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

"Possibly," Dulles said. "And if that happens, I'll know that Valkyrie has been compromised and will take the appropriate action."

After a moment, Donovan asked, "Are you going to tell me what you and Frade discussed in Brazil?"

"When Frade told me about the Froggers, I thought we might suddenly have been struck with good fortune. It was the same surname as one of the players in Valkyrie. I couldn't be sure--and I couldn't find out while I was in Brazil--so what I asked Frade to do was have a photograph of himself taken with his Froggers, and to stand by, so to speak, for further orders.

"I did not tell him what I hoped, and he did not learn until yesterday, that Lieutenant Colonel Wilhelm Frogger, the Froggers' sole surviving son, a Valkyrie conspirator, had been captured when General von Arnim surrendered the Afrikakorps and was now in the senior officers' POW camp in Mississippi.

"When I had that information, I brought Frade to the United States."

"You didn't think," Donovan asked, more than a little sarcastically, "that Frade suddenly coming up here from Argentina might look a little suspicious?"

"What Allen did, Bill, was have Lloyd's of London cancel the insurance of South American Airways," Graham said. "Otherwise known as Franklin Roosevelt's Stick It to Juan Trippe Airline."

"I don't think that's funny, nor do I understand," Donovan said.

"South American Airways--Frade--was informed that inasmuch as SAA's pilots did not hold an internationally recognized Airline Transport Rating, they were forced to cancel SAA's insurance," Dulles explained. "This caused, as I suspected it would, a furious--and always resourceful--Cletus Frade to deal with the situation in his own way. What he did was load a dozen SAA pilots on one of his Lodestars and fly them to the Lockheed plant in Burbank to take the necessary examinations and get their ratings. And incidentally, to take back to Argentina a half-dozen of those 'surplus' Lodestars."

Graham picked up the story: "Howard Hughes and I were waiting for him in his hotel room at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood. The next morning, the SAA pilots--including Frade--were dropped off one at a time at SAA Lodestars to meet the examination pilots. Frade was dropped off last, at a Constellation, where Howard and I were again waiting for him.

"We flew to the Jackson Army Air Base in Mississippi. En route, we told Frade what was going on. We drove out to Camp Clinton and met with Oberstleutnant Frogger. He's one starchy sonofabitch, incidentally, who would only recite his name, rank, and serial number even after we showed him the pictures of Frade with his parents.

"We told him that we would protect his family from the Germans, even eventually allow them to come to the States, if he could talk them into helping Frade keep track of where the Operation Phoenix money was going. He professed to know nothing of Operation Phoenix, but he agreed to come with us to Washington 'to meet someone who would confirm that Operation Phoenix existed.'

"We took him to see Putzi. Frogger knew who Putzi was, of course, and was impressed, as I thought he would be. And then we threw Galahad's name at Frogger and told him we knew he was involved with Valkyrie. He was still adjusting to the shock that we knew about Valkyrie when the door opened and a Secret Service agent wheeled in the President."

"My God!" Donovan said. "And?"

"We got lucky again," Graham said. "Roosevelt didn't say much beyond 'You must be Major Frade' to Cletus, and then he left. I had the feeling that while he didn't have any idea what was going on, he'd better give me the benefit of the doubt."

"You didn't tell him?" Donovan asked.

Graham shook his head. "And, amazingly, he didn't ask. That's what you're going to have to do, Bill: come up with a story to explain to Roosevelt what we were doing there that does not, repeat not, even hint about Operation Valkyrie."

Donovan, who did not at all like being bluntly told what he was going to have to do, nevertheless did not lose his temper.

"And then?" Donovan asked.

"Frogger came on board, said he'd do whatever we asked."

"And now there is a secret within a secret," Dulles said. "Frogger will go to Argentina to help Frade with Operation Phoenix. That's a secret. But his primary role will be to help me help the Valkyrie conspirators."

"How are you going to get him to Argentina?" Donovan asked. "And don't you think he'll be missed at Camp Clinton, both by the Army and the Germans?"

"He's now in Las Vegas, Nevada," Graham said. "As soon as the Documents people can come up with what he needs to prove that he's a South African named Fischer--the whole nine yards, passport, driver's license, clothing, even suitcases--and we can get it out there, he'll be flown--probably by Howard, in a Constellation--to Canoas and wait there for Frade to appear and get him into Argentina."

"How's Frade going to do that?"

"Frade is very resourceful," Dulles said. "He'll think of something."

"Frade gives new meaning to the term 'loose cannon,'" Donovan said. "And what about the POW camp? What happens there?"

"At 2300 last night, the camp commander reported to the local authorities, the provost marshal general, and the FBI that Oberstleutnant Frogger cannot be found and must be presumed to have escaped."

"Clever," Donovan said. "But J. Edgar will blow a fuse when he finds out he's been spending what he calls his 'finite resources' trying to find a German POW we have."

Dulles shrugged. "I don't want Hoover to know that. Now. Or ever. I want the FBI looking in every nook and cranny for Colonel Frogger."

"If I didn't know better, that might sound like an order," Donovan said, his voice tense.

"If you're not willing to go along with that, I'll go see the President, right now, and make my case," Dulles said. "This has to be kept secret, Bill."

"Second the motion," Graham said.

After a very perceptible pause, Donovan said, "Okay. I'll go along. I'm not sure if I'm doing so because I think you're right, or because there is a certain appeal to the thought of J. Edgar being increasingly humbled by not being able to find an escaped POW, or because I really don't want the President to have proof that the both of you are half in the bag before five o'clock in the afternoon."

Neither Graham nor Dulles replied.

"This is where I usually say 'keep me posted,'" Donovan said. "But that would be a waste of breath with you two, wouldn't it?"

He pushed himself out of his chair and walked out of the office.

II

[ONE]

4730 Avenida Libertador

Buenos Aires, Argentina

1525 12 August 1943

When Cletus Frade came down the stairs into the basement garage of the mansion, he looked--and felt--both very tired and upset. He also felt grimy. He was wearing the same clothing--except for underwear that he had changed twice--he had put on forty-odd hours before in Los Angeles: a polo shirt and khaki trousers, and battered Western boots. Once he had arrived in Argentina, where it was winter, he had added a fur-collared leather jacket, the breast of which had sewn to it a leather patch bearing a stamped-in-gold representation of Naval Aviator's wings and the legend C. H. FRADE 1LT USMCR.

Except for maybe six hours spent on the ground taking on fuel, buying food (usually sandwiches), visiting some really incredibly foul gentlemen's rest facilities, and changing his linen, he had been either at the controls of a Lockheed Lodestar or catching what sleep he could lying in the aisle between the seats in the passenger compartment.

Finally, the Lodestar had touched down, twice, in Argentina.

The first time had been at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, where he had dropped off Mr. Wilhelm Fischer, a South African, and where Frade's wife had told him the bad news: