“The Air Corps didn’t happen to have any Staggerwing Beechcrafts in stock—I think they stopped making them in 1940—but they had an order from the President, relayed through General Arnold, to replace the aircraft lost in South America. So they took a Lodestar intended as a VIP transport and sent that to Brazil, where it was painted with the same identification numbers of the Staggerwing—and in Staggerwing Red—and notified me that the ‘plane’ was ready. I told our Cletus to go get what I thought would be another Staggerwing.
“He did. And when he got to Brazil, he saw the Lodestar as a good way to get the radar and its crew into Argentina. So, with about two hours of instruction in how to fly it, he did just that. Without a copilot.
“And made it. When I heard about it, I caught the next Panagra Clipper and went down there and reamed him a new anal orifice for being so stupidly arrogant as to think he was that good a pilot.
“Frankly, my heart wasn’t in that. What I was hoping was that the ass-chewing would make him think twice the next time he wanted to do something so off the wall.”
“And did that work?”
“You’ve met him, Allen, what would you say?”
Dulles looked at Marine Corps Colonel A. F. Graham and with a straight face said, “I would say that Major Frade is a typical Marine officer,” then returned his attention to the message.
“Man from the Delta?” Dulles asked.
“Oberstleutnant Frogger,” Graham replied. “Frogger’s son. We got him out of the VIP POW camp in the Mississippi Delta.”
“And he’s at the Brewery?”
Graham nodded.
“So what are we going to tell Frade to do?”
“We are not going to tell him anything, Allen. You blew your right to tell him anything when you didn’t tell him—or me, so that I could tell him—about the phony sergeant major. And, on that subject, is there anything else you think Frade or I should know?”
“No, Alex, there isn’t.”
“Until about five minutes ago, that would have been good enough. Now I’m not sure.”
Dulles’s face tightened.
Graham didn’t back down. “Goddamn it, we had an agreement—no secrets, nothing that could be misunderstood between us.”
“Yes, we did. And I broke it. By oversight, not intention, but I broke it and I said I was sorry.”
Graham didn’t reply.
“What would you like me to do, Alex? Get on my knees and beg forgiveness? Commit suicide?”
“Good thoughts,” Graham said. “How about getting on your knees and committing hara-kiri on the White House lawn?”
“As reluctant as I am to correct an always correct military man such as yourself, I have to tell you—presuming you are talking about self-disembowelment—the proper term for it is seppuku.”
“They taught you that at Princeton, did they?”
“Indeed they did.”
“In that case, go seppuku yourself, Allen.”
They smiled at each other.
“So what are you going to tell Frade to do?” Dulles asked.
“Watch and listen, Allen. But first get out of my chair.”
Dulles got up and Graham sat down.
He pushed the lever on his desk intercom device.