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

Frogger did not respond.

Without breaking eye contact with Frogger, Hanfstaengl said, “May I ask him a question, Alex?”

“Discreetly, Putzi.”

"Herr Oberstleutnant, does the term heavy water —”

“Stop right there, Putzi!” Graham said sharply.

“—mean anything to you? Because if it does, and you’re not giving Graham what he wants—”

“Shut up, Putzi!” Graham ordered loudly and furiously.

Graham looked at Frade. “Get Frogger the hell out of here. I knew this was a bad idea. . . .”

Hanfstaengl threw both hands up in a gesture of surrender.

“Herr Hanfstaengl, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Frogger said without conviction as Frade reached for him.

“Putzi, you sonofabitch!” Graham said bitterly.

The door from the corridor suddenly opened.

A burly man stepped inside. He held a Smith & Wesson revolver in his hand, the arm extended parallel to his leg. He looked quickly around the room.

“You can put that away, Dennis,” Franklin Delano Roosevelt said as he rolled his wheelchair through the doorway. “I know both of them well enough to know it’s mostly bark without much bite.”

No one in the room spoke for a moment.

“Mr. President,” Graham said finally. “Your friend has just been talking about heavy water.” His voice was tense with anger.

“I heard you would be here, Alex,” the President said, ignoring the outburst entirely. He paused to take a cigarette from a gold case and fit it into an eight-inch-long silver holder. Dennis, the man who had entered the room holding a revolver at his side, quickly produced a cigarette lighter.

Roosevelt took a puff and exhaled thoughtfully.

“As I was saying, Alex, I heard you were paying Putzi a visit, but I didn’t hear anything about these gentlemen.”

He waved the cigarette holder like a pointer at Frade, Fogger, and Fischer, who had all, without thinking about it, come to attention. Then the cigarette holder pointed at Frogger.

“May I ask who you are, sir?”

Frogger grew even more stiffly erect. He bowed and clicked his heels.

“Oberstleutnant Frogger, Wilhelm, Excellency!” he barked.

“In whose presence Hanfstaengl has been—” Graham began, only to be shut off by Roosevelt’s extended palm.

Roosevelt’s cigarette holder was now aimed at Frade.

“Before anyone tells me, let me guess. You’re Cletus Frade.”

“Yes, I am, Mr. President.”

“I’m pleased that you finally have found time to come to Washington,” Roosevelt said. He turned to Frogger. “Mr. Frade is an interesting man, Colonel. At one time, he was a distinguished fighter pilot. Now he’s an intelligence officer who knows the names of the German officers who are planning to—how do I put this? —permanently and irrevocably remove Chancellor Hitler from office. Information he refuses to share with me, as difficult to believe as that may be.”

He paused and looked at Frade for a long moment.

FDR then went on: “And I have no idea, Colonel, why he’s brought you here to see my old friend Hanfstaengl. I’m not at all sure he’d tell me if I asked. But I do know that he would not have done so unless he thought it was rather important.”

He took another pull at his cigarette, then looked at Frogger as he slowly exhaled the smoke through his nostrils.

“The reason, Mr. Frogger, that I don’t insist that Frade share everything he knows with me is that he enjoys my absolute confidence. You might wish to keep that in mind in your dealings with him.”

The President kept his eyes locked with Frogger’s for a long moment, then swiveled the wheelchair to face Hanfstaengl.

“This would seem to be a poor time for a visit, Putzi, wouldn’t it? I’ll come back another time.” He paused, then said, “Good evening, gentlemen,” and swiveled his wheelchair around so that he faced the door.

The Secret Service agent was just able to get to the door and open it as Roosevelt rolled up to it. And then the President was through it and gone.

A long moment later, Frade said without thinking, “Jesus H. Christ!”

“Is it true, Mr. Frade?” Frogger asked. “That you know the names of those officers who plan to . . . remove . . . der Führer?”

“If it were true, why the hell should I tell you?”

“If it was not true, you would have said it was, to elicit my support,” Frogger said.

Frade just looked at him.

“Mr. Frade,” Frogger said after a moment, “does the name Oberstleutnant Claus Graf von Stauffenberg mean anything to you?”

Frade didn’t reply.

“Perhaps you’re not as good an intelligence officer as your President Roosevelt seems to think you are, Mr. Frade. The look in your eyes answered my question.”

They locked eyes.

“As the imminent and inevitable collapse of the Afrikakorps became apparent, ” Frogger said, “von Stauffenberg was trying to arrange my transfer to Germany. I’m rather surprised my name has not come to your attention.” He paused, then went on: “Under the changed circumstances, Mr. Frade, I will of course do whatever it is you want me to do.”

“For the moment, Colonel Frogger, I’ll go along with you,” Graham said. “It will take a day or two for me to verify your connection with von Stauffenberg. If you’re lying, I’ll have you shot.”

“I understood that, Colonel, when I gave you von Stauffenberg’s name.”

“Fischer, take him back to Bolling. Put him on the Constellation. If he tries to escape, if he tries anything, kill him,” Graham ordered.

[FIVE]

Bolling Air Force Base Washington, D.C. 2205 6 August 1943

The Constellation was not only plugged into a ground-power generator but was also connected with something Frade had never seen—a flexible pipe connected to a truck-mounted air-conditioning unit. Graham had told him that it had been specially made to cool the President’s Sacred Cow while the aircraft waited for him on a typical torrid Washington summer day.

Frade was sitting—drinking coffee with Howard Hughes—near the rear door, through which the eighteen-inch-diameter flexible hose was delivering a steady blast of icy air. Frogger was seated about in the middle of the passenger compartment. He was no longer handcuffed. Fischer was sitting across the aisle from him, and two of Howard’s Saints were sitting on the aisle just forward of Frade. Frogger wasn’t going anywhere.

There were MPs armed with Thompson submachine guns at the foot of the stairs, and just inside the door were two men in suits who Frade supposed were either Secret Service agents or from the OSS.

One of them stepped around the air-conditioning hose and onto the stairs, then a moment later came to where Frade and Hughes were sitting.

“Colonel Graham would like to see you, gentlemen,” he said.

They went down the stairway and got into the backseat of the Packard limousine.

“I haven’t heard from Allen Dulles,” Graham began the moment Hughes had pulled the door closed after them. “No telling where he is, or when I’ll hear from him. But I think Frogger’s telling the truth, so I think we should get this show on the road.”

“Vegas?” Hughes said.

Graham nodded.

“Las Vegas?” Frade asked.

Graham nodded again.

“I think it might be helpful if I knew what’s going on,” Frade said more than a little sarcastically.

“Ignoring your tone of voice, I will tell you,” Graham said. “By now the word is out that we took Frogger to see Hanfstaengl.”

“The word’s out to who?” Frade said. “And, for Christ’s sake, by who?”

“You might want to write this down, Major,” Graham said. “There is no such thing as hole-proof counterintelligence. I’m going on the assumption that among the Hotel Washington’s staff are some people who are generously compensated for reporting to the Spanish embassy, the Mexican embassy, the Argentine embassy—yeah, Clete, the Argentine embassy—and even the British embassy about who goes to see Putzi Hanfstaengl and even more generously compensated if they can provide photographs of the visitors. So we have to get Frogger out of town as quickly as possible.”