Victory and Honor Read online

  The only Turtles missing from the reception party—or not on the Lodestar—were Captain Sawyer and newly promoted Master Sergeant Sigfried Stein, the team’s explosives expert who was a refugee from Nazi Germany. Both were at Frade’s Estancia Don Guillermo, near Mendoza in the foothills of the Andes, holding down the fort of what Frade thought of as the lunatic asylum, and his wife thought of as her little house in the mountains, more formally known as Casa Montagna.

  There were also four gauchos on horseback by the hangars, all armed with either rifles or submachine guns, and there were, Clete knew, at least six or eight more out of sight, keeping watch on the Big House.

  There were also a half dozen servants of both sexes from the Big House and as many mechanics/ground handlers.

  “I really hate to go out there,” Clete said to Dorotea. “Signing autographs for fans is so tiring.”

  “My father was right about you. You’re bonkers, absolutely bonkers. I should have listened to him.”

  “You were deaf with uncontrollable lust.”

  “You bah-stud!”

  “I love it when you talk dirty.”

  “My God!” Dorotea exclaimed as she opened the door to the passenger compartment. Clete saw that she was smiling.

  After disembarking from the Lodestar, the women saw that the children were placed in baby carriages for the ride to the Big House that would pass through over a hectare of English garden. Then the women—with the exception of Dorotea—walked after the servants who pushed the baby carriages. Other servants trailed them with everyone’s luggage.

  The men, meantime, pushed the Lodestar into the hangar. Moving the big airplane took grunting effort from all of them.

  When the Lodestar had been arranged to Clete’s satisfaction, Allen Dulles cleaned his hands with a handkerchief. Then, pointing, Dulles asked, “What’s that under the tarpaulin?”

  “The last time Hansel was here, he left in a hurry and forgot it,” Frade said. “Being the wonderful fellow that I am, I’ve been taking care of it for him.”

  Von Wachtstein, having heard his name, walked up as two mechanics responded to Clete’s gesture and started removing the tarpaulin.

  When they had finished, von Wachtstein said, “My God!”

  The Fieseler Storch—a small, high-wing, single-engine aircraft—was painted in the Luftwaffe spring and summer camouflage scheme of random-shaped patches in three shades of green and two of brown. Black crosses identifying it as a German military aircraft were on both sides of the fuselage aft of the cockpit, and the red Hakenkreuz of Nazi Germany was painted in white circles on both sides of the vertical stabilizer.

  “It looks like it could be flown right now,” von Wachtstein said.

  Frade glanced at his wife, then said, “Dorotea and I flew it to your mother-in-law’s house for dinner last week.”

  “How did Peter come to ‘forget it’ the last time he was here?” Dulles asked.

  “Well,” Frade said by way of explanation, “Peter can’t be accused of being a military genius, but he did set up an emergency get-out-of-Dodge plan. Which worked.”

  “When we got word,” von Wachtstein furnished, “Ambassador von Lutzenberger called me at four A.M. with the joyous news that God had saved our beloved Führer from Claus’s bomb at Wolfsschanze. I then picked up Karl Boltitz at his apartment, went out to El Palomar Airfield, filed a flight plan to Montevideo, and, as soon as it was light, took off in the Storch. And flew here. Cletus then flew us—no flight plan—to Canoas in the Red Lodestar. Thirty-six hours later, Karl and I were officially POWs at Fort Hunt.”

  “Von Lutzenberger,” Dulles said, “the German ambassador in Buenos Aires?”

  Von Wachtstein nodded.

  “He knew what you were doing?” Dulles pursued.

  Von Wachtstein nodded again, then looked at Frade and said, “What happened to him after the unconditional surrender?”

  “I don’t know,” Frade said. “I should have asked Martín.”

  “I did ask General Martín,” Dorotea said. “The ambassador and his wife are either in Villa General Belgrano or will be shortly. Just about everybody else from the embassy was taken to the Club Hotel de la Ventana in the south of Buenos Aires Province.”

  “What’s that, a house?” Major Ashton asked. “‘Villa General Belgrano’?”

