“And Leibermann is?”
“The FBI guy in Buenos Aires.”
“The FBI chap in Berne seems to think I am invisible,” Dulles said.
“Leibermann is a good guy. We work well together. Anyway, he brought them out to the estancia, and we’re hiding them until somebody tells me what to do with them.”
“On your estancia?”
“On another one I’d never heard of ten days ago. They’re safe.”
“And Leibermann has reported this to the ambassador? And/or the FBI?”
Frade shook his head.
“Why did they . . . ‘surrender’?”
“They wanted Leibermann to get them to Brazil so they could be interned. Leibermann thinks, and I agree, that they were afraid to go back to Germany because von Deitzberg or Cranz—Frogger’s replacement, actually an SS-OBERSTURMBANNFÜHRER—HAVE not been able to identify von Wachtstein as the spy and are going to hang it on Frogger.”
“This man’s name is Frogger?”
“Wilhelm Frogger. His son and namesake—he had three sons; two got themselves killed—is an oberstleutnant who got himself captured with the Afrikakorps. He’s now in a POW camp in the States.”
“They’ve probably got him in Camp Clinton,” Dulles said, almost to himself.
“Excuse me?”
“This chap in the Afrikakorps?”
“Yeah. I think so. Do tank officers wear big black berets?”
Dulles nodded.
“Then he was—is—a tank officer,” Frade said. “What’s Camp Clinton?”
“A POW camp in Mississippi. We sent a lot of Afrikakorps officers there— including, significantly, General von Arnim. It’s where we plan to hold all German general officers and the more important staff officers.”
Frade’s face showed he had no idea who General von Arnim was.
“Hans von Arnim,” Dulles explained. “He took over the Afrikakorps from Erwin Rommel. He surrendered what was left of it when Tunisia fell. In early May.” He paused and chuckled. “Starchy chap. About so tall”—he held his hand out to indicate a short height—“with a Hitlerian mustache and a large—forgive me—Semitic nose.”
“You know him?” Frade asked in surprise.
“I went to Tunisia to see him. I’m afraid I got nowhere with him.”
Dulles paused thoughtfully again, then asked, “You didn’t report this to Colonel Graham?”
“I sent him half a dozen messages and never got a reply. So I guessed he was out of Washington, and I didn’t want somebody else reading about Frogger if Graham wasn’t there.”
“What are you doing with these people now?”
“One of my sergeants—Stein, good guy, smart, Jewish, got out of Germany just before they would have packed him off to Sachsenhausen or someplace— is trying to convince them that the only way he can keep me from shooting and burying them in an unmarked grave on the pampas is for them to come up with something I can use. Starting, for example, with a manning chart of their embassy. If he lies about that, von Wachtstein will be able to tell.”
“And if he’s not lying, then what?”
“Then I will see what else I can get out of him.”
“I’m sure you can see how valuable this man could be in providing the information about German assets I mentioned.”