Honor Bound Read online

  “Is that the real reason you want me to go down there? To try to work on my father?”

  “No. As I said, if you could tilt your father toward us, that would be a bonus. But you’re being sent down there to take out the ‘neutral’ submarine replenishment vessel. What we’re hoping—your father is a very powerful man down there—is that the BIS…”

  “The what?”

  “The Bureau of Internal Security, which is sort of their FBI, except that it’s under the Ministry of Defense. They’re very good, I understand, trained by the Germans. What we’re hoping is that once the BIS find out your father is el Coronel Frade, they may elect to be a little less enthusiastic, a little less efficient in investigating you, than they would ordinarily be.”

  “How are they going to know he’s my father? Are you going to tell them?”

  “They’ll find out. I told you, they’re very good.”

  “When does all this start to happen? I was promised a leave. I want to go to Texas….”

  “I understand,” he said. “We know about your uncle, too. That must have been tough….”

  “Sir, do I get a leave or don’t I?”

  “Yes, of course. There will be time for you to visit both Midland and New Orleans.”

  “Thank you,” Clete said.

  Graham looked into Clete’s eyes for a moment, then nodded. He looked at his watch.

  “We have a compartment on the Chicago Limited,” he said. “We have an hour and a half to make it. I think you’d better start packing.”

  “I just take off? What about the War Bond Tour? Won’t they miss me?”

  “They will be told that you’re on emergency leave because of an illness in your family,” Graham said. “Do you suppose I could have another drink, while you pack?”

  [THREE]

  Office of the Director

  Office of Strategic Services

  National Institutes of Health Building

  Washington, D.C.

  15 October 1942

  “You wanted to see me, Colonel?” Colonel A. F. Graham asked as he stood in the door. He was in civilian clothing.

  “Come on in, Alex,” Colonel William J. Donovan, a stocky, well-tailored man in his fifties, replied. As Graham walked into the office, Donovan added, “Actually, I wanted to see you three days ago, and then the day before yesterday, and yest—”

  “I was on the West Coast,” Graham said. “I sent you a memo.”

  “Carefully timed to arrive after you left,” Donovan said. He was smiling, but there was a tone of rebuke in his voice.

  “Amazing town, this Washington,” Graham said. “It only takes a couple of months for an honest man to become as devious as any lifelong bureaucrat.”

  “Tell me something, Alex,” Donovan asked; he was clearly enjoying the exchange. “How did you manage to run the country’s second-largest railroad without knowing how to delegate responsibility?”

  “The third or fourth largest, actually. Depending on how you count—by trackage or by income. The Pennsylvania and the New York Central make more money; and the Union Pacific, the Sante Fe, and the Chicago and Northwestern all have more trackage.”

  Donovan smiled tolerantly at him. Unlike most of the upper echelon of the OSS, Colonel A. (for Alejandro) F. (for Fredrico) Graham was not awed by Colonel William R. Donovan, Director of the Office of Strategic Services—and World I Hero, spectacularly successful Wall Street lawyer, and intimate, longtime friend of his Harvard classmate, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States.

  Probably because Graham was himself a World War I hero, Donovan often reflected. And had an even greater income from running his railroad than he himself had. And had a loathing for politicians, even those who made it to the White House.

  Donovan was pleased when he was able to recruit Graham for the OSS and to steal him from the President (Roosevelt was talking about making Graham “Transportation Czar”; the theft annoyed the President, but he got over it). There were a number of reasons why he was truly valuable; high among these was his reputation for not backing down from a position he believed to be the right one.

  “But to answer your question, Colonel,” Graham went on. “By knowing what things should be delegated, and what things the boss should do himself.”

  “We even have an Assistant Director for Recruitment around here. Did you know that?”

  “Actually, he’s a Deputy Assistant Director,” Graham said. “He works for me. Did you ever really read the manning table?”

  “No,” Donovan said, and laughed. “I have an Assistant Director named Graham who does that sort of thing for me. Whenever he comes to work.”

  “I thought it was important, Bill,” Graham said. “That’s why I went myself.”

  “Your memo said your trip was in connection with the Argentina problem,” Donovan said, his tone making it a question.

  Graham nodded.

  “Then let me clear the air. There will be no violation of Argentine neutrality by United States Naval or Army Air Corps forces. I took that all the way to the top. The State Department won.”

  “The top” meant the President of the United States.

  “I thought that’s what would happen,” Graham said. “That’s why I went recruiting in California. We need more assets down there.”

  Donovan nodded his agreement and then asked, “Any luck?”

  “A very interesting young Marine. Young fellow named Frade.”

  “The Marine Corps…no, Holcomb himself…has been complaining that we’re taking too many of his officers.” Thomas Holcomb was then Major General Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps.

  “You’ll have to deal with Holcomb. This one we need.”

  “Why?”

  “This one—he flew at Midway, and they just gave him a second DFC—not only comes with a large set of balls, he speaks Spanish fluently. And his father is very interesting.”

  “Who’s his father?”

  “El Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade.”

  “And who is el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade?”

  “He is the éminence grise of the G.O.U.”

  “It’s not nice, Alex, to force your boss to confess his ignorance.”