  “It’s actually a place,” von Wachtstein said, “a little village in Córdoba. It looks like it’s in Bavaria. It was started by German immigrants, and when the Argentine government had to put the interned survivors of the Graf Spee somewhere, the most dedicated Nazis were sent there. I used to fly that”—he pointed to the Storch—“up there once a month with the payroll and their mail.”

  “And the less dedicated Nazis?” Dulles asked.

  “Some of them went to an Argentine army base near Rosario,” Boltitz chimed in, “and the rest to the Ventana Club Hotel.”

  “I used to go there, too,” von Wachtstein said. “Usually, I had a message or a package for the Bishop of Rosario, a man named Salvador Lombardi. You know what they say about converts to Catholicism becoming more Catholic than the Pope? Well, that sonofabitch was a convert to National Socialism and was more of a Nazi than Hitler. He told me one time that anyone who opposed Der Führer would suffer eternal damnation. And he meant it.”

  “I believe the bishop is a close friend of my Tío Juan,” Frade said. “I wonder why that doesn’t surprise me.”

  There were many reasons for Frade’s deep distrust of el Coronel Juan Domingo Perón—his godfather, “Uncle” Juan—who was vice president, secretary of War, and secretary of Labor and Welfare of the Argentine Republic. Chief among them was that Perón, very sympathetic to Germany’s socialist political ideals, was too friendly with the Nazis in Argentina. And, Frade had discovered, Perón’s ultimate ambition wasn’t to become president of Argentina—he instead aspired to be ruler of a Greater Argentina that the Nazis had intended to create by combining Uruguay, Paraguay, and even parts of Chile and Brazil.

  All of which supported Frade’s strong suspicion that Perón had been complicit in the Nazis’ ordering the assassination of el Coronel Jorge Frade and the attempted assassination of Cletus Frade.

  And when Clete—who embraced Sun Tzu’s philosophy of keeping one’s friends close and one’s enemies closer—finally ordered his Tío Juan to move out of Uncle Willy’s Avenida Libertador mansion— calling him a degenerate sonofabitch for his lust for thirteen-year-old girls—Perón had actually pulled a pistol on him. It had taken Frade considerable restraint not to let Enrico’s riot shotgun accidentally discharge double-ought buckshot in Perón’s direction.

  “Some of those messages for Bishop Lombardi were from Perón,” von Wachtstein confirmed.

  Allen Dulles suddenly put in: “Getting off the subject of Colonel Perón and with the caveat that there’s never a good time to say something like this, Peter and Karl, I want you to know both personally and on behalf of the OSS how very sorry we are about what Hitler did to Admiral Boltitz and General von Wachtstein.”

  “Thank you,” von Wachtstein said simply.

  “Thank you,” Boltitz said, then added: “But I have to tell you—fully aware that this is probably what we sailors call ‘pissing into the wind’—that I haven’t completely given up hope about my father. One of the later arrivals at Fort Hunt told me he had heard that when the word came that the bomb at Wolfsschanze failed to kill Hitler, my father, who was in Norway, in Narvik, simply disappeared.”

  Frade had a sudden cold-blooded thought: He knew what was going to happen to any of the conspirators.

  Jumping into those icy waters was preferable to what the SS would do to him—starting with torture and ending by getting hung from a butcher’s hook—if they got their hands on him.

  “It’s possible, of course, that he took his own life,” Boltitz went on.

  Jesus, he’s reading my mind!

  “But I don’t think he would do that. He had Norwegian friends.”

/>   Sorry, Karl, but I’m afraid you really are pissing into the wind.

  “I’ll see if I can find out anything for you,” Dulles said.

  “Thank you.”

  “I’d love to say let’s go get something to drink,” Frade said. “But that’ll have to wait. Let’s go to the quincho. At least we can get some coffee.”

  “You don’t need me in there,” Dorotea said. “And I have our lady guests to attend to. Clete can tell me what happened later.” She saw the look of surprise on Allen Dulles’s face and added: “He always tells me everything, Mr. Dulles. I thought you knew that.”

  She then walked briskly toward the Big House.

