He glanced at General Greene, and said: “Colonel Mattingly sent a great deal of the latter to me — Cronley carried it to Argentina — but I want to be absolutely sure he didn’t miss anything.”
He looked back at Mattingly: “So, to answer your question, Colonel Mattingly, what I plan to do at the monastery is get with General Gehlen and come up with a list of the ex-SS and everyone else with a Nazi connection that we have to get out of the monastery and Pullach and to Argentina as soon as possible. In other words, a list of those people we really can’t afford to have the Soviets catch us with, prioritized on the basis of which of them, so to speak, are the most despicable bastards. They go first. Oberst Otto Niedermeyer and I have been thinking about this for some time—”
“Who?” General Greene asked.
“He was Gehlen’s Number Two—”
“It’s my understanding that Colonel Mannberg is Gehlen’s Number Two,” Mattingly said.
“Niedermeyer tells me he was,” Frade replied. “And he’s the officer Gehlen sent to Argentina”—Frade paused and chuckled—“doubly disguised as a Franciscan monk and then as a Hauptscharführer.”
“I don’t understand,” General Greene said.
“When they got to Argentina and took off their monk’s robes,” Frade explained, “they identified themselves as Obersturmbannführer Alois Strübel and his faithful Hauptscharführer—”
“His faithful what?” Mrs. Greene asked.
Frade looked first at General Greene and then at Mrs. Greene before replying, “Sergeant major, Mrs. Greene.”
“Go on, please, Colonel,” General Greene said.
“Brilliant detective work by myself quickly discovered that Hauptscharführer Otto Niedermeyer was actually Colonel Niedermeyer. Gehlen apparently decided a sergeant major could nose around easier than a colonel.”
“So he lied to us,” Mattingly said.
“And I was shocked as you are that anyone in our business could possibly practice deception,” Frade said. “But, as I was saying, Gehlen sent Niedermeyer to Argentina very early on in this process to make sure we were going to live up to our end of the bargain. He tells me he was Gehlen’s Number Two, and I believe him. And I’m also convinced Niedermeyer was not a Nazi—”
“Why?” Mattingly interrupted.
“Could you just take my word for that, Colonel, and let me finish?”
“Go on,” Mattingly said.
“So I believe the list of the Nazi and SS scum Niedermeyer gave me, again prioritized according to what kind of bastards they are, is the real thing. I’d be willing to go with it as-is. But as some — including Otto Niedermeyer — have pointed out, Gehlen can be very difficult, so I am going to politely ask him to go over Niedermeyer’s roster.”
“I got the impression this afternoon,” Mattingly said, “that Admiral Souers wants to return to Washington as soon as possible.”
“He does,” Frade said.
“Then wouldn’t it make sense for you to give me this list of yours and have me deal with General Gehlen? There’s no reason for you to have to go all the way down there. It’s a four-, five-hour drive.”
When Frade didn’t immediately reply, Mattingly went on: “And, really, the monastery and the people there are my responsibility, aren’t they?”
Frade exhaled audibly.
“Admiral Souers planned to get into all of this with you tomorrow, but it looks like I’m going to have to get into it now.”
“Please do,” Mattingly said, rather unpleasantly.
Frade felt everyone’s eyes around the table on him.
“The reason I have to go to the monastery,” Frade began, “and to have a look at the Pullach installation is because Admiral Souers has ordered me to do so. And the reason he’s done that is because, for reasons of plausible deniability, he has transferred command of Operation Ost — just Ost, not the South German Industrial Development Organization — to the Special Projects Section of the Office of the Naval Attaché at the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires.”
“To what, where?” Colonel Schumann asked.
“When the OSS shut down, its assets — including me — in the Southern Cone of South America were absorbed by the Special Projects Section of the Office of the Naval Attaché at the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires. In other words, for the next sixty days, Operation Ost will be hidden there.
“That will allow General Greene and you, Colonel Mattingly, if — I actually should say ‘when, inevitably’—the Soviets breach the security of the monastery or Pullach, to credibly deny you know anything about Operation Ost. All you’re doing there is running a counterintelligence operation in which some former German officers and non-coms are employed.”
“That makes sense,” General Greene said thoughtfully. Then he chuckled. “Have a nice ride down the autobahn tomorrow, Colonel Frade. Maybe, now that you and Mattingly have kissed and made up, he’ll loan you his Horch for the trip.”
Frade smiled. “That would be very kind of him, but Cronley’s going to fly me in his Storch.”
That Mattingly was not amused was evident in his voice: “And how does Captain Cronley fit into this credible-deniability scenario?”
“In an operational sense, he will be the liaison between the monastery/Pullach, the Farben Building, and Buenos Aires.”
“Who’ll operate the link to Vint Hill Farms?” Major McClung asked.
“Cronley,” Frade said.
Well, Cronley thought, that answers the question “Does McClung know about the Collins and the SIGABA?”
Then, without thinking about what he was doing, Cronley leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his neck. When he saw that Frade, Mattingly, and Mrs. Greene were looking askance at him, he quickly lowered his arms, shifted in his chair, and moved it closer to the table. Rachel’s toes moved immediately to his crotch. After a moment, she withdrew, and then put her foot back on his instep.
“And I’m sure you have considered the possibility,” Mattingly said sarcastically, “that when the Soviets inevitably breach the security of Kloster Grünau or Pullach, they might wish to ask Captain Cronley what he knows about Operation Ost.”
“All Cronley has to do is say, ‘I’m the commanding officer of the guard company. Colonel Mattingly told me I don’t have the Need to Know what’s going on in the compound and am not to ask.’ And, as Mrs. Greene and others have pointed out, he’s only a captain. Captains are unimportant.”
“And you think he could handle pressure like that?” Mattingly asked. His tone made it clear that he didn’t think so.
“I do. But what matters is that Admiral Souers does.”
“I’m really getting tired of all this shop talk,” Mrs. Greene announced. “I want to dance.”
“Colonel Frade,” Colonel Schumann said, “do you think it would be useful if I took a look at your security arrangements for the Pullach operation? I know McClung is going down there in the near future, and I could go with him.”
“I think that’s a great idea,” Frade said. “And — I don’t know how this fits into your schedule, Colonel Mattingly — but how about us all meeting in Munich after I deal with Gehlen?”
Before Mattingly could answer, Rachel said, “Grace, if you and I went down there with them, we could see what will have to be done for the dependent quarters before people start moving in.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” General Greene said. “I’d like to see the Pullach compound myself.”
“We could take the Blue Danube,” Grace Greene said, smiling. “It has a marvelous dining car. And then we can stay at the Vier Jahreszeiten. I like the Vier Jahreszeiten. There’s nothing as nice in Frankfurt.”