Death and Honor

“—and was, so to speak, shot down in flames. This unnamed man told him—and this is where it gets interesting—that he was going to tell him what he had told Juan Trippe no more than an hour before: ‘It would be ill-advised to ever raise Lindbergh’s name to me again.’

“ ‘Me,’ of course, meaning—”

“He knows who you mean, Howard,” Graham said with a sigh.

“So, cleverly assembling the facts, Alex and I concluded that Juan Trippe went to this unnamed man and told him, considering what Charley had done to knock the head Jap admiral out of the war, that it was time to forgive him. An hour later, Ha . . . my friend went there and offered the same argument. This man is not known to appreciate being shown where he has made an error in judgment.

“And the next day, or maybe the day after, he told Wild Bill Donovan to set up an airline in South America, no reason given,” Hughes concluded.

“Does General Donovan know about this?” Clete asked.

“General Donovan is very good at figuring things out,” Graham said.

“But he hasn’t said anything to you, right?” Hughes asked Graham.

“He probably knows that Juan annoyed FDR and is being punished with South American Airways,” Graham said, “but I don’t know if he knows Hap— oh, hell, the cow’s out of the barn—if he knows Hap Arnold also went to Roosevelt. And he hasn’t told me because I would be liable to tell Howard—Wild Bill refers to Howard as my Loose Cannon Number One—”

“Guess who’s A. F.’s Loose Cannon Number Two, Clete,” Hughes interrupted, laughing.

Graham finished: “—who would be capable of going—even likely to go— to Colonel McCormick and telling him (a) what Lindbergh did vis-à-vis Yamamoto and (b) what FDR did in grateful appreciation.”

“What I’d like to do is go whisper in Alphonso’s ear,” Hughes said.

"God damn it, don’t even joke about something like that,” Graham said furiously.

“ ‘Alphonso’?” Clete asked.

“The A in Senator Robert A. Taft’s name stands for Alphonso,” Hughes said. “That’s a secret right up there with Leslie Groves’s superbomb.”

Graham looked at Hughes almost in horror, then his eyes darted to Clete.

Clete said, “I don’t know who—what did you say, ‘Leslie Groves’?—I don’t know who she is, but I know about the superbomb.”

“Who she is?” Hughes said, laughing. “Clete, the guy who runs the Manhattan Project is a barrel-chested gray-haired major general named Leslie Groves.”

“Allen Dulles told you about the Manhattan Project?” Graham asked.

Clete nodded.

“He somehow neglected to mention that to me,” Graham said.

“Maybe he thinks you’re a loose cannon,” Hughes said.

Graham flashed him an angry look.

“He also told me about some German ex-Nazi in the Hotel Washington,” Clete said. “Tell me about him.”

“He did tell you how secret the Manahattan Project is, I hope,” Graham said.

Clete nodded, then said, “Tell me about the German in the Hotel Washington. ”

Graham said, “You’re thinking he might be useful in turning Colonel Frogger?”

“I don’t know. It looks to me as if I need all the help I can get. What about him?”

“I’m somewhat embarrassed that I never thought about this at all,” Graham said. “What did Allen Dulles tell you about Hanfstaengl?”

“That he was an early supporter of National Socialism,” Clete said, “and became a pal of Hitler, a member of the inner circle. Then he got on the wrong side of Martin Bormann or Goebbels or Göring or Himmler—or all four—who didn’t want him close to Hitler. Somebody warned him that one of the above— or maybe Hitler himself—was going to have him whacked, and he got out of Germany just before that was going to happen, and came here and looked up his college chum, FDR, who installed him in the Hotel Washington, where he tells Roosevelt what Hitler and friends are probably thinking.”

Graham nodded and said, “That’s the story.”

“You sound like you don’t believe it,” Hughes said.

“I have trouble believing people who change sides,” Graham said.

“If Clete thinks he’d be useful, and he probably would be,” Hughes said, “we could pick up ol’ Putzi in Washington and take him with us to Mississippi. Or take the Kraut with the funny name to Washington to see Putzi.”

“Ol’ Putzi would probably be useful”?

Howard knows about this guy?

Not only knows about him, but sounds as if he knows him.

“We could pick up ol’ Putzi and take him with us to Mississippi”?

“Who is ‘we’ and ‘us’?” Clete asked. “As in ‘we could pick up ol’ Putzi and take him with us to Mississippi’?”

Graham started to reply, then stopped.

“I don’t have the Need to Know, right?” Clete said.

“What’s going to happen now, Major Frade,” Graham said, “is that you’re going to bed before you fall asleep standing up again. You will be awakened at eight, and informed that the Immigration Service people will pick you up in the driveway at nine and return you to Burbank.”