  [ONE]

  Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo Near Pila, Buenos Aires Province Republic of Argentina 1050 12 May 1945

  “When this is over,” Clete announced after everybody had filed into the quincho, “the bar will open. In the meantime, sit down, have a cup of coffee, and pay attention to our boss.”

  There are all sorts of quinchos, structures originally built of poles supporting a thatched roof, designed to keep people out of the sun and rain while watching meat grill on the wood-fueled parrilla. The Big House’s quincho was somewhat more elaborate. At least three generations of Frades had used it to entertain not only their friends but the senior employees of the Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo. There was a large number of the latter.

  This quincho was a substantial brick building large enough to seat fifty people at what in America would be called picnic tables. The roof was covered with red Spanish tiles, and there was a complete restaurant-size kitchen to complement the twenty-foot-long parrilla. And there was a well-stocked bar.

  “Thank you, Colonel Frade, for that enthusiastic introduction,” Dulles said dryly, and sat down on one of the wooden plank tables.

  “There’s good news and there’s bad news,” Dulles began. “As you’re aware, the very good news is that the Germans have surrendered unconditionally, and as soon as we’re finished here, we’ll have a drink to celebrate that.

  “The bad news is that the end of any war is a dangerous time. Some argue that it can be more dangerous than during the war, because on the losing side there can be breaks in chains of command and in discipline, and lawful orders can either be lost in the chaos or be outright ignored—or both. Nor is it unusual among those on the losing side for there to be instances of every man for himself. I’ll get more into that in a moment.

  “While Germany has surrendered, the fact is the war is not over for us. You won’t be sent to the Pacific. But you won’t be going home, either, because you’re needed here. And concerning that, the other bad news—there’s so much of it I hardly know where to begin—is that the OSS shortly will cease to exist.”

  That announcement caused a sudden anxious energy in the quincho . Some of the Turtles suddenly sat upright, causing the wooden legs of their seating to screech across the tile floor. Others blurted a mix of “What?” and “I’ll be damned!”

  Clete Frade popped to his feet and extended his right arm over his head, the palm of his hand out. “Hold it down. Let Mr. Dulles continue.”

  There then came some audible sighs, but the room turned quiet again. Frade returned to his seat.

  Dulles went on: “Believe me, I don’t like it any better than you men. But I’m afraid that we—the OSS—had it coming. Let me go off on that tangent. I’m sure you will all be shocked to hear that the Army, the Navy, the State Department, and the FBI have never liked the OSS. They’ve had to put up with us because the OSS enjoyed the protection of President Roosevelt. The OSS was his idea. The moment Roosevelt died the pressure on President Truman to disband us began. It increased with the German surrender. It isn’t a question of whether the OSS will be shut down, but when.

  “So far as the OSS in Argentina is concerned, organizationally Team Turtle is de jure subordinate to the OSS station chief, Colonel Richmond C. Flowers, USA, who is the military attaché at our embassy in Buenos Aires.

  “De facto, Team Turtle is directly subordinate to Colonel Graham and, to a lesser degree, myself. While Majors Ashton and Pelosi, who have been accredited to the embassy, are de jure subordinate to Colonel Flowers, de facto Colonel Flowers has been told that he does not have either the authority to tell them what to do or the ability to question them as to what they are doing.

  “In a manner of speaking, Flowers is Marshall’s man in the OSS. His allegiance is to General Marshall, not to General Donovan. You understand, of course, that when I refer to the chief of staff of the Army, I am not referring to General George Catlett Marshall personally, but to one or more of his subordinates who know his desires and will try hard to satisfy them. That would include his deputy chief of staff or someone even lower on that chain of command. Or—almost certainly—the assistant chief of staff for intelligence, and others lower on that chain of command.

  “Everyone still with me? If there are questions, please ask them. Because what I’m about to tell you concerns not only some of your fine work being completely destroyed, but also what you may well face in the very near future.”

  He paused and looked around the room.

  There were more than a few expressions of curiosity. But no questions.

