Blood and Honor

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BlOOD

And

HONOR

I would like to thank Mr. William W. Duffy II, formerly of the United States Embassy in Buenos Aires, and Colonel Jose Manuel Menendez, Cavalry, Argentine Army, Retired, who both went well beyond the call of duty in helping me in many ways as I was writing this book.

W. E. B.Griffin

Buenos Aires, 13 December 1995

Foreword

Nation at a Glance

San Carlos de Bariloche

A federal court will decide this week whether or not former Nazi SS Erich Priebke will be extradited to Italy. A year ago, Priebke admitted to having participated in the murder of 335 civilians in the Ardeatine caves in Rome duringWorld War II. San Carlos de Bariloche Judge Le?nidas Molde agreed to Priebke's extradition after Italian courts petitioned the Argentine government to send Priebke to Italy to face murder charges.

Page 2

The Buenos Aires Herald, Buenos Aires, Argentina

July 4, 1995

Part One

Chapter One

[ONE]

Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo

Near Pila, Buenos Aires Province

Republic of Argentina

2105 4 April 1943

The concentration el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade was devoting to the inch-thick document on his desk was interrupted by what sounded like the death agony of a water buffalo being stomped by an elephant.

Frade, a six-foot-one, 195-pound, fifty-one-year-old, still had all of his hair (including the full mustache he had worn since he was commissioned Sub-Teniente—Second Lieutenant—of Cavalry) and all of his teeth; but in the past five years he had found it necessary to wear corrective glasses when reading. He removed his horn-rimmed spectacles, sighed audibly, and looked across his study at the source of the noise.

It came from the open mouth of a heavyset man in his late forties who was sitting sprawled in a leather armchair, sound asleep. He, too, wore a cavalryman's mustache.

He was Enrico Rodriguez, who had left Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo to enlist in the Cavalry to serve as Sub-Teniente Frade's batman. They had retired together twenty-five years later as Colonel Commanding and Suboficial Mayor (Sergeant Major) of Argentina's most prestigious cavalry regiment, the Husares de Pueyrred?n.

During their long service together, el Coronel Frade had grown familiar with Suboficial Mayor Rodriguez's snoring. Tonight's was spectacular, which meant that Rodriguez had been drinking beer. For some reason wine and whiskey did not seem to affect Enrico the way beer did. Wine made Enrico mellow; whiskey very often sent him in search of feminine companionship; but beer—even two beers—made Enrico sleepy and turned on the snoring machine full blast.

For a moment el Coronel Frade seriously considered picking up his metal wastebasket and dropping it on the tile floor of the study. That would bring Enrico out of his slumber—and the chair—as if catapulted.

He decided against it. It had been a long day, and Enrico was tired.

He looked at his watch, and at the inch-thick folder on his desk, and decided to hell with it. He too was tired, and they had to drive back to Buenos Aires.

He slid his glasses into the breast pocket of his tweed jacket and stood up, then picked up the inch-thick folder and carried it to an open, wall-mounted safe. After placing the document on one of the shelves, he shut the door, then turned a chrome wheel that moved inch-wide steel pistons into corresponding holes in the frame; finally, he spun the combination dial.

The safe itself was concealed from view by a movable section of bookshelves. When closed, these gave no indication that anything was behind them.

Frade swung the bookcase section back in place and tiptoed out of the simply furnished study, so as not to wake Enrico. He then went down a long, wide corridor to his apartment. There he sat on the bed and with a grunt removed his English-made riding boots. That done, he removed the rest of his clothing and tossed it on the large bed.

He went into his bathroom and showered and shaved. When he went back into the bedroom, Enrico was there.

"There is an operation, I am told," Coronel Frade said. "The surgeon goes in your throat—or maybe it's the nose—cuts something, and then you don't snore."

Enrico looked uncomfortable.

"I am told the operation is relatively painless," Frade went on straight-faced, "and that you don't have to spend more than a week or ten days in the hospital, and that you can eat normally within a month."

"You should have woken me, mi Coronel," Enrico said.

"And disturb the sleep of the innocent?"

"I have fueled and checked the car, mi Coronel," Enrico said, changing the subject. "Rudolpho and Juan Francisco will precede us in the Ford."

"No, they won't," Frade said. "There is no need for that."

"It is better, mi Coronel, to be safe than sorry."

"We will go alone," Frade said.

"S?, Se?or," Enrico said.

"Have a thermos filled with coffee, please," Frade ordered. "I don't want you to fall asleep on the way to Buenos Aires."

“S?, Se?or," Enrico said.

"Wait for me in the car," Frade said. "I won't be a minute."

Enrico nodded and left the bedroom.

The car was a black Horche convertible touring sedan, painstakingly and lovingly maintained by Enrico, often assisted by el Coronel. Some of the reason for their loving care was that parts for the Horche were not available at any price. The Horche Company was no longer making luxury automobiles, but rather tank engines for the German Army. And some of it was because el Coronel was extraordinarily fond of this automobile.

He rarely let Enrico drive it. Tonight was to be an exception.

"You drive, please," el Coronel ordered as he walked quickly down the wide steps to the verandah. "I want some of that coffee."

“S?, Se?or," Enrico said.

He opened the front passenger door, closed it after Frade stepped in, then went around the front of the car and got behind the wheel.

"Pay attention to the road," Frade ordered. "Stay well behind anything ahead of us until you're sure you can pass without having it throw up a stone and hit our windscreen."

Enrico had heard exactly the same order three or four hundred times.

“S?, Se?or," he said.

Enrico drove slowly until el Coronel had poured coffee into a mug, closed the thermos bottle, and put it on the floor. Then he pressed more heavily on the accelerator.

Two miles down the road—still on estancia property—his headlights picked up an object on the road. As he took his foot from the accelerator, el Coronel ordered, "Slow down, there's a beef on the road."

It was indeed a beef, lying crosswise in the center of the macadam.

El Coronel swore. He could not have told anyone within five hundred head how many cattle roamed Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, but he was always enraged to find one of them on the road, victim of an encounter with a truck.

Enrico applied the brakes more heavily. The Horche took some time to slow from 120 kph. And he knew that if he went on the shoulder at any pace faster than a funeral crawl, el Coronel would have something to say.

The roof was down, and as Enrico started to pass the beef, el Coronel stood up, supporting himself on the windscreen frame to take a good look at it.

As he did this, Enrico noticed movement on the side of the road. He was wondering if somehow his headlights had failed to pick out more beeves when he saw the muzzle flashes.

And then something hit him in the head and he fell onto the wheel.

The Horche veered left, crossed the road and the shoulder, and then came to a stop against a fence post.

Two men ran up to the car.

El Coronel Frade was on his knees on the front seat, searching for the .45 automatic pistol he knew Enrico carried in the small of his back.

One of the men shot him twice, in the face and chest, with both barrels of a twelve-bore side-by-side shotgun.

El Coronel Frade fell onto Enrico's back and then slid down it, coming to rest between Enrico's back and the seat.

The man with the Thompson submachine gun looked at the bloody head of Suboficial Mayor Enrico Rodriguez, Cavalry, Retired, and professionally decided that shooting him again would be unnecessary.

[TWO]

Wolfsschanze

Near Rastenburg, East Prussia

2130 5 April 1943

The license plates of the Mercedes sedan bore the double lightning flashes of the SS. As it approached, a Hauptsturmf?hrer (SS Captain), a Schmeisser submachine gun hanging from his shoulder, stepped into the floodlight-illuminated roadway and rather arrogantly, if unnecessarily—a heavy, yellow-and-black-striped barrier pole hung across the road—extended his right hand in a signal to stop.

He wore a leather-brimmed service cap with the Totenkopf (death's-head) insignia. Behind him, wearing steel helmets, their Schmeissers in their hands, an Unterscharf?hrer (SS Sergeant) and a Rottenf?hrer (SS Corporal) backed him up. Between two narrow silver bands around the cuffs of their black uniform sleeves, the silver-embroidered legend "Adolf Hitler" identified them all as members of the Liebstandarte (literally, "Life Guard") Adolf Hitler, Hitler's personal bodyguard.

The Hauptsturmf?hrer approached the Mercedes, raised his arm straight out from his shoulder in salute—the passenger in the rear seat wore the uniform of a Standartenf?hrer (SS Colonel)—and barked, "Heil Hitler!"

The Standartenf?hrer raised his right arm, bent at the elbow, to return the salute, then reached in his pocket for his credentials, which he extended to the Hauptsturmf?hrer.

"Standartenf?hrer Goltz to visit Partieleiter Mart?n Bormann," he announced. "I am expected." (Partieleiter—Party Leader—Bormann, as Hitler's Deputy, ran the Nazi party.)

"Be so good as to have your driver park your car, Herr Standartenf?hrer, while I verify your appointment," the Hauptsturmf?hrer said, as he opened the rear door of the Mercedes.

Goltz stepped out of the Mercedes. Above the two silver bands on his tunic cuffs were the silver letters SD, identifying him as a member of the Sicherheitsdienst, the security service of the SS.

He stood waiting in the road as the Hauptsturmf?hrer went into one of the four buildings of the Guard Post South. Not even a Standartenf?hrer of the Sicherheitsdienst was passed into Wolfsschanze ("Wolf's Lair," Adolf Hitler's secret command post) without being subjected to the most thorough scrutiny.

A minute later, the Hauptsturmf?hrer returned, and again gave the stiff-armed Nazi salute.

"If the Standartenf?hrer will be so good as to follow me, I will escort him to his car."

"Thank you," Goltz said, again returning the salute with his palm raised to the level of his shoulder.

The yellow-and-black-striped barrier pole rose with a hydraulic whine, and the two passed through what was known as the "outer wire" of Wolf's Lair. The compound, four hundred miles from Berlin and about four miles from Rastenburg, was an oblong approximately 1.5 by .9 miles. The outer wire was guarded by both machine-gun towers and machine-gun positions on the ground and by an extensive minefield.

Just inside the outer wire perimeter—separated as far as possible from each other to reduce interference—were some of the radio shacks and antennas over which instant communication with the most remote outposts of the Thousand Year Reich was maintained.

A Mercedes sedan, identical to the one Goltz had just left, backed out of a parking area inside the outer wire and up to the now raised barrier pole. A Rottenf?hrer jumped out, opened the rear door, and raised his arm in salute.

SS officers in charge of security had decided it was more efficient to require Wolf's Lair visitors to leave their cars outside the outer wire, and transfer inside the wire to cars from the Wolf's Lair motor pool. Doing so obviated subjecting the incoming vehicle to a thorough search. It also spared the visitor the waste of time such a search would entail, not to mention the time of the SS personnel who conducted the search.

As soon as Standartenf?hrer Goltz was seated in the back of the Mercedes, the driver closed the door, ran around the front of the car, and slipped behind the wheel.

The road passed for three-quarters of a mile through a heavy stand of pine trees, with nothing visible on either side. Then, in the light of the full moon, behind a Signals Hut on the left, railroad tracks came into sight. A parallel spur, Goltz saw, held the F?hrer's eleven-car private railway train. A moment later, on the right, ringed with barbed wire and machine gun emplacements and towers, the first of the two inner compounds of Wolf's Lair came into sight. This one held, essentially, the personnel charged with the administration and protection of Wolfsschanze.

There were buildings assigned to the Camp Commandant and his staff; the headquarters of the battalion of Liebstandarte troops, and their barracks and mess hall; a second mess hall, dubbed the Kurhaus ("Sanitarium"); and a thick-walled concrete air-raid bunker, dubbed "Heinrich," large enough to hold everyone in the compound.

Past the first inner compound and to the right, lining the road for half a mile, were other small buildings that housed the second level of Thousand Year Reich officialdom. Here, spreading out from the Gorlitz Railway Station, were the offices of Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop; Albert Speer, Germany's war-production genius; GrossAdmiral Karl Doenitz, the Commander in Chief of the Navy; senior Luftwaffe officers; and another mess and another huge concrete bunker.

Across the road, ringed by barbed wire and the heaviest concentration of machine-gun and antiaircraft weaponry, was the F?hrer's compound itself.

Inside were no fewer than thirteen thick-walled concrete bunkers. The largest and thickest, not surprisingly, was the F?hrerbunker. Across the street from it were two other bunkers. One housed Hitler's personal aides and doctors; the second housed Wehrmacht aides, the Army personnel office, the Signal Officer, and Hitler's secretaries.

