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“Now, the Germans—presuming they don’t develop their nuclear bomb before we do; and the indications are they will not—have lost the war. This is apparent to their senior officers, to everybody but Hitler. Most importantly, it is apparent to Admiral Canaris, chief of Abwehr intelligence. Which is why he’s been talking to me. That’s another secret to which you are privy, along with no more than perhaps a dozen others. Am I going too fast for you?”

“Yes, sir. You are. My head is spinning.”

“Well, then, let me finish, and when I have, I’ll try to clarify what you may not fully understand. All right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The question then becomes, when will they lose the war? The sooner the better, obviously. But there are some problems. For one thing, they are somewhat ahead of us in the development of jet fighter aircraft. Our XP-59A didn’t get into the air until the first of October 1942—”

“We have a jet fighter?” Clete blurted in surprise.

Dulles nodded. “—and is nowhere near operational. The German Messerschmitt Me-262, on the other hand, is near operational status.”

“Peter flew one,” Frade said, “in Augsburg. He said it went six hundred miles an hour and has thirty-millimeter cannons.”

“Your friend Peter has flown this aircraft?”

Frade picked up on something in Dulles’s voice.

“He’s my friend. He saved my life, okay?”

“You didn’t make any sort of a report of this test flight?”

Frade shook his head.

He said, “I just presumed we knew about it. Had spies. . . .”

His voice trailed off as he realized how lame that sounded.

Dulles’s eyes narrowed.

“Well, we don’t,” he said coldly. “If you can fit it into your busy schedule when you get back to Argentina, you might consider talking some more to your friend Peter about the Me-262. I’m sure the Army Air Forces would dearly love to hear what someone who has actually flown the Me-262 thinks about it.”

Frade did not reply.

“If the Germans can build enough of them quickly enough, they can inflict bomber losses on the Air Forces and the RAF to the point where the bombing will have to be called off. That would permit them to continue the war for an extended period. Under that circumstance, your delicate feelings about asking your friend about the Me-262 aren’t really important, are they?”

“Is that what you were thinking?” Frade asked.

“Isn’t that what you were thinking?”

“I was thinking it was stupid of me not to have thought the AAF would want to hear about the Me-262,” Frade said. “And then that it really didn’t matter, because I don’t think he knows much beyond its performance, armament, and how hard or easy it is to fly. He didn’t get that much time in it, and he’s a pilot, not an engineer.”

Dulles considered that a long moment, then said, “You’re probably right. And anyway, we’ve gone off at a tangent.

“To backtrack: Putzi said that probably every senior Nazi knows the war is lost. Hitler is psychologically unable to face that, and the senior officers around him are not going to suggest it. But Bormann—who is probably the most powerful man after Hitler—does, or we wouldn’t have Operation Phoenix.

“The ransoming operation is probably simply a personally profitable sideline for senior officers of the SS, headed by von Deitzberg. Himmler—as always—is a mystery. I don’t have a clue as to whether he’s involved with the ransoming operation or not, or whether von Deitzberg is running it under his nose. The upper ranks of the SS, according to Canaris, are riddled with criminal types.

“The question of what to do about both came up at dinner, and was decided by the President, based on a number of factors. Starting with the ransoming operation, Roosevelt said the question was saving lives, however that could be done. Exposing the operation would serve only to ensure that all the Jews in the camps were exterminated.

“Similarly, exposing Operation Phoenix—which seems so incredible on its face that the Nazis could not only deny it but ridicule the accusation—would accomplish very little.”

“You’re saying you’re just going to let them continue?”

“I’m saying you are. With an important caveat. We want to know everything about it. We want the money traced from the moment it arrives in Argentina. We want to know what was bought with it, and from whom. The names of the Argentine—and Paraguayan and Uruguayan—officials who have been paid off. Everything.

“The thinking is that if we went to General Ramírez or General Rawson now with what we have, or what you might dig up, they would tell us to mind our own busin