“No. They are now OSS special agents—show him your ID, Hansel.”
Peter did.
Bendick nodded his acceptance.
Frade went on: “I knew I was going to need them, so last week—on May tenth—I flew to Washington and got them.”
General Bendick looked at von Wachtstein and, shaking his head in disbelief, asked, “And you were the air attache of the German Embassy?”
“Tell him, Hansel,” Frade ordered.
“Before that,” von Wachtstein said, “I was commanding officer of Jagdstaffel 232—Focke-Wulf 190s— defending Berlin against B-17s.”
Bendick shook his head again and then asked Frade, “They were turned over to you—is that what you’re saying?”
“No, what I said was that I needed them, so I went and got them. I didn’t have the time to deal with the bureaucracy.”
“You just took them from a POW camp on your own authority?”
Frade nodded.
Bendick again shook his head in disbelief.
Frade said: “Your original question, Bob, was something like ‘Why should I trust Boltitz?’”
Bendick met Frade’s eyes. “Has it occurred to you, Colonel Frade, that the smart thing for me to do is pick up that telephone and tell my provost marshal to come running? That two escaped German POWs and the guy who helped them escape are in flight planning?”
Frade held the gaze and said, “You could do that, General. It’s known as ‘covering your ass.’ But you won’t.”
“And why won’t I?”
“Two reasons. One is that you know that if you did, you’d be helping the Nazis get away with sending their submarines to South America, and you don’t want to do that. Two, you’re not that kind—the CYA kind—of an officer.”
“How do you know? Was telling me all this smart?”
“Probably not. But in my business, every once in a while you have to take a chance. I took it. I’d take it again.”
“Taking a chance like putting a shot-up B-17 down on a fighter strip? Because it wasn’t really an option?”
“Yes, sir.”
General Bendick turned to his aide-de-camp.
“Jimmy,” he ordered, “get on the horn and get Colonel DuBois and Colonel Nathan down here. Tell them I’m running a middle-of-the-night training program in how to find submarines.”
[TWO]
Transient Mess Val de Cans Airfield Belem do Para, Brazil 0405 17 May 1945
SAA Chief Pilot Gonzalo Delgano, Captain Mario Peralta, and a flight engineer whose name Clete could never remember—he thought of him as “the chubby flight engineer, who, three-to-one, also works for the BIS”—were sitting over coffee at a table near the door when Clete and the others walked in.
The diplomats were sitting at various tables around the nearly empty mess.
“We wondered where you were,” Delgano greeted them.
“We all set to go?” Clete replied.
“Anytime you are. Weather looks good, and we may even get that tailwind.”
“Just as soon we have some breakfast,” Clete said.
“You haven’t eaten?” Delgano asked.
“No. That’s why we’re going to eat now,” Clete said.
“El Senor Nulder wondered what had happened to you,” Delgano said.
“And asked you?”
Delgano nodded.
“What did you tell him?”
“The truth. I didn’t know.”
Clete ordered: “Enrico, why don’t you go ask Senor Nulder if he can spare a moment for me?”
* * *
It was the first time that Frade had gotten a good look at Rodolfo Nulder, the director of security at the Secretariat of Labor and Retirement Plans. He thought there was something about him—his carriage, a hint of arrogance—that suggested a military background.
Nulder smiled and put out his hand as he approached the table.
“I’m Rodolfo Nulder, Senor Frade,” he announced with a charming smile.
“So Capitan Delgano has been telling me.”
“Did he also tell you that I was at both the military academy and the Kriegsschule with your father?”
“No, as a matter of fact, he didn’t,” Frade lied, somewhat deflating Nulder’s arrogance, if only for a moment. “But he did tell me, when I asked him who was in charge of our cargo of diplomats, that you probably were. True?”
“When I left the army, I became involved with governmental security. I’m presently the director of security for the Secretariat of Labor and Retirement Plans—”
“The Secretariat of Labor and Retirement Plans?” Frade interrupted. “Or the Secretary of Labor and Retirement Plans?”
Nulder raised his eyebrows, then said, “Actually, I suppose one could say that both are true. I sometimes assist el Coronel Peron in security matters outside the Secretariat of Labor and Retirement Plans. This is one of those occasions. Actually, Senor Frade, I was hoping to have a word with you, to explain my role in this mission, when we arrived here. But then no one seemed to know where you were.”
“No one did,” Frade said.
Nulder’s charming smile flickered off and then came back on.
He said: “I was going to tell you that in his role as vice president, el Coronel Peron thought, because I know Germany, that I would be useful in carrying out the mission President Farrell had assigned to the Foreign Ministry, and asked me to participate.”
“Does that mean you’re the man in charge?” Frade asked, not very pleasantly.
“Let me put it this way. Think of me as the liaison officer between yourself, as the managing director of SAA, and the senior Foreign Ministry officer, Ambassador Gimenez, on this mission.”
Frade considered that, nodded, and said: “Then I guess you’re the man I’m looking for. You can pass this on to Ambassador Gimenez. . . . Wait. I just thought of something: How can you be an ambassador to a country that no longer exists? What used to be Germany is now territory held by force of arms by the Allied Powers and under martial law. Can you accredit an ambassador to a military headquarters?”
Nulder’s face showed both that he had not expected the question and that he had no answer to it.
“I really don’t know,” he confessed. “Why don’t we leave such questions to the Foreign Ministry?”
“Okay. But the reason I wanted to see the man in charge—and the reason I’m just now having my
