The Honor of Spies

"Luftwaffe engineers have developed a new fighter, the Messerschmitt Me- 262, which uses a revolutionary new type of propulsion, the jet engine. It is faster than any other fighter aircraft in the world, and it is armed with 40mm cannon. It can fire at American and British bombers from a distance greater than their .50-caliber machine guns can return fire. Once it goes into action, it will cause unacceptable losses to British and American bombers.

"There is already a squadron of these aircraft flying in Augsburg. But there has been time enough to manufacture only twenty or thirty of them.

"But it's just a matter of time until they do.

"Time has been working for our enemies.

"So now we make it work for us.

"How do we protect our rocket engineers from being killed by the Soviet Communists if they should temporarily overrun our rocket facilities? More important, how do we prevent our rocket scientists from being forced to work for the Soviet Communists?

"The same thing for our aeronautical engineers.

"The same thing for our physicists, who are close to developing a bomb more powerful than the imagination can accept.

"If the Soviets came into possession of German technology, it would mean the end of the Christian world.

"I'm sure the answer has already occurred to many of you.

"We bring them to Argentina, secretly, by submarine. Germany has the largest fleet of submarines in the world.

"And we set them up, with new laboratories, perhaps even manufacturing facilities. If things go even worse for us, with time working against us, certainly with manufacturing facilities.

"Where?

"I'm sure that answer has already occurred to many of you, perhaps all of you. I know that it has occurred to el Coronel Schmidt.

"Right here, in this remote corner of Argentina."

There was a burst of applause.

"As you can well understand, this has to be accomplished with the greatest secrecy. The Communists are everywhere. And the Jews. The Antichrist.

"El Coronel Schmidt and others have been working on establishing these refuges for German scientists--and their families--for some time, and will continue to do so.

"But there is another problem, the real reason I am here. This is always distasteful for professional officers, but again, we must deal with things as they are rather than with things as we may wish them to be.

"I am speaking of treason, which von Clausewitz described--I forget the exact quote . . ."

Probably because I just made this one up. But it does sound like something he would say.

". . . but it was to the effect that treason is simply another way of showing cowardice in the face of the enemy. On the battlefield, there is a simple way of dealing with those who throw down their arms and refuse to fight. One conducts a summary court-martial to establish that those are the facts. And if they are, the traitors, the cowards--whatever they are called--are tied to a post, stripped of their military insignia, offered a blindfold, and shot, with as many of their former comrades in arms as can be gathered watching.

"In the First World War, when soldiers of regiments refused to fight, every tenth soldier in the regiment was shot. We Germans believe in honor and justice, and we don't shoot people we don't know for sure have run from the enemy. But we do execute those we know have shown their treason, their cowardice.

"I am ashamed to tell you that a trusted officer of the German Embassy in Buenos Aires, Wilhelm Frogger, and his wife--who, like my wife, was an agent of the Sicherheitsdienst, the secret police branch of the SS--have deserted their post and gone over to the enemy.

"They were assisted in running by an American, a slimy Jew by the name of Milton Leibermann, who works for the American FBI. Leibermann thought that--probably with the assistance of the head of the OSS in Argentina, a man named Frade--he could hide the Froggers from us, save them from the execution they so rightly deserve.

"He was wrong. I am almost positive that some excellent detective work on the part of the Sicherheitsdienst agents in the embassy has located them. In Mendoza. Once we are sure of this, SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Sepp Schafer and I will carry out the unpleasant duty of executing these swine.