To the east Reichsmarschal Hermann Goring had both an office building and his own personal bunker. Between these and the F?hrerbunker was a VIP mess called the "Tea House." Nearby were the offices and bunker assigned to Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, titular head of the High Command of the Armed Forces (OKW). He shared his bunker with Generaloberst (Colonel General, the equivalent of a full—four-star—U.S. Army General) Alfred Jodl, the chief of the Armed Forces Operations Staff, and Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, Chief of the Abwehr, the military intelligence service of the OKW.

Once, when they were alone, Reichsleiter Mart?n Bormann had explained to Goltz that while Jodl was important enough to be given space inside the F?hrer's inner compound, he was not important enough to have his own bunker.

Bormann—who was deputy only to Hitler in running the Nazi party—of course had his own bunker, as did Josef Goebbels, the diminutive, clubfooted genius of Nazi propaganda. But Bormann's staff also had their own bunker, while Goebbels's staff did not. Although bunkers were provided for servants, liaison officers, and official visitors, Goebbels's underlings privileged to be in the Fuhrer compound had to find bunker space for themselves.

Standartenf?hrer Goltz believed that Wolfsschanze—rather than Berlin— provided the best clues to judging who stood where in the pecking order. And nothing he had ever seen—here, or in Berlin or anywhere else—had caused him to question the very senior and very secure position of Mart?n Bormann. That perception had provoked an interesting decision: Where did his loyalty lie? With Heinrich Himmler, who as head of the SS was his own direct superior? Or with Mart?n Bormann, with whom he had been close since the early days?

It would have been nice if the question had never come up. But when Himmler had assigned him as SS-SD liaison officer to the Office of the Party Chancellery—in other words, to Bormann—it did.

As Goltz was aware—and Bormann was equally aware—Himmler fully expected him to study Bormann and his immediate staff for signs of anything that Himmler could report to Hitler. And Himmler trusted him to do so. Goltz went a long way back with Himmler, too.

The question for Goltz had boiled down, finally, to what would best serve the Fuhrer himself. For one thing, Goltz understood that while the F?hrer should be above politics, this was unfortunately not possible. And he understood further that while Reichsprotektor Himmler certainly could not be faulted for his untiring efforts to protect the Fuhrer, Himmler was not above using the information that came his way for his own political purposes.

Bormann was, of course, no less a political creature than Himmler, and certainly just as willing to use information that came his way for political purposes. The difference was that Mart?n Bormann had no purpose in life but to serve the Fuhrer, while Heinrich Himmler's basic purpose was to serve the State. Himmler would argue, of course, that Adolf Hitler and the German State were really one and the same thing, but in the final analysis, Goltz did not think that held water.

Thus, in a hypothetical situation, if Hitler were forced to choose between Bormann and Himmler, Goltz had no doubt that he would chose Bormann.

And so, even before he reported to Mart?n Bormann's office in the Reichs-chancellery, he had decided that his SS officer's oath required that he transfer his loyalty from Himmler to Bormann. In his mind, he had no other choice.

At the same time, he had come to believe that what had begun as a selfless act of duty—bread cast onto the water—was going to pay dividends. For one thing, Hitler had often confided in Bormann his suspicions that not all cowards and defeatists were in the Armed Forces. That the Fuhrer was referring to the SS was a not unreasonable inference.

In Goltz's professional opinion, as a security man of some experience, defeatists and traitors were indeed in the highest echelons of the Army, just waiting for a chance to seize power, depose the Fuhrer, and seek an armistice with the enemy. It was Himmler's job, the job of the SS, to ruthlessly root these men out. He had found some. But the Fuhrer was correct in suspecting that he had not found all.

It logically followed—it was a question of numerical probability—that if there were X number of defeatists and potential traitors in the Army, then there were Y number in the Navy, Z number in the Luftwaffe, and even XX number in the SS. Goltz believed that the ratio probably was geometric. If there was one traitor in the SS, there were probably two in the Luftwaffe, four in the Navy, and eight in the Army.

In Goltz's view, Hitler might well pardon Himmler for not finding all the traitors in the Army, or even those in the Navy and Luftwaffe, but the first traitor uncovered in the SS would look to the Fuhrer like proof that Himmler was incompetent... or even disloyal himself.

And it reasonably followed that if the Fuhrer decided that Himmler could no longer be trusted, then the Fuhrer would not place a good deal of trust in Himmler's immediate underlings either. If Himmler was deposed—and this was far from inconceivable, if one remembered Rohm ( On Hitler's orders, Ernst Rohm, one of his oldest friends and head of the Sturmablietung (SA). was murdered by the SS June 30, 1934, on "The Night of the Long Knives.")—so would be those immediately under him.

And who would be better qualified to replace Himmler than Standarten-f?hrer Josef Goltz, who had not only been in the SS at senior levels long enough to know how that agency should operate, but who all along—literally since the days of the Burgerbraukeller in Munich—had been the trusted intimate of the faithful Mart?n Bormann?

The Mercedes stopped at the first of the entrances to the Fuhrer compound. Obviously, the Hauptsturmf?hrer at the gate in the outer wire had telephoned ahead not only to Bormann's office, but to the SS officer in charge of Fuhrer compound security; for an Obersturmfuhrer (First Lieutenant) was waiting for him.

"Heil Hitler!" he barked. "It is good to see the Herr Standartenf?hrer again."

"Well, look who's here!" Goltz said, although he did not remember meeting the tall, good-looking Obersturmfuhrer before. "How have you been?"

"Very well, thank you," the Obersturmfuhrer said. "If you'll come with me, Sir, I will escort you to Reichsleiter Bormann's office."

"How kind of you," Goltz said, and followed him into the Fuhrer compound, this time returning the guard's salute with an equally impeccable straight-armed salute.

[THREE]

Walfsschanze

Near Rastenburg, East Prussia

2200 5 April 1943

There were, of course, no windows in Bormann's office. Behind the oak paneling was several feet of solid concrete. On one wall hung an oil portrait of the Fuhrer. Facing it on the opposite wall was a monstrous oil painting of the mountains near Garmisch-Partenkirchen. It had been a gift to the Fuhrer, and he had given it to Bormann.

"I'm really sorry I kept you waiting, Josef," Reichsleiter Mart?n Bormann said, sounding as if he meant it. As he spoke, he stepped from behind his desk to greet Standartenf?hrer Goltz. "How was the trip?"

Bormann was a short and stocky man, wearing a brown Nazi party uniform decorated only with the swastika brassard on his right sleeve and the Blood Order insignia pinned to his right breast. (The Blood Order decoration, awarded to those who participated in the—failed—1923 coup d'?tat in Munich, was of red and silver, surmounted by an eagle, showing a view within an oak-leaf wreath of the Feldherrnhalle in Munich, and bore the legend "You Were Victorious.")

"Very long, Herr Reichsleiter," Goltz replied, returning the firm handshake.

"Well, at least you won't have to drive back to Berlin. I've arranged a seat for you on the Heinkel."

A Heinkel twin-engine bomber had been converted to a transport for highspeed service between Berlin and Wolf's Lair. Only six seats were available, and they were hard to come by unless spoken for by someone very high—Keitel, Goring, Bormann, or the F?hrer himself.

"Wonderful. Thank you."

"Reichsprotektor Himmler was kind enough to tell me early this morning that he had received word from Buenos Aires that a certain highly placed Argentine met a tragic death at the hands of bandits," Bormann said, getting immediately to the point that most immediately concerned Goltz, "and that he felt you could now travel to Buenos Aires without raising any suspicions that you were personally involved."

A faint smile crossed Goltz's lips. Oberst Karl-Heinz Gr?ner, Military Attach? of the Embassy of the German Reich to the Republic of Argentina, had sent a radio message to Himmler reporting the death of el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade. A copy of that message was delivered to Goltz in Berlin an hour before Himmler saw it. Goltz had immediately called Bormann.

"I did not, of course, tell him that I had already received the same information," Bormann went on. "I did tell him that was good news, as I had finally received the last signature on the document, and suggested he order you here personally to pick it up. He told me that you were already en route."

"Everyone has come on board?"

"Canaris last, of course," Bormann said, smiling, and walked behind his desk, pulled open a drawer, and handed Goltz a business-size envelope. Goltz took from it a single sheet of paper, folded in thirds, and read it.

Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Hebeiterportel

Berlin 1 April 1943

The bearer, SS-SD Standartenf?hrer Josef Goltz, has been charged with the execution of highly confidential missions of the highest importance to the German Reich.

In his sole discretion, SS-SD Standartenf?hrer Goltz will make the nature of his missions known only to such persons as he feels may assist him in the execution of his missions. Such persons are—

1. Directed to provide SS-SD Standartenf?hrer Goltz with whatever support, of whatever nature, he may request.

2. Absolutely forbidden to divulge any information whatsoever concerning SS-SD Standartenf?hrer Goltz' missions to any other person without the express permission of SS-SD Standartenf?hrer Josef Goltz, including communication by any means whatsoever any reference to SS-SD Standartenf?hrer Goltz' missions to any agency of the German Reich, or any person, without the express permission in each instance of SS-SD Standartenf?hrer Josef Goltz.

Reichsleither Mart?n Bormann Wilhelm Keitel

NSDAP Feldmarschal

Heinrich Himmler Karl Doenitz

Reichsproteckto Grand Admiral

Joachim von Ribbentrop Wilhelm Canaris

Foreign Minister Rearadmiral, Abwehr

Goltz raised his eyes to Bormann.

"A very impressive document, Herr Reichsleiter," he said. He refolded the letter and put it back in the envelope. "Do I understand that I am to keep this?"

Bormann nodded.

"While you were on your way here," Bormann said, "Reichsprotektor Himmler called again, to inform me that he had obtained a seat for you on the Lufthansa flight leaving Templehof for Buenos Aires tomorrow."

Goltz put the envelope in an inside pocket of his uniform.

"You don't seem too happy to hear that," Bormann said. "Is duty about to interfere with your love life, Josef?"

"I never allow duty to interfere with my love life," Goltz replied. "What you see is a mixture of anticipation, curiosity, and unease, Herr Reichsleiter."

"Unease about what?"

"I hope you're not placing too much confidence in me."

"Modesty doesn't become you, Josef. And you know how important this endeavor is."

"I will, of course, do my best."

Bormann nodded.

"1 had a thought," he said, moving to another subject, "when they told me you were at the outer wire, and again while you were waiting. Vis-a-vis von Wachtstein."

"Oh?"

"I have a feeling his son might be very useful to us. Particularly if the Generalleutnant himself were participating in the endeavor." (A Generalleutnant is literally a lieutenant general, but is equivalent to a U.S. Army—two-star— major general.) "I won't say anything to him, of course, until you have a chance to look at the situation in Buenos Aires and let me know what you think. But why don't you pay a courtesy call on him now, Josef, ask if there is something you could carry for him to his son—a letter, perhaps?"

"A very good idea," Goltz said. "I was, what shall I say, a little surprised at how close the von Wachtsteins are to poverty. If we are to believe the Generalleutnant's estate-tax return."

"Perhaps he dug a hole with his paws and buried a bone or two in it for a rainy day. After all, he is a Pomeranian."

Goltz smiled.

"While he is preparing whatever he wishes to send—give him an hour, say—you come back here and we'll talk."

"Yes, Sir."

"He's across the road, but I'll send you in my car so you won't have to walk."

"That's very good of you."

"In lieu of a drink, Josef. I'm taking dinner with the F?hrer, and I don't want to smell of alcohol."

Goltz chuckled. The F?hrer was an ascetic man who neither smoked nor drank. There was an unwritten law that those privileged to be in his presence also abstained.

Generalleutnant Graf (Count) Karl-Friedrich von Wachtstein was a short, slight, nearly bald fifty-four-year-old, the seventh of his Pomeranian line to earn the right to be called "General." Originally a cavalryman, he had joined the General Staff as an Oberstleutnant (Lieutenant Colonel) eight years before.

When war broke out, he went into Poland at that rank but assumed command of a Panzer regiment when its colonel was killed in his tank turret during an unexpectedly difficult encirclement maneuver. His Polish opponent, they later learned, had instructed his troops to save their rifle fire for officers who gallantly exposed themselves in tank turrets. Afterward, he was promoted to colonel.

