While awaiting news about Hellmuth, the spies upgraded security. Their worn Kryha prompted Berlin to send a new Red Enigma in November 1943. On December 20, General Gualberto Villarroel, backed by Becker, staged a successful Bolivian coup—the first fruit of continental fascism. On December 28, Becker and Utzinger radioed New Year’s greetings.

The Red Enigma posed new challenges: Berlin sent it without keys, forcing double encryption (Kryha then Enigma) to transmit the key. Using previous solutions and IBM machines, the Coast Guard stripped the outer layer. As work continued, intelligence from breaks and Hellmuth’s confession pressured Argentina. On January 26, 1944, Argentina severed relations with Germany and Japan. In February, the Coast Guard solved the Red Enigma wiring. Lieutenant Jones informed Bletchley, which replied that they had also just solved it.

SS commander Kurt Gross learned of Argentina’s break from the news and mistakenly blamed courier leaks, not broken codes. He ordered redoubled efforts and requested chemical weapons intelligence. In late January, the London Sunday Express broke the story about the “Hellmuth Affair.” The publicity pressured Argentina to prove its independence, while the FBI were angered by their exclusion from the intelligence used to expose the plotters. In response, the FBI offered Argentina a “spectacular spy story” about Becker as a way for the country to manage its public relations (289). Legal attaché Francis Crosby suggested framing Becker as a master spy caught by Argentina’s police, which would be evidence that Argentina wasn’t in league with the Nazis. The FBI circulated a pulpy memo and launched a ground manhunt using direction-finders to seize stations.

During this time, Utzinger wanted to halt transmissions, but Berlin and Becker refused. The transmitter moved to a farm under a chicken coop, but the police found it, arresting and torturing collaborators.

On March 22, Utzinger radioed US news: Japanese spy Velvalee Dickinson, the “Doll Lady,” was arrested in January after suspicious doll-themed letters were intercepted. The letters, addressed to non-existent Señora Inéz Lopez Molinari in Buenos Aires, were returned to the address of a customer in Ohio. Prosecutor Edward C. Wallace asked Elizebeth to analyze them. Despite FBI worries about publicity theft, she identified the “open code” describing warships as dolls. Dickinson received 10 years in prison. Elizebeth got no public credit since articles cited the FBI or the Navy.

Elizebeth watched the network die through 1944. On August 18, Utzinger and 40 associates were arrested. He later reported that the police had faked evidence and that Perón had ordered a cover-up. Utzinger’s arrest ended effective Nazi espionage in the West.

Records attribute the technical codebreaking to the Coast Guard rather than the FBI. Elizebeth’s team produced 4,000 decrypts from 48 circuits and three Enigmas, saving lives and stopping coups under “Ultra” secrecy. Hoover, unconstrained, launched a fall 1944 publicity blitz: An American Magazine article and a Frank Capra film portrayed the victory as entirely belonging to the FBI.

For Christmas 1944, Elizebeth wrote a family bulletin noting William’s Exceptional Service Award while calling her own work a “routine navy job, in an unglorious fashion” (301). In early 1945, both suffered exhaustion. Roosevelt died in April, devastating Elizebeth. Colonel McGrail died in May, leaving Elizebeth to comfort his widow, Florence. The European victory in May brought little relief.

In July, William received orders from the Target Intelligence Committee (TICOM)—a 90-day mission to seize Nazi intelligence before Soviet capture. On July 14, Elizebeth saw him off.

On April 19, 1945, Becker was arrested in Buenos Aires with his girlfriend Teresa. He leveraged his connections to Perón to receive preferential treatment from Major Menendez. After Perón’s February 1946 election with his wife, Eva Duarte, Becker and other spies were released. Utzinger was deported; Becker remained, helping Nazi war criminals escape to South America after the war. He was never heard from again. On July 21, 1946, Villarroel was killed by a mob, his body hanged from a lamppost.

William’s TICOM team investigated Nazi scientist Dr. Oskar Vierling’s mountaintop Bavarian laboratory. William inspected hidden inventions, including voice scramblers and acoustic torpedoes, and compared it to a “Nazi Riverbank,” the eccentric private research laboratory where his career began. While traveling war-torn Germany, he witnessed fire-bombed cities and displaced people. His team found German translations of his own prewar cryptologic publications in Nazi garrisons.

William visited Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest (Kehlsteinhaus), touring meeting rooms with alpine views, and then Hitler’s destroyed private house. He kept a marble floor piece as a paperweight. Meanwhile, Elizebeth visited her sister in Michigan, marveling at simple luxuries like ice.

William reached Bletchley Park on July 28 for his mission’s second leg. He had a final meeting with Alan Turing, who was leaving for electronic computing work. William observed interrogations of German cryptology prisoners-of-war Dr. Wilhelm Fricke and Erich Hüttenhain and concluded that the Nazis had never doubted Enigma’s security in spite of the Allies’ success in breaking the code.

On August 6, the Hiroshima bomb dropped. William, asleep in London, learned the next morning and discussed it with Eddie Hastings. Both considered it a mistake to bomb a city without warning. Elizebeth wrote that Americans hoped it ended the war quickly. On August 10, after Nagasaki, William learned that Japan had accepted surrender terms. Japan surrendered unconditionally on August 14, and President Truman declared a two-day holiday for federal employees. 

Elizebeth watched peacetime return as Arlington Hall and the Naval Annex emptied. William arranged for birthday presents for his wife from overseas, sending friends and flowers to her on sequential days. He wrote about commercializing his inventions, a source of constant frustration for him since he could do little to monetize his ideas due to security issues. Around September 12, William flew home from Scotland and arrived at a nearly empty Arlington Hall before reuniting with Elizebeth.

William joined the discussions that led to the NSA’s creation. Elizebeth documented her unit’s work in a 329-page “Top Secret Ultra” history, preserved 4,000 decrypts in the National Archives, signed a lifelong secrecy oath, and left the Naval Annex. She spent late 1945 to summer 1946 organizing prewar smuggling files at the Treasury Annex. Due to the end of Prohibition, she recommended abolishing her unit and position, and she was terminated on September 12, 1946.

Reunited at last, the Friedmans collaborated on a book debunking Bacon-Shakespeare cipher theories. They recalled debunking an anagram-based cipher from economist Dr. Walter McCook Cunningham for Theodore Roosevelt Jr. They sold their house and moved to Capitol Hill, near the Folger Shakespeare Library and Library of Congress.

In The Shakespeare Ciphers Examined, they thanked their early employer George Fabyan and Baconian theorist Mrs. Gallup for sparking their interest. While researching, Elizebeth reflected on her past, drawing a line from Riverbank Laboratories, where her career began, to her life’s work. She recalled the moment she decided to trust her own mind over Gallup and Fabyan. It was the decision that had launched her career. She remembered the thrill of her first codebreaking successes with William, discovering a power and a love that she could ignite at will.