What happened next started out the next day as simple curiosity: How much am I spending on various things of interest to the OSS? And why the hell am I?
He had been astonished with his first, really rough partial estimate.
Over the next week or so, he prepared a more thorough listing of his expenses and losses on behalf of the OSS. The latter started with what it had cost him to repair—actually rebuild—the house at Tandil, which had been machine-gunned literally to rubble by troops of Colonel Schmidt’s Tenth Mountain Regiment.
When he had a more or less complete listing of things the OSS should have paid for but hadn’t, it was twenty-six pages in length.
In it, he had tried to err on the side of frugality—for example, he billed the OSS two hundred fifty dollars an hour for the “business use” of the Red Lodestar. That was half the ballpark figure SAA used for estimating the per-hour cost of flying SAA Lodestars on their routes.
He also had decided that ten dollars a day was a more than fair price for the OSS to pay for each “contract security operative”—the pressed-into-service ex-troopers of the Húsares de Pueyrredón.
Then, just as he had been genuinely surprised to see how often he’d used the Red Lodestar for OSS business, he really had been surprised to see how large his private army had grown. And how much it had cost to feed it and move it around.
At least a dozen times during the preparation of the invoice, he told himself that he was just wasting his time.
All this is going to do is piss off Donovan and Graham.
But, on the other hand, what if I didn’t have access to the overstuffed cash box of el Coronel, Incorporated?
It isn’t fair for the OSS to expect me to spend my own money doing things for the OSS—especially since doing things for them usually results in people trying to kill me.
When he was ready to hand the invoice to Tony Pelosi to be sent to Washington, he had second—or perhaps fiftieth—thoughts about actually sending it. But finally—What the hell, why not?—he typed a brief note, then signed it:16 Jun 1944
Dear General Donovan:
Detailed invoice enclosed.
Please remit sum of $503,508.35 at earliest convenience.
Respectfully,
Cletus H. Frade
Major, USMCR
And he handed the note and the invoice to Pelosi, who saw that they were put in the next possible diplomatic pouch.
When there had been no reply of any kind in two weeks, Clete had decided that Donovan or Graham, or both, were either really pissed at him or were ignoring him, or both, and that he’d simply made a fool of himself. Again.
He’d had no regrets. It had been interesting to see how much being a spy was costing him. The invoice showed he had dipped into el Coronel’s cash box on behalf of the OSS for a little more than half a million dollars.
Now, Frade glanced at the briefcase on the desk and thought, Better late than never!
Frade then looked at Flowers. “I thought that might have money in it.”
“Of course you did,” Flowers said stiffly, handing Frade an envelope.
Frade opened it. It contained a single sheet of paper that read:The Embassy of the United States of America Buenos Aires, Argentina
Colonel Richmond C. Flowers
Military Attaché
16 MAY 1945
The undersigned acknowledges receipt of $500,000 (Five Hundred Thousand Dollars Exactly) in lawful currency of the United States from Colonel Richmond C. Flowers, USA.
Cletus H. Frade