He went into Russia commanding a tank regiment, and was fairly seriously wounded. When Generaloberst Jodl heard this—von Wachstein had worked under Jodl as a major—he decided that the Army could not afford to have an unusually bright general staff officer killed doing something as unimportant as commanding troops in combat, and ordered him back to Berlin. With the transfer came a promotion to Generalmajor (literally, Major General, but equivalent to a U.S. Army—one-star—Brigadier General).

Earlier this year, in February, following a shakeup in the General Staff after the Sixth Army's surrender at Stalingrad, he was promoted Generalleutnant, with the additional honor of having the F?hrer personally pin on his new badges of rank.

"What the General Staff needs, Jodl," the F?hrer had said at the small promotion ceremony in his bunker, "is more general officers like Graf von Wachtstein and myself—men who have been exposed to fire."

Hitler had won the Iron Cross First Class—an unusual decoration for a lowly corporal—in the First World War, and was fond of reminding his generals that, unlike many of them, he had been tested under fire.

"Hello, Goltz," von Wachtstein said, returning Goltz's salute with an equally casual raising of his arm from the elbow, palm extended. "What can I do for you, beyond offering you coffee?"

"Coffee would be fine, Herr Generalleutnant," Goltz replied. "It was a long ride from Berlin."

Von Wachtstein mimed raising a coffee cup to his lips to his chief clerk, Feldwebel (Technical Sergeant) Alois Hennig, a tall, blond twenty-two-year-old.

"Jawohl, Herr Generalleutnant," Hennig said, and left them alone.

"Reichsleiter Bormann is in conference," Goltz said. "I thought I would pass the time paying my respects to you."

"Bormann is a busy man," von Wachtstein said.

"I'm about to go to Buenos Aires."

"I'd heard something about that."

"I thought of your son, of course, when I received my orders."

"I'm sure he would be delighted to show you around Buenos Aires," von Wachtstein said. "By now I'm sure he is familiar with everything of interest. Most of that, unless he has suddenly reformed, will be wearing skirts."

"He does have that reputation, doesn't he? Have you heard from him lately?"

"Not often. The odd letter. He was apparently asleep in church when they went through that 'Honor Thy Father' business."

Goltz chuckled.

"And then the mail is erratic, isn't it? I thought perhaps I could carry a letter for you."

"That would be very kind, but irregular," von Wachtstein said.

"Even if it came to anyone's attention—and I can't see how it would—I don't think there would be any serious questions about someone in my position doing a small service to an old friend."

"I would be very grateful, Goltz, but I don't want to impose on our friendship."

"It would be no imposition at all."

"When are you leaving Wolfsschanze?"

"Whenever the Heinkel leaves. The Herr Reichsleiter got me a seat on it."

"There is something," von Wachtstein said. "In one letter he complained that he has only one set of major's badges . . ."

"That's right, he was promoted, wasn't he?"

". . . and spends a good deal of time carefully moving them from one uniform to another. I could probably get a set or two here. . . ."

"I'd be delighted to carry them to him."

"Thank you."

Feldwebel Hennig appeared with two cups of coffee on a wooden tray.

"The African coffee, Herr Generalleutnant," he said. "Unfortunately, about the last of it."

"You're a bright youngster, Hennig," von Wachtstein said. "I have every confidence that you will be able to steal some more somewhere."

"I happen to have a source of coffee, good coffee," Goltz said. "I'll tell my office to send you a couple of kilos with the next messenger."

"And I was not really glad to see you, Josef, when you walked in here. I shamelessly accept."

"Friends should take care of one another, shouldn't they?"

"A noble sentiment."

As Hennig was setting the tray down, one of the three telephones on von Wachtstein's desk rang. Hennig moved to answer it but stopped.

"It's the red line, Herr Generalleutnant," he said.

A red-line telephone—so called because the instrument was red—was another symbol of status in Wolfsschanze. There were only fifty red-line instruments. The special switchboard for these had been installed so that Hitler and very senior officials could talk directly to one another without wasting time speaking to secretaries. Those who had red-line telephones were expected to answer them themselves.

"Heil Hitler, von Wachtstein," he said, picking it up.

"Canaris," the Chief of the Abwehr identified himself. "I understand Standartenf?hrer Goltz is with you?"

"Yes, he is. One moment, please, Herr Admiral," von Wachtstein said, and handed the phone to Goltz. "Admiral Canaris."

"Yes. Herr Admiral?" Goltz said, listened a moment, and then said, "I ask the Herr Admiral's indulgence to finish my cup of the Herr Generalleutnant's excellent coffee." There was a pause, and then, chuckling, "I'll tell him that, Herr Admiral. Thank you."

He handed the telephone back to von Wachtstein.

"Admiral Canaris said that if you have excellent coffee, you have the only excellent coffee in Wolfsschanze, and it is clearly your duty as an old comrade to tell him where you found it."

"Actually, Peter got that for me in North Africa. He ferried a Heinkel over, and brought that back with him."

"Maybe he wasn't asleep in church after all," Goltz said. "May I suggest you get your son's rank badges as soon as you can, and if you're going to send a letter, write it as soon as possible. Within the hour."

"You're very kind, Josef."

"Not at all. After all, since you served me the last of your African coffee, it is the least I can do."

"Please give my regards to the Admiral," Generalleutnant von Wachtstein said.

[FOUR]

Admiral Canaris was preoccupied. He did not acknowledge Goltz's salute, and although he looked up when Goltz entered, Goltz felt that his mind was far away.

But then, suddenly, he felt Canaris's eyes examining him coldly.

"This won't take long, Standartenf?hrer," Canaris said. "But I have a few things to say to you before you leave for Argentina."

"I will be grateful for any direction the Herr Admiral may wish to give me."

Canaris ignored that too.

"One. I agreed to the elimination of Oberst Frade with great reluctance. But in the end, I decided the risk that he would assume the presidency was unacceptable. It was entirely possible, in my judgment, that he might well have had sufficient influence to obtain a declaration of war against us—especially in the period immediately following the seizure of power by the Grupo de Oficiales Unidos. The implications of that should be obvious. Not only does Germany need Argentine food and wool, but as Argentina goes, so will go Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, and probably Peru."

"I understand, Herr Admiral."

"His elimination, Standartenf?hrer, was not without price. I know the Argentine Officer Corps. While the great majority of Argentine Army officers are sympathetic to the National Socialist cause, they will deeply resent the elimination of Oberst Frade. Not only was he a popular figure, but the Argentines are a nationalist people. They understandably resent an action like that occurring on their soil. Meanwhile, it is to be hoped that in time the necessity of our act will be understood, and later accepted. The goodwill of the Argentine Officer Corps is an asset we cannot afford to squander; and I admonish you, Standartenf?hrer, to do everything possible to avoid further antagonizing them."

"I understand, Herr Admiral."

"For that reason alone, I did not sign your mission order until after the elimination had taken place. I did not want you suspected of any responsibility for it. That, in my judgment, would have been the case had you been in Buenos Aires at the time the elimination was carried out."

"I understand, Herr Admiral."

"Two. Regarding the Reine de la Mer incident. The Portuguese government has protested—has von Ribbentrop gone into this with you?"

The Portuguese vessel Reine de la Mer (really a replacement, replenishment vessel for German U-boats) was sunk in Argentine waters—by Americans, everyone believed but could not directly prove.

"I received a Foreign Ministry briefing, Herr Admiral."

Canaris looked at him for a long moment.

"Well?"

"I was informed that the Portuguese government has in the strongest possible terms protested the sinking to the United States government. I was further informed that the Americans deny any knowledge of this."

"The Portuguese have also protested strongly to the Argentine government," Admiral Canaris added. "More important, the Spanish Foreign Ministry called in the American ambassador to express their 'grave concerns' about the Reine de la Mer, and made it clear that there would be 'grave consequences' if anything like that happened in the future to a vessel flying the Spanish flag."

"So I was informed, Herr Admiral," Goltz said. "The Spanish said they would regard such an attack as 'an unpardonable act of war.'"

"Since the Americans do not wish to see the Spanish join the Axis, Standartenf?hrer, one would think that would be enough to make them think twice about attacking a Spanish-registered vessel in Argentine waters. Or even boarding a Spanish vessel on the high seas to search for contraband. Were you briefed thoroughly on this by the Navy?"

"I was informed during my Navy briefing: That the replacement replenishment vessel will sail from Sweden, via the English channel, directly to Buenos Aires. That she will notify both the German and British authorities she is bound for Argentina. And that she will have the Spanish flag on her hull floodlighted at night, so there can be no mistake as to her nationality and neutral status."

“'And'?"

"That five other Spanish and Portuguese vessels will be crossing the Atlantic toward Argentina at the same time—"

"Notat the same time!" Canaris interrupted impatiently.

"I misspoke, Herr Admiral. Pardon me," Goltz said. "At twenty-four-hour and forty-eight-hour intervals ahead of the Comerciante del Oceano Pacifico!'

"The idea is that the Americans, who expect us, of course, to send a vessel to replace the Reine de la Mer, will board any suspicious vessel. We have taken steps to make sure their agents in Spain and Portugal believe the other ships are suspicious. The moment the Americans stop Ship One, the vessel will radio that it is being boarded. The Portuguese or Spanish will immediately summon the American ambassadors in Lisbon and Madrid to protest. If the Americans sight the Comerciante del Oceano Pacifico —who will be doing her very best to avoid being sighted (she'll sail far into the South Atlantic, and then approach Buenos Aires from the south)—perhaps they will not be so eager to stop her after this has happened two, three, or four times."

"I thought it was a clever plan, Herr Admiral," Goltz said.

"It is overly complicated, and enormously expensive, and I would not give it more than a fifty-fifty chance of succeeding," Canaris said coldly. "It was justifiable only in that a replenishment vessel is essential for submarine operations in the South Atlantic."

"I understand, Herr Admiral."

"Two of three members of the OSS team which took out the Reine de la Mer left Argentina immediately afterward. The team leader, Oberst Frade's son, and a man named Pelosi. Pelosi returned four days ago. . . ."

"I had not heard that, Herr Admiral."

"There was a radio from Oberst Gr?ner. He's a good man. He has someone in the Foreign Ministry. Pelosi now has diplomatic status, as an assistant military Attach?. My feeling is that he was returned to assist a follow-on OSS team which will probably be sent when the Americans learn we have replaced the Reine de la Mer."

"The third man of the OSS team? The Jew?"

"He is still in Argentina, working covertly. The Americans apparently feel he can garner information from the Jews in Buenos Aires. Shipping information, that sort of thing. The head of their FBI in Buenos Aires is also a Jew. I have the feeling Ettinger, the Jew, may be working for him, and no longer is connected with the OSS. In my judgment, that OSS team—they are of course known to the Argentines—has ceased to exist as an operational unit. Thus I believe we can count on the OSS sending an entirely new team down there when the Americans learn the Oceano Pacifico is on station. When that happens, it may be necessary to eliminate them. This of course has to be done very carefully—referring to my earlier remarks about not antagonizing the Argentine sense of nationalism. The first OSS team down there was eliminated with great skill by Gr?ner—there was not even notice of it in the newspapers. Please tell him I expect the same sort of first-class work when the time comes to deal with the next OSS team to show its face."

"Of course, Herr Admiral," Goltz said with a smile.

Canaris looked at him curiously, as if surprised that his words could have been interpreted in any way as amusing.

"May I ask a question, Herr Admiral?"

Canaris waited for him to go on.

"The third member of the former OSS team. You say he is working with the Jews in Buenos Aires? Is there a possibility—"

"That he will put his nose into the source of our special funds?" Canaris interrupted. "Yes, of course there is. If that happens, you have permission to eliminate him, taking the same great care I've been talking about."

"And not before, as a precautionary measure?"

"I'm getting the idea I am not making my point about Argentine sensitivity, Standartenf?hrer. Let me make it again. You will do nothing that might even remotely annoy the Argentines unless there is absolutely no other option. We want them to think of us as allies in the war against communism, not, for example, as the kind of people who come to their country and blow up ships or eliminate people. Now, is that clear?"

"Perfectly, Herr Admiral."

Canaris looked at him coldly, as if wondering why someone with such visibly limited mental powers could be entrusted with the mission he had been given.

