“By the time you and I could get to Jorge Frade, he could be there with your car,” von Wachtstein finished.
“That would work,” Martín said.
“And I could shoot the lists and send the film with your driver,” Schultz said.
“That would really be helpful,” Martín said.
“A beautiful plan which will probably destroy Hansel’s happy marriage, when Alicia gets home and he’s not there,” Frade said.
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” von Wachtstein said. “I thought you knew that.”
[TWO]
Half of a section of one of the book-lined walls of the library that von Dattenberg had noticed when he was brought into the house was swung open. It revealed a small desk on which sat several devices. But of course von Dattenberg was not privvy to the secret compartment; as far as he knew, the library bookshelves were simply that.
One device on the desk was a Collins Radio Corporation Model 7.2 transceiver, usually—but not today—capable of establishing communication around the world.
“It’s the fucking sun,” Lieutenant Oscar Schultz, USNR, diagnosed.
It was an expert opinion. Schultz had once been chief radioman, USN, aboard the destroyer USS Alfred Thomas, DD-107.
“Can we get through to Vint Hill?” Frade asked.
Vint Hill—officially Vint Hill Farms Station—was a small, highly secret base in Virginia, not far from Washington and the Pentagon. It was the home of the Army Security Agency, which provided, among other services, “secure”—in other words, encrypted—communications between the Pentagon and Army headquarters around the world. It had provided such services to the Office of Strategic Services and—by VOPOTUS, Verbal Order President of the United States—had been directed after the OSS disestablishment to continue to provide such services between Allen Dulles, Colonel Robert Mattingly, and Lieutenant Colonel Cletus Frade in connection with the unnamed operation everyone had come to think of as OPERATION EAST.
El Jefe adjusted several controls on the Collins and then typed for perhaps ten seconds on the keyboard of another device, this one itself classified Top Secret, and called the SIGABA. He then pushed a switch marked TRANSMIT.
Thirty seconds later, a strip of paper, a quarter inch in width, began to come out of the SIGABA.
He looked at it and announced, “We’re up, boss.”
Frade handed him a typewritten message. Schultz took it and turned to the SIGABA keyboard, and with a speed most secretaries would envy, retyped it. This caused two things to happen. The message i
tself appeared as it would on a typewriter, and the SIGABA started to emit more of the quarter-inch paper.
When he had finished, he handed the “typewriter” copy to Frade, who read it carefully.
* * *
TOP SECRET–PRESIDENTIAL
URGENT
VIA VINT HILL SPECIAL
FROM TEX 0013 10OCT45
EYES ONLY ADDRESSEES
TO BERN AT WHITE HOUSE
TANKER AT HQ USFET
FLAGS AT XXVII CIC MUNICH
* * *
“Tex” was Frade; he was from Texas. “Bern” was Allen Dulles, who had run OSS operations in Europe from Bern, Switzerland, and had been given access to the White House communications network. “Tanker” was Colonel Robert Mattingly, now deputy commander of the CIC at Headquarters, U.S. Forces, European Theater in the I.G. Farben Building in Frankfurt. “Flags” was Major Harold N. Wallace, whose lapels bore the crossed semaphore flags of the Signal Corps, and who was now commanding the XXVII CIC Detachment in Munich.