Sawyer looked around and then pointed. Stein was walking toward them from the house.
Clete waited until he had joined them, then, after introducing Körtig, Möller, and Subinspector Navarro to “Major” Stein, he asked where Señor Fischer was.
“With his father. You need him?”
“No. What I want you to do is ask him to stay with his father until I send for him.”
Stein’s raised eyebrows showed his surprise, but he didn’t say anything.
“Then,” Frade continued, “find the housekeeper and tell her (a) to prepare some of the rooms in one of the outbuildings for the Körtigs and the Möllers. That’s two wives and three children—adolescents. They’ll be staying here awhile. And (b) to prepare something to eat for everybody; we haven’t had anything since breakfast.”
“Where are the wives and children?” Stein said.
“With Mother Sup
erior getting a physical; they should be here in forty-five minutes or an hour.”
“Doña Dorotea didn’t come with you?”
“She’s with them. Captain Sawyer is going to show Subinspector Navarro the arms cache and the perimeter defense. He and another Gendarmería officer will need rooms in the big house, and we’ll need rooms for eight gendarmes in whatever outbuilding she wants to put the Möllers and the Körtigs. Enrico is going to take Señor Möller and Señor Körtig to the bar. As soon as you can, bring any messages from Mount Sinai to me there.”
“No messages from Mount Sinai, Major,” Stein said. “You expecting one?”
A very long one. When you don’t know what the hell you are doing, ask somebody who presumably does.
And Graham has certainly had enough time to send me my orders.
Clete said: “The SIGABA’s up at Vint Hill Farms?”
Stein nodded. “With a net check every hour.”
“Well, in that case, there’s nothing for Señor Möller and Señor Körtig and me to do but have a glass of wine while we wait for the ladies,” Clete said. “Or hear from Mount Sinai. Or for the sky to fall. Whichever comes first.”
[FOUR]
Office of the Deputy Director for Western Hemisphere
Operations
Office of Strategic Services
National Institutes of Health Building
Washington, D.C.
1715 3 October 1943
Allen W. Dulles entered Graham’s office carrying a well-stuffed briefcase and a small, nearly square package wrapped in cheap gray paper and tied with frazzled string.
Whatever that is, he brought it from London. Among other things they don’t have in Merry Old England these days is decent wrapping paper and string.
Dulles set the package on Graham’s desk and then reached across the desk to shake his hand.
“How was the flight?” Graham asked.
“Long and uncomfortable. The daily courier left without me. I came on a standard Douglas C-54. Via Shannon, Ireland; Gander, Newfoundland; and Westover, in Massachusetts. That’s a long way to ride sitting on unupholstered seats or trying to sleep on a pile of mail bags on the floor.”
“That’s the price of having to respond to the call of your master’s voice,” Graham said. “How did that go?”