“I’m really grateful, Colonel. Thank you.”
“Anything else the Army Security Agency can do for the OSS?”
“No. That’s about it,” Graham said. Then he changed his mind. “This is a wild hair . . .”
“ASA deals with wild hairs all the time.”
“Cryptography.”
“You came to the right place. What’s the problem?”
“When we augmented the team down there, we sent an Army M-94 cylindrical cipher device with them, thinking it would be an improvement over the hand encryption they’re using. El Jefe refuses to use it. He says it’s too easy to break.”
“El Jefe? The Chief?”
Graham, smiling, nodded.
“Well, he’s right. Who’s liable to intercept?”
“The Germans, most likely. Others.”
“Apropos of nothing whatever, Colonel, does the term Enigma mean anything to you?”
“Yes, it does.”
“I thought it might. Well, the bad news is we don’t have anything nearly as good. The M-94 is pretty primitive. We have another one called the SIGABA, which is almost as good, as safe as the one whose name is classified.”
“We have those at several places,” Graham said. “But when I asked Colonel Lemes, he said that not only are they awfully expensive—”
“Is that a problem for you?” Scott interrupted.
Graham shook his head and went on. “—but that they are large, heavy, delicate—apparently they’ve never successfully dropped one by parachute— difficult to operate, and a mechanical nightmare.”
“Unfortunately, he’s right. About the only place they work reliably, outside of fixed bases, is aboard ship.”
“How common is that? I mean, would they have one aboard a destroyer?”
“What destroyer? Some do, some don’t.”
“The USS Alfred Thomas, DD-107,” Graham said.
“You want me to find out?”
“Could you?”
“Sir,” Lieutenant McClung boomed from the door. “I have—more precisely Lieutenant Fischer has—the information the colonel requested vis-à-vis the SIGABA aboard a Navy vessel.”
“Is he out there with you?”
“Yes, sir,” McClung boomed.
“Bring him in.”
The two young officers marched into Colonel Scott’s office.
Second Lieutenant Leonard Fischer, Signal Corps, was nowhere as large as First Lieutenant McClung.
“What did you find out, Len?” Scott asked.
“Sir, there is one aboard the Alfred Thomas. My source in the Navy says he doesn’t know if it’s operable, and probably is not, because the chief radioman who knew how to operate it and repair it was taken ill and removed from the ship somewhere in South America—Argentina or Uruguay, he wasn’t sure.”
Colonel Scott and Colonel Graham looked at each other, but neither responded directly.
“Lieutenant, let me ask you a question,” Graham said. “What would you say the chances are that a SIGABA could be shipped about five thousand miles on one airplane—I mean, it would be loaded aboard the airplane in Washington and off-loaded at its destination, not go through depots, et cetera—without suffering irreparable damage?”
“It would need a lot of work, sir,” Lieutenant Fischer said, after thinking about it. “Five thousand miles in an airplane is a lot of vibration, and there would be, I’d guess, half a dozen landings and takeoffs to make it that far. But irreparable? No, sir. Presuming the parts were available, and we know pretty well which parts will fail, and there was someone who knew what he was doing to make the repairs, it could be made operable.”
“Thank you,” Graham said, and looked at Scott.
“That’ll be all for right now, but stay close,” Scott said.
“Yes, sir,” McClung boomed, drowning out whatever Fischer replied.
Scott looked at Graham after the two had left.
“Did I ever tell you, Colonel, that in addition to everything else we do here, some of us read minds?”
“Read mine,” Graham said.
“How long will Lieutenant Fischer be on temporary duty with you?”
"It’s important, Colonel, or I wouldn’t ask,” Graham said. “Can I have him for thirty days?”
VII
[ONE]
Office of the Commercial Attaché Embassy of the German Reich Avenida Córdoba Buenos Aires, Argentina 0915 14 July 1943
Commercial Attaché Karl Cranz had come to work in a very pleasant frame of mind. There was only one problem to deal with that he could see, and it wasn’t at all a major one. There was no question in his mind that the foreign ministry would, as a result of his cable yesterday, cancel Commercial Attaché Wilhelm Frogger’s orders to return to Berlin. That caused the small problem of having two commercial attachés in the embassy.
Cranz had decided that could easily be solved by changing his own title to deputy commercial attaché. It didn’t matter, really, what official title one carried, so long as everyone understood who had the authority.
Reminding Frogger that he was, in fact, Obersturmbannführer Cranz and in Argentina on an important and highly secret mission would keep Frogger in his place, leaving Frogger free to continue his auction bidding war with the Americans over the tinned corned beef.
What was amusing in all this was that he really wasn’t Obersturmbannführer Cranz at all, but actually Standartenführer Cranz, although he had to keep that under his hat until von Deitzberg was on the Condor on his way home.
When he was free to let everyone know his real rank, that would put a number of potential problems in order. As Standartenführer Cranz he would be both the senior service officer in the embassy and the senior SS officer in this part of South America.
That would make him senior to the just-promoted Fregattenkapitän Boltitz, the new naval attaché. Not that he anticipated any trouble with Karl Boltitz or his new number two, Military Attaché for Air Major Peter von Wachtstein. He had just about decided that whoever the traitor in the embassy was, it wasn’t von Wachtstein. If indeed there was a traitor. It seemed more and more likely that what had happened at Samborombón Bay was entirely an Argentine reaction to the elimination of Oberst Frade.
He would also put Raschner straight about why he had not been recalled to Berlin. Raschner obviously thought he still would be working for von Deitzberg, and in that capacity keeping an eye on Commercial Attaché Cranz. Immediately after advising Raschner of his actual rank, Cranz would make it clear to him that the reason Raschner remained in Buenos Aires was that Standartenführer Cranz had asked Himmler for his services and, accordingly, Raschner no longer worked for von Deitzberg.
Raschner—he was not a fool—would immediately recognize on which side of his bread was the butter and was probably going to be very useful.
And just as soon as von Deitzberg left for Berlin, Cranz would have von Wachtstein fly him to Montevideo, where he would assert his authority over both Councilor Konrad Forster and Sturmbannführer Werner von Tresmarck in the embassy there.
Councilor Forster was actually Hauptsturmführer Forster of the Sicherheitsdienst. His primary function in the embassy—known only to Ambassador Schulker—was counterintelligence. Cranz would firmly tell Forster that Forster was now under his orders, and that Cranz was to be immediately furnished with any information he developed.
Forster was not privy to anything concerned with the confidential special fund, and Cranz had no intention of telling him.
But if von Tresmarck did something stupid—something that might call attention to anything, which included the fund—Cranz told Forster that he wanted to hear about it right away.
Von Tresmarck would also be told that he now was directly responsible to Cranz, and bluntly reminded that he had one foot on the slippery slope to a pink triangle on a gray Sachsenhausen inmate’s uniform.