W.E.B. Griffin - Victory and Honor

“Colonel Frade to see Colonel Graham,” Frade announced. “I do not have an appointment.”

One of the security guards automatically reached for a telephone and dialed a number.

With a little bit of luck, Frade thought, Graham won’t be here.

Then I will make sure the MPs have moved, and go back outside and see if there’s another way to get out of that parking lot.

Frade could quite clearly hear the voice of the male who answered the call snap: “What?”

Dammit—he’s here!

“Who is this, please?” the security guard said into the phone.

“Who did you expect to get when you called this number?” the voice on the phone demanded incredulously.

“Colonel Graham, sir.”

“Okay. You got him. What? ”

“There’s a Marine officer here, Colonel. Lieutenant Colonel Frade. He says he doesn’t have an appointment—”

“He damn sure doesn’t!” the voice said, then before hanging up added: “Send him up.”

Colonel Alejandro Federico Graham, USMCR, the deputy director of the OSS for Western Hemisphere Operations, was standing in the corridor when Frade got off the elevator. He wore his usual immaculate uniform.

“Well, look what the tide floated in!” Graham said in Spanish.

“Mi coronel,” Frade said, and saluted.

Graham returned the salute, shook his head, and said, still in Spanish, “We are Marines. Naval custom proscribes the exchange of hand salutes indoors unless under arms. Try to remember that in the future.”

Then he gestured for Frade to follow him into his office.

“I’m almost afraid to ask what you’re doing here,” he said, waving Frade into an inner office and then into a chair.

“A personnel matter, mi coronel . A personal personnel matter.”

“What kind of a personnel matter?”

“I am in receipt, mi coronel , of a letter from the Finance Officer, Headquarters, USMC, informing me that inasmuch as I have not provided the appropriate proof that I have flown any aircraft the required four hours per month for the past twenty months, I am therefore not entitled to flight pay, and it will therefore be necessary for them to deduct the appropriate amount from my next check.”

“¡Jesúcristo!”

“And since I have not received any paycheck at all for the past twenty-some months, I thought I’d come and see if I couldn’t clear the matter up.”

“Well, I’d probably be more sympathetic if I didn’t know how far removed from the welfare rolls you are, Colonel. What’s that phrase, ‘Rich as an Argentine’?”

“That, mi coronel , is what they call the pot calling the kettle black.”

Graham shook his head.

“So, what really brings you up here, Clete?”

“On the way back from Portugal with yet another load of Teutonic people carrying Vatican passports, as I sat there watching the needles on the fuel gauges drop, I wondered what was going to happen to Boltitz and von Wachtstein once the Germans surrendered.”

“And?”

“I thought that they would probably be loaded onto a troopship, returned to the former German Thousand-Year Reich, and then locked up in a POW enclosure until somebody decided their fate. If they survived that long.”

“And that’s probably what will happen.”

“So I figured I’d better come up here and get them.”

“The injustice of the Nazis getting to go to Argentina, and the good guys getting locked up—and possibly worse—is that, more or less, what you were thinking?”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking. We owe them, and you know it.”

“You did give just a little thought to their being locked up at Fort Hunt and getting them out of there would be impossible?”

“ Next to impossible, mi coronel .”

Graham raised an eyebrow. “Meaning what?”

“Meaning that at this moment, they’re sitting in my grandfather’s Cadillac, which is waiting in General Donovan’s reserved parking spot.”

“You got them out of Fort Hunt?” Graham asked incredulously.

Clete nodded.

“I told them you wanted to talk to them; had sent me out there to fetch them.”

“And what the hell do you plan to do with them now?” Graham said. But before Frade could reply, he asked, “Why the hell did you bring them here? To me?”

“Well, the guy at Fort Hunt didn’t entirely believe me. So he took the path of least resistance.”

“Explain that to me.”

“He was afraid I was telling the truth, so that made him afraid to call you and check. And he was afraid I was a phony. So he sent a jeep and a weapons carrier loaded with MPs with me, to make sure I came here.”

“And now what, Clete? Now that you’ve painted yourself into one hell of a corner?”

“Well, I had the security guards order the MPs to the front of the building. If there’s another way to get out of the parking lot behind the building, I get in my car and we’re gone.”

“To where?”

“Gravelly Point.”

“What did you do, fly your Red Lodestar into there?”

“No. What I have is a South American Airways Constellation.”

“You flew a Constellation into National Airport?”

Clete nodded.

“¡Jesúcristo!”

“I’ve now got about fifteen hundred hours in Connies. I’m getting pretty good at it.”

“And what do you want me to do? Bring you cigarettes and magazines when you’re in the Portsmouth Navy Prison?”

“I want you to do what you know is the right thing,” Frade said seriously. “Help me get to the airport.”

Graham exhaled audibly.

He met Frade’s eyes, then spun around in his chair. Then he turned so that he was facing Frade again.

“You’re way ahead of me, aren’t you, you clever bastard?” he said icily. “You know that if Donovan himself walked in right now, the chances of you being court-martialed—which you richly deserve—are damned slim. You know too much. And the same applies to me.”

“I wouldn’t have come here if that light bird at Fort Hunt hadn’t sent the MPs with me. I had no intention of involving you in this at all.”

“And what did you think was going to happen when you got away with it? If you got away with it?”

“I’m going to drop off my resignation from the Corps at the embassy in Buenos Aires the day I get back. Then I’m going to disappear in Argentina. I saw Mr. Dulles in Lisbon. He said I’m going to have to decide what to do, and what I’ve decided is to disappear. I’m getting pretty good about helping other people disappear there.”

“You can’t just resign from the Corps, you goddamned fool! You’ll get out of the Corps only when the Corps permits you to get out of the Corps!”

Frade stared at Graham and thought, I wondered about that. He’s probably right—if I wasn’t also an Argentine citizen.

Graham picked up one of the telephones on his desk and dialed a single number.

“Security chief, please,” he said, then looked at Frade and added, “Sit there, Colonel, and don’t say one goddamn word.”

Well, Frade thought, I tried.

At least I didn’t tell Beth I was going to get Karl.

“This is Graham. There are two MP vehicles from Fort Hunt in front of the building. Go out there and find whoever’s in charge and bring him up here.”

He hung up the phone.

He turned to Frade and said, “Continue to sit there with your mouth shut, Colonel. I have no interest in hearing anything you might be tempted to say.”

He waited ten seconds, then said, “The proper Marine officer’s response to that, Colonel, is ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ And for the moment at least, you are still a serving officer in the Corps.”