DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN
FROM DIRECTOR
MSG NO 2072 1310 GREENWICH 8 MAY 1943
TO STATION CHIEF MEXICO CITY
FOR DIRECTOR WHO
YOUR PRESENCE REQUIRED HERE NOT LATER THAN 0800 TOMORROW.
STACHIEF MEXICO CITY DIRECTED TO PROVIDE FASTEST AVAILABLE TRANSPORTATION TO SAN ANTONIO WHERE AIR CORPS WILL PROVIDE FURTHER TRANSPORTATION TO WASHINGTON.
ACKNOWLEDGE RECEIPT AND ETA SAN ANTONIO.
DONOVAN
* * *
Graham had tried to telephone Donovan to ask if whatever was so important couldn’t wait twenty-four hours while he finished his business in Mexico City, but all he could get was “the Director is not available and won’t be until sometime after six tonight.” By six, he thought, he could be in San Antonio, so he really had no choice but to break his dinner date with a Mexican attorney with close ties to the Mexican president and head for San Antonio.
He could not, of course, explain to the Mexican lawyer that he had been suddenly ordered to Washington, which rubbed the lawyer the wrong way. And then he didn’t get to San Antonio until after seven. And then the B-26 that was flying him to Washington had been forced to make a “precautionary landing” in northern Alabama.
He had arrived in Washington with barely time to stop at his apartment for a quick shave, shower, and change of clothes, before reporting at the proper place and the proper time.
At two minutes before eight, he had arrived at OSS Headquarters, in what had once been the National Institutes of Health Building. There Donovan’s secretary told him she had no idea when the Director would be coming in, “but probably a little after nine.”
“Well, you made it,” Donovan greeted him. “Good.”
“I thought the hour was 0800,” Graham said.
Donovan ignored him.
“I was supposed to have dinner last night with a guy who probably could have been paid to let our people into the telephone company,” Graham said.
“‘Could have been paid’?” Donovan parroted.
“Right. Past tense. He was miffed when I had to break our dinner date. Latins tend to be miffed when people are late for important meetings.”
“And you’re Latin, right?” Donovan said, and immediately regretted it.
“Yes, I am.”
“Raise the ante,” Donovan said. “That’s important.”
“I thought it was important,” Graham said. “I’d rather that we intercept German communications than have the Brits do it for us and then send us a ‘You Owe Us’ bill every month for the next fifty years.”
“I want to talk to you about Galahad,” Donovan said, sailing on.
“Jesus Christ, Bill!” Graham said incredulously, contemptuously, “You brought me back to talk about Galahad?”
Donovan nodded.
“We’ve been over that before,” Graham said, c
oldly furious, and added: “You’re as bad as the goddamn Mexicans! You never know when to quit!”
“‘The goddamn Mexicans’?” Donovan quoted mockingly. “Why, Alejandro Federico, I didn’t expect to hear something like that from someone like you.”