It’s not a question of whether the OSS will be shut down, but when. And whenever it happens, it will leave a vacuum that won’t be good for the country.”
“When do you think it will happen?”
“The Army, Navy, and State Department intelligence people will probably start to try to take us over—or try to take over individual operations, such as yours—possibly right about now. I don’t think we’ll be officially shut down for three, maybe four months.”
“And what am I supposed to do when that happens?”
“That’s what I came to tell you, Clete—that I don’t know what to tell you to do. You’ll be on your own. If, for example, some would-be admiral in the Office of Naval Intelligence arrives in Buenos Aires and says, ‘You now belong to me, so give me everything you know about everything here,’ you could not be faulted for doing just that.
“But, on the other hand, if you decide that handing over information or assets to someone would not be good for the country . . .”
“What would I do with stuff—with the people, the assets, all of it—I decided not to turn over?”
“You could, as I intend to, go on the perhaps naive premise that sooner or later—very likely later, much later—President Truman, or even his successor—they’re already talking about General Eisenhower in that capacity —will see there is a need for an agency like the OSS and resurrect it.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“My sentiments exactly. I believe that will happen, Clete. But in this agreement with Gehlen I
Frade met Dulles’s eyes a long moment, then said, “If I turned over what I know about all of Gehlen’s people I’ve gotten into South America, how long do you think it would take for Morgenthau to find out?”
Dulles considered the question as he sipped at the scotch. He finally said, “A week. Possibly as much as two. People have a tendency to present the misbehavior of others to their superiors as quickly as they can.”
“The Gehlen operation was your decision. So, if I opened my mouth about that, you’d be in trouble, right?”
“I don’t want you to take that into consideration, Clete.”
“And if I did roll over, a lot of people who don’t need to know about the Gehlen operation get to know about it and the Russians get to know about it, right? Probably before Morgenthau does?”
“That seems a credible scenario.”
“And the Russians learn everything about Gehlen’s agents in place, right?”
Dulles looked Frade in the eyes but did not reply.
Frade went on: “Whereupon the Russians execute them. And I won’t be responsible for that.”
“That would have to be your decision, Clete, taking into account what it would mean for you. You’d be liable to find yourself in very hot water.”
Frade shook his head in frustration.
“Well,” he said, “I’ve been in hot water before, but if I declare that I don’t know anything, then I don’t know anything.”
Dulles said, “To repeat myself, that would have to be your decision.”
“What happens to von Wachtstein and Boltitz now?” Frade then said.
Major Hans-Peter von Wachtstein had been deputy military attache for air—and Frade’s mole—in the German Embassy in Buenos Aires. Frade had asked Dulles to have him and Kapitan zur See Karl Boltitz, the embassy’s naval attache, safely moved to the States. Both of their fathers had been in Hitler’s High Command—and both targeted for execution for their participation in Operation Valkyrie. While the fate of Peter’s father still was unknown, the OSS had evidence of Karl’s father being killed—and it hadn’t been a stretch of anyone’s imagination to believe that Hitler would have ordered the sons hung from a meat hook, too.
“What do you mean?” Dulles said.
“I mean, do they get sent back to Germany? Or what?”
“That’s the most likely scenario.”
“You arranged to get them sent to Fort Hunt. Can’t you arrange to get them sent back to Argentina? They could be a great help in dealing with the bad Germans there, starting with those involved with Operation Phoenix.”
“I’ll try. That would be the decent thing to do, and I will try. But right now I don’t see how I could help.”
Frade shook his head, then sarcastically said, “Whoopee!”
Dulles drained his drink.
“I am sorry, Clete. Unfortunately, that is the nature of our business.”
Frade was silent a long moment, then sighed.
“Yeah, I know,” he said, “but it damn well doesn’t mean I have to like it. Thank you for leveling with me, Mr. Dulles.”
“How many times have I asked you to call me by my Christian name?”
“I could no more call you ‘Allen’ than I could call Colonel Graham ‘Alejandro.’”
“You could if you tried.”
“And if that’s all you have for me, Mr. Dulles, I’ll get in my airplane and fly another load of Germans wearing clerical garb and carrying Vatican passports to sanctuary in Argentina.”
Frade stood and put out his right hand. Dulles took it.
“We’ll be in touch,” Dulles said.
Clete nodded and walked out of the restaurant.
[TWO]
Washington National Airport Arlington, Virginia 1310 10 May 1945
The four-engine, triple-tail Lockheed Constellation was the finest transport aircraft in the world. In 1939, Howard Hughes, the master aviator whose vast holdings included the majority of shares in Trans World Airlines, had ordered the superplane built to his specs. It was capable of flying forty passengers in its pressurized cabin higher (an altitude of thirty-five thousand feet) and faster (cruise speed was better than three hundred knots) and for a longer distance (forty-three hundred miles) than any other transport aircraft. Its wing design was nearly identical to that of the single-seat Lockheed Lightning P-38 fighter—although on a far grander scale.
South American Airways would have never received a single Connie if President Franklin D. Roosevelt had not had what Clete Frade thought of as a “hard-on” for Juan Trippe and his Pan American Airways. Actually, if Roosevelt had not been beyond pissed at Trippe—who had hired, then at first refused to fire, Colonel Charles “Lucky” Lindbergh after the world-famous aviator had dared to cross FDR—there never would have been a South American Airways at all.
But SAA did indeed exist, and it had not just one but a total of eleven Connies, setting it up to dominate transoceanic air travel postwar—and angering the volatile Juan Trippe no end.
Graham had told Clete: “FDR really knows how to carry one helluva grudge.”
Four days earlier, when Clete had landed South American Airlines Constellation
LOS ANGELES CAL 3 PM 9 MAY 1945
VIA MACKAY
CLETUS H FRADE
SOUTH AMERICAN AIRWAYS
