Death and Honor

“I’ll be back in a minute, Major,” Graham said. “While I’m gone, why don’t you give some serious thought to the chain of command you’d like to see in place here?”

“Sir?” Frade asked, but Graham was already at the door and didn’t reply.

“Very interesting,” Frade said after examining the leather folder holding the plastic-sheathed photo identification card and gold OSS badge. “What am I supposed to do with it? Show it to Colonel Martín?”

And there’s that sardonic look on his face. And I understand it.

“I can do without the sarcasm, Frade,” Graham said icily.

“Sorry,” Frade said, not sounding very contrite.

“You noticed, I hope, that in the rank block, you are identified as area commander. ”

“I saw that. What does it mean?”

“Just what it says,” Graham said.

Frade held both hands out, palms upward, signaling he had no idea what Graham was talking about.

“Let me explain,” Graham said. “You’re not the only officer around with command structure problems . . .”

I’m making this up as I go along.

"... and this new system is what Director Donovan and I—in consultation with the attorney general—came up with.”

“New system?”

“The Rules for the Governance of the Navy—or Army Regulations—just don’t provide for situations in the OSS where the best-qualified man to perform a function, or issue orders, is an officer—or often an enlisted man—junior to, and thus subject to the orders of, someone else in his unit.”

“That finally occurred to somebody, did it?” Frade asked.

“So we’ve developed our own OSS command structure, which gives the necessary lawful authority to the individual who should have it, regardless of his rank in his service. At the moment, there are four grades: special agent, senior agent, supervisory agent, and area commander.”

Frade pursed his lips thoughtfully.

Not sardonically. Have I got him?

If I don’t blow this, I just may have.

“Just about everybody in the field will be a special agent,” Graham went on. “Again, without regard to their actual rank in their branch of the service. Those with greater responsibility will hold the higher ranks. I can readily see where a lieutenant—for that matter, a sergeant—will be a senior agent. Frankly, I don’t think that many sergeants will be supervisory agents, but if that becomes necessary, it will happen. The important thing about the new system is that it gives lawful authority to those we think should have it.”

“Ashton’s a good man, but he doesn’t know half as much about communications or the radar as Chief Schultz,” Frade said. “Or Siggy Stein.”

“In that case, if you want to, you could designate Chief Schultz as a senior agent. That would give him the lawful authority over the others he needs.”

Frade didn’t reply.

He’s obviously giving this some thought. Which means he’s swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.

“What are you thinking, Frade?”

“That maybe I better apologize for what I was thinking when you handed me this Junior G-Man’s badge. This’ll work, Colonel.”

“My badge reads theater commander. That outranks an area commander.”

Where the hell did I get that?

“I was afraid it would,” Frade said. “What do I call you, ‘theater’? Or ‘commander’? ”

“ ‘Sir’ will do nicely. This is strictly for internal use. You understand that?”

Frade nodded. “You have these for the other guys?”

“Special agent badges and ID cards for everybody, plus about a dozen blanks—already signed—for the ID cards. When you decide who’ll be what, you can fill them out. I also have some senior and one supervisory thingamabobs that go on the badges.”

When I took everything away from those morons in Documents, it was to keep them from falling into the wrong hands. I never dreamed they’d be used.

Thank God I didn’t have time to destroy them.

“Let me think about it,” Frade said.

“Certainly. Now, there’s two other things we have to talk about.”

“Okay.”

“There are three really significant secrets, Frade, that only very few people know about. By very few people, I mean Director Donovan, Allen W. Dulles, and me.”

“Who’s Dulles?”

“The senior OSS man we have in Switzerland. Like me, a theater director.”

Frade nodded.

“One of them is actually two,” Graham said. “That’s Operation Phoenix and the ransoming of Jews from concentration camps.”

Frade nodded again.

“The second is that Dulles is in contact with Admiral Canaris, and that means with the plan to assassinate Hitler.”

Frade nodded again. “And the third?”

There was absolutely no reason that Frade should know of the Manhattan Project.

“You don’t have the Need to Know,” Graham said.