“Necochea’s a small town on the coast,” Dorotea explained to her husband, “about ninety kilometers south of Mar del Plata.”
“How do you know they were Argentine army trucks?” Frade asked.
“Well, they were under command of a colonel of mountain troops, and some of them were wearing uniforms.”
“That’s some five hours ago,” Frade said. “Too late to do anything about the goddamned submarine.”
“I really hope so,” von Wachtstein said.
“Excuse me?” Dorotea said.
“Kapitänleutnant Wilhelm von Dattenberg, her commander, is an old friend of mine. We went to school together.”
XII
[ONE]
Office of the Director Office of Strategic Services National Institutes of Health Building Washington, D.C. 0845 24 July 1943
“What brings you to work so early, Alex?” OSS Director Donovan said to Deputy Director for Western Hemisphere Operations Graham. “I didn’t think you Latinos got out of bed before ten.”
“With all possible respect, Mr. Director, sir,” Graham said as he made a rude upward gesture with his middle finger, “I beg to inform you that I have been hard at work since about five, in order that you would find something on your desk to do when you came to work, almost certainly hungover from a lateevening—perhaps an into-early-morning—soiree with our commander in chief, his charming wife, and your dear pal J. Edgar Hoover.”
“You heard about that, did you?”
“I hear about everything,” Graham said. “I thought you knew that.”
Donovan shook his head and asked, “You want some coffee?”
“Since I was not at all sure you would be so charmingly hospitable, I told her to bring me a cup.”
Donovan smiled and chuckled and then pointed to the thick stack of eight-by-ten-inch photographs on his desk.
“I presume you have seen these?”
Graham nodded. “I watched as most of them appeared miraculously on paper in that tray of whatever chemical it is in the photo lab.”
“And the lieutenant—‘Flags,’ nice-looking young man—where is he?”
“I sent him out to Vint Hill Farms in my car. I told him to stay loose, and my driver to stay there until he hears otherwise. Flags—Fischer—was pretty beat.”
"What about him?”
Donovan’s secretary came in with a simple coffee service of two china mugs and a thermos bottle on a plastic tray, set it down, then filled the mugs.
Graham waited until she had left the office and closed the door behind her before answering: “I said he was pretty beat. I should have said ‘in shock.’ Forty-eight hours ago, he thought he was going to be either thrown in a cell or shot, then all of a sudden he’s back in Washington.”
“He came here?”
“I met the B-26 that brought him up from Miami. I wasn’t kidding when I said I’ve been up and at it since five.”
“Well, the pictures came out,” Donovan said. “Would I be far off if I guessed that the other young man—the handsome chap in a racetrack tout’s plaid jacket with the foulard at his neck and in desperate need of a barber—is Major Cletus Frade, USMCR?”
“You never saw Don Cletus before?”
Donovan shook his head.
“I think I’ll have that shot blown up and use it as a dartboard,” the OSS director said. “Can you guess what the President—and, for that matter, Eleanor—and of course J. Edgar wanted to talk about last night?”