  “It stands for Grupo de Oficiales Unidos,” Graham explained. “They are planning a coup against the President of Argentina. With a little bit of luck they’ll succeed.”

  “This fellow’s father? The Argentine colonel?”

  Graham nodded.

  “The last briefing I had,” Donovan said, “claimed that the Argentinean military, to a man, supported the Axis. Or at least the Germans.”

  “Then you weren’t listening closely. The ‘Argentines are Pro-Axis’ business is simply not so. Just because they wear German helmets doesn’t mean they’re all Nazis. There’s a good deal of pro-British sentiment among much of the officer corps, and the bureaucracy.”

  “‘Pro-British’? As differentiated from ‘Pro-Allies’? Or ‘Pro-American’?”

  “They don’t particularly like us; they like to think they should be the dominant power in this hemisphere. And we’ve never had a presence down there the way the British have. And they’re a practical people, Bill. After Dunkirk, noble sentiment aside, who would you have bet would win the war in Europe? After Pearl Harbor, or especially after Singapore and the Philippines fell to the Japanese—patriotism aside—who would you have bet on to win the war in the Pacific?”

  “The question of the moral right and wrong is not in the equation, so far as they’re concerned?”

  “As it is in ours, you mean? We violated every description of neutrality I’ve ever heard when we had the U.S. Navy looking for German submarines in the North Atlantic, long before we were in the war.”

  “You disapprove of what we did, Alex?”

  “No. The point I’m making here is that the Argentine government has taken greater pains to be neutral than we ever did—even the one now in place, under Castilló, who is a fascist.”

&nb
sp; “Then you weren’t at the briefing where I heard that they’re closing their eyes to the Germans’ refueling and replenishing their submarines in the River Plate.”

  “I set up that briefing for you,” Graham said. “I hoped you would pay attention when Major Kellerman made the point that the German submarines are being supplied by neutral—not German—vessels,” Graham countered. “And not by the Argentines.”

  “That’s splitting hairs,” Donovan said.

  Graham met Donovan’s eyes and shrugged. Then he said, “If it were not for those U-boats, Bill, Brazil almost certainly would still be neutral.”*

  “The trouble with that,” Donovan countered, “is the feeling in Argentina that whatever Brazil does, Argentina should take the other side.”

  “That’s only among some people in Argentina,” Graham argued. “I still have hopes that we can get Argentina to see the light.”

  “What we don’t want down there is a war between Brazil and Argentina. That strikes me as a real possibility. They don’t like each other, and I’m afraid that one of your Argentine coronels is going to decide that if they get in a war with Brazil, Germany will have to help them.”

  “I think Germany likes things just as they are. They’re getting Argentine beef, leather, wool, other foodstuffs,” Graham said. “And they have their hands full in Africa and Russia. And I really don’t think Argentina wants to pick a fight with Brazil. They know that we can supply Brazil a lot easier than Germany can supply them.”

  “You hope,” Donovan said.

  “I think they know, Bill. From what I have seen, they have pretty good intelligence.”

  “So I heard at the briefing,” Donovan said.

  “What we will see now,” Graham went on, “is whether they are wise enough to close their eyes to our blowing up one—or more—of the neutral ships who are replenishing the German submarines. Which we have to do before the Brazilians start seriously thinking about doing it themselves. They know we would have to support them if they got into a war with Argentina; that certainly has a certain appeal to some of their coronels.”

  Donovan nodded his agreement again.

  “What I don’t understand, Alex,” he said, “is why you’re devoting so much of your time and effort to this.”

  “It’s my mission,” Graham said, and then added, “Unless something has happened to change that?”

  “I simply meant that Newton-Haddle has no doubt that his team down there will have no trouble in putting the German ship out of action.”

  “‘His’ team?” Graham asked, and now there was ice in his voice.

  “Newton-Haddle told me he trained them personally,” Donovan said. “That’s all I meant.”

  Colonel Baxter F. Newton-Haddle, U.S. Army Reserve, was the OSS’s Assistant Director For Training, and ran the Country Club (the OSS operated a training school in Virginia at a requisitioned country club). He was a wealthy Philadelphia socialite, the archetypal WASP, as Donovan privately thought of him. Donovan was also aware that Graham, who had seen combat with the Marines in France in World War I, thought he was a strutting peacock.

  Graham’s face showed that Donovan’s explanation hadn’t mollified him.

  “It may be replenishment ships, plural,” he went on. “That wouldn’t surprise me. Even if they take out the ship now in the River Plate…”

  “When they take it out, not if,” Donovan interrupted, with a smile he hoped would remove the tension. “Think positively, Alex.”

  “…there is little question in my mind,” Graham went on as if he had not heard a word, “that the Germans will send another to replace it—or several others.”

  “OK,” Donovan said. “And you think one team isn’t enough? Your mission, Alex, your decision.”

  That satisfied him, Donovan thought, judging from the look on Graham’s face. And then he developed the thought: If the bad blood between Newton-Haddle and Graham gets out of hand, and I have to choose between them, I need Graham more than I need Newton-Haddle.

  “Thank you,” Graham said. “Frankly, I wasn’t sure where I stood.”

