“That,” Hughes added, “and a bottle of gin and some ice and a martini mixer, or shaker, or whatever they call it. Serve wine with the others’ meals, but no hard stuff. I don’t want anybody finding the liquid courage to start a jailbreak.”
“Yes, Mr. Hughes.”
“You heard me say I want those prints yesterday?”
“Yes, Mr. Hughes.”
The man turned and left the room.
“What did you say before?” Clete asked Graham. “ ‘Zimmerman’?”
Graham shook his head in exaggerated disappointment. “You were apparently asleep during Modern American History 101 at our alma mater. You really don’t know?”
“No, I really don’t know.”
“Neither do I, Alex,” Hughes said. “And I very nearly finished high school. What the hell are you talking about?”
“In 1917, the British had a cryptographic operation they called ‘Room 40.’ Big secret, because they had broken the Imperial German diplomatic code—”
Hughes interrupted: “Like the Navy has broken the Imperial Jap Navy Code?”
“You didn’t hear that, Clete,” Graham said furiously. “My God, Howard!”
“Well, you said we were going to tell him about Lindbergh and Yamamoto; he’d have heard that then,” Hughes said unrepentant.
Frade looked from Hughes to Graham and back again.
Lindbergh? Lucky Lindy?
And who? Yamamoto, the Jap admiral?
Graham shook his head and went on: “And one day in January 1917, Room 40 broke a message that Zimmerman, the German foreign minister, had sent to Count von Bernstorff, the German ambassador in Washington, with orders to forward it to the German ambassador in Mexico, a man named von Eckhardt.”
“What was in the message?” Frade asked.
“Two things. That Germany was going to resume unrestricted submarine warfare as of the first of the month. And that Eckhardt was to tell the president of Mexico that if Mexico declared war on the United States, after the war— which Germany would win, of course—Mexico could have Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.”
“You’re pulling my leg,” Hughes said.
“No, I’m not. You really never heard this before?”
“No, I haven’t. You, Clete?”
“This is all news to me.”
Graham shook his head in disbelief, then went on: “So the Brits, after thinking about it for a month, decided to tell us, even though they knew this would mean the Germans would know they had been reading their mail.”
“And what happened?” Clete said.
“Then President Wilson sat on the telegram for a week, before finally releasing it to the press on March first. The American people were furious, and a lot of them seemed more annoyed with Mexico, who hadn’t said a word to us about the telegram, than with the Germans. Anyway, a month after that we declared war on Germany.”
“I’ll be a sonofabitch,” Hughes said indignantly. “Those goddamn Mexicans!”
Graham laughed. “See what I mean? ‘All’s fair in love and war,’ Howard. Write that down.”
“You think they’re trying to pull the same thing again, with Argentina?” Hughes asked.
“On the way up here,” Clete said, “I wondered if Tío Juan had really been careless, or whether he wanted me to find those maps.”