Clete gave that a long moment’s consideration, then said: “Start feeding the hungry, Antonio. Tell Doña Dorotea I had to take a call.”
Clete walked to one of the large, brown-leather-upholstered armchairs. As he settled in it, his mind went back to the first time he’d met Allen Welsh Dulles.
It had been a remarkable meeting—one in which some staggering pieces of the greater espionage puzzle that affected Clete began to fall into place. It had taken place at Canoas Air Base, Puerto Alegre, Brazil, in the commanding officer’s Mediterranean-style red-tile-roof cottage in July of ’43, days after “Aggie”—Colonel Graham—had sent “Tex”—Frade—a cryptic radio message that he was to see the CO at “Bird Cage”—Canoas, where the first Lockheed Lodestars destined for the newly formed South American Airways had been sent for final delivery to el Señor Cletus Frade, managing director of SAA.
Frade, of course, had expected to see the commanding officer. Instead, the cottage held only a stranger.
“Allen Welsh Dulles,” he introduced himself, then made them drinks, then casually announced that they had mutual friends. “My brother—John Foster Dulles—has a law firm in New York City; among his clients are Cletus Marcus Howell and Howell Petroleum. And, of course, I have been friends with Alejandro Graham a long time—and not just our time working for Wild Bill Donovan.”
Frade, not knowing what to believe of the stranger’s story, didn’t reply.
Then Dulles really surprised him by naming Frade’s mole in the German Embassy: “Galahad is Major Hans-Peter Baron von Wachtstein.”
Frade, who refused to reveal that to anyone in or out of the OSS, professed ignorance.
Dulles answered: “The FBI, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Army’s Chief of Intelligence, and of course SS-Brigadeführer Ritter Manfred von Deitzberg—among others—would dearly like to know that, too.”
And that got Frade’s attention, too.
He knew that the Germans had at least two secret programs in Argentina. Von Deitzberg—Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler’s deputy—was running one, an unnamed operation in which senior SS officers were ransoming Jews to be released from concentration camps and moved to Argentina. The other was Operation Phoenix—senior members of the Nazi hierarchy purchasing property in South America, primarily in Argentina but also in Paraguay, Brazil, and other countries, to which they could flee when Germany fell, and from which they could later rise, phoenix-like, to bring Nazism back.
Then Dulles described the private dinner in the Hotel Washington he’d had only nights earlier—“Just me, Graham, Donovan, the President, and Putzi Hanfstaengl.”
Frade again professed ignorance—this time truthfully. “Am I supposed to know who Putzi Haf-whatever is?”
Dulles explained that the wealthy Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl, who had attended Columbia with Roosevelt and Donovan, had been in Hitler’s inner circle before he got smart and fled to the United States—just prior to the SS’s plan for Putzi to suffer a fatal accident. FDR prized Putzi’s insider perspective of the mind-set of Hitler’s high command. And, as Dulles related to Frade, it was Putzi’s belief that most if not all senior Nazis knew the war was lost, that Hitler was psychologically unable to face that, and that no one dared suggest it to him.
“Which explains the existence of such secret operations as Phoenix and Valkyrie,” Dulles said.
Then, finally convincing Frade that Dulles was who he said he was, Dulles said: “I am privy to a secret about Valkyrie known to no more than nine Americans, one of whom is you. Through Admiral Wil
helm Canaris”—he paused to see if Frade recognized the chief of the German military intelligence service, the Abwehr, then went on after he’d nodded—“I am in communication with General von Wachtstein, who in fact intends to assassinate Adolf Hitler. One of his other co-conspirators—Lieutenant Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, Count von Stauffenberg—is a close friend of young von Wachtstein . . . your Galahad.”
Clete felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
Peter had told Clete that he’d seen von Stauffenberg in Munich and that the subject of regicide had been discussed.
Then, making Frade’s head really spin, Dulles broached the biggest secret: the Manhattan Project. He explained that the Americans were racing the Germans to develop an enormously powerful atom bomb from an element known as uranium.
“Whoever creates this bomb first is going to win the war. It’s as simple as that,” he said. Then, saying Graham shortly would TOP SECRET message him the same, he laid out Frade’s marching orders: “So your first priority is the immediate reporting of anything you hear about uranium or a superbomb.”
The next priorities, Dulles went on, were of equal importance: allowing the ransoming and Phoenix operations to continue while learning everything about them.
“As morally despicable as the ransoming is,” Dulles explained, “FDR says the bigger issue is saving lives wherever and however possible. If we were to expose the ransoming, the real result would be the extermination of all the Jews in concentration camps. And if we expose Phoenix, the Nazis will simply deny its existence. Letting it continue, however, allows us to trace the money from the moment it arrives in Argentina. You’ll create a paper trail of what was bought with it, and from whom. Plus the names of the officials—Argentine, Paraguayan, Uruguayan—who are being bought. Everything.
“The thinking is that if we went to General Ramírez or General Rawson now with what we have, or what you might dig up, they would tell us to mind our own business. The Argentines are not convinced the Germans have lost the war. But, while the Germans will hang on as long as possible, ultimately they will surrender unconditionally, as demanded by Roosevelt at the Casablanca Conference. And what that means, under international law, is that the moment the Germans sign the surrender document, everything the German government owns falls under the control of the victors. Things like embassy buildings, other real estate, bank accounts.
“Our ambassador will then call upon the Argentine foreign minister, present him with a detailed list of all German property in Argentina—which you will have prepared, to include bank account numbers, descriptions of real estate, et cetera—and inform him that we’re taking possession of it.
“The Argentine government may not like it, but it’s a well-established principle of international law, and it really would be unwise of them to defy that law. I rather doubt they will. Nations, like people, tend to try to curry favor with whoever has just won a fight.”
Cletus Frade then admitted that his head was indeed spinning, and suggested that he was way out of his depth, that starting up South American Airways was proving challenging enough.
Dulles replied: “Alec Graham said, vis-à-vis you, something to the effect that the first impression you give is of a dangerously irresponsible individual who should not be trusted out of your sight. And then, depending on how much experience one has with really good covert intelligence officers, one comes to the realization that one is in the company of a rare person who seems to be born for this sort of thing.”
Frade had considered that, wondered how much of it was smoke being blown up his ass, then said: “Does that mean you’re going to tell me what this airline business is all about?”
“Alec and I talked about that, and General Donovan told me he’d asked the President. No one knows anything except that Franklin Delano Roosevelt thinks it’s a good idea, and that he was pleased to learn of your remarkable progress in getting one going.”