"Three, Standartenf?hrer," Canaris went on after a long moment. "I have supported from the beginning the idea of acquiring property in Argentina for operational purposes. As a matter of fact, the concept was originally mine. If my recommendations had been listened to as far back as 1937, we would already have property in place. Not only for the immediate operation planned, but for other purposes. I repeated these recommendations at the time the Graf Spee (On December 13, 1939, in what became known as "The Battle of the River Plate." the battle-damaged German pocket battleship Graf Spee was driven into the harbor of Montevideo in neutral Uruguay by the British and New Zealand cruisers HMS Ajax and HMNZS Achilles. Intense diplomatic pressure from England and the United States forced the Uruguayan government to order the Graf Spee to leave the harbor within the seventy-two-hour period called for by the Geneva Convention, or be interned. On December 17, 1939, at the personal order of Adolf Hitler, the Graf Spee was scuttled just outside Montevideo to keep her from falling into British hands. The German community in Buenos Aires, 125 miles across the river Plate, chartered a fleet of small boats and took her crew to Argentina, where they were interned.) was scuttled, and again nothing was done. The result of that inactivity is now obvious. Here we are embarked on an operation far more important than anything else I can think of—important to the very existence of the Thousand Year Reich. And we're starting from scratch so far as acquiring property is concerned. Not to mention that we have been unable until now to even seriously plan to repatriate the Graf Spee officers, something that should have been done three years ago."

Goltz could think of no tactful way to respond, and said nothing.

"I want you to clearly understand, Standartenf?hrer," Canaris went on, "that I view the property you will acquire as a long-term asset, not something which can be, so to speak, expended in the course of the repatriation operation. Do you understand that?"

"I understand, Herr Admiral."

"Good," Canaris said. He extended his hand. "That's all I have. Thank you for coming to see me. Good luck."

Goltz saw in Canaris's eyes that he had already been dismissed.

Chapter Two

[ONE]

Cafe Lafitte

Bourbon Street

New Orleans, Louisiana

1535 5 April 1943

The bar was crowded, smoke-filled, hot, noisy, and reeked of sweat and urine. Most of the patrons were servicemen, and most of these were sailors, sweating in their blue woolen winter uniforms. A pair of Shore Patrolmen stood just inside the door, each holding a billy club in one hand and a paper cup of soft drink in the other.

As the young man in a tieless white button-down collar shirt and a seersucker jacket elbowed his way toward the bar, he was aware that he was getting dirty looks from some of the sailors. He thought he knew why: Hey, what the hell are you doing out of uniform, when here I am, three weeks out of Great Lakes Naval Training Center and about to go out and save the world for democracy ?

The last thing in the world the young man—who was twenty-three years old, and whose name was Cletus Howell Frade—wanted to do was find himself in a confrontation with a half-plastered nineteen-year-old swab jockey. It seemed to be the final proof that coming in here for a Sazerac cocktail was not the smartest thing he had done today.

He knew for a fact that the Cafe Lafitte made lousy Sazerac cocktails. But ten minutes before, when he first got the idea to have a symbolic farewell Sazerac, and in the Cafe Lafitte, which was supposed to have been in business since Christ was a corporal, it seemed a good idea.

The bartender, a corpulent forty-year old with a stained white apron around his waist, looked at him, his eyebrows signaling he was ready to accept an order.

"Sazerac, please."

"I got to see your draft card," the bartender said in what Clete recognized to be a New Orleans accent.

"What?"

"We're cooperating with the authorities," the bartender said. "Gotta see your draft card."

Clete took out his wallet and removed a plastic identification card—not a draft card—and handed it to the bartender. The bartender examined it carefully and compared the face on the photograph with the face of the young man standing before him.

He did not seem wholly satisfied, but he handed the card back, said, "I thought you had to wear your uniform," and turned to make a Sazerac.

Clete was about to put the card back in his wallet when he felt a hand on his arm. He turned and saw one of the Shore Patrolmen standing beside him, and the second SP standing behind the first.

"Could I have a look at that, please?" the SP said politely, but it was a demand, not a request.

Clete nodded and handed it to him. The SP went through the business of comparing the photograph on the card with Clete's face, then held the card over his shoulder so the other SP could have a look.

"It looks, Sir," the SP said, "like you're out of uniform. Could I have a look at your orders, please, Sir?"

Clete reached into the inside pocket of the seersucker jacket and came out with a single sheet of mimeograph paper, folded twice. He handed this to the SP, who unfolded it.

"Paragraph seven authorizes me to wear civvies," he said.

The SP found Paragraph 7, read it, and then showed the orders to the SP standing behind him and stuck out his lower lip, registering surprise.

"I never saw orders like that, Sir," the SP said. "But I guess it's all right. Sorry to have troubled you, Sir."

Clete smiled and nodded, and put the orders back in his pocket. Then he turned back to the bar as his Sazerac was served.

He laid a five-dollar bill on the bar, then picked up his Sazerac and took a sip. It was a lousy Sazerac, as he was afraid it would be. When he was a student at Tulane he'd had enough of them to become a judge. And had painfully learned that the second would taste better than the first, the third better than the second, and the fourth would strike one treacherously in the back of the head, causing one so stupid as to drink that many to lose not only inhibitions but often consciousness and all memory of what happened subsequently.

Sazerac drinking had another facet, he thought, as he took a second sip. When fed to a well-bred young woman, taking care to administer the proper dosage—an overdose usually produced a number of unpleasant side effects, ranging from nausea to unconsciousness—quite often produced both a diminishment of inhibitions and a concomitant urge to couple.

Get thee behind me, Satan!he thought, when he realized the direction his mental processes were taking him. That sort of thing is in your past. You are no longer free to nail any female you can entice into a horizontal position. Your watchword, like that of the goddamn U.S. Marine Crotch itself is now Semper Fidelis, always faithful.

He drained his glass, and felt the alcohol warm his veins. He picked up his change, shouldered his way back out of the Cafe Lafitte onto Bourbon Street, and headed toward Canal Street, where, he thought, with a little bit of luck he would find a taxi.

[TWO]

3470 St. Charles Avenue

New Orleans, Louisiana

1905 5 April 1943

The taxi dropped Major Cletus Howell Frade off at the curb before a very large, very white, turn-of-the-century ornate, three-story frame mansion on St. Charles Avenue, the tree-lined main boundary of the section of New Orleans known as the Garden District.

He crossed the sidewalk, opened a gate in the cast-iron fence that separated an immaculate lawn from the street, and walked up the brick path onto the porch, fishing for keys in his pocket. Before he could put them in the lock, the leaded-window door swung inward.

A silver-haired, very light-skinned Negro butler wearing a gray linen jacket smiled at him.

"What were you doing, Jean-Jacques? Peeking through the curtains, waiting for me?"

"I just happened to be looking out the window, Mr. Cletus," Jean-Jacques replied. "Miss Martha's here, Mr. Cletus."

"Miss Martha," the former Martha Reed Williamson, was Clete's aunt and the widow of the late James Fitzhugh Howell. Her husband had died instantaneously of a cerebral hemorrhage en route from the bar to the men's room of the Midland Petroleum Club shortly after Clete had flown his Wildcat off the escort carrier USS Long Island onto Guadalcanal's Henderson Field.

"She is?" Clete asked, surprised. He had said goodbye to Martha in Midland three days before. "The girls?"

The girls were his cousins, Elizabeth (Beth), who was twenty-one and about to graduate from Rice, and Marjorie, who was nineteen and in her sophomore year at that institution. Miss Martha became pregnant with Beth shortly after she took into her bride's home the two-year old-son of her husband's sister, Eleanor Patricia Frade, deceased. She raised Clete as her own, and her daughters and her nephew always thought of themselves as brother and sisters.

Jean-Jacques shook his head, "no." Clete was disappointed. Marjorie and Beth seemed to be less a royal pain in the ass recently than earlier on.

"Miss Martha drove up from Houston," Jean-Jacques said. '"Got here just after you went to town. Must have gotten up in the middle of the night to start out."

He pointed at a Kraft paper bag in Clete's hand. "You want me to put that in your room for you? They're in the library, and I know he and Miss Martha have been peeking out the curtains looking for you."

"He" was Cletus Marcus Howell, master of the house, Chairman of the Board of Howell Petroleum, and Clete's grandfather.

"No, thanks, I want another look at it."

"Anything I can get for you?"

"No, thanks," Clete replied, and then changed his mind. "Yeah, there is. I just had a god-awful Sazerac, and I'd like a good one."

"My pleasure," Jean-Jacques said. "One Jean-Jacques Jouvier world-famous Sazerac coming right up."

Clete crossed the wide foyer and entered the library.

A tall, pale, slender, sharp-featured, silver-haired man glowered at him. He was wearing a superbly tailored dark blue, faintly pin-striped three-piece suit, with a golden watch chain looped across his stomach.

"Well, look what the cat dragged in," the Old Man said. "Ran out of rotgut in the Vieux Carre, did they?"

"Grandfather," Clete said, and walked to his aunt Martha, a tanned, stocky, short-haired blond woman, and kissed her cheek.

"He had no way of knowing I was coming," she said, defending him.

"What brings you here?" Clete asked.

"What do you think? I wanted to see you before you left" Martha said.

"I'm flattered," he said.

"You know Mr. Needham, I believe, Cletus?" the Old Man said.

"No, Sir, I don't believe I do."

Mr. Needham was a bald, nearly obese middle-aged man who had removed his jacket and rolled up his white shirtsleeves so that he could more easily practice his art.

He was standing before an oil portrait of Cletus Howell Frade in a Marine Officer's dress-blue uniform. He turned to look at Clete, smiled, wiped his hand on a rag, and extended it to Clete.

"I'm honored to meet you, Sir," he said. "A genuine privilege to meet one of our country's heroes."

Clete looked uncomfortable.

"How do you do?" he said, then: "I didn't know you could do that."

"Do what?" his grandfather asked.

"What's the word? 'Fix'? 'Change'? Go back and change one of those once it was done."

"Of course you can. That's an oil portrait, not a photograph," the Old Man said.

"I'm really glad you're here, Major," Mr. Needham said. "I want everything to be just right."

He pointed to Clete's dress-blue tunic, laid out, complete to Sam Browne belt and officer's saber, against the back of a red leather couch.

"I had Antoinette bring that down from your room," the Old Man said. "Mr. Needham had little difficulty changing your rank insignia to a major's. Your decorations—including that Navy Cross you somehow forget to tell me about—posed more of a problem."

"It looks fine to me," Clete said after comparing the tunic with the nearly complete work on the portrait. "I'm really impressed with someone like you, Mr. Needham. I can't draw a straight line."

"How is it, Cletus," the Old Man pursued, "that I had to learn of your Navy Cross from Senator Brewer?"

"What's the name of that play? Much Ado About Nothing?"

"They don't hand out the Navy Cross for nothing," the Old Man said. "You can tell us about it now."

Jean-Jacques appeared with four Sazeracs in long-stemmed glasses on a silver tray.

"Saved by the Sazeracs," Clete said, taking one. "Thank you, Jean-Jacques."

"I don't recall asking for a Sazerac," the Old Man said.

"Not to worry, Jean-Jacques," Martha said. "If he doesn't want his, Mr. Needham, Cletus, and I will split it."

"I didn't say I didn't want it, I said I didn't remember asking for it," the Old Man said. "Thank you, Jean-Jacques."

Needham took his glass and raised it to Clete.

"To your very good health, Sir," he said.

"Thank you," Clete said.

"Hear, hear," the Old Man said.

Clete sipped his Sazerac, then set it down and opened the brown paper bag, taking from it a pair of binoculars.

"What have you got there?" the old man asked.

"A pair of Bausch and Lomb 8-by-57-mm binoculars," Clete replied. "I just bought them. I'm sure they're stolen."

"What in the world are you talking about?"

"You asked what I have here, and I'm telling you."

"If they're stolen, where did you get them?" Martha asked.

"In a pawnshop on Canal Street."

He saw that the stolen binoculars now had the Old Man's attention. With a little bit of luck, that would end the questioning about the Navy Cross.

"Why do you think they're stolen?" Martha pursued.

