6—MY CHANCES OF FINDING THE CRATES ARE PRACTICALLY NONEXISTENT, BUT I WILL WORK ON IT. LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU WANT ME TO DO IN CASE I GET LUCKY.
7—ALSO PLEASE ADVISE IF THE CAMERA WORKED AND WHAT I AM SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THE TOURISTS.
8—PLEASE ADVISE WHEN FLAGS WILL ANSWER THE PHONE.
TEX
Donovan looked up from the papers and said, “Well, just to be sure we know what and whom we’re talking about, who’s Popeye?”
“Oh, no, Bill,” Graham said while wagging his right index finger for effect. “Allen Dulles and I know who he is. But so that you can look FDR straight in the eye and truthfully say you don’t know who he is, we’re not going to tell you.”
Donovan exhaled audibly, but didn’t respond directly.
"And Big-Z is von Deitzberg, right?”
“Himmler’s adjutant,” Graham confirmed. “SS, but he was sent to Argentina in a major general’s uniform.”
Donovan nodded.
“Presumably to run the smuggling operation,” Graham added, “in addition to Phoenix.”
“And now he’s been recalled to Berlin? Any idea why?”
Graham shook his head.
“And his replacement, Limburger?” Donovan asked.
“Another member of the SS inner circle.”
“Who kept both Popeye and Galahad in the dark about when and where, et cetera?”
“That’s what it says.”
“And the Argentine army was involved?”
“Same answer.”
"How come Galahad gave Frade his friend the U-boat skipper’s name?”
“Why not? What could Frade do with it?”
“And there’s a new replenishment ship?”
“So it would appear.”
“Can we do anything about it, now that we know the name?”
Graham shrugged, then said, “I haven’t made up my mind yet whether we should. And I don’t know if we can. We can’t board her on the high seas. I don’t understand that decision, but the President made that very clear.”
Donovan looked at Graham for a long moment.
“Okay, Alex, what do you want to do?”
“Let me throw something else into the equation. Lieutenant Colonel Frogger, who’s now in that VIP POW camp—Camp Clinton, in Mississippi—has been classified as a Class Three.”
“Am I supposed to know what that means?”
“I had to ask. Class One is a professional officer and dedicated National Socialist. Class Two is a Nazi who holds commission; it includes all members of SS and most other officers. Class Three is a professional officer not known to be a Nazi, or to be sympathetic to the idea. Apolitical.”
“And is there a Class Four?”
“An officer who professes to see the errors of his ways and is ready to do what he can to help us rid the world of those terrible Nazis.”
“You don’t seem to approve of the Class Fours.”
“I generally don’t trust people who find it easy to change sides.”
“How do you feel about Putzi Hanfstaengl?”
“Putzi didn’t become anti-Nazi until Adolf Hitler decided to eliminate him, now did he?”
“The President trusts him.”
“FDR also trusts Henry Wallace, and I know J. Edgar has told the President that he knows Wallace is at the very least a Communist sympathizer.”
“How do you know that?”
“What? That Henry Wallace is somewhat to the left of Joe Stalin, or that J. Edgar told Roosevelt that he is?”
“Either, both.”
“Hoover told me. In the strictest confidence, of course.”
“Not to leave this room, of course, but J. Edgar told me the same thing, in the strictest confidence, of course. And I confided—in the strictest confidence, of course—in J. Edgar that I had told Roosevelt precisely that when he picked Henry Wallace for his Vice President.”
They shook their heads and smiled at one another.
“We seem to have digressed,” Donovan said. “So what does this Afrikakorps lieutenant colonel’s classification as a Three suggest to you that you should do?”
“You’re sitting down; I can tell you,” Graham said, and paused. “I’m going to bring Frade up here to see if he can enlist Colonel Frogger in our noble cause.”
“Which noble cause would that be?”
“Giving his father some backbone. A conservative estimate of what’s in those special shipment crates is a hundred million dollars. I suspect it’s more than that. I don’t want to lose track of it. And more will be coming. The key to keeping track of it is Frogger’s knowledge of who the German embassy has in its pocket.”
“Backbone?”
“His wife is the real Nazi in the family.”
“This woman?” Donovan asked incredulously, pointing to a photo of Frau Frogger standing beside Len Fischer.
Graham nodded. “And she’s been working on him to go back. I don’t know whether she thinks all will be forgiven, or whether she’ll denounce her husband.”
“Frade’s not going to let her go, is he?”
“Absolutely not. And Frogger’s too smart, too scared, to think all would be forgiven.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“He’s a bureaucrat. He’s going to take the middle ground. Tell us just enough to keep us hoping for more, but not everything he knows. We need his full cooperation; he has to be really turned. And the way to do that is through the son.”
“And what makes you think the son will go along with this? You said he’s been classified as apolitical.”
“I don’t know if he will or not. But I think we have to try.”
“Alex, I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“That makes it two to one, Bill. You lose.”
“Meaning what?”
“Allen thinks it’s worth a shot.”
“You talked to Dulles about this?”
Graham nodded. “I called him as soon as I saw the picture of Frau Frogger and what looks like her grandson.”
“You mean Fischer?”
Graham nodded again. “Allen’s original thought was that I would take Fischer and the pictures of Frogger’s mother and father to Camp Clinton and between us we could turn this guy—”
“Presuming you could turn him,” Donovan interrupted, his tone on the edge of sarcasm, “what would you do with him, take him to Argentina?”
If Graham heard the sarcasm, he ignored it along with the question.
“—but when I saw the picture of the two of them, Frau Frogger and Fischer, I realized that a nice-looking young Jewish second lieutenant like Fischer was not going to have much of an impact on an Afrikakorps lieutenant colonel. So I called Allen.”
“You talked about this on the telephone?” Donovan asked, both incredulously and on the edge of anger.
Graham saw this, and his lips tightened.
“Yeah. And Allen and I also chatted about the plot to assassinate Hitler, the Manhattan Project, Operation Phoenix—”
“All right, all right,” Donovan said. “Sorry.”
“—and other subjects of high interest,” Graham finished. “Then Allen asked me what I thought of having Frade deal with Colonel Frogger.”
“He asked you that?”
“Yes, he did. He also said that if I hadn’t called, he would have called me. Great minds, you may have heard, run in similar paths.”
“I’m getting the feeling, Alex, that you’re not in here asking my opinion of this idea of yours and Allen’s, much less for permission to carry it out.”
“That’s because you’re perceptive, Bill. Probably a result of your legal training.”
“But I am permitted to ask a question or two?”
“Certainly.”
“How are you going to get Frade to come here? I’ve always had the impression that he might ignore an order to come home. And how is he going to explain his absence to his Argentine friends?”
“Allen and I have a plan.”
“Which is?”
“If I told you, you would be in a position to say, ‘I told you so,’ should it not turn out as well as we hope it will.”
[TWO]
Office of the Managing Director Banco de Inglaterra y Argentina Bartolomé Mitre 300 Buenos Aires, Argentina 1650 30 July 1943