“Well, that’s good news!” Clete said happily.
“Since I know your idea of formal dress is hosing the mud off your cowboy boots,” Dorotea said, “your enthusiasm for a new suit piques my curiosity. Tell me all, darling.”
He told her.
Dinner for Frade was the New York strip steak he had thought of earlier, plus two fried eggs, home-fried potatoes, and a tomato and cucumber salad, which additions he thought of as he watched one of the maids open a bottle of merlot.
By the time it was over, not only had a second bottle of merlot been emptied by Clete, Enrico, and Oscar, but Frade was just about prepared to answer Graham’s radio message. Dorotea had first written it down, then gone to the study, typed it out, shown it to him for his approval, then returned to retype it with his corrections, and then finally to show him the final version.
After dinner, he went with her and El Jefe to the study, and watched how the operation worked.
First, she typed the message on the SIGABA keyboard, which produced a very long strip of perforated paper on which the now-encrypted message had been punched.
“Oscar will have to contact Vint Hill, darling,” Dorotea said. “He hasn’t yet had time to teach me how to do that.”
“Won’t you have to learn Morse code first?”
“Of course, but that shouldn’t take long.”
He didn’t argue.
It didn’t take the former chief radioman long to establish contact with Vint Hill. Frade heard Schultz twice key in dit dit dit, dah dit dit dit, which he recognized as being SB, for “Stand By.”
Schultz waved graciously at Dorotea, who then took the perforated tape, fed it into the Collins, and with a delicate finger pushed a button.
The Collins began to swallow the tape, far faster than Clete expected. Finally, it had gone through the machine and come out another opening.
“Another beauty of this setup is that it transmits so fast,” Schultz said. “You can resend—in other words, send twice—in less time than it would take me to key this in by hand. Less time for anybody to triangulate us, even if they happened on the frequency we’re using.”
“Very impressive,” Clete said, meaning it.
He gestured to Dorotea, who fed the tape into the Collins again.
When it started to come out of the Collins, Schultz moved a small metal wastebasket under the transceiver to catch it.
“And now all we have to do is burn the tape,” he said. “And of course Dorotea’s notes and the drafts, and we’re done.”
“Not in here, Oscar,” Dorotea commanded. “Burning that paper will smell up the whole house.”
They carried the wastebasket onto the verandah.
Schultz took out a Zippo lighter, lit a piece of paper, and dropped it, flaming, into the wastebasket.
Clete saw something in the dark that shouldn’t be there—the flare of a match in the garden—touched Enrico’s arm, and pointed.
Enrico worked the action of his shotgun.
Then there was another flare of light in the garden, this time long enough for Frade to see that it was a match that a gaucho on horseback was using to light a cigar. And to see that the gaucho held a 7mm Mauser carbine across his saddle.
“There are always two watching the house, Don Cletus,” Enrico said matter-of-factly.
Frade replied softly so that only Enrico could hear.
“What are you talking about?” Dorotea demanded.
“I just told Enrico that I’m so pleased with all you learned that tonight you can stay; he won’t have to take you back to the village.”
“You bah-stud!” she said loudly.
Schultz laughed.
“And you, too!” Dorotea said.
[SIX]
Office of the Director Office of Strategic Services National Institutes of Health Building Washington, D.C. 0845 23 July 1943
“If you have a moment, Bill?” the deputy director for Western Hemisphere operations of the Office of Strategic Services inquired of the director of the OSS from the latter’s office door.
“I always have time for you, Alejandro,” William J. Donovan said, waving him in. “But only if you’re the bearer of good tidings.”
“We have a response from Frade,” Graham said, gesturing with the folded sheet of paper in his hand.
“From our loose cannon? Why am I afraid what you bear in your hands is not good tidings? Let me see it.”
“Shit,” Graham said.
“Alejandro!” Donovan said in mock horror. “I’m shocked.”
“Well, I was so pleased with it, and anxious to tell you, that I forgot to leave it in my office.”
Donovan gestured for him to hand it over.
“There are things in here I’m not going to like?” Donovan said.
“Almost certainly.”
Graham gave it to him, then walked to a couch, stretched out his legs, and waited while Donovan read the message.
URGENT
VIA ASA SPECIAL
TOP SECRET LINDBERGH DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN
FROM TEX
TO AGGIE
1—YOUR MESSAGE RE: LEICA ACKNOWLEDGED
2—INASMUCH AS LIEUTENANT FISCHER (HEREAFTER FLAGS) HAS DEPARTED AND I CAN’T ASK HIM HOW GOOD THE NEW TOY YOU SENT IS, I WILL USE THE SAME CUTE VERBAL CODE WITHIN AN ENCRYPTED MESSAGE THAT YOU DID. PLEASE ADVISE IF I HAVE TO DO THIS IN THE FUTURE.