The moment Clete saw the binoculars in the pawnshop he knew they were stolen. For one thing, there was a burnished area (freshly painted over) by the adjustment screw where the Navy customarily engraved USN and the serial number. For another, the price was right, and finally the pawnshop proprietor was exceedingly reluctant to provide a bill of sale. He reduced the price even further on the condition that Clete take possession without paperwork.

Instead of a sense of outrage at the theft, Clete felt a certain admiration for the thief. It had been his experience as an officer of the Naval Service that the three most difficult things to steal from the Navy were pistols, binoculars, and aviator chronographs.

When he was in Washington, where he had spent most of the last six weeks, he would not have been at all surprised if some dedicated, and outraged, Marine Corps supply officer had shown up at Eighth and Eye ( Headquarters, USMC, is at Eighth and I Streets in Washington, D.C.)—or for that matter, had burst into OSS Headquarters in the National Institutes of Health Building—and demanded either the return of his Corps-issued Hamilton chronograph or payment therefore, since he was no longer in a flying billet.

The first time he was shot down, he parachuted into the waters off Tulagi and was rescued by a PT boat. As they roared back to the "Canal," her skipper suggested to him that if he put the Hamilton into his pocket, it might be considered "Lost In Combat."

Since a small gift of a government-issued chronograph to a fellow officer of the Naval Service whose vessel had plucked him from shark-infested waters seemed appropriate, Lieutenant Frade took that Hamilton off his wrist and gave it to him, together with his saltwater-soaked .45 Colt automatic and its holster.

He was, of course, issued another Hamilton chronograph and another .45, but only after a dedicated supply officer (literally during a Japanese strafing raid on Henderson Field) offered him the choice of either paying for both, or signing a two-page document swearing, under pain of perjury—the awesome punishments for which were spelled out in some detail on the form—that they had really and truly, Boy Scout's Honor, cross my heart and hope to die, been lost in combat.

He had paid. The Hamilton on his wrist now was still on some supply officer's books somewhere.

"Look here," Clete said. "You can see where someone ground off 'USN' and the serial number."

Martha looked, and then the Old Man looked.

"If you believed them to be stolen, why did you buy them?" the Old Man asked, incredulously.

"I wanted them," Clete explained reasonably. "You can't just walk into the optical department of Maison Blanche and buy them anymore. The Navy takes all that Bausch and Lomb can make."

"The morality of the question never entered your mind?" Martha asked, with a tolerant smile.

"Oh, but it did. Since they had already been stolen, I decided the higher morality was to make sure they were put to use by a bona fide commissioned officer of the Naval Service, such as myself, rather than, for example, by some tout watching the ponies run at the racetrack."

"You have a screw loose, you know that? Your deck of cards is at least four or five short of the necessary fifty-two. A genetic flaw from your father's side," the Old Man said, and then had what he thought was a sudden insight. "You're pulling our leg, right? Taking advantage of an old man and woman who trust you?"

"Pulling your leg about what?"

The Old Man looked at him suspiciously, then changed the subject.

"Tell me about the Navy Cross," he demanded. "The Senator said the citation was very vague."

"You really want to know?"

"No. Not really. Why should I care how my only grandson earned the nation's second-highest award for gallantry?"

"I'd like to know too," Martha said.

"Well, there I was, cruising along at ten thousand feet, with nothing between me and the earth but a thin blonde . . ."

"Oh, God!" Martha said.

"Spare us your vulgar sense of humor, if you please," the Old Man said sternly, but unable to keep a smile from his lips. "You will have to excuse my grandson, Mr. Needham. He frequently forgets we tried to raise him to be a gentleman."

"I'd venture to say, Mr. Howell, that the Major is simply being modest," Mr. Needham said.

"I suppose that's possible," the Old Man said, visibly pleased. "Unlikely, but possible." He changed the subject: "Well, at least we've had the chance to make sure the portrait is technically accurate, haven't we? There was a problem of time. My grandson returns to duty tomorrow."

"Oh, is that so?" Needham replied. "Where are you going, Major? Or isn't a civilian supposed to ask? 'Loose Lips Sink Ships'?"

"Actually, I'm going to Buenos Aires," Clete said. "And, so far as I know, that's not a military secret."

"Buenos Aires?" Needham asked.

"It's in Argentina," the Old Man offered helpfully.

"About as far from the war as you can get," Clete said.

"Thank God for that," Martha said.

"Cletus has been appointed Assistant Naval Attach? at our embassy there," the Old Man said.

"That sounds very interesting," Needham said. "I don't know anything about Argentina, except, you know, what is it they call their cowboys?"

"Gauchos," Clete said.

"And lovely dark-eyed Se?oritas . . ."

"And some lovely blue-eyed Se?oritas," Clete said, thinking of one of the latter in particular.

"Oh, really?" Martha said, picking up on that. "Has your blue-eyed Se?orita got a name?"

"You sound like you've been there before," Needham said, sparing Clete from having to respond to Martha.

"Yes, I have."

"Unfortunately, he was born there," the Old Man said.

"Really?"

Clete gave the Old Man a warning look. The Old Man met his eyes defiantly, but after a moment, backed off.

"I hope you haven't made plans for dinner, Cletus," the Old Man said. "For reasons I can't imagine, Martha just told me she wants to go to Arnaud's."

"No, Sir," Clete said. "I was planning to have dinner here, with you."

"Another indication that you're not playing with a full deck," the Old Man said. "Why in the world would you prefer to have dinner with me, as opposed to having dinner with a young woman very likely to be dazzled by your uniform and medals?"

"Because you are my grandfather, and despite some monumental flaws of your own, I would rather spend time with you than anyone else I can think of except Martha."

The Old Man looked at him. Tears formed in his eyes. He turned and went to the wall and pulled the call bell.

Jean-Jacques Jouvier appeared almost immediately.

"Call Arnaud's," the Old Man ordered, his voice sounding strange. "Tell them I require a private dining room for three at eight. Tell them—understanding this dinner is important to me—they may prepare whatever they wish. Arrange for the car at 7:45. And when you've done that, bring us another round of Sazeracs."

Jean-Jacques nodded and left the room.

The Old Man looked at Clete, then pointed at the uniform tunic on the red leather couch.

"Since it's already off its hanger, would it be inconvenient for you to wear

that?"

"Not at all," Clete said. "Is Arnaud's offering a discount for servicemen?"

"I don't know," the Old Man said. "But now that you've mentioned it, I'll be sure to ask."

[THREE]

Arnaud's Restaurant

The Vieux Carre

New Orleans, Louisiana

2030 5 April 1943

When the 1938 Durham-bodied Cadillac pulled up to the over-the-sidewalk canopy of the French Quarter Landmark—it was said that the Marquis de Lafayette wanted to dine at Arnaud's but couldn't get a table—one of the proprietors, who was functioning as the maitre d'hotel, and a waiter came out the door.

"I was hoping you'd change your mind, again, Mr. Howell," the proprietor said as the Old Man. grunting, stepped out of the car.

"I'd heard business was bad, but I wasn't aware it was so bad you had to stand on the street shanghaiing customers," the Old Man said.

Clete laughed.

"Stop that," Martha said. "The last thing you want to do is encourage him."

"You remember my daughter-in-law, of course, Edward?" the Old Man asked.

"Of course. Nice to see you again, too, Mrs. Howell."

"And my grandson?"

"Of course. Miz Howell, Mr. Frade."

"That's Major Frade, Edward. What did you think he's wearing? A doorman's uniform?"

"It's good to see you, too," Clete said, shaking hands.

"For reasons I cannot fathom, Mrs. Howell wished to have dinner here tonight, and my grandson went along with her. Personally, if this were to be my last meal in New Orleans for a while, I could think of half a dozen other places besides your greasy spoon," the Old Man said.

"Well, we'll try to see that Major Frade doesn't go away hungry."

"That'll be a pleasant change," the Old Man said, and, following the waiter, walked into the restaurant. The proprietor, Martha, and Clete smiled at each other, shaking their heads. The proprietor bowed Martha into the restaurant ahead of him.

"Would you like anything special?" the proprietor asked Clete. "All I heard was that the dinner was important to him. I didn't know who."

"How are the oysters?" Clete asked.

"Compared to what?" the proprietor asked.

"Hey, this is me. not my grandfather." Clete chuckled.

"How would you like them?"

"On the half-shell."

"These are nice, you'll like them," the proprietor said. "I was going to suggest on the half-shell."

The little procession moved past the long line of people waiting for tables and on to the rear of the lower dining room. The Old Man, who had been taking half a dozen meals a week in Arnaud's since he was twelve, was one of the rare exceptions to the rule that Arnaud's did not accept reservations. A small room with a curtained door was waiting for them, the table set up elaborately, including a candelabra. Three wine coolers held napkin-wrapped bottles.

The proprietor took a bottle of champagne from one of them, skillfully popped the cork, and poured.

"I don't recall ordering champagne," the Old Man said.

"It's for Mrs. Howell and Major Frade," the proprietor said. "They, at least, appreciate a nice glass of wine."

"Major Frade also expects a serviceman's discount."

"Tonight the serviceman's discount, one hundred percent, applies to him and any of his lady guests. All others, of course, either pay or wash dishes."

"If I have to pay, I will have a glass of water and some rolls and butter."

"With the greatest of pleasure," the proprietor said. "I will feed the pore Lafayette au beurre noir I had prepared for you to the cats in the alley."

"If you prepared it, it's probably chat Lafayette au beurre noir."

"It wouldn't matter if it was; you couldn't tell the difference," the proprietor said. "I will leave you now, closing the curtain, so my paying customers will not see what I have hidden in the back room."

"Thank you," Clete said, raising his glass.

"Not at all," the proprietor said. "My mother always taught me to be kind to the ill-bred, especially those on the edge of senility."

"I told your father he was making a terrible mistake when he allowed you to wear shoes and told me he was going to try to teach you to read and write," the Old Man said.

"Bon appetit!" the proprietor said, and left them.

"He's not his father, of course," the Old Man said, "but he does know food."

A waiter appeared with an enormous silver bucket full of iced oysters, put on a heavy canvas glove, and began to shuck them.

"Is everyone having oysters?" he asked.

"Of course," the Old Man answered.

The Old Man waved them into chairs, sat down himself, and from an array of condiments began to concoct a sauce of ketchup, lemon juice, horseradish, and Tabasco. (Tabasco is manufactured on Avery Island, Louisiana, by the McIlhenny family. The McIlhenny who served with the First Marine Division on Guadalcanal ultimately became president of the company, and retired from the Marine Corps Reserve as a Brigadier General. On his death in 1994, he left a substantial portion of his fortune to the Marine Academy, a Marine Corps-connected boarding school for boys.)

"I saw him on the 'Canal, did I ever tell you?" Clete said.

"You saw who on Guadalcanal?"

"Ed McIlhenny. He was a lieutenant. Platoon leader."

"He's back."

"Is he all right?" Clete asked quickly, concern in his voice. The return of a Marine to the United States from Guadalcanal more often than not meant that he had suffered a wound too serious to be treated in the Pacific.

"According to his father, as fit as a fiddle, and as proud as a peacock about being promoted to captain. His father asked about you, by the way."

"I hope you told him they made me a major; that'll take the wind out of Ed's sails."

"I did, in fact, mention it in passing," the Old Man said. "That took some of the wind out of his father's sails, too."

He gave the cocktail sauce a final, satisfied stir with a spoon, then pushed the bowl to the center of the table. Clete dipped an oyster in it and ate it with satisfaction.

"How do they eat their oysters in Argentina?" the Old Man asked.

"They're not big on seafood down there," Clete said.

"The reason I asked is that once I prepared a sauce like that for your father. He turned three shades of green, and I thought for a moment he was going to faint," the Old Man said, obviously cherishing the memory.

"They don't spice their food very much," Clete said, hoping that the Old Man's comment was not the opening line in a conversation about his father.

"I was wrong when I asked you, with Needham there, about your Navy Cross," the Old Man said. "I know what you did down there was classified, and I shouldn't have asked."

Clete shrugged, signaling it didn't matter.

"You can tell us now," the Old Man said. "We're alone."

Clete put another oyster in his mouth and shook his head resignedly.

"The Senator told me," the Old Man went on, "that the citation read, 'for conspicuous gallantry, above and beyond the call of duty'—"

"They all say that," Clete interrupted.

