The Honor of Spies

"You mean this guy Frogger?" Graham said. "According to Frade, he thought he was being thrown to the wolves by the SS people in the embassy. When the Froggers were ordered home to Germany, they took off."

"Interesting, but I was asking about the FBI agent."

"He told Frade he had no place to hide them," Graham explained, "and he thought Frade could use them--or we could--to help keep track of all that Operation Phoenix money. So Frade took them. And told Allen about having them when they met at the Canoas Air Base in Brazil."

"You met with Cletus Frade in Brazil?" Donovan asked. He was visibly angry, and now his voice was icy. "Funny, I never heard about that, Allen. Another of those things you decided I didn't have to know?"

Dulles's eyes tightened.

"I seem to recall, Bill, that the 'condition of employment' you mentioned before gave me the authority to run Europe as I see fit. Is that your recollection as well?"

Donovan didn't reply.

"My understanding was that it did," Dulles said. "And operating on that premise, I didn't think I had to have your permission to meet with Cletus Frade, or to tell you that I had until I decided it was appropriate."

Dulles let that sink in for a moment, then went on: "One of the players in Operation Valkyrie is Galahad's father."

Donovan knew that Operation Valkyrie was the code name used by disaffected members of the German High Command to identify their plan to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

Donovan said: "I suppose that since you and Alex have decided that neither I nor the commander in chief can be trusted with Galahad's identity, you're not going to identify his father either."

"Only that he is a generalleutnant on Hitler's inner staff who sees him on a daily basis," Dulles said.

"Bill," Graham said, "we'd be willing to trust you with both names if we knew you wouldn't run to the President with them. It boils down to the same thing. Things leak from the Oval Office, and we simply can't take that risk with this."

"I know you don't think much of the FBI," Donovan said. "But J. Edgar Hoover's more competent than you give him credit for being. The President has ordered him to find out who Galahad is. And sooner or later, he will."

"Possibly," Dulles said. "And if that happens, I'll know that Valkyrie has been compromised and will take the appropriate action."

After a moment, Donovan asked, "Are you going to tell me what you and Frade discussed in Brazil?"

"When Frade told me about the Froggers, I thought we might suddenly have been struck with good fortune. It was the same surname as one of the players in Valkyrie. I couldn't be sure--and I couldn't find out while I was in Brazil--so what I asked Frade to do was have a photograph of himself taken with his Froggers, and to stand by, so to speak, for further orders.

"I did not tell him what I hoped, and he did not learn until yesterday, that Lieutenant Colonel Wilhelm Frogger, the Froggers' sole surviving son, a Valkyrie conspirator, had been captured when General von Arnim surrendered the Afrikakorps and was now in the senior officers' POW camp in Mississippi.

"When I had that information, I brought Frade to the United States."

"You didn't think," Donovan asked, more than a little sarcastically, "that Frade suddenly coming up here from Argentina might look a little suspicious?"

"What Allen did, Bill, was have Lloyd's of London cancel the insurance of South American Airways," Graham said. "Otherwise known as Franklin Roosevelt's Stick It to Juan Trippe Airline."

"I don't think that's funny, nor do I understand," Donovan said.

"South American Airways--Frade--was informed that inasmuch as SAA's pilots did not hold an internationally recognized Airline Transport Rating, they were forced to cancel SAA's insurance," Dulles explained. "This caused, as I suspected it would, a furious--and always resourceful--Cletus Frade to deal with the situation in his own way. What he did was load a dozen SAA pilots on one of his Lodestars and fly them to the Lockheed plant in Burbank to take the necessary examinations and get their ratings. And incidentally, to take back to Argentina a half-dozen of those 'surplus' Lodestars."

Graham picked up the story: "Howard Hughes and I were waiting for him in his hotel room at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood. The next morning, the SAA pilots--including Frade--were dropped off one at a time at SAA Lodestars to meet the examination pilots. Frade was dropped off last, at a Constellation, where Howard and I were again waiting for him.

"We flew to the Jackson Army Air Base in Mississippi. En route, we told Frade what was going on. We drove out to Camp Clinton and met with Oberstleutnant Frogger. He's one starchy sonofabitch, incidentally, who would only recite his name, rank, and serial number even after we showed him the pictures of Frade with his parents.