“You don’t know?”
Graham shook his head.
“Allen’s idea. Frade believes everything he sent in that message. If he doesn’t know anything, he can’t let anything slip. Anyway, the Air Force’s North American Air Defense Command, which issues the clearance to enter U.S. airspace— and normally would issue it to an airliner of a neutral country in maybe an hour—has been told to wait five hours. That’ll do several things. It will almost certainly give the pilots with him—at least one of whom is an Argentine intelligence officer taking notes—a chance to witness Frade showing genuine frustration and maybe even losing his temper.”
Graham took a sip of his coffee, then added, “And it will give me a little time to get out to Burbank.”
He drank again from the cup, then said, “The permission will finally come, and they’ll fly to the Lockheed plant in Burbank, where they will not be expected, and will be met by indignant and curious immigration officers and by curious Lockheed officials who more than likely will be annoyed. Frade and his group won’t be arrested, but they will be escorted to their hotel by an immigration officer and told not to leave it until everything is cleared up.
“Sooner or later, somebody at Lockheed is going to call the War Production Board and ask what to do with the SAA pilots who have just dropped in on them unexpected and uninvited—”
“How do you know they’ll do that?” Donovan interrupted.
“Because, if they don’t, Howard Hughes will tell them to do so.”
“Howard Hughes is in on this?”
Graham nodded. “But only him.”
“How much did you have to tell him?”
“Only that I needed a favor. He knows Frade, you know.”
“You told me that.”
“Anyway, when somebody at Lockheed calls the War Production Board, there will be a couple of hours’ delay and then someone will tell Lockheed to do whatever South American Airways wants done.”
“And how do you know that will happen?”
“Julius Krug, the chief of the War Production Board, knows that the airline is Roosevelt’s idea.”
“There’s a long list of things that could go wrong in that scenario, Alex.”
"O ye of little faith!”
“But even if nothing goes wrong, what if Frade can’t turn the Afrikakorps colonel—?”
“Lieutenant Colonel Wilhelm Frogger,” Graham furnished. “If Frade and Fischer—and of course me—can’t turn him, then because he will have heard too much to be allowed to go back in the POW cage, I’ll have to decide what to do with him.”
“I don’t like the sound of that. He’s entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention.”
“If that gets to be a real problem—which means if he does—we’ll talk again about his having an accident. But right now I’m thinking of sending him to the Aleutian Islands, where he can sit out the war with our homegrown Communists. ”
“You’re serious?”
“There would be a certain poetic justice in that, don’t you think? A devout Nazi being guarded by American Communists?”
“Before you do that, Alex, I’ll want to talk about it again.”
Graham shrugged, then drained his coffee cup.
[TWO]
Lockheed Air Terminal Burbank, California 1805 4 August 194
3
Clete had moved into the Lodestar’s pilot’s seat as they had approached the U.S.-Mexican border. He decided that it would be better to have an American voice—and one familiar with American procedures—dealing with the en route controllers and the Lockheed Terminal tower than a Spanish-tinged one who didn’t really know what he was doing.