Martín nodded.
“President Roosevelt made the decision that as outrageous as Operation Phoenix is, and as despicable and disgusting as the SS-run Buy-the-Jews-Out-of-Extermination-Camps Operation is, as much as he would like to expose both operations to the world, the bottom line is that some Jews are being saved from the ovens. If it came out, no more Jews could be saved, and the Germans would probably kill the rest of the Jews as quickly as possible so there would be no proof, no witnesses.”
Martín exhaled audibly again. This time it sounded like a groan.
“My orders are to keep track of where that money is going,” Frade said. “So that when the war is over—”
“That’s an admission, you realize . . .”
“Yeah. I realized that when I decided you had a right to know what’s going on.”
“And the Froggers are giving you information, or at least names—that sort of thing—regarding the money from both Operation Phoenix and the other one? Does the other one have a name?”
“The who? Never heard of them. And, no, the other filthy operation doesn’t have a name.”
“Do the Germans know you know about the unnamed operation?”
“They don’t know how much we know about it.”
“How much do you know?”
“A good deal. And when the war is over, when faced with the alternative of either telling us what we don’t know or a hangman’s noose, I suspect the slimy SS bastard running the operation in Montevideo will sing like a canary.”
“Montevideo?”
Frade nodded.
“Your sergeant was killed in Montevideo,” Martín said.
“Technical Sergeant David Ettinger,” Frade said. “They stuck an ice pick in his ear in the garage of the Hotel Casino de Carrasco. More precisely, the SS bastard hired a local assassin—probably assassins—to do it. Ettinger was getting too close to that unnamed operation.”
“Has the ‘SS bastard’ a name?”
“Why do you want his name?”
“For my general fund of knowledge, Cletus.”
“There is a man in Montevideo who was offended by what happened to David Ettinger . . .”
“An American, perhaps?”
Frade nodded.
“Maybe in the OSS?”
“Next question?” Frade said, and then went on: “This man believes in the Old Testament adage about an eye for an eye. But he was refused permission to take out the SS bastard. That’s when they told us FDR had decided that he wanted the unnamed operation to continue, to save as many Jews as possible. To keep an eye on this SS bastard, but keep him in place. If you had his name, Alejandro, I don’t know what you’d do with it.”
“I understand,” Martín said. “If I were you, I wouldn’t trust me with it either. Even if I gave you my word that I would keep it to myself, and pass on to you anything that came my way about him. And the unnamed operation.”
They locked eyes for a long moment.
“Sturmbannführer Werner von Tresmarck,” Frade said. “He has diplomatic cover, of course. He’s a homosexual. His wife is involved in it up to her eyeballs . . .”
“I thought you just said he was homosexual.”
Frade nodded. “He is. That’s how they keep him in line. He either does what they tell him, with absolute honesty, and keeps his mouth shut, or he winds up in a concentration camp with a pink triangle pinned to his suit.”
“And the wife?”