Your second duty is to transfer the family funds from Switzerland to Argentina as quickly as possible. You have by now made contact with our friend in Argentina, and he will probably be able to be of help. In any event, make sure the funds are in some safe place. It would be better if they could be wisely invested, but the primary concern is to have them someplace where they will be safe from the Sicherheitsdienst until the war is over.
In the chaos which will occur in Germany when the war is finally over, the only hope our people will have, to keep them in their homes, indeed to keep them from starvation, and the only hope there will be for the future of the von Wachtstein family, and the estates, will be access to the money that I have placed in your care.
I hope, one day, to be able to go with you again to the village for a beer and a sausage. If that is not to be, I have confidence that God in his mercy will allow us one day to be all together again, your mother and your brothers and you and I in a better place.
I have taken great pride in you, Hansel.
Poppa.
Graham read the letter, then looked at Frade.
“Jesus Christ,” Graham said softly.
“Yeah.”
“And Whatsisname, the ambassador, is ‘our friend’?”
“Lutzenberger,” Frade furnished.
“How did you come by this letter?”
“From von Wachtstein. He needed help to deal with his money. I owed him.”
“What for?”
“He warned me they were going to bushwhack me, remember? That gave him a big IOU on me.”
“And are you helping him?”
“My Uncle Humberto is.”
Graham looked at him for amplification.
“Humberto Valdez Duarte,” Frade explained. “Managing director of the Anglo-Argentine Bank. He’s married to my father’s sister. It was their son—my cousin—who got himself killed at Stalingrad spotting artillery, when all he should have been doing was observing.”
“If their son was killed with the Germans at Stalingrad, why is he helping?”
“I suppose the real reason is he figured my IOU to von Wachtstein was a family debt of honor.”
“And you think he can be trusted?”
Frade nodded. “I think he was forced to face the fact that his son was a fool. But he’s not going to do anything to hurt me. Or von Wachtstein.” He paused and chuckled, then added: “I’d bet my life on it.”
“You realize, I suppose, that not only should you have shown me this letter long before this—”
“I thought about that. And decided not to pass it on. I didn’t know what would be done with the information, and I didn’t want General von Wachtstein getting hung on a butcher’s hook as a traitor because of something I’d done.”
“That sort of decision is not yours to make, Major Frade.”
“I generally make all my own decisions,” Frade said. “Deferring only to people I know are smarter than me.”
“Officers senior to you are presumed to be smarter than you.”
“That hasn’t been my experience.”
Graham realized that he was dangerously close to losing his temper, and that would make matters even worse.
“This helping von Wachtstein conceal his money over here, I hope you’re aware, could be considered as treating with or giving aid and comfort to the enemy.”
“I hope that wasn’t a threat.”
“It was a simple statement of fact, Frade.”
Neither said anything for a moment, then Graham asked, “What happened when von Wachtstein went to the ambassador? Let’s get back to that.”
“He told him—this is almost a quote—to be careful when he came back from Uruguay; he needed him. Actually, he said, ‘Germany needs you.’ ”
“Why was von Wachtstein flying to Uruguay in the first place?”
“They have a Fieseler Storch. Like a Cadillac version of the Piper Cub. He goes over there all the time, carrying stuff, people, et cetera.”
“And then what?”
“Lutzenberger calls Boltitz in and shows him a letter from Canaris, which says Boltitz is to regard any orders from Lutzenberger as if they came personally from him.”
“And the orders from Lutzenberger were to lay off von Wachtstein?”
“That, too, of course. But, more importantly, admitting—without actually coming out and saying it—that he’s part of the whole resistance to the Nazis, and probably part of—at least a supporter of—the plot to kill Hitler.”
“And then von Wachtstein told you what had happened?”
“He flew out here, with Boltitz, in the Storch. They both told me.”
“And then you sent me the radio?”
Frade nodded.
“Frade, I can only hope that you appreciate what dangerous ground—what thin ice—you’re walking on,” Graham said seriously.
“I can only hope that you appreciate your OSS guy down here is in way the hell over his head.”
“Is that another shot at Commander Delojo?”
“I was talking about me.”
“Commander Delojo is the Argentine OSS station chief,” Graham said. “He’s my OSS guy down here.”
“Then I can only hope you appreciate your OSS guy down here is not only in way over his head, but isn’t working exclusively for the OSS.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“He’s an Annapolis ring-knocker, a lifer, who still has dreams of being captain of a battleship. He is not going to do anything that might displease the Navy Department, and, conversely, is going to do anything he thinks will please them—get him his battleship—like sending them anything about what the OSS is doing down here that they might like to know. He scares the hell out of me.”
“I don’t believe that he’s that way.”
“If Delojo knew anything about what I’ve just told you, it would be in the next diplomatic pouch to the Office of Naval Intelligence. And Christ only knows what they would do with it.”
God damn it! He’s right.
That wasn’t considered before—what the hell, the Navy’s on the same side in this war—but it should have been. And by me.
Well, as soon as I get back to Washington, I’ll get Delojo out of here.
If ONI hears that Admiral Canaris is working against the Nazis, God only knows what they would try to do with their fellow sailor. And what damage that could cause to what Dulles is trying to do.
Or, for that matter, to the OSS.
There’s nothing the Navy would like more than to send the chief of Naval Operations to Roosevelt and tell him they’ve got Canaris in their pocket. And, that being the case, shouldn’t the OSS be ordered to back off?
The problem is that there is only one man who can deal with Canaris, and he’s not in the Navy. At the first approach the Navy made to Canaris, he’d back off. Not only from the Navy but from Allen Dulles, too.
I can’t let Navy Intelligence put its toe in those waters.
“I think you’re dead wrong about that, Frade.”
“Then I’m sorry. What I was hoping you’d say would be that you would send somebody—Christ, there must be somebody in the OSS—who would know what to do down here.”
Nobody with your connections, unfortunately.
And, as a matter of fact, nobody that I can think of who could do a better job, including me.
Okay, Alejandro, truth time. Face the facts.
Your clever idea to send a young Marine officer—with absolutely no experience as an intelligence officer—down here wishfully thinking that maybe he could get his Argentine father to look more fondly on the United States has gotten completely out of hand.
For one thing, that mission is moot—El Coronel Frade is dead.
And it doesn’t really matter that young Frade probably can’t tilt the Argentine government toward us any more. Not impossible, but improbable. The bottom line here is that that isn’t nearly as important as the other things.