITARY DISTRICT OF WASHINGTON

  “What do I do, Mr. Clete?” Tom asked.

  “Let’s see what happens if we ignore that,” Clete said.

  What happened a half-mile down the road was the appearance of two MPs, both sergeants and both armed with Thompson submachine guns. They stood in the middle of the road. One of them held out his hand in an unmistakable Stop Right Damn There! gesture and the other looked as if he would be happy to finally be able to shoot the Thompson at somebody.

  Tom stopped the Cadillac. Almost immediately, an Army ton-and-a-half truck, commonly called a weapons carrier, appeared behind the Cadillac. An MP jumped from the passenger seat, and two more MPs from the truck bed. They all had Thompsons, and they were clearly determined to do their duty to keep interlopers not only from getting into Fort Hunt, but also from escaping now that they had been captured.

  The sergeant who had made the Stop Right Damn There! gesture now marched toward the Cadillac, with the other covering his back.

  He had almost reached the car when he saw that the passenger was in uniform, and that the insignia of a lieutenant colonel was on his collar points and epaulets.

  He went to the rear door and saluted. Clete returned it as the window rolled down.

  The MP said, “Sir, may I have your prior clearance?”

  “Take me to the commanding officer, Sergeant,” Clete replied, then nodded at the MP standing behind him. “And tell the sergeant there that if he intends to fire that Thompson, he’d better work the action.”

  That didn’t have t
o be repeated. The sergeant immediately looked down at his weapon and clearly recalled that the Thompson submachine gun fired from an open bolt. Looking more than a little chagrined, he pulled back the bolt, thus rendering it operable.

  Frade met the eyes of the MP at his window, smiled, then said, “Have you a vehicle we can follow, or would you rather ride with us?”

  “Just a moment, Colonel, please, sir,” the sergeant said.

  After consultation with the others, the sergeant returned to the Cadillac and got in the front seat. The sergeant with the now-functioning weapon walked to the weapons carrier, got in the front seat, and signaled for all but two of the others to get in the back. The two exceptions started walking in the direction of a guard post mostly hidden in the heavily treed roadside.

  The weapons carrier moved to the front of the Cadillac.

  “If you’ll just follow the truck, please?” the sergeant sitting beside Tom said.

  Frade knew the highly secret mission of Fort Hunt—the interrogation of very senior enemy officer prisoners, predominantly German, but including a few Italians and even, Colonel Graham had told him, two Japanese—but he had never been here before.

  It was not an imposing military installation, just a collection of built-in-a-hurry-to-last-four-years single-and two-story frame, tarpaper-roofed buildings. Clete wondered why it was called a fort. Most for-the-duration military installations—like the senior officer POW Camp Clinton he had visited in Mississippi—were called camps.

  The two-vehicle convoy stopped at one of the two-story frame buildings. It bore the sign HEADQUARTERS, FORT HUNT. Standing in front were two U.S. Army soldiers, a slight, slim, bespectacled lieutenant colonel in a somewhat mussed uniform, and a stocky, crisply uniformed master sergeant. Both wore MP brassards on their sleeves and carried 1911-A1 pistols in holsters dangling cowboy-like from web belts, instead of the white Sam Browne belts that MPs usually wore.

  Both looked with frank curiosity at the little convoy.

  “Wait here, please, Colonel,” the MP sergeant sitting beside Tom said as he opened his door.

  Screw you, Clete thought. I want to hear what you tell those two.

  Frade was out of the Cadillac before the MP had reached the soldiers standing in front of Headquarters, Fort Hunt.

  The two looked curiously at him. The master sergeant, apparently having spotted Frade’s silver oak leaves, said something behind his hand to the lieutenant colonel, whereupon both saluted.

  “Good afternoon,” Clete said cheerfully as he returned the salute. “Why do they call this place a fort? It looks as if it was built yesterday.”

  The question was obviously unexpected.

  Clete saw on the Army lieutenant colonel’s uniform his name: KELLOGG.

  After a moment, Kellogg said: “Actually, it was a fort. It was built for the Coast Artillery just before the Spanish-American War.”

  “No kidding?”

  “And the land once was part of George Washington’s farm,” Kellogg added.

  “I’ll be damned!”

  “How can we help you, Colonel?” Kellogg then said cordially but with authority.

  “My boss wants to chat with a couple of your guests,” Frade replied.

  “Colonel, may I see some identification?” Kellogg said.

  Frade handed him the leather wallet holding his spurious credentials.

  The lieutenant colonel examined them carefully, then handed them to the master sergeant, who did the same before handing them back to Frade.

  “We don’t see many credentials like those,” Kellogg admitted.

  “Well, so far we’ve managed to keep them off the cover of Time,” Frade said.

  “And your . . . boss . . . your boss is who?”

  “Colonel Alejandro F. Graham, USMCR—”

  “I know Colonel Graham,” Kellogg interrupted.

  “—sometimes known as the Terrible Tiger of Texas A&M,” Frade finished. “Whose bite is far more deadly than his growl.”

  Kellogg smiled somewhat uncomfortably.

  “And you say Colonel Graham sent you out here to chat with two of our prisoners?”

  “No. What I said was that he wants to chat with two of them, and sent me out here to fetch them.”

  Frade went into a pocket on his tunic and came out with a sheet of paper.

  “One of them is a Kapitän zur See Karl Boltitz and the other is Major Freiherr Hans-Peter Baron von Wachtstein. Now, that’s what I call a mouthful! I wonder how they get all that on his identification card?”

  The master sergeant smiled.

  “It’s not easy, Colonel,” he said. “And some of these Krauts have names that are even worse than that.”

  “Colonel, this is more than a little unusual,” Kellogg said. “We didn’t even know you were coming. Do you have any kind of authority—written authority?”

  “You mean, you want me to sign for them? Sure. Be happy to.”

  “No, I meant a document authorizing you to take these officers with you.”

  Frade sighed. “Colonel, let me explain how I came to be here. I got to Washington two days ago. I can’t tell you . . . Hell, why can’t I? The Germans have surrendered. I was in Portugal . . .

  That’s true. I was in Lisbon not long ago, smuggling even more Nazis out of Europe.

  “. . . as area commander . . .

  Now I’m lying again. I’ve done so much of that it comes as natural to me as it did to Baron Munchausen.

  “. . . I haven’t worn a uniform in years. Anyway, I got to Washington two days ago. Good Marine and fellow Aggie that I am, I immediately reported to the Terrible Tiger of A&M. Colonel Graham showed me a chair, handed me copies of Time and Life, and said to read them while he looked around for something for me to do. An hour ago, he handed me the names of these two Krauts and told me to go fetch them.”

  “Colonel, how do I know that’s true?” Kellogg asked.

  “Well, you could trust my honest face. Or you could ask yourself, ‘If Colonel Graham didn’t send this guy, how come he’s riding in the colonel’s chauffeur-driven Cadillac?’ Or you could call the Terrible Tiger and ask him. I would recommend Options One and/or Two.”

  Kellogg considered that a moment, then said, “Excuse us a moment, will you, please, Colonel?”

  “Certainly.”

  The lieutenant colonel and the master sergeant went inside the headquarters building.

  If they’re calling Graham, I’m screwed.

  But why do I think they won’t call him?

  Because, with a little bit of luck, one or both of them has been on the receiving end of one of Graham’s fits of temper.

  The fits are rare but spectacular, and usually triggered by someone insisting on complete compliance with a petty bureaucratic regulation.

  Never wake a sleeping tiger!

  And I’m on a roll!

  Not quite two minutes after the pair had walked into the headquarters building, the master sergeant came out.

  “Sir, Colonel Kellogg suggests you go inside and have a cup of coffee with him while I go fetch the Krauts for you.”

  “Fine. Thank you very much.”

  “What we’re going to do is send an MP escort with you to the Institute of Health, in case the Krauts try to escape or anything.”

  Oh, shit! Frade thought.

  He nodded. “Good idea.”

  The Office of Strategic Services had taken over the National Institutes of Health building in the District of Columbia “for the duration.”

  In the headquarters building, Frade quickly found the light bird’s office. It had a sign hanging over the door: LTCOL D. G. KELLOGG. PROVOST MARSHAL.

  Several minutes later, about the time Kellogg had poured coffee into a chipped but clean china mug for Frade, Kapitän zur See Karl Boltitz and Major Freiherr Hans-Peter Baron von Wachtstein were escorted into the office by two military policemen.

  They marched up to Lieutenant Colonel Kellogg’s desk and came to attention and clicke
d their heels.

  Boltitz—a tall, rather good-looking, blond young man—was dressed in the white uniform worn by officers of the German navy at sea. He paid little attention to the officer in the Marine Corps uniform. Von Wachtstein, also blond, was smaller and stockier. He was wearing U.S. Army khakis, to which had been affixed the insignia of a Luftwaffe major and his pilot’s wings. When he saw the Marine Corps officer, he gave what could have been a double take, but quickly cut it off to stand at attention.

  Kellogg began: “Gentlemen, this is Colonel—”

  “Cletus Frade,” Clete interrupted in a commanding tone, “lieutenant colonel, U.S. Marine Corps. We’re going to take a little ride. And if you’re even thinking of trying to get away from me, don’t. I’d like nothing better than the chance to shoot either or both of you Nazi bastards.”

  To add visual support to his statement, he took a Model 1911-A1 Colt from the small of his back.

  “I always carry this with a round in the chamber.”

  “Colonel Frade,” Colonel Kellogg said quickly and nervously, “I can assure you that both of these officers have been very cooperative and . . .”

  Frade snorted his disbelief.

  “. . . I’m sure they will give you no problems.”

  “Their choice,” Frade said. “They either behave or they’re dead men.”

  Neither German officer said a word.

  [FIVE]

  The Office of Strategic Services 2340 E Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 1535 10 May 1945

  Preceded by an MP jeep and trailed by an MP weapons carrier, the Cadillac turned off E Street and stopped before a Colonial-style building that would have been quite at home on a college campus. Frade was in the front with the chauffeur; Boltitz and von Wachtstein rode in the back.

  Frade surveyed the area and thought, What the hell do I do now? I never wanted to be here in the first place—and damn sure not with POWs I just broke out of the slam.

  I’ve got to get rid of these MPs. . . .