Griffin W.E.B. - Honor Bound 03 - Secret Honor

McCormick."

Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick, publisher of the

Chicago Tribune, made no secret of his loathing for President

Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

"And I suppose I could count on you to be with Howell when he went to see McCormick."

"That's a possibility I think you should keep in the back of your mind, Bill."

"You realize, Alex, that you're willfully disobeying a direct order? This is tantamount to mutiny."

"I'll split that hair with you, Bill. I thought about that on the way up here. You're not on active duty, Colonel; legally, you're a dollar-a-year civilian. I don't think that you have the authority to issue me a military order. But let's not get into that-unless you've already made up your mind to go down that road?"

"What road should we go down?"

"Be grateful for what we have."

"Which is?"

"Cletus Frade has done more for us than either of us dreamed he could. He earned that Navy Cross by putting his life on the line when he led the submarine Devil Fish into

Samborombon Bay to sink the Reine de la Mer. Only a bona fide hero or a fool would have flown that little airplane into the aircraft weaponry on that ship, and whatever Cletus is, he's no fool."

"I wasn't accusing him of being either a fool or a coward,"

Donovan said.

"And because of what he did during the coup d'etat, he's

President Rawson's fair-haired boy," Graham went on. "Do I have to tell you the potential of that?"

"Point granted," Donovan said.

"Not to mention that his father-who was the likely next president of Argentina-was killed by the Germans during the process."

Donovan gave a snappish wave of his arm to acknowledge the truth of that.

"Not to mention that he was the one who located the Com erciante del Oceano Pacifico," Graham went on. "Which really deserves mentioning-"

"She's in the middle of the South Atlantic," Donovan inter rupted. "On a course for Portugal or Spain. There was a report from the Alfred Thomas, who is shadowing her, early this morning." The USS Alfred Thomas, DD-107, was a destroyer.

"Why don't we sink her?" Graham asked. "We know what she's carrying."

"The President made that decision," Donovan said. "There are… considerations."

"Getting back to the Oceano Pacifico," Graham went on.

"If he hadn't flown Ashton and his team, and their radar, into

Argentina, we never would have found her. And flew them, let me point out, in an airplane he'd never flown before. We sent him that airplane, Bill. We screwed up big time by sending him the wrong airplane. And he pulled our chestnuts out of the fire by flying it anyway."

"You sound like the president of the Cletus Frade fan club," Donovan said, tempering the sarcasm in his voice with a smile.

"Guilty," Graham said. "And while I run down the list, it was Frade's man, Frade's Sergeant Ettinger, who found out about the ransoming of the Jews. And got himself murdered."

"Can I stipulate to Major Frade's many virtues?"

"No, I want to remind you of them. Of all of them. And it was Frade who found out about Operation Phoenix."

"From Galahad. Which brings us back to him," Donovan said. "The President is very interested in Operation Phoenix.

He wants to know-and I want to know, Alex-who Galahad is."

"In my opinion, and Frade's, Galahad is a Class I intelli gence source whose identity must be kept secret, so that he won't be lost to us because somebody here does something stupid and the Germans find out about him. Or even have suspicions about him."

"That's not good enough, Alex. I want to know who he is.

Who all of Frade's sources are."

"He's not going to tell you, and neither am I," Graham said. "I guess we're back where we started."

"And if Frade is taken out-which, after what they did to his father, seems a real possibility-that would leave only you knowing who Galahad is. That's not acceptable, Alex."

"There are others who know who Galahad is," Graham said. "But I won't tell you who they are, either."

Donovan looked at Graham, expressionless, for almost a minute before he spoke.

"I'm going to have to think about this, Alex," he said.

"Think quick, Bill. I want an answer right now, before I leave your office."

"That sounds like another threat."

"Either you fire me, which I think would be a mistake, or you tell me I can stay on under the original ground rules. You will not second-guess me. Your choice."

"That's not a choice. I can't do without you, and you know it."

"I have your word, Bill?"

"I can be overruled by the President," Donovan said. "He's not used to having anybody tell him something's none of his business."

"Roosevelt can't do without you, and both of you know it,"

Graham said. "What's it to be, Bill?"

Donovan exhaled audibly. "OK," he said. "You have my word."

"Thank you."

Graham pushed himself off the couch. "I need a long, hot shower and several stiff drinks," he said. He got as far as the door before Donovan called his name.

"Yes?" Graham asked, turning.

"This is a question, Alex, rather than second-guessing. Did you approve of Frade's killing those two Nazis-the military attache and the SS guy-on the beach?"

"Frade didn't kill them," Graham said. "They were shot by two retired Argentine army sergeants."

"How did that happen?"

"I sent the lieutenant from Ashton's team to the beach to take pictures of the Germans landing the Operation Phoenix money from the Oceano Pacifico. I sent the sergeants down to the beach to guard him. That's all they were supposed to do.

But one of the sergeants not only had been el Coronel

Frade's batman for thirty years, but the brother of the woman who was killed when they tried to assassinate young

Frade. And they're Argentines, Latins, like me. Revenge is a part of our culture. The minute they saw who it was… bang! Ashton's lieutenant was very impressed. It was at least two hundred yards. Two shots only. Both in their heads."

"You sound as if you approve."

"I wouldn't have ordered it," Graham said. "And Frade didn't. But was I overwhelmed with remorse? No. You ever hear 'an eye for an eye'?"

"Yeah, I've heard that. I've also heard 'the devil you know is better than the one you don't.' They'll send somebody else."

"Yes, I'm afraid they will. Anything else, Bill?"

Donovan shook his head, "no," and Graham walked out of the office.

II

[ONE]

The Office of the Reichsfuhrer-SS

Berlin

1430 26 April 1943

"Herr Reichsfiihrer," Frau Gertrud Hassler's high-pitched voice announced, "Deputy Minister von LQwzer of the For eign Ministry, Ribbentrop's office, asks to see you." "Ask the gentleman to wait a minute or two, please,"

Himmler said courteously, and returned to reading the tele typed report from Warsaw. It both baffled and infuriated him.

If the report was to be believed, and he had no reason not to believe it, the day before, "a group estimated to number approximately 2,000 Jews" in the Warsaw ghetto had risen up against their captors, protesting a pending "transport" to resettlement in the East. "The East" was a euphemism for the Treblinka concentration camp, but the damned Jews were not supposed to know that.

For one thing, a revolt of Jews against German authority is on its face unthinkable.

For another, these vermin, in their walled ghetto, have obviously somehow managed to obtain a few small arms.

Someone will answer for this.

And even if it isn't "a few small arms," but many, and every slimy Hebrew in the ghetto has somehow managed to lay his hands on a pistol or a rifle, there is in Warsaw-in addition to the SS personnel-a division of German soldiers, a division of German soldiers!!!; the uprising should have been put down minutes after it became known.