  “Your mission, Alex,” Donovan repeated. “Just tell me about it.”

  “When I get the second team down there, the primary mission of both teams will remain the interruption of the replenishment of German submarines and any merchant raiders which may still be active there. I think we have to make two points to the Argentines: First, there is a limit to our patience; we won’t let them look the other way while the Germans replenish their warships in their waters. And second, we are willing, and capable, of playing hardball ourselves.”

  “Who’s on the second team besides the son of Colonel Whatsisname?”

  “Frade,” Graham furnished. “The second man is a second lieutenant I found in the 82nd Airborne Division. His family is in the industrial demolitions business in Chicago. I watched his father demolish a grain elevator next to my right-of-way in Wisconsin. Great big brick sonofabitch, eight stories high and a quarter of a mile long. He dropped it in on itself without getting so much as a loose brick on my tracks. If this kid is half as good as his father, he’s just what I need.”

  “A second lieutenant?”

  “And scarcely old enough to vote,” Graham said. “The third man on the team will be a Spanish Jew with German connections whose family was in Dachau…murdered there, it looks like. I found him in the Army’s Counterintelligence Corps at Camp Holabird in Baltimore. He’s an electrical engineer, and according to Dave Sarnoff at RCA, a pretty good one.”

  “When do you plan to send these people to Argentina?”

  “As soon as the explosives kid, his name is Pelosi, and Ettinger the Jewish chap have gone through a quickie course at the Country Club. And after we take care of their papers and make their cover stories credible.”

  “Which are?” Donovan asked.

  “Ettinger is well-educated, multilingual; and he’s been through the CIC training program. I want to talk to him myself—I haven’t done that yet. But I think he will fit unobtrusively into the Bank of Boston, if I can convince Nestor that he can’t use him for anything else until the replenishment-ship problem is solved.”

  “Jasper Nestor’s the Station Chief in Buenos Aires,” Donovan thought out loud. “He may have other ideas where to use this fellow.”

  “And this is my mission,” Graham said sharply. “Which I have been led to believe is the most important thing we have going down there right now. I hope Nestor understands that.”

  “I’m sure he does. Nestor is a good man,” Donovan said. Then, suddenly and perversely unable to resist the temptation to needle Graham, he added: “Colonel Newton-Haddle thinks very highly of him.”

  Good God, why did I say that? The last thing I want to do is antagonize him!

  Graham’s eyes, ice cold, locked on Donovan’s for a moment. Then, his eyes still cold, he flashed Donovan a gloriously insincere smile.

  “What is it they say, Bill, about birds of a feather?”

  Donovan laughed, hoping it sounded more genuinely hearty than it felt.

  “And the explosives expert? What about his cover?”

  “Frade’s family is in the oil business. Howell Petroleum. Mostly in West Texas and Louisiana, but with interests in Venezuela, including one conveniently known as Howell Petroleum (Venezuela). Conveniently, it sends two or three tankers a month to Argentina. Argentina would like to buy more oil. Howell Petroleum (Venezuela) is going to accommodate them. This will require the opening of an office in Buenos Aires to make sure the petroleum is not diverted. Meanwhile, the Germans are desperate for petroleum, especially for refined product, and don’t seem to care what it costs. Money talks. And especially loudly in Argentina, or so I’m told. So it’s credible to establish an office down there to make sure that Howell oil is consumed within Argentina. And that gives a credible cover to the Marine—his middle name is Howell—and to Pelosi, as well. He’s been around enough tank farms and refineries—if only to demolish them—t
o look like he knows what he’s doing.”

  Donovan nodded.

  “That should work,” he said. “Tell me more about your plans for the Marine vis-à-vis his father.”

  “That’s a wild card. The boy was born there. But he was with his mother when she died in the United States. He was an infant then and stayed here. He was raised by an uncle and aunt, and later lived with his grandfather, Cletus Marcus Howell…”

  “I know the name,” Donovan interrupted.

  “…in New Orleans. The grandfather loathes and despises the father, and very possibly has poisoned the son against him. In any event, they don’t know each other. We’ll just have to see what happens when they get together.”

  “Best case?”

  “El Coronel is overcome by emotion at being united with his long-lost American son, and tilts our way, bringing the Grupo de Oficiales Unidos with him.”

  “Worst?”

  “He hasn’t been in touch with his son since he was in diapers. The child may be something el Coronel wishes never happened, and he won’t be at all happy to have his son show up down there.”

  “But you think we should play the card?”

  “Absolutely. I don’t like to think about the consequences in South America if we found ourselves involved in a war against Argentina. If somebody asked me, I wish Brazil had remained neutral.”

  “You’re talking about J. Edgar Hoover’s major intelligence triumph,” Donovan said.

  J. Edgar Hoover, the enormously politically powerful director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, claimed sole authority for all United States intelligence and counterintelligence activity in Latin and South America. While not publicly challenging Hoover’s position or authority, President Franklin Roosevelt had nonetheless authorized Donovan’s OSS to operate in South America.

  “You’re not suggesting Hoover thinks we would be served by a war between Brazil and Argentina?” Graham asked, surprised.