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

"Thank you for coming so quickly, Colonel," Colonel A. F. Graham, USMCR, said.

"What can I do for you, Colonel?" Colonel Ludlow said, and looked at the two other men in the room, both of whom were wearing sort of a uniform of knit polo shirts, khaki slacks, and aviator's sunglasses as they leaned against the wall and held bottles of Coca-Cola.

"I don't mean to offend," Colonel Ludlow said to the taller of the two, "but has anyone ever told you that you look like Howard Hughes?"

"I've heard that before," Hughes said.

"Hughes is much better-looking, Colonel," the man beside him--Major Cletus Frade, USMCR--said. "And isn't going bald."

Colonel Graham flashed Frade an impatient look, then pushed himself out of the armchair.

"With the caveat that the classification is Top Secret, Colonel," Graham said, "would you please take a look at this?"

He handed Ludlow a four-by-five-inch envelope.

"Didn't you show me this when you first came?" Colonel Ludlow asked as he opened the envelope.

"What I showed you when I came was my authorization to see Colonel Frogger," Graham said. "This is somewhat different."

Ludlow read the document:

Ludlow's face showed his surprise as he looked at Colonel Graham.

"This is a blank check for anything, Colonel," Ludlow said.

"Yes, it is," Graham said. "I have to ask about your lieutenant. Do you want him to participate in what I'm going to need, or would you rather I have Major Frade take him into the kitchen, tell him what certainly will happen to him if he breathes a word of this to anyone for the rest of his life, and send him away?"

Ludlow considered that for a moment.

"Colonel Graham, this is Lieutenant Mark Dalton. I trust him. The question is whether he wants to become further involved with what's going on here." Ludlow looked to the wiry lieutenant. "Dalton?"

"You may show him that note," Graham said.

Ludlow handed the note to Dalton, who read it.

"In or out, Lieutenant?" Graham asked.

"In, sir," Lieutenant Dalton said.

"We don't shoot people who run off at the mouth about things like this, Lieutenant," Graham said. "But what we do, instead, is confine them in Saint Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, where they stay incommunicado at least for the duration of the war, plus six months. If Colonel Ludlow trusts you, I'd like to have you, but I want you to be sure you know what you're letting yourself in for."

"In, sir," Lieutenant Dalton repeated.

"Incommunicado means your family will be informed you are missing in action."

"In, sir," Dalton said after a just-perceptible hesitation.

Graham nodded, then introduced Frade, Hughes, and Frogger, then said: "All right. What we are going to do is give Colonel Frogger a polo shirt and long-legged khakis. Lieutenant Dalton, you are then going to back Colonel Ludlow's staff car up to the back door and open the trunk. As the rest of us form as good a shield as we can, Colonel Frogger will then get in the trunk.

"Colonel Ludlow and Colonel Frogger will then get in that car. Major Frade and Mr. Hughes and I will get in the other car. We will follow you to the Jackson Army Air Base, where we will drive directly to our airplane, a Constellation. We then will again make as good a quick shield as we can while the trunk is opened and Colonel Frogger gets out, then goes up the ladder and into the aircraft.

"We will take off as soon as possible." He looked between Ludlow and Dalton. "You two will return here, and at 2300 hours, you will--in addition to whatever else you do when there is an escape--notify your superior headquarters and the FBI that Colonel Frogger has escaped."

He let that sink in, then added: "Don't let anyone--especially the FBI--know we were here at all."

"You're asking me to lie to the FBI?" Colonel Ludlow asked.

"I'm ordering you to lie to the FBI. I have the authority from the chief of staff to do so. It is important that the FBI believes that Colonel Frogger has actually escaped. If I didn't send them--and everybody else--on a wild-goose chase looking for Frogger, then someone will smell a rat."

"God, Alex, you are really a master of the mixed metaphor," Howard Hughes said.

Frade chuckled.

"What kind of an airplane did you say?" Lieutenant Dalton asked.

"A Constellation," Frade answered. "A Lockheed 1049, a great big four-engine, triple-tailed beautiful sonofabitch."

"I don't think I've ever seen one," Dalton said.

"Not many people have," Colonel Graham snapped. "Now, if it's not too much trouble, can we get this show on the road?"

[FOUR]

Office of the Deputy Director for Western

Hemisphere Operations

Office of Strategic Services

National Institutes of Health Building

Washington, D.C.

1630 8 August 1943

There came a quick knock at the door.

"I said 'nobody,' Alice," Colonel A. F. Graham called. He was sitting behind his desk, his feet resting on an open drawer, holding a short squat glass dark with bourbon whiskey.

"Does that include me?" a stocky, gray-haired, well-tailored man in his sixties asked as he entered the room.

"I told you, Allen," Graham said to the man sitting on his couch in the process of replenishing his martini glass, "that the other shoe was going to drop."

Allen Welsh Dulles chuckled. He was in his fifties, had a not-well-defined mustache on his lip, somewhat unkempt gray hair, and was wearing what members of his class thought of as a "sack suit," a black single-breasted garment with little or no padding on the shoulders. He also wore a white button-down-collar shirt and a bow tie.

"And Deputy Director Dulles," the stocky, well-tailored man said, "my day is now complete. You were going to stop by my office and say hello, weren't you, Allen?"

"Not today, if I possibly could have avoided it," Dulles said. "Bill, you have this remarkable ability to cause it to rain on any parade of mine."

"What are you celebrating? What is that, a martini?"

"May I offer you a small libation, Mr. Director?" Graham asked.

"No, thank you," Colonel William J. Donovan said. "I try to set an example for my subordinates."

"Is that why you wear those gaudy neckties?" Graham asked.

"How many of those have you had, Alex?"

"Probably one-third to one-half of what I will ultimately have," Graham said seriously.

"And neither of you is going to tell me what it is that you're celebrating?"

"Actually, Bill," Graham said, "what Allen and I were discussing when you burst uninvited in here was how little we could get away with telling you."

"I don't think you're kidding," Donovan said not very pleasantly.

"He wasn't," Dulles said. "You've heard, I'm sure, that the only way a secret known to three people can remain a secret is if two of the three are dead?"

"But you agreed--in what we lawyers call 'a condition of employment'--that there would be no secrets between us. Remember that?"

"And if it were not for your buddy Franklin," Graham said, "both Allen and I would happily live up to that condition of employment. But you keep telling him things you shouldn't."

"To rain on your parade, Alex," Donovan said, "my buddy Franklin happens to be the President of the United States."

Dulles put in pointedly: "And who has in his immediate circle a number of people--especially the Vice President--who I would be reluctant to trust with any secret, much less this one, as far as I could throw the White House."

"This secret is one we really don't want to get to Uncle Joe Stalin via Mr. Henry A. Wallace's close friends in the Russian Embassy," Graham said.