3—FLAGS LEFT BIRDCAGE APPROXIMATELY 1400 TODAY TO CATCH THE NEXT BUS HOME FROM YOU KNOW WHERE. HE HAS WITH HIM UNEXPOSED ROLL OF FILM SHOWING FROGGERS (HEREAFTER TOURISTS) HOLDING COPY OF DAY-OLD LOCAL NEWSPAPER. HERR TOURIST (HEREAFTER GOOD KRAUT) GAVE US SOME DATA ABOUT LOCAL DIPLOMATIC ORGANIZATION THAT GALAHAD HAS CONFIRMED AS ACCURATE. FRAU TOURIST (HEREAFTER OLD BITCH) REGRETS GOOD KRAUT’S ACTIONS AND WOULD RETURN HOME IN A MINUTE IF GIVEN THE CHANCE.
4—TOURISTS ARE IN THE BEST, MOST REMOTE AND MOST SECURE LOCATION I CAN PROVIDE.
5—A SECOND ROLL OF UNDEVELOPED FILM, ESSENTIALLY THE SAME PICTURES, ADDRESSED TO YOU OR YOUR BOSS, EN ROUTE VIA USAAF OFFICER COURIER, WHO IS PILOTING A BIRDCAGE BIRD UP NORTH.
6—BRIGADIER CHICKEN AT BIRDCAGE, AT FIRST VERY DIFFICULT, BECAME PICTURE OF COOPERATION AFTER I SHOWED HIM MY CREDENTIALS. NOT ONLY DID HE PROVIDE A SPECIAL BIRDCAGE BIRD TO TAKE FLAGS TO THE BUS STOP BUT PROVIDED ARMED GUARD TO MAKE SURE FLAGS GOT
SAFELY ON THE BUS. HE EVEN OFFERED TO BUY ME DINNER BEFORE I FLEW HOME.
7—I CONFESS THE FIRST TIME I SAW THOSE CREDENTIALS, I THOUGHT, NO SURPRISE, THAT SOMEBODY UP THERE WASN’T PLAYING WITH A FULL DECK. I APOLOGIZE ABJECTLY. GIVE THE SOB BOTH EARS AND THE TAIL.
8—WITH REGARD TO FLAGS: NOT ONLY IS HE ONE HELL OF A TECHNICIAN, BUT A HELL OF A FINE OFFICER. IT LOOKED FOR ABOUT TWENTY-FOUR HOURS AS IF WE WERE ALL ABOUT TO BE STOOD AGAINST A WALL. I OFFERED TO GET HIM OUT OF THE LINE OF FIRE. FLAGS SAID HE WOULD TAKE HIS CHANCES AS HE FELT THE PICTURES THE CAMERA GUY WANTED WERE MORE IMPORTANT THAN MAYBE WE UNDERSTOOD. CAN YOU GET HIM A MEDAL?
9—MORE IMPORTANT, CAN YOU GET HIM TO QUOTE VOLUNTEER END QUOTE FOR THE BOY SCOUTS THE WAY YOU DID ME? FOR ONE THING, HE ALREADY KNOWS WHERE MOST OF OUR SKELETONS ARE BURIED, AND WILL LEARN ABOUT THE REST WHEN HE’S WORKING THE OTHER END OF THE TELEPHONE. IF THAT’S NOT POSSIBLE, I VERY STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU GET HIM A BADGE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. THERE’S BOUND TO BE A GENERAL OR COLONEL CHICKEN AT HIS PLACE OF WORK WHO WILL BE TOO CURIOUS ABOUT WHAT HE’S DOING FOR THE BOY SCOUTS, AND A BADGE WILL CERTAINLY HAVE THE SAME BENEFICIAL EFFECT ON HIM THAT IT DID ON GENERAL CHICKEN AT BIRDCAGE.
10—FOR YOUR GENERAL INFORMATION, THERE WAS A STORY IN LA NACIÓN THAT SAID SOUTH AMERICAN AIRWAYS WILL SHORTLY RECEIVE ITS SECOND LODESTAR AIRCRAFT, WITH MORE COMING SOON, AND THAT OPERATIONS WILL SOON BEGIN FROM SOUTH AMERICA’S NEWEST AIRFIELD, WHICH, AT THE SUGGESTION OF COLONEL JUAN D. PERON, HAS BEEN