“And he’s an ace. Who was just awarded the Navy Cross. And is smart enough to understand that court-martialing a hero might pose some public relations problems for you. And for the President. That’s presuming, of course, that he would put himself in a position, coming here, where you could court-martial him.”
“It wouldn’t have to be a court-martial….”
“Saint Elizabeth’s? You’re not thinking clearly, Bill.”
In an opinion furnished privately to the President by the Attorney General, the provisions of the law of habeas corpus were not applicable to a patient confined for psychiatric evaluation in a hospital, such as Saint Elizabeth’s, the Federal mental hospital in the District of Colombia.
“I’m not?”
“Cletus Marcus Howell, who dearly loves his grandson, is a great admirer—and I think a personal friend—of Colonel McCormick.”
Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, made no secret of his loathing for President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
“And I suppose I could count on you to be with Howell when he went to see McCormick.”
“That’s a possibility I think you should keep in the back of your mind, Bill.”
“You realize, Alex, that you’re willfully disobeying a direct order? This is tantamount to mutiny.”
“I’ll split that hair with you, Bill. I thought about that on the way up here. You’re not on active duty, Colonel; legally, you’re a dollar-a-year civilian. I don’t think that you have the authority to issue me a military order. But let’s not get into that—unless you’ve already made up your mind to go down that road?”
“What road should we go down?”
“Be grateful for what we have.”
“Which is?”
“Cletus Frade has done more for us than either of us dreamed he could. He earned that Navy Cross by putting his life on the line when he led the submarine Devil Fish into Samborombón Bay to sink the Reine de la Mer. Only a bona fide hero or a fool would have flown that little airplane into the aircraft weaponry on that ship, and whatever Cletus is, he’s no fool.”
“I wasn’t accusing him of being either a fool or a coward,” Donovan said.
“And because of what he did during the coup d’état, he’s President Rawson’s fair-haired boy,” Graham went on. “Do I have to tell you the potential of that?”
“Point granted,” Donovan said.
“Not to mention that his father—who was the likely next president of Argentina—was killed by the Germans during the process.”
Donovan gave a snappish wave of his arm to acknowledge the truth of that.
“Not to mention that he was the one who located the Comerciante del Océano Pacífico,” Graham went on. “Which really deserves mentioning—”
“She’s in the middle of the South Atlantic,” Donovan interrupted. “On a course for Portugal or Spain. There was a report from the Alfred Thomas, who is shadowing her, early this morning.” The USS Alfred Thomas, DD-107, was a destroyer.
“Why don’t we sink her?” Graham asked. “We know what she’s carrying.”
“The President made that decision,” Donovan said. “There are…considerations.”
“Getting back to the Océano Pacífico,” Graham went on. “If he hadn’t flown Ashton and his team, and their radar, into Argentina, we never would have found her. And flew them, let me point out, in an airplane he’d never flown before. We sent him that airplane, Bill. We screwed up big time by sending him the wrong airplane. And he pulled our chestnuts out of the fire by flying it anyway.”
“You sound like the president of the Cletus Frade fan club,” Donovan said, tempering the sarcasm in his voice with a smile.
“Guilty,” Graham said. “And while I run down the list, it was Frade’s man, Frade’s Sergeant Ettinger, who found out about the ransoming of the Jews. And got himself murdered.”
“Can I stipulate to Major Frade’s many virtues?”
“No, I want to remind you of them. Of all of them. And it was Frade who found out about Operation Phoenix.”
“From Galahad. Which brings us back to him,” Donovan said. “The President is very interested in Operation Phoenix. He wants to know—and I want to know, Alex—who Galahad is.”