"'. . . at great risk to his life.'"

"I didn't hear that part, either, honey," Martha said. "Can you tell us about it?"'

"I'd rather not," Clete said.

"Please, Clete," Martha said.

"The Germans were supplying their submarines from a neutral vessel in the Bay of Samboromb?n—in the river Plate estuary," Clete said, knowing there was no way he could get out of an explanation. "We took it out."

"Took it out,' meaning you sank it?" Martha asked.

Clete nodded.

"How?"

"That's classified."

"The last time I looked, it was not this side of your family which could be fairly suspected of being Nazi sympathizers," the Old Man said.

"That's not true, Grandfather, and you should know better."

"If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck."

"OK. And this is classified. I could get in a hell of a lot of trouble if they found out I'd told you about this."

"Our lips are sealed."

"We found the allegedly neutral supply vessel—it was flying a Portuguese flag. Tit for tat, the United States violated Argentine neutrality by sending a submarine into Samboromb?n Bay, Argentine waters, and the sub took out the supply ship."

"There's more to it than that. They didn't give you the Navy Cross for finding a Portuguese freighter."

"Yes, they did."

"How did you find it?"

"With an airplane."

"Where'd you get an airplane?"

"It was my father's."

"He's changed sides, has he?" the Old Man asked, and then went on without giving Clete a chance to reply. "You said 'was.' Past tense. What happened to the airplane?"

"It went in the drink."

"It crashed?" Martha asked.

Clete nodded.

"It was shot down, is what you mean, right?" she pursued.

Clete nodded again.

"You went out and found this German ship in an airplane, right? What kind of an airplane?"

"A Beech stagger-wing."

"You went out in an unarmed civilian airplane, knowing full well you were going to get shot at, and probably shot down. Am I getting close?"

"You're a regular Sherlock Holmes."

"Not 'probably" shot down. Almost certainly shot down. That's why they gave you the Navy Cross. And promoted you to Major. You did what you saw as your duty, thinking you were going to get yourself killed. Modesty is a virtue, Cletus, but there is such a thing as carrying a virtue too far."

"Have another oyster, Grandfather."

"And what are you going to do down there now? The last time I spoke with Colonel Graham—"

"The last time you talked with Colonel Graham!"

Colonel A. F. Graham, USMCR, was a Deputy Director of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and Clete's immediate superior officer.

"—he was pretty vague about what you're going to be doing, in addition to being the Assistant Naval Attach?, I mean."

"I'm surprised he talked to you at all," Cletus said.

"It turns out that not only does Howell Petroleum ship a lot of product on that railroad he used to run, but also that we have a number of mutual friends," the Old Man said.

"Senator Brewer, for example?"

"Him too, I suppose. His name never came up. And furthermore, as a favor to the OSS, I’m still carrying that Jew on the Howell books as an oil-depot expert. Of course, Graham talks to me. He knows where I stand in this war. Unlike some other kin of yours, I want our side to win."

"I know how you feel about my father . . ."

"I should hope so."

". . . but I cannot sit here and by keeping my mouth shut tacitly agree to your characterization of him as a Nazi, an Axis sympathizer."

The Old Man snorted.

"This is Clete's last dinner," Martha said entreatingly. "Do we have to get into it over Clete's father?"

"Who's fighting? I'm just calling a spade a spade."

"And I don't like your characterization of Ettinger as 'that Jew.' Christ, you had him to the house as your guest!"

"He's an Israelite, isn't he? What's wrong with that?"

"I give up."

"I have no idea what I've said that could possibly offend you," the Old Man said.

A waiter appeared with small bowls filled with a reddish liquid.

"Crawfish bisque, Gentlemen," he said.

"Wonderful, he said, changing the subject," Clete said.

"Fine. You were telling me what you're going to be doing for Colonel Graham in Argentina."

"Whatever I'm told to do," Clete said. "I expect to spend a lot of time on the canap?-and-idle-conversation circuit."

"In other words, you're not going to tell me," the Old Man said.

"Right."

"Why didn't you just come right out and say it was none of my business?"

"It's none of your business," Clete said, laughing.

"OK. That's settled. What about Henry Mallin? Do you see much of him?"

Enrico Mallin, an Anglo-Argentine called "Henry," was Managing Director of the Sociedad Mercantil de Importacion de Productos Petroliferos (SMIPP). Howell Petroleum, especially Howell Petroleum (Venezuela), was his primary source of crude petroleum and petroleum products.

"From time to time," Clete said, as a very clear picture of Se?or Mall?n's daughter, Dorotea, came into his mind's eye.

"It might pay you to cultivate him a little," the Old Man said. "I've seen some very interesting geological reports about—where is it the whales are?"

"Patagonia?"

"Patagonia.This war isn't going to last forever, and I would be very interested in your opinion of Mallin. Is he, in other words, the man we should have down there to set up exploration for us?"

"You're thinking of doing exploration down there? In Argentina!"

"I said 'we' and 'us,'" the Old Man said.

"You would actually invest your money in Argentina!"

"By the time this war is over, it will in all likelihood be your money . . ."

Damn him! He didn't say that to elicit my sympathy, but he is an old man, and he damned well might be dead before the war is over.

". . . and if that comes to pass, I want you to remember that I told you that oil is like money. It doesn't matter where it comes from; it can be converted into cash."

"I'll try to remember that," Clete said.

"Don't be smug from a position of ignorance, Cletus. Try to remember that, too. You really don't know what this war is all about, do you?"

"In my ignorance, I've been under the impression we're fighting this war because the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor."

"Why did they bomb Pearl Harbor?"

"That's where our Pacific Fleet was."

"Don't you know, or are you being flip?"

"Tell me."

"We're fighting the Japanese—and for that matter, the Germans—over oil. Did you know that the Soviet Union has the largest oil reserves in the world?"

"No, I didn't," Clete said, genuinely surprised.

"The Russians have oil, the Germans want it—need it desperately—so they went to war. Did you know that the German Army and Air Force are already using synthetic petroleum—they make it from coal—for twenty-five percent of their needs?"

"Where did you hear that?"

"From Colonel Graham," the Old Man said. "The Germans have damned little of their own petroleum reserves. Most of the crude they're using, they're getting from Romania. Did you know that?"

Clete, more than a little chagrined, shook his head, "no."

"You probably also thought that Royal Dutch—Shell—was getting its crude from windmill-powered pumps set up in tulip beds next to the dikes in Holland, right?"

"Either there or from the Permian Basin," Clete said. "We— Uncle Jim and Martha—put down . . . Christ, I don't know, thirty, forty exploratory holes for Shell outside Midland."

"You got that right, at least," the Old Man said.

"Sir?"

"You said 'we put down holes.' Right. Howell Petroleum put down exploratory holes on a participatory basis with Royal Dutch. Some of them even came in. Yes, we did, since the last I heard, Howell Petroleum is owned by the Howell family."

"I know that," Clete said, holding up both hands, palm outward, to shut him off.

Two waiters and a busboy appeared. Their appearance did not shut up the Old Man either.

"And when the Good Lord sees fit to take me, with the Howell stock your mother—may she rest in peace—left you, and with what Jim—may he rest in peace—left you, and with what you're going to get from me, you're going to be the majority stockholder, so we're not talking in the abstract, here, Cletus, we're talking about real money!"

"Yes, Sir."

One of the waiters ritualistically poured a half inch of a red wine in a glass for the Old Man's approval. He picked it up and sipped it.

"Well, this is better than the vinegar you tried to foist off on me the last time I came in here," he said.

"My day is now complete," the waiter said.

"And that," the Old Man said, pointing to a sauce-covered pork tenderloin the other waiter was slicing, "is presumably the French fried cat?"

"Indeed it is, Sir," the waiter slicing it replied. "When Old Tom got himself run over, we carefully preserved his carcass for a special occasion like this."

Clete, smiling, picked up his wineglass and took a sip.

"I'm going to miss you," he said.

"When I'm gone, you mean? And well you should. I'm going to leave you a very rich young man."

"I meant now, when I go to Argentina."

"Oddly enough, I will miss you, too," the Old Man said. "We were talking about oil, or money, which is really the same thing."

"We weren't talking. You were delivering a lecture."

"Royal Dutch has production all over the Far East." the Old Man resumed his lecture. "There is no oil in the Japanese islands. The Japanese need oil, the Dutch have oil that can be stolen. Ergo, another war."

Christ, he's probably right. I don't know. When he starts off on one of these lectures to the ignorant, he makes me feel as if I'm thirteen years old and have just flunked World Politics I.

"If the Germans can hang on to the Russian oil reserves, which means they can simply steal the Russians' oil, fine for them. They don't need Argentina. But if they can't hang on to free oil, they're going to have to get it somewhere. They are in a fine position to barter with Argentina. Germany, like the United States, is industrialized. Argentina isn't. The German factories turn out things Argentina needs—automobiles, trucks, electricity-generating systems, locomotives, that sort of thing—and Argentina pays for them with crude oil. You getting the picture?"

"But Argentina is not producing enough oil for its own needs," Clete said. "Isn't that why Howell is shipping them both crude and products?"

"I'm not talking about now, Cletus, I'm talking ten, twenty years down the pike, long after I have gone to my reward. You've got to start thinking about that now. With Jim gone to his reward, you're going to have to take over Howell for me when I go."

"No," Clete said. "Not necessarily. Odds are that Marjorie or Beth will latch on to some oil type. Or both of them will. Houston's full of them."

"No, Clete," Martha said. "He's right, for once."

"Of course I'm right," the Old Man said.

"Jim and I talked about it," Martha said. "The way his will was written— and mine—the girls get the preferred stock, and that income, but you'll get Jim's and my voting stock, and control of the company."

"He never said anything about anything like that to me," Clete said. The conversation was making him uncomfortable.

"He thought there would be time, we both did, when you came home after the war."

There was a moment's silence, and then Clete decided to change the subject. "You're talking as if you think Germany might win the war, Germany and Japan."

"Will German tanks roll down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington? Or will Jap soldiers bayonet people and rape women in Beverly Hills like they did in Nanking? That's highly improbable. But I'll tell you what is possible—an armistice. The First World War ended with an armistice, why not this one?"

"I never even thought about an armistice," Clete thought aloud.

"You know what happened at Stalingrad?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"The Germans lost a whole army there. Six hundred thousand men and all their equipment."

"That many? I never thought about that, either. I don't think we had forty thousand Marines on Guadalcanal."

"Can you imagine what would have happened here if you had had to surrender on Guadalcanal? If forty thousand Americans had been killed? Roosevelt would have been impeached—which might not be such a bad idea, come to think of it. And we're a hundred and eighty million people. There are about seventy million Germans. Six hundred thousand is almost one percent of seventy million."

"What's your point? You've lost me."

"My point is this," the Old Man said. "Somewhere, right now in Germany, there are people—important people, and whatever you want to say about the Germans, they aren't stupid—who are facing the facts. If they are losing one percent of the total population in just one battle, and the war is nowhere near over, then it's time to get out of the war."

"I don't think Hitler is in any danger of getting himself impeached," Clete said. "He's a dictator, remember?"

"You've read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. A lot of big-time dictators suddenly found themselves out of a job when their people had had enough." The Old Man drew his meat knife across his throat. "Remember that?"

"I think the word for that is 'regicide,'" Clete said softly. "Killing the king."

"Well, I'm impressed. Maybe you did learn something at Tulane after all."

I didn't learn that word at Tulane. I learned it in Buenos Aires, when Peter von Wachtstein translated the letter from his father, in which Generalmajor von Wachtstein announced that his officer's honor required that he commit the act of regicide.

You 're right, Grandfather. We 're not talking in the abstract here. We 're talking about real people actually committingregicide.

"Always stand pat on sixteen, you mean?"

"I was trying to be complimentary," the Old Man said. "Sooner or later, and I think sooner, Hitler will be deposed. As soon as that happens, the Germans will seek an armistice, and we'll give it to them."

"President Roosevelt called for unconditional surrender at the Casablanca Conference."

"If the Germans offer an armistice, we'll take it," the Old Man said, dismissing Roosevelt's pronouncement. "And once that happens, and the Japanese realize that they're all alone, they'll ask for one too."

"I don't agree with that at all. Japs don't surrender. We learned that on the 'Canal."

