“Colonel Graham and I will decide what General Donovan is to get in these areas.”
Frade pointed at Fischer. “For Christ’s sake, he’s a second lieutenant.” He paused and looked at Fischer. “Right?”
“Yes, sir,” Fischer said. “I’m eligible for promotion in sixty days.”
“And you don’t think Donovan is going to send some colonel out to Vint— whateverthehell—”
“Vint Hill Farms Station,” Dulles furnished.
&nb
sp; “—to stand Second Lieutenant Fischer at attention and tell him Donovan gets a copy of everything?”
“Both Colonel Graham and I have told General Donovan that if something like that happens, he and I will personally deliver our resignations to the President.”
“And,” Frade challenged, “you don’t think General Donovan could think of a way around that? ‘And not only will you give me a copy of everything, Second Lieutenant Fischer, but I order you not to tell anyone—including but especially Graham, Dulles, and Frade—that you’re going to do it.’ ”
“Actually, that potential problem occurred to Fischer,” Dulles replied. “And he came up with a rather clever simple means to let us know if that has happened. ”
Frade looked at Fischer and made a Come on, let’s hear it gesture.
“Yes, sir. Sir—”
“Whoa,” Frade interrupted. “No ‘sir.’ No ‘major.’ From right now.”
“Yes, si— What do I call you?”
“Clete. And you?”
“Len. Leonard.”
“Okay, Len: How are you going to keep Donovan from standing you tall?”
“There’s no way I can do that, but if it happens, when I open the net in the morning . . .”
“Explain that, please.”
“There will be a regular contact every day at a time to be determined. First, the contact is established. Then there is a brief gibberish message, encoded, to test the SIGABA and its signal operating code. You know, something like ‘Mary had a little lamb’; ‘There is nothing to fear but fear itself’; ‘Lucky Strike Green has gone to war’; ‘Play it again, Sam’ . . .”
“Okay, I get the picture.”
“If I have been compromised, I send yesterday’s gibberish as the test encryption. ”
Frade thought it over and said what he had been thinking.
“That’d work. But how do we know you’d do it?”
“Two reasons. One, I’m a Jew, and I think the President is right. If this ransoming operation gets out, no more Jews will be able to get out of German concentration camps. . . .”
“You told him about that?” Frade challenged Dulles.
Dulles nodded. “He would have come to know anyway.”
Frade raised his eyebrows, then looked at Fischer.
“And reason two?”
“Colonel Graham made certain threats about what would happen to me if I betrayed the trust he was placing in me. I believe him, and I’m a devout coward.”