W. IV - Honor Bound 05 - The Honor of Spies

"And only you or the colonel is able to do that?"

"Plus, of course, Lieutenant Fischer," Lieutenant Colonel Raymond said. "And he isn't available."

Graham realized his temper was about to flare.

You could have sent the still-encrypted message over here, rather than wait hours until they found you, Colonel. Believe it or not, we could have decrypted it here.

"Well, Fischer's on his way back, Colonel," Graham said, finally and calmly. "The last word I had was that he'll probably be here tomorrow."

"Yes, sir," Lieutenant Colonel Raymond said.

Graham watched as Raymond first freed himself from his handcuff, then unlocked the briefcase, took from it a large manila envelope--stamped TOP SECRET--and then took from that a business-size envelope--also stamped TOP SECRET--and handed that to Graham.

"Thank you," Graham said. "Please have a seat, Colonel. There will probably be a reply. Can I offer you a little something?"

"No, sir. Thank you, sir."

"Coffee, maybe?"

"Yes, sir. If it wouldn't be a problem," Raymond said as he sat in one of the armchairs.

Graham raised his voice. "Alice, it's Maxwell House time in here."

"Coming right up!"

Graham opened the envelope and removed the contents. He read it as far as the first paragraph before he knew he wasn't going to like it.

"Alice," he called. "Belay the coffee in here! The colonel will take it in your office." He looked at Raymond. "This is not quite what I expected. Would you mind . . ."

Raymond was already on his feet.

"Yes, sir," Raymond said. "I understand, sir. I did the decryption myself. That message is a bit unusual, isn't it, sir?"

Again Graham felt his temper flare. This time he had an even harder time keeping it contained.

What Raymond had said he shouldn't have said, although it was true. "A bit unusual" was something of an understatement. But what had ignited Graham's anger was that Raymond acknowledged that he had read the message during the decryption process.

The only way to avoid that was for the individual actually writing the message to encrypt it, and then transmit it, himself, and for the recipient to personally receive and then decrypt it.

Otherwise, any number of people who had no business being familiar with the message at all--secretaries, cryptographers, radio operators, typists--had a valid reason to read the message and thus become familiar with it.

This system made necessary the use of code names for people and places and operations within the encrypted message itself. The theory being that if only the author and the recipient knew that "Tex" was Major Cletus Frade and

"Aggie" was Colonel A. F. Graham, et cetera, the clerks, et cetera, involved in the transmission and receipt of the message who had read it would not know what they had read.

"Yes, it is," Graham replied, his temper under control. "This shouldn't take long, Colonel. Thank you for your patience."

"Not at all, sir."

Lieutenant Colonel Raymond left the office, closing the door after himself.

Dulles got up and walked to Graham's desk and looked over his shoulder at the message.

Graham knew what all the code names meant, but Dulles had to ask about some of them:

"Pinocchio? Who's that?"

"He said 'new Kraut buddy.' Probably Gehlen."

"Pinocchio because his nose grows when he's lying?"

"What else, Allen?" Graham said.

"Polo?"

"Captain Madison R. Sawyer III, formerly Number Three on the Ramapo Valley polo team."

"The Brewery is where Frade has the Froggers?"

"It's his house in the vineyards of his Estancia Don Guillermo in the foothills of the Andes Mountains near Mendoza. He told me the entire Marine Raider Battalion couldn't get up the mountain to take it."

Dulles chuckled, then asked, "Big-Z?"

"SS-Brigadefuhrer Manfred von Deitzberg."

"Bagman?"

"Sturmbannfuhrer Werner von Tresmarck, who runs that obscene confidential fund operation; he's light on his feet and does exactly what von Deitzberg tells him because otherwise he goes to Sachsenhausen with a pink triangle on his chest."

"That would tend to make him behave, I suppose. Sausage?"

"Anton von Gradny-Sawz, first secretary of the German Embassy."

"Cavalry?"

"Major Frade has declined to give me his name," Graham said dryly. "But I suspect he's Colonel Alejandro Martin of the BIS. I don't think Frade has turned him, but I think it's safe to say that Martin has decided that the gringos are less of a danger to Argentina than the Nazis. He's been helpful. Very helpful."

"I presume 'Bigtoys' means the Constellations?" Dulles said.

"What else could it mean? But what's that about von Deitzberg being ordered to destroy them? Ordered by who?"

"The only thing that comes to mind is that Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels is unhappy--for his propaganda purposes--with Argentina having better transport aircraft than Lufthansa," Dulles said. "But I rather doubt that he has that much influence over Himmler, who would have to issue that order."

"Maybe it came from Hitler; Goebbels has influence with him."

"I just don't know," Dulles said.

"Now, that's worrisome," Dulles said.

"Yes, it is."

"The question is who turned whom."

"My God, Allen! He's a Marine with the Navy Cross! What I meant was that he told him 'just about everything.' "

Dulles looked as if he was about to reply but then had changed his mind.

"Well, I can make a good guess who he means by 'Princeton,' " Allen W. Dulles, BA Princeton '14, MA Princeton '16, said, smiling. "But the Valkyrie business is worrisome."

"You did get that message? That Martin has someone in the Argentine Embassy in Berlin?"

"And I have been working on it, so far unsuccessfully."

Graham nodded thoughtfully, then said, "Are you going to pass around that the Argentines know about Valkyrie?"

"I'll have to think, very carefully, about that. All of those involved do not have von Stauffenberg's courage and determination; if they heard this they'd be likely to pull back. I wish there was some way I could get to Argentina and discuss the players with Colonel Frogger, but I don't see how I could arrange that."

"We can ask Frade to ask him, Allen."

"Let's put that on the back burner for the moment."

Graham nodded.

"Why Renfrew?" Dulles said.

"After the movie."

Renfrew of the Royal Mounted had been a surprisingly successful B movie of 1937 starring James Newill as Sergeant Renfrew, of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who pursued the evildoers, assisted by his dog, a German shepherd named Lightning.

"Why not Dick Tracy?" Dulles said. " Renfrew must've meant something to Frade."

"Who," Graham replied, "was (a) still not much more than a boy when that movie came out, and (b) was almost certainly fairly well lubricated when he wrote this message."