Griffin W.E.B. - Honor Bound 04 - Death and Honor

“Yeah, I know about that. What did you think Alex was doing out here, chasing movie starlets?”

“As a matter of fact . . .” Clete said.

“Watch it, Major,” Graham said, but he was smiling.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Clete asked.

“You look kind of beat, Clete,” Graham said. “You sure you want to do this now?”

“I am beat. But as beat as I am, I know I’d never get any sleep not knowing . . .”

“Okay. Your call.” Graham took a sip of his beer, clearly composing his thoughts, then went on: “Roosevelt has decided—and, for once, I agree with him—that the best way to deal with Operation Phoenix is not to try to stop it but, instead, to keep an eye on it and grab the money, et cetera, once the war is over.”

Clete had just enough time to be surprised that Howard Hughes was privy to Operation Phoenix when Hughes confirmed it:

“Otherwise,” Hughes said, “they’d just find some other way to get the money in. Nobody ever accused Bormann, Göring, Goebbels, and Company— or, for that matter, Franklin Roosevelt—of being stupid. Many other pejoratives apply, but not ‘stupid.’ ”

Graham chuckled and went on: “And Allen Dulles thinks you—and the Froggers—are the key to doing that. He thinks the key to getting the Froggers to help, really help with Phoenix and more, is to go to Mississippi and turn their Afrikakorps son. More important, Allen thinks you’re our best hope to turn him.”

“I don’t have any idea how I would do that,” Clete said.

“So far,” Hughes offered, “you’ve turned one Kraut with the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross and another Kraut who works for Canaris. . . .”

“You told him that?” Clete blurted angrily.

Graham didn’t reply.

Hughes added: “You’re obviously pretty good at turning Krauts. So why should turning the one in Mississippi be so difficult?”

Frade looked at Graham, who went on: “So the problem was to get you to the States without raising any more suspicions in Colonel Martín’s fertile mind. And Allen said the way to do that was not to tell you anything was going on until you got here. He was betting that you would understand the only way to get around the problem of your pilots not having ATRs was to get them rated, and since the only place you could do that was here, you’d figure out some way to get them—and you—here without making anybody suspicious. And he was right. Again.”

“Allen Dulles was behind Lloyd’s canceling our insurance?” Clete asked incredulously.

Graham nodded.

“I’ll be damned!” Clete said admiringly.

“I don’t think I want to play poker with Dulles,” Hughes said.

“What are the maps Dorotea was talking about?” Graham said. “And, incidentally, I sent her your love and told her that you arrived safely. A radiogram to South American Airways. She’ll get it, right?”

“I have trouble picturing you as a happily married man,” Hughes said.

“That’s because you haven’t seen her,” Clete said to Hughes, then looked at Graham. “Yeah, she’ll get it. Thanks.”

“The maps?” Graham pursued.

“God, I forgot about them. We went to my Granduncle Guillermo’s house to pick up a picture of my mother that my grandfather wants. Perón is staying there. He wasn’t there when we were, but Dorotea saw an Argentine army map case and took the maps from it. One shows the coastline south of Mar del Plata where U-405 ...” He looked at Hughes. “You know about that, too, Howard?”

“I know everything,” Hughes said.

“Of course,” Clete said, then picked up where he’d left off: “. . . where U-405 landed the special shipment, which means that Perón knew all about it.”

“That surprised you?” Graham asked.

“Yeah, a little. Even after I’ve had time to think about it.”

“Dorotea said ‘maps,’ plural.”

“The other one was from the Oberkommando of the Wehrmacht. It shows South America ‘after the annexation.’ Paraguay and Uruguay are shown as provinces of Argentina.”

“Zimmerman,” Graham said thoughtfully. “That’s interesting.”

“What?” Clete asked.

“Stranger things have happened,” Graham said, as if to himself. Then he asked, “Where’s the film?”

“In my toilet kit.”

Graham said, “You have some place where it can be developed right now, Howard?”

Hughes rose gracefully from his armchair, walked to a closet, unlocked it, reached inside, came out with a telephone, and, putting the phone to his ear, leaned on the doorjamb.

“We need a little room service,” he announced into the telephone, then put it back, closed the door, and locked it.

He saw the look on Frade’s face.

“We couldn’t take the chance that one of your pals would catch you trying to get Alex on the phone,” Hughes explained. “And Alex was worried what kind of a hooker you’d get if you tried that.”

Frade gave him the finger.

A moment later, there was a knock at the door and someone called, “Room service.”

Hughes opened the door to a stocky man wearing a white cotton waiter’s jacket, and motioned him into the room.

The man looked expressionless but carefully at Frade.

“Get your film, Clete,” Hughes ordered.

“Is this guy room service or not?” Clete asked.

“You’re hungry?” Graham asked.

Frade nodded.

“Tell them to start serving dinner,” Hughes ordered the man. “Bring three here. And then take a film cassette the gentleman in the towel is about to give you out to the studio. Have it souped. I want prints large enough to read. And I want them yesterday. Bring the film back with you. Got it?”

“Yes, Mr. Hughes,” the man said, and turned and looked at Frade again.

Clete went to the bathroom, took the film cassette from his toilet kit, and started to return but changed his mind. He got dressed first, then went back to the living room. The “waiter” still stood where he had been standing.

Clete handed him the film cassette.

“And when you bring my dinner . . .” he began, then looked at Hughes. “Do I have any choices?”

“The usual jailhouse fare,” Hughes said.

Frade turned back to the waiter. “Bring a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a good bottle of merlot or pinot noir.”

The man looked at Hughes for direction.

“That,” Hughes added, “and a bottle of gin and some ice and a martini mixer, or shaker, or whatever they call it. Serve wine with the others’ meals, but no hard stuff. I don’t want anybody finding the liquid courage to start a jailbreak.”

“Yes, Mr. Hughes.”

“You heard me say I want those prints yesterday?”

“Yes, Mr. Hughes.”

The man turned and left the room.

“What did you say before?” Clete asked Graham. “ ‘Zimmerman’?”

Graham shook his head in exaggerated disappointment. “You were apparently asleep during Modern American History 101 at our alma mater. You really don’t know?”

“No, I really don’t know.”

“Neither do I, Alex,” Hughes said. “And I very nearly finished high school. What the hell are you talking about?”

“In 1917, the British had a cryptographic operation they called ‘Room 40.’ Big secret, because they had broken the Imperial German diplomatic code—”

Hughes interrupted: “Like the Navy has broken the Imperial Jap Navy Code?”

“You didn’t hear that, Clete,” Graham said furiously. “My God, Howard!”

“Well, you said we were going to tell him about Lindbergh and Yamamoto; he’d have heard that then,” Hughes said unrepentant.

Frade looked from Hughes to Graham and back again.

Lindbergh? Lucky Lindy?