Death and Honor

“Hello, Howard,” Frade said, then looked at Graham. “Good evening, sir.”

“I’ll be goddamned,” Hughes said. “He’s so surprised he’s almost polite.”

“I didn’t expect to see you here, Howard.”

“With Alex, you mean?” Hughes asked.

Clete nodded. “Or him, either.”

“I’m the reason you’re here with him,” Hughes said.

“What?”

“Alex was out here about—what, Alex? A year ago?”

“Fourteen, fifteen months,” Graham furnished.

“Doing what?” Frade asked.

“That’s none of your goddamn business, Clete,” Hughes said with a smile. “Particularly since that Border Patrol guy thinks you’re a draft dodger.”

“You heard that?”

“Alex and I were playing house detective in the lobby,” Hughes said, and mimed holding up a newspaper to hide his face. “Anyway, Alex was here a little over a year ago, and I told him I had just thought of something, and asked him if he remembered Cletus Marcus Howell from the trial. . . .”

“I’m afraid to ask, but what trial?”

“Right after my father died, my goddamn relatives were stealing me blind. I was a minor; they had themselves appointed my guardians, and they headed right for the Hughes Tool cash box. Your grandfather saw it, didn’t like it one bit, and neither did A. F. here. So I borrowed from your grandfather the money I needed for lawyers and we went to court. Your grandfather and A. F. told the judge what an all-around solid citizen I was, wise beyond my years, and got me liberated—”

“Emancipated,” Graham corrected him. “Declared an adult.”

“Right. Anyway, I saw your picture in the L.A. Times. You’d just made ace on Guadalcanal. It made me think, so I told Alex about your Argentine father, and since Alex was in the spy business—”

“You know about that?” Clete blurted.

“Yeah, I know about that. What did you think Alex was doing out here, chasing movie starlets?”

“As a matter of fact . . .” Clete said.

“Watch it, Major,” Graham said, but he was smiling.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Clete asked.

“You look kind of beat, Clete,” Graham said. “You sure you want to do this now?”

“I am beat. But as beat as I am, I know I’d never get any sleep not knowing . . .”

“Okay. Your call.” Graham took a sip of his beer, clearly composing his thoughts, then went on: “Roosevelt has decided—and, for once, I agree with him—that the best way to deal with Operation Phoenix is not to try to stop it but, instead, to keep an eye on it and grab the money, et cetera, once the war is over.”

Clete had just enough time to be surprised that Howard Hughes was privy to Operation Phoenix when Hughes confirmed it:

“Otherwise,” Hughes said, “they’d just find some other way to get the money in. Nobody ever accused Bormann, Göring, Goebbels, and Company— or, for that matter, Franklin Roosevelt—of being stupid. Many other pejoratives apply, but not ‘stupid.’ ”

Graham chuckled and went on: “And Allen Dulles thinks you—and the Froggers—are the key to doing that. He thinks the key to getting the Froggers to help, really help with Phoenix and more, is to go to Mississippi and turn their Afrikakorps son. More important, Allen thinks you’re our best hope to turn him.”

“I don’t have any idea how I would do that,” Clete said.

“So far,” Hughes offered, “you’ve turned one Kraut with the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross and another Kraut who works for Canaris. . . .”

“You told him that?” Clete blurted angrily.

Graham didn’t reply.

Hughes added: “You’re obviously pretty good at turning Krauts. So why should turning the one in Mississippi be so difficult?”

Frade looked at Graham, who went on: “So the problem was to get you to the States without raising any more suspicions in Colonel Martín’s fertile mind. And Allen said the way to do that was not to tell you anything was going on until you got here. He was betting that you would understand the only way to get around the problem of your pilots not having ATRs was to get them rated, and since the only place you could do that was here, you’d figure out some way to get them—and you—here without making anybody suspicious. And he was right. Again.”

“Allen Dulles was behind Lloyd’s canceling our insurance?” Clete asked incredulously.

Graham nodded.

“I’ll be damned!” Clete said admiringly.

“I don’t think I want to play poker with Dulles,” Hughes said.

“What are the maps Dorotea was talking about?” Graham said. “And, incidentally, I sent her your love and told her that you arrived safely. A radiogram to South American Airways. She’ll get it, right?”

“I have trouble picturing you as a happily married man,” Hughes said.

“That’s because you haven’t seen her,” Clete said to Hughes, then looked at Graham. “Yeah, she’ll get it. Thanks.”

“The maps?” Graham pursued.