"If the Emperor tells them he's decided there should be an armistice, there'll be an armistice," the Old Man said flatly. "Anyway, for the sake of argument, indulge me. The war is over. Germany wants to barter manufactured goods for Argentine crude. I would be happier if they were bartering with us, but that looks unlikely."

"Wait a minute, you're losing me."

"I would like to barter our crude to Argentina, our Venezuela crude—preserving our own oil reserves—for American manufactured products, but that's not about to happen."

"Why not?"

"Germany will make them a better deal. They really will need crude. And so will the Japs. They'll sell them an equivalent washing machine, or automobile, for less than we will."

"So where does that leave us?"

"Out in the cold, unless we get in on the ground floor when the Argentines start developing their oil fields. If we get in on exploration and production first, we can take a percentage of whatever they produce. So we're back to where this conversation started. It will behoove you, Cletus, to pay attention to Henry Mallin. He could be very important to us."

"I'm going down there as a Marine, as the Assistant Naval Attach?, not to cut an oil deal."

"Funny, you always struck me as being smart enough to walk and chew gum at the same time. All I'm asking you to do is be nice to Henry Mallin for our own selfish purposes."

"I give you my word as an officer and gentleman by act of Congress that I will be the essence of charm and goodwill toward Enrico Mallin."

If not for the reasons you want me to.

The Old Man looked at him for a long moment, then nodded.

"This boiled cat isn't as bad as it smells, is it?"

"Not if you wash it down with enough of the vinegar."

"You go easy on the vino when you get down there, Cletus. And I don't want you earning any more medals. You've done your fair share in this war, and then some. Let somebody else do their share. You just go out—what did you say?—on the canap?-and-idle-conversation circuit and sit out the rest of the war. I want you back in one piece. I want a male great-grandchild."

"Well, I could start to work on that the minute I get down there. I have seen—"

"I'm not so foolish as to try to tell you to keep your pecker in your pocket. But carry on with somebody you won't have to marry if you get her in the family way. One Argentine in-law in my lifetime has been more than enough."

"If it wasn't for my father, I wouldn't be sitting here with you."

"Possibly not, but your mother, may she rest in peace, would be. She could have had her pick of any one of—"

"Strange," Clete interrupted the Old Man, "but I seem to recall hearing all this before."

"All right," the Old Man said. "Just don't write me a letter and tell me you've found some female down there you want to marry."

"That's highly improbable."

"It better be impossible," the Old Man snapped, and then suddenly his entire aura changed. He looked old and vulnerable, not delightfully feisty.

"Clete, if there is one thing that would break my heart, kill me, it would be if you were to get seriously involved down there. It would kill me if you married an Argentine. Your mother did that, and look what happened to her."

"I have no plans to marry anybody in Argentina," Clete said.

That is the truth. I would like to, but it's simply out of the question.

"Don't change your mind," the Old Man snapped, his feistiness returning as quickly as it left. "That's a hell of a long airplane ride for an old man to take with a bullwhip to beat some sense into you. Which I assure you I would do."

Clete shook his head. "I'm terrified," he said.

He sensed that he would remember the old man's momentary vulnerability for a long time, perhaps forever.

What the hell's the matter with me? The question is moot. It is because I love her that I can't marry her. The worst thing I could do to her, in my line of work, is marry her. Make her pregnant. Leaving her a widow with an American child would be a hell of a lot more rotten thing to do than what my father did to my mother.

Chapter Three

[ONE]

3470 St. Charles Avenue

New Orleans, Louisiana

2305 5 April 1943

The Cadillac turned off St. Charles and stopped while the chauffeur opened the gate. When it did, they could see lights burning behind the drapes of the library of the Howell Mansion.

"It must be the new maid," the Old Man said. "Jean-Jacques knows better than to throw money away lighting empty rooms."

"Or there may be somebody in the library," Clete said, "who's afraid of the dark."

"Somebody in the library? At this hour?" Martha asked doubtfully.

"There's a car at the curb," Clete said, gesturing toward a black Ford Fordor.

The Old Man did not follow the gesture.

"My guests park their cars inside the fence, on the drive," the Old Man said.

Jean-Jacques opened the portico door to admit them.

"Colonel Graham is in the library, Mr. Howell," he said, "with two other gentlemen."

"Is he really?" the Old Man said, and headed for the library. Clete followed him. After a moment's hesitation, Martha followed Clete.

Afterward, Clete was to remember that his reaction to the unexpected appearance of Colonel Graham was curiosity. He had no concern that something might have gone wrong—much less a premonition that disaster had struck.

"Well, hello, Graham," the Old Man said. "Jean-Jacques get you everything you need?"

"Mr. Howell," Graham said. "Clete."

The Deputy Director for Western Hemisphere Operations of the OSS was a short, trim, tanned, barrel-chested, bald-headed man in his fifties. He was as well-tailored as Clete's grandfather and wore a neatly trimmed pencil-line mustache.

"A sus ?rdenes, mi Coronel," Clete replied—"[I stand] at your orders, Colonel."—primarily to annoy the Old Man. Although his grandfather spoke fluent Spanish himself as a result of his years in Venezuela, he devoutly believed the world would be a far better place if everybody spoke English.

The Old Man flashed Clete a dirty look.

"I don't believe you know my daughter-in-law," the Old Man said. "Mrs. James F. Howell. Martha, this is Colonel Graham."

"I've heard a lot about you, Colonel," Martha said, offering him her hand.

"Have you really?" Graham said, looking at the Old Man. "It's an honor to make your acquaintance, Ma'am."

"Not that you're unwelcome at any hour, of course, Graham," the Old Man said, "but curiosity ..."

"I apologize for the hour," Graham said, "but it was unavoidable. I'm afraid that I'm the bearer of some very bad news."

"Is that so?"

"Clete, I have to tell you that your father is dead," Graham said.

"Oh, Clete, honey, I'm so sorry!" Martha said, and touched his cheek.

"What happened?" Clete asked after a moment.

"We don't know much, and what we do know we haven't been able to verify. It seems there was a robbery attempt last night on the estancia highway. Your father resisted and was shot to death. I'm very sorry."

"What about Enrico?" Clete asked without thinking.

"Enrico?" Graham asked, confused.

"Enrico Rodriguez, my father's . . . sergeant," Clete said. "He never goes . . . went. . . anywhere without him."

"Clete, I just don't know," Graham said.

"Cletus, I'm sorry," the Old Man said. "I—"

"Those sonsofbitches," Clete said bitterly. "They couldn't get me, so they got him!"

"We don't know that, Clete," Graham said.

Clete snorted.

"What do you mean, 'they couldn't get you'?" Martha asked, horrified.

"Nothing," Clete said.

"I want to know," Martha went on, "what Cletus meant when he said they tried to get him!"

Graham, visibly uncomfortable, looked as if he was carefully framing a reply.

"If you're thinking about telling me this is none of my business, save your breath," Martha said.

Graham looked at her directly for a long moment before deciding that she could not be cowed.

"An attempt was made on Clete's life, Mrs. Howell," Graham replied. "Obviously, it failed."

"An attempt was made on his life? By whom?"

"In Clete's case, we have reason to believe it was the Germans," Graham said.

"Christ," Clete said. "We know it was the Germans. And it was the Germans who killed my father."

"We don't know that," Graham argued.

"I'll damned sure find out when I get down there."

"We have to talk about that, Clete," Graham said.

"What do you mean, talk about it?"

"This unfortunate development opens a number of other possibilities for us," Graham said, "which we really should not—I'm truly sorry, Mrs. Howell— discuss in your presence."

"Us meaning the OSS?" the Old Man interrupted.

"Yes," Graham said, simply.

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about," Clete said.

"We've been thinking—" Graham began.

"We is who?" the Old Man interrupted, and when Graham looked at him in shock and annoyance at the interruption, went on: "And don't tell me this is none of my business, Graham. We're in my library, and I have been involved in this whole business from the beginning. And for that matter, so has Mrs. Howell, so don't try to exclude her, either."

Graham's face was stiff for a moment, but then he smiled and shrugged.

Then he turned to one of the men who came with him, a slim man in his thirties, who wore his hair combed straight back and, like Graham, sported a pencil-line mustache. "Delojo," he said, "this is one of those circumstances we were talking about when it is necessary to deviate from procedure."

Delojo nodded but did not smile.

"Excuse me," Graham went on. "Mrs. Howell, Mr. Howell, may I present Lieutenant Commander Frederico Delojo, U.S. Navy, and Mr. Quinn?"

Quinn was a stocky, pale-skinned Irishman, also in his thirties.

Delojo offered his hand first to Martha and then to the Old Man. When the Old Man shook Delojo's hand and then Quinn's, he made it clear with the gesture that while he was willing to be civil, his patience was being strained.

"You were saying, Graham?" he challenged.

"You understand, I'm sure, Mrs. Howell, Mr. Howell, that we are dealing here with highly classified material affecting national security—"

"Get to the point, Colonel," Martha interrupted. "I sit on the National Oil Production Board. I have a TOP SECRET security clearance."

"Yes, I know, Mrs. Howell," Graham said. "But you are not cleared for OSS information. May I continue?"

"Go ahead," she said.

"I want both you and Mr. Howell to understand that severe penalties, including the death penalty, are provided for the unauthorized disclosure of material classified by the OSS as TOP SECRET. Do you both understand that?"

"I'll take that as a recitation of some bureaucratic drivel you feel compelled to make," the Old Man said, "rather than a threat. If I thought you were threatening me—or my daughter-in-law—I would have to do something about it."

"Grandfather . . ." Clete said.

"It's all right, Clete," Graham said. "Actually, Mr. Howell, in this case I was referring to Director Donovan and myself when I said 'we.'"

Colonel William J. Donovan, a Wall Street lawyer, and winner of the Medal of Honor in World War I, had been named Director of the OSS by his longtime friend, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

"I'm tempted to call Bill Donovan right now and tell him you're down here threatening me," the Old Man said.

"Go ahead," Graham said. "I'm sure you have his number—"

"Damned right I do," the Old Man interrupted.

"And equally sure that he would tell you what I have just told you."

He pointed to the telephone.

The Old Man looked at him.

"Get on with what you have to say," he said. "I reserve the right to call Donovan at my convenience."

"Of course," Graham said.

Clete could see in Delojo's and Quinn's eyes—their faces remained impassive—their surprise at encountering people who were not awed either by the Director of the OSS or by his Deputy.

"OK. Let's start at the beginning," Graham said. "When Clete went to Argentina the first time, his cover was that he had recently been medically discharged from the Marine Corps, and that his purpose in visiting Argentina was to see that the petroleum products shipped by Howell Petroleum down there were not diverted to the Axis."

"And I went along with including—what's his name? Pelosi— Pelosiand Ettinger in that little charade," the Old Man said. "Let's not forget that."

Graham stared at him for a moment, looked as if he was going to reply, and then changed his mind.

"The idea of sending Clete back to Argentina as the Naval Attach? came after the Reine de la Mer incident," Graham said. "There were two justifications for that—"

"The Reine de la Mer is the name of the ship Clete was responsible for sinking?" Martha interrupted.

"I'm disappointed, but not surprised, Major Frade, that you saw fit to discuss this with Mrs. Howell," Graham said, looking into Clete's eyes.

"Colonel," Clete said, coldly angry, "I don't regard either my aunt or my grandfather as threats to national security."

"Neither do I," Graham said. "But that's not the point, is it? They did not have, do not have, the right to know."

"When do we get to the point?" the Old Man snapped.

"The death of el Coronel Frade makes Clete's continued presence in Argentina even more important," Graham said. "Will you grant that point, or should I elaborate?"

"If I didn't think that my grandson's presence down there was important to the war effort, I would never have gone along with any of this," the Old Man said.

"There are a number of people in Argentina who are distinctly unhappy with Clete's presence there. Starting—I don't know if you are aware of this, Mr. Howell—with Admiral Montoya, who is Chief of the Argentina Bureau of Internal Security. Montoya did not expel Clete from Argentina only because el Coronel Frade went to him and exerted the pressure necessary to dissuade him."

"Cletus did not tell me that," the Old Man said. "I wondered why they didn't throw him out of the country."

