Willy Anderson and two Spanish speaking FBI agents reached Maracaibo on September 16. A quick check of Colombian ports led to the conclusion that Venezuela was a likely location since several suspected Axis agents were thought to operate out of Maracaibo and Caracas. The mission sounded simple: catch Fred Vickers and uncover any of his contacts in the area. The three-man FBI team consisting of Anderson, and agents Alejandro Jimenez and Mario Cuervo arrived separately and checked into different hotels and rooming houses. Venezuelan authorities were only to be alerted once they had located their man. Anderson wanted to avoid any slip-ups or leaks in a foreign country where the FBI required formal permission to operate.
They began with a survey of the ship chandlers and shipping agents known to hire freighter crews. Jimenez claimed to be looking for work and asked around if anyone was hiring. After a few days he was told to see Osvaldo Pacini who always had good jobs for experienced seamen to distant ports in Africa and Europe. Pacini, an old time Italian immigrant to Venezuela, could be the contact they were looking for. The team kept a close watch on Pacini and his office.
Anderson sent a cable to Washington with instructions that a message from a legitimate Miami shipping company be telegraphed to Osvaldo Pacini’s office requesting a crew for a freighter arriving from Miami to load minerals in Venezuela and Brazil to be delivered as quickly as possible to Dakar, in French West Africa. The message was sent by telex and the vessel was a legitimate Panamanian flag freighter the Comandante Velasco. At first there was no reaction. Then a few hours later a messenger suddenly left Pacini’s office and boarded a motorboat heading south on the lake below the port area. Anderson and his men followed at a distance.
The young man in the motorboat saw that he was being followed and decided to head back to Maracaibo. Anderson cut the slower boat off as the two FBI men drew their guns. The messenger made no attempt to resist. Pacini had ordered him to turn back if he was being followed rather than risk exposing Vickers. The fellow kept silent as the Jimenez and Cuervo asked him where he was headed. Anderson cut in and had Jimenez translate:
“Look, we know you’re going to deliver a message to an important man. We’re interested in that person and we can either convince you to cooperate with us, and pay you in U.S. dollars; or… beat the location out of you very painfully. I guarantee that you will tell us what we need to know but you may not be the same person again. Do you understand me?”
The young man nodded and said he wanted to cooperate. They towed his boat and turned south once more. Vickers was hiding a few kilometers inland off a path that went into the jungle. The four men walked up the jungle path for two kilometers until they reached a clearing just as the sun was setting behind the trees. The house was a rudimentary construction on stilts with a deck and two chairs outside. A small ray of light filtered from behind the curtains. They covered both entrances front and back, but after a few minutes it was clear that there was no one inside the house and that the spy had probably been tipped off.
Anderson decided it would be more effective to move against Pacini through official channels. Comandante Escobar, the police chief at the port of Maracaibo, proved to be very flexible especially when Anderson showed him $500 in large bills. He agreed to move in quietly and without fanfare on Pacini. Escobar set up a meeting where he threatened the ships handler saying his spying activity was no longer a secret and that he’d have to surrender whoever he was shielding or the worse possible consequences would be visited upon him and his family. After bickering for several hours Pacini agreed to make a deal. But still Fred Vickers was nowhere to be found and soon the FBI decided that he had either fled into the Amazonian rainforest and or taken some other boat along the coast.
Anderson was ordered back to the New York office. A second team of four FBI and Army scouts went to Manaus, on the Amazon to search for Vickers. They followed the Rio Negro upstream as far as they could go on two motorboats close to the border with Venezuela. But Vickers had decided to travel down the Orinoco River on a kayak, just as it turns into the Sierra Parima in the southeastern corner of Venezuela. After weeks of navigation on the various tributaries of the Amazon, he had managed to reach the village of Atauba some two hundred kilometers north of Manaus. Exhausted and worn out he made the mistake of stopping there to recuperate for a few days. The FBI team learned from the Indians that a white man traveling alone in a kayak was buying food and fresh water in American dollars. They quickly traced him to Atauba where they found him in one of the floating shacks along the river. Vickers was too weak to offer any resistance and the team took him back to the United States from Brazil in total secrecy.
In early January 1943 Anderson was asked to come to Washington on an urgent matter. J. Edgar Hoover told him confidentially that Fred Vickers had been located and arrested in Brazil and was currently in the custody of ONI in the United States. Anderson was surprised when Hoover asked him to come to the White House for a meeting with President Roosevelt. Hoover and Anderson were ushered into the President’s study,
“Mr. President I’m pleased to introduce Special Agent William Anderson the man who was instrumental in capturing the saboteur.”
Anderson shook FDR’s hand,
“I want to tell you personally how much I appreciate what you’ve done for the country. This is indeed a major operation and Mr. Hoover will fill you in on the rest of what I expect. Keep up the good work.”
The president was wheeled away and Anderson, by then thoroughly amazed at having shaken the president’s hand, left the Executive Office Building with the director. In the car Hoover said,
“The president has ordered that the Vickers matter must die a quiet death. There will be no trial and the prisoner is being interrogated by naval security. He’ll be treated as prisoner of war and questioned for some time until we’re sure he told the navy all he knows and more. We are instructed to forget this case and that Vickers is in custody. It is now exclusively a naval intelligence matter. President’s orders. Understood?”
Anderson was silent and surprised for several long seconds. He understood that the case had political ramifications and answered,
“Of course, Mr. Hoover, I understand.”
“Good man!”
Hoover was relieved and shook hands ordering his driver take him directly to Union Station.
One month later, in February 1943, a promotion to Special Agent in Charge was announced for William Anderson, with far greater responsibility in running the Foley Square office than he could ever dream of came directly from Hoover’s private telex line. When Willy’s picture made the local newspapers the Vickers case was never mentioned and anything connected to it had been carefully erased.