  “Okay,” Dulles said with a nod, then went on: “Shortly after Colonel Flowers was named OSS station chief for Argentina and told that he had no control over Team Turtle, he complained to General Marshall that, because of all the things Team Turtle was doing, he had nothing to do. Marshall—or, as I said before, one of his loyal underlings—complained to General Donovan. In an attempt to spread oil upon the troubled waters, Donovan threw Marshall a bone.”

  He paused, then said with a smile, “How’s that for a masterful double cliché?”

  That got him chuckles, and Master Sergeant William Ferris applauded and called, “Hear! Hear!”

  Dulles then said: “That bone being the care and maintenance of the files Team Turtle had been keeping that listed or else, which banks and which safety-deposit boxes in all the money and precious stones, et cetera, resided that Herr Doktor Goebbels and other National Socialist officials had been sending to Argentina to fund their Operation Phoenix. The release of the intel was done, I must say, over Colonel Frade’s most strenuous objections. But when ordered by General Donovan to turn over said files to Colonel Flowers, Colonel Frade dutifully did so.”

  “How’s that for a masterful stupid decision?” Frade asked bitterly.

  “You had no choice, Clete,” Dulles said evenly. “It was an order.”

  “I could have given Flowers half of the files, a quarter of them,” Frade argued. “He wouldn’t have known the difference, and we would have had at least some of that money and those valuables left to grab. But, no, I gave the bastard everything we had on Phoenix.”

  “As you were ordered to do,” Dulles repeated, and then stopped. “I am about to talk out of the other side of my mouth on the subject of obeying orders. When Colonel Flowers made an unwise decision vis-à-vis those files—”

  “‘Unwise decision’?” Frade parroted. “How about a masterful double stupid decision?”

  Dulles smiled at him.

  “If you like,” Dulles said, “I will rephrase: When Colonel Flowers, to ensure those files would not fall into the wrong hands, made his masterful double stupid decision to take the files out of the embassy and place them in the safe in his home, he thus unwittingly permitted parties unknown—”

  “Otherwise known as el Coronel Juan Domingo Perón,” Frade interrupted again.

  “—to gain surreptitious access to them and photograph them, thus permitting the holders of the various bank accounts and safety-deposit boxes to move the assets elsewhere before they could be seized by the Argentine government on Germany’s unconditional surrender.

  “On learning that there were no assets to be seized, Colonel Flowers suspected that Colonel Frade had not only intentionally given him false data when ordered to turn over the files to him but had
given the bona fide data to, quote, some of his Argentine friends, close quote. And then reported his suspicions as fact to the assistant chief of staff for intelligence.

  “Flowers, of course, had no way of knowing that, in addition to turning over the files to him, what Colonel Frade had actually done was make copies of everything and given those copies to the legal attaché of the U.S. Embassy, Mr. Milton Leibermann, and informed General Donovan that he had done so.

  “Mr. Leibermann notified the FBI that he had come into possession of the files, the accuracy of which he had verified, from Colonel Frade.

  “On receipt of this communication, J. Edgar Hoover called General Donovan and asked why Colonel Frade had been so obliging, inasmuch as officers of the OSS and the FBI in Argentina were forbidden to communicate with one another. General Donovan told him that Frade had been so concerned the files would be compromised once they were in the hands of Colonel Flowers that he felt justified to place a copy of them into the hands of the FBI.

  “And so it came to pass, as it says so often in the Bible, that when the assistant chief of staff for intelligence, in righteous indignation, called upon General Donovan with Colonel Flowers’s suspicions vis-à-vis Colonel Frade, General Donovan was able to tell him they were unfounded. ‘General, the data Frade furnished Colonel Flowers was accurate. Ask J. Edgar Hoover, who has a copy.’

  “The assistant chief of staff for intelligence apparently contacted Director Hoover, for that was the last either Donovan or the OSS heard of the matter.

  “I think it reasonable to assume, however, that the assistant chief of staff for intelligence did indeed discuss the matter with Colonel Flowers. I also think it reasonable to assume that they refused to relieve Colonel Flowers for cause because that would have been tantamount to admitting the officer forced upon the OSS was grossly incompetent.