“Send a jeep over here,” he ordered, then hung up. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what’s in those bags that’s so important that you need to guard it with a riot gun?”
“Would you believe me, Major, if I told you that one contains clothing for the orphanage Colonel Mattingly is running and that there’s half a million dollars in the other one?”
“I’ve learned to believe just about anything I’ve heard about Colonel Mattingly and the OSS. But that one’s stretching it a little too far.”
Frade found the commanding officer of OSS Europe Forward in the garden behind the house. He was sitting at a table and drinking a glass of wine that Frade suspected had fallen off Ciudad de Rosario the last time he was in Berlin.
“May I say that you look dashing in your Marine Corps suit, Colonel Frade?” Mattingly announced by way of greeting. “You could be on a recruiting poster.”
“If you’re not nice, you don’t get the half million,” Frade said.
“I think I would kill for that half million,” Mattingly said. “And now that I’ve said that and thought it over, you may take that literally. We need it bad, and I was getting worried that they’d found you before you could get it back over here.”
“Who they?”
“Sit down and have a glass of this excellent grape the Argentine diplomats graciously shared with us, and I will bring you up to date on what’s happened. Good news and bad news. Mostly bad.”
“Don Cletus?” Enrico asked, holding up a duffel and nodding toward it.
“Go ahead,” Frade said.
“What’s he got in the bag?”
“Clothing for Heinrich and the other one.”
“Gerhard’s the other one. On that subject, Siggie Stein says that if we can get them to Argentina, he knows a nun that’ll take care of them until better arrangements can be made. Good idea?”
“Damn good idea, Bob. I even know the nun. But how are we going to get them to Argentina?”
“Through the compassion of the Vatican, Clete. They owe me a couple of big favors, so for once the pitiful orphaned German children getting off the airplane to find succor in Argentina will actually be pitiful orphaned children. And I really want to get them out of here. I don’t think the trouble we’re getting from the Russians is going to stop. It’s probably going to get much worse.”
“Is that the bad news?”
“That’s the good news, Clete. The bad news is that David Bruce told me he had a private chat with the Supreme Commander. Ike told him that when he talked with General Marshall about keeping the OSS alive, Marshall told him that President Truman has decided to shut us down. Further, Ike told Bruce that he told Marshall that he wanted to bring up keeping us alive to Truman himself, whereupon Marshall told him to butt out, or words to that effect.”
“Does Ike know about Gehlen?”
“He does now. David said he felt he had to tell him.”
“And?”
“Reduced to basics: He’s not going to tell Marshall. If we get caught, Ike will have to own up, which would blow the entire Gehlen project out of the water.”
“So?”
“We need a sacrificial lam
b.”
“Whose name is Frade?”
Mattingly nodded.
“This was less a callous decision on the part of Dulles, Graham, and myself than the fact that the secretary of the Treasury is already on your case. Remember what I told you about he who laughs last?”
“I didn’t hear me volunteering to be a sacrificial lamb.”
“And you don’t have to be, Clete. You are perfectly free to tell Morgenthau’s people whatever they want to know.”