At that point, Commander Delojo put on his uniform, checked to see that he had both his diplomatic passport and the carnet issued to diplomats by the Argentine Foreign Ministry, and left his apartment. Obviously it was his duty to notify the OSS as soon as possible that the long-expected coup d?tat was finally taking place.
Nothing now on the street indicated what had roused him from his sound sleep but the first police car. The other police cars and the convoy were nowhere in sight.
A taxi came down the street. He flagged it and ordered the driver to take him to the United States Embassy.
En route to the Embassy the taxi was stopped twice by roadblocks, one manned by half a dozen members of the Corps of Mounted Police and the other by a platoon of soldiers of an Engineer Battalion. The Mounted Police passed him through immediately, but the two Engineer lieutenants held a whispered discussion that lasted ten minutes before deciding they should pass the American diplomat.
While he was waiting for their discussion to conclude, Delojo reconsidered his original idea to urgently message the OSS in Washington that the coup d?tat was now taking place.
For one thing, he did not know for a fact that it was. He really should not message Washington unless he could transmit facts. And prudence suggested that just sitting on the nest waiting to see what breed of chick emerged from the egg was the proper course of action.
Yesterday, VacuumMr. Milton Leibermann of the Federal Bureau of Investigationput his head in the door and in an unexpected and frankly unwelcome spirit of interagency cooperation informed him that he had just learned that one of Frade's enlisted men, Sergeant David Ettinger, was missing from Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo and was very possibly in great danger, and that he thought Delojo should know about it.
Oracle would certainly want to know about that. Theoretically, Frade or his parachutist deputy would have relayed that information to Washington. But that was a dangerous presumption to make. Perhaps Frade didn't know about it, and Lieutenant WhatsisnamePelosicould not be relied upon to act in a responsible manner. He was, in fact, a demolitions man, not an intelligence officer.
On one hand, Delojo reasoned, if he messaged Oracle about the missing sergeant, it might make the point that he was staying on top of the situation in Buenos Aires. But on the other hand, doing so raised two potential areas of difficulty. Frade was responsible for reporting on his own men. After that unnecessarily curt message from Donovan about his role with respect to Frade, it might appear that he was trying to put his nose in somewhere it wasn't welcome. Furthermore, if he did inform the OSS that the sergeant was missing, he would be expected to reveal the source of his information, Leibermann. Director Donovan had told him personally that he was to have as little to do with the FBI as possiblepreferably nothing.
It was near sixa.m. when Commander Delojo reached the Bank of Boston Building. Just before he entered it, he decided that the most prudent course of action was to find out as much about the coup d?tat as possibleif that's really what it wasand to see if he could learn anything about the missing sergeant, but not to message Oracle unless he had facts to report.
As Delojo entered the narrow corridor where his office was located, one of the cryptographic section's enlisted men was approaching from out of the corridor. He was a large, tall, corn-haired Iowa farm boy to whom Commander Delojo had been introducedthe Embassy Security Officer thought it a good idea for cryptographic clerks to be personally acquainted with officers authorized to dispatch or receive TOP SECRET materialbut he could not at the moment recall his name.
"Morning, Commander," the sergeant said. "I was just looking for you."
"Is that so?"
"Poop from the group for you," the sergeant said, extending a clipboard to Delojo. "Just came in. If you'll sign that, please?"
Commander Delojo held the opinion that the U.S. Army did not instill in its enlisted men a proper respect for commissioned officersenlisted Army personnel were, if anything, worse than their Marine counterpartsbut he did not think this the place or the time to have a word with the sergeant about his informality.
He took the clipboard and signed for Message 3002, TOP SECRET NO COPIES, handed the clipboard back, and reached for the message's envelope.
"What the hell's going on outside, Commander?"
"I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn the Argentines are staging a coup d?tat," Delojo said.
"No shit? Against who?"
That did it. The next time I see the cryptographic officer Iwill have a word with him about this young man.
"By definition, Sergeant, a coup d?tat is made against the existing head of state. Here that would be President Castillo."
Commander Delojo carried the envelope to his office, closed and locked the door after him, then tore open the envelope.
URGENT TOP SECRET NOT TO BE COPIED
FROM ORACLE WASHDC
MSG NO 3002
DIR 0050 GREENWICH 19 APRIL 1943
TO STACHEBP AGGIE
STACHIEP BUENOS AIRES
1. ADDRESSEE WILL REPLY QUICKEST MEANS GIVING TIMERECEIPT THIS MESSAGE
2. RELIABLE INTELLIGENCE GIVES ETA GROCERYSTORE TWO MOUTH RIVER PLATE 1600 GREENWICH 20 APRIL 1943.
3. DETERMINE AND ADVISE QUICKEST MEANS:
A. LOCATION AGGIE.
B. LOCATION TEX AND PARROT AND OPERATIONAL STATUS OP PARROT.
C. LOCATION SNOOPY AND TEAM AND EQUIPMENT AND OPERATIONAL STATUS EQUIPMENT.
4. QUERY SOURCE GALAHAD POSSIBLE REASON SPECIAL INTEREST AT HIGHEST LEVELS BERLIN IN SECURITY OF QUOTE REPATRIATION PLAN MATERIEL ENDQUOTE POSSIBLY ABOARD GROCERYSTORE TWO.
5. WHOEVER ESTABLISHES FIRST CONTACT WITH AGGIE WILL RELAY FOLLOWING: PRESIDENT DESIRES EARLIEST POSSIBLE IDENTIFICATION AND MOTIVATION OF GALAHAD.
DONOVAN END
TOP SECRET NOT TO BE COPIED
"Damn!" Commander Delojo said, realizing that the message placed him in an even more difficult position than having to decide whether or not to message Oracle vis-a-vis the coup d?tat and Sergeant Whatsisname.
Obviously, if he was to locate AggieColonel A. F. Graham, USMCR that meant he was down here somewhere.
Why? Has something else gone wrong that I'm not aware of?
Delojo had no idea where TexMajor Cletus H. Frade, USMCRwas except that he had left Buenos Aires by train five days ago.
The last word he had from SnoopyCaptain Maxwell Ashton III, AUS was that he was in Santo Tome and his team and their equipment were in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Porto Alegre was the last known location of Parrotthe airplane that Frade had gone to Porto Alegre to pick up and, against Delojo's objections, bring into Argentina black, while carrying the rest of Team Snoopy and their radar equipment with him.
Since he had no idea of the identity, much less the motivation, of Galahad, he obviously could not locate him and query him regarding the " 'repatriation plan materiel' possibly aboard grocerystore two," whatever the hell that might be.