“This one—he flew at Midway, and they just gave him a second DFC—not only comes with a large set of balls, he speaks Spanish fluently. And his father is very interesting.”
“Who’s his father?”
“El Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade.”
“And who is el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade?”
“He is the éminence grise of the G.O.U.”
“It’s not nice, Alex, to force your boss to confess his ignorance.”
“It stands for Grupo de Oficiales Unidos,” Graham explained. “They are planning a coup against the President of Argentina. With a little bit of luck they’ll succeed.”
“This fellow’s father? The Argentine colonel?”
Graham nodded.
“The last briefing I had,” Donovan said, “claimed that the Argentinean military, to a man, supported the Axis. Or at least the Germans.”
“Then you weren’t listening closely. The ‘Argentines are Pro-Axis’ business is simply not so. Just because they wear German helmets doesn’t mean they’re all Nazis. There’s a good deal of pro-British sentiment among much of the officer corps, and the bureaucracy.”
“‘Pro-British’? As differentiated from ‘Pro-Allies’? Or ‘Pro-American’?”
“They don’t particularly like us; they like to think they should be the dominant power in this hemisphere. And we’ve never had a presence down there the way the British have. And they’re a practical people, Bill. After Dunkirk, noble sentiment aside, who would you have bet would win the war in Europe? After Pearl Harbor, or especially after Singapore and the Philippines fell to the Japanese—patriotism aside—who would you have bet on to win the war in the Pacific?”
“The question of the moral right and wrong is not in the equation, so far as they’re concerned?”
“As it is in ours, you mean? We violated every description of neutrality I’ve ever heard when we had the U.S. Navy looking for German submarines in the North Atlantic, long before we were in the war.”
“You disapprove of what we did, Alex?”
“No. The point I’m making here is that the Argentine government has taken greater pains to be neutral than we ever did—even the one now in place, under Castilló, who is a fascist.”
&nb
sp; “Then you weren’t at the briefing where I heard that they’re closing their eyes to the Germans’ refueling and replenishing their submarines in the River Plate.”
“I set up that briefing for you,” Graham said. “I hoped you would pay attention when Major Kellerman made the point that the German submarines are being supplied by neutral—not German—vessels,” Graham countered. “And not by the Argentines.”
“That’s splitting hairs,” Donovan said.
Graham met Donovan’s eyes and shrugged. Then he said, “If it were not for those U-boats, Bill, Brazil almost certainly would still be neutral.”*
“The trouble with that,” Donovan countered, “is the feeling in Argentina that whatever Brazil does, Argentina should take the other side.”
“That’s only among some people in Argentina,” Graham argued. “I still have hopes that we can get Argentina to see the light.”
“What we don’t want down there is a war between Brazil and Argentina. That strikes me as a real possibility. They don’t like each other, and I’m afraid that one of your Argentine coronels is going to decide that if they get in a war with Brazil, Germany will have to help them.”
“I think Germany likes things just as they are. They’re getting Argentine beef, leather, wool, other foodstuffs,” Graham said. “And they have their hands full in Africa and Russia. And I really don’t think Argentina wants to pick a fight with Brazil. They know that we can supply Brazil a lot easier than Germany can supply them.”
“You hope,” Donovan said.
“I think they know, Bill. From what I have seen, they have pretty good intelligence.”
“So I heard at the briefing,” Donovan said.
“What we will see now,” Graham went on, “is whether they are wise enough to close their eyes to our blowing up one—or more—of the neutral ships who are replenishing the German submarines. Which we have to do before the Brazilians start seriously thinking about doing it themselves. They know we would have to support them if they got into a war with Argentina; that certainly has a certain appeal to some of their coronels.”