"To get back to the Naval Attach? business," Graham said. "As Naval Attach?, Clete would have had the protection of diplomatic status. While he could have been declared persona non grata, this could not have been done without his father's knowledge, and, furthermore, would have caused the usual diplomatic response: We would have expelled an Argentine diplomat of equal, or superior, rank. Under those circumstances, there was, we believed, little chance that he would be expelled. Those circumstances have changed. Coronel Frade is dead. Those who don't want Clete in Argentina will be perfectly happy to have their Naval Attach? here—for that matter, any Argentine diplomat—expelled tit for tat."

"Meaning, the minute Clete gets down there, he'll be shipped out on the next plane?" Martha asked. "While I suppose this will open my patriotism to some question, that really wouldn't bother me at all. It seems to me that he's already done more than one young man can reasonably be expected to do. Let somebody else take his chances down there."

"Martha, come on!" Clete said.

"It would bother us a great deal. We would be losing the most important intelligence asset we have in Argentina."

"The way you're talking, it's a done deal," the Old Man said.

"There is an option," Graham said. "Argentine citizens cannot be expelled from Argentina. And Clete is an Argentine citizen."

"He's an American citizen. He just had the misfortune of being born down there," the Old Man said.

"Under Argentine law, he's an Argentine," Graham said flatly.

"What are you suggesting, Colonel?" Martha asked.

Graham did not reply directly.

"Furthermore, under Argentine law, on the death of his father, as the sole heir, he comes into possession of everything his father owned."

"He doesn't need his father's money," the Old Man said. "He's got enough money in his own right."

"It would be perfectly natural for Clete to go down there to claim his patrimony," Graham said.

"If he claims he's an Argentine," the Old Man said, "and they catch him doing work for you, there's a word for that: treason. What do they do to traitors in Argentina, Colonel?"

"Am I permitted to join this conversation?" Clete asked. "Since it concerns me?"

"What?" Graham asked.

"What's this business about me being—what did you say?—'the most important intelligence asset' you have in Argentina? How do you figure that?"

"There's going to be an attempted coup d'?tat. You know that. The G.O.U. is behind it. You know that."

"The what?" Martha asked.

"It stands for Grupo de Oficiales Unidos," Clete said. "Group of United Officers."

"Colonel Frade was the President of the G.O.U., and the source of most of its money," Graham said.

"What's that got to do with Cletus?" Martha asked.

"We think he will be in a position to get close to whoever will replace his father. The G.O.U. officers were all close friends of his father. He will be in a position to influence—"

"And if this coup d'?tat fails," the Old Man interrupted. "Then what happens to Clete? They stand him against a wall?"

"If things go wrong, we'll get him out of Argentina," Graham said.

"How are you going to do that?" Martha asked.

Graham pointed at Commander Delojo.

"He'll get you out. He'll take your place as Naval Attach? . . . and that will still be cover for the OSS Station Chief in Buenos Aires."

"How?" Clete asked, looking at Delojo.

"Whatever it takes, Major," Delojo said. "Hopefully, we can still get that airplane into Argentina. That would make things easier, of course. But if necessary, I'll get you out, airplane or no airplane. Into Paraguay, Uruguay, or most likely Brazil. If anything goes sour, Colonel Graham has made getting you and your team out my first priority."

The airplane—a Beechcraft Expediter ( The Beech Aircraft C-45 Expediter was a small (six-passenger) transport aircraft, powered by two Pratt and Whitney "Wasp Junior" 450-horsepower engines. It had a maximum speed of 21 5m.p.h. and a range of 700 miles.)—was to have been a gift from the President of the United States to Colonel Jorge Guillermo Frade. Officially it was an expression of Roosevelt's admiration for Colonel Frade as an Argentine leader. It was also intended to replace Colonel Frade's Beechcraft stagger-wing—now on the bottom of Samboromb?n Bay; for that aircraft had been '"in the service of the United States" when Clete was shot down flying it. And incidentally it would give Clete wings to look for the next "neutral" merchant ship the Germans would send to supply their submarines.

Clete thought that whole idea was bizarre, and had told Colonel Graham so: His father was virtually certain to reject the "gift" the moment he heard about it. And if the chances, with his father alive, of getting the airplane into Argentina had been a hundred to one against, now, with his father dead, they were nonexistent.

"Cletus," Martha asked incredulously, "you're not actually considering going along with this?"

"Martha, I'm a serving Marine officer," Clete said. "I go where I'm ordered to go."

"Cletus, I absolutely forbid you to have anything to do with this," the Old Man said.

"Grandfather, I'll tell you what Uncle Jim would have told you. This is my decision, no one else's." He looked at Martha. "Martha, you know that."

"I know I wish neither one of you had ever heard of the Marine Corps," she said.

"My wife said much the same thing when I came back on active duty," Graham said.

"And she probably suspected, at your age, that you would be behind a desk, wouldn't you say, and not involved in something like this?" Martha said acidly.

"Martha, that was a cheap shot!" Clete said.

"I'm surprised that a 'serving Marine officer' like you, honey, hasn't heard what they say about 'all's fair in love and war,'" she said. But then she added, "But you're right. I had no right to say that. I'm sorry, Colonel."

"No apology is necessary, Mrs. Howell," Graham said. There was a moment's silence, and then he went on. "You're not being ordered, Clete. If you go under these changed circumstances, you go as a volunteer."

"There you go!" the Old Man said.

"When do I go?" Clete asked.

"Tomorrow. As scheduled. Commander Delojo will be on the plane day after tomorrow. We sent a cablegram, in your name, asking that your father's funeral be delayed until you can get there."

"You were pretty sure that he'd go along with this," Martha said.

"I was," Graham said.

"You're not going, Cletus," the Old Man said. "That's that."

"I'm going, Grandfather," Clete said, and turned to Graham. "How am I supposed to have heard about what happened to my father?"

"In a Reuters news story, which we made sure was picked up by both the New York Times and the Washington Post."

"OK," Clete said. "And who did I send the cablegram to?"

"Your uncle Humberto," Graham said. He turned to the Old Man. "You may have noticed, Mrs. Howell, that your nephew is very good at this sort of thing. He can take care of himself. He'll be all right."

"I pray to God he will be," the Old Man said. "But right now I think he's as insanely irresponsible as his father was."

"Goddamn it!" Clete flared angrily. "Grandfather, not one more nasty goddamned word from you about my father! Not tonight! For Christ's sake!"

The Old Man did not back down.

"Or what? That wasn't some sort of a threat, was it?"

"Colonel," Clete said, "give me ten minutes to gather my gear."

"Where do you think you're going?" the Old Man asked nastily.

"Out of here," Clete said.

"You're going to apologize, Marcus Howell," Martha said firmly. "And not utter one more word about Clete's father. Or I'm leaving with him. And it will be a cold day in Hell before you see me or the girls again. And that's not a threat, that's a statement of fact! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!"

For a moment, it looked as if the Old Man was going to hold his ground. Then he cleared his throat.

"Cletus, you know that I would never say anything . . ." he said.

"That's not an apology!" Martha said, coldly angry.

"If you believe an apology is called for, consider that one has been offered," the Old Man said. Then he saw the look in Clete's eyes. "Cletus, please. Don't let us part like this. Please stay."

Clete didn't reply.

"It's up to you, honey," Martha said. "We both know that's about as far as that nasty old man is capable of going."

Clete looked at the Old Man.

"Not one more goddamned word!" he said. "Not tonight. Not ever!"

The Old Man held up both hands at shoulder height, palms outward, in a gesture of surrender. Then he looked at Colonel Graham.

"You will please pardon this unseemly display of intimate family linen." he said.

Graham did not reply directly.

"We need a few minutes alone with Major Frade," he said. "And then we'll be on our way."

The Old Man thought that over a moment.

"I think;" he said finally, "that you would probably be more comfortable in here. Martha, would you like to come to the sitting room with me?"

Martha walked to the door, waited for the Old Man to pass through it, turned and smiled at Clete, and then went through the door. She closed it after her.

"Sorry about that," Clete said, looking somewhat sheepishly between Graham, Quinn. and Delojo.

"Commander Delojo and Mr. Quinn have read your dossier," Graham said. "I think they understand the situation."

Clete nodded.

"Mr. Quinn has an Argentine passport for you," Graham said, getting down to business. "The idea is that you will try to enter Argentina with it. If there is difficulty with that, then you will produce your diplomatic passport. They'll have to accept that, and that will give you at least a day or two in the country. We'll play it by ear from there. There will be somebody from the embassy meeting the plane. They may hold you in Immigration. . . ."

"I have an Argentine passport," Clete said, as if he had just begun to pay attention.

"I didn't know that," Graham said, and added, disapproval in his voice, "You never mentioned that in your debriefings."

"My father got it for me," Clete said.

"Well, that's one problem out of the way," Quinn said. It was the first time he had spoken.

"How does this change of plan affect my team?" Clete asked.

"You remain in command of your team, of course," Graham said.

"And Ashton's team? The Radar team?" Clete asked.

Another OSS team was being sent to Argentina. It was commanded by someone Clete had not met, but who he suspected was another of Donovan's socialites—his name was Captain Maxwell Ashton III. Ashton's team was equipped, Clete had been told, with the very latest radar. After Clete had arranged for a place on the shore of Samboromb?n Bay where it could be set up, it could locate the German replacement vessel within a hundred yards, at night, or in the most dense fog.

Once that had been done, the plan went, an American submarine could enter Samboromb?n Bay at night, running with just enough of its conning tower out of the water to provide Ashton's radar with a target and to allow its radios to function. It would then be directed to a position near enough to the German vessel to make a sure one-shot torpedo kill.

Clete thought that plan was almost as bizarre as the airplane "gift" to his father, and with only a slightly better chance of success. Getting the radar into Argentina at all was going to be difficult, and getting it from wherever they managed to land it to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo without being discovered would be even more difficult.

And if the radar Captain Maxwell Ashton III and his team were bringing with them was anything like the radar on Guadalcanal, it would not be capable of locating anything with a hundred-yard degree of accuracy—if it worked at all.

He devoutly hoped he was wrong. If there was no radar—and it now seemed absolutely impossible to get a replacement for the Beech stagger-wing—they would be worse off than they'd been before. He would have to try to locate the German ship with one of the Piper Cubs on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, then guide a submarine to it the way he'd done with the Beech. And after their experience with the Beech, the Germans were almost certainly going to be prepared for another nosy airplane.

"We learned yesterday that they are in Brazil. Commander Delojo will coordinate the infiltration of the team with you and Captain Ashton."

"And what about the airplane?"

"That's in Brazil too. Available to you and Commander Delojo as you feel necessary."

"You're not being very clear, Colonel, about who's in charge," Clete said.

"The Part One of the basic plan remains in effect," Quinn said. "You—your team—will locate and identify the replenishment vessel when it arrives on station. As far as Part Two is concerned—infiltration of the new team into Argentina—that will be coordinated, as Colonel Graham just told you, between you and Commander Delojo. Part Three, elimination of the replenishment vessel, is something we're still working on."

"In other words, SNAFU, right? Situation Normal, All Fucked Up?" Clete said, a little bitterly.

"Wait a minute, Major," Delojo said.

"You wait a minute, Commander," Clete snapped. "Without an airplane, I have no goddamned idea how I can find the replenishment vessel. And with my father gone, I have no idea how I can get an airplane into Argentina."

"We were thinking of the light aircraft on your father's estancia," Quinn said.

"I should have said a decent airplane. A capable airplane. The only airplanes on my father's estancia are Piper Cubs. I need that C-45."

"You found the Reine de la Mer with your father's Beechcraft," Delojo argued.

"And got shot down. I'm not going to try that again. "

"That may be necessary," Delojo said.

"Aside from the fact that it would be suicidal, Commander," Clete said, "it would not work. If the Germans can talk the Argentines into looking the other way again when they anchor another replenishment ship in Samboromb?n Bay, the Argentines are also going to look the other way when the Germans shoot up any airplane—or any boat—that comes anywhere near them. We're going to have to go with the original idea of identifying the ship by aerial photography. And you can't do that with a handheld camera in a Piper Cub."

"I think Clete's right," Graham said. "We're going to have to get that C-45 into Argentina somehow. For the sake of thinking about that, Clete, could you conceal that airplane on your father's estancia if we just flew it, black, no markings, into Argentina?"

Clete thought that over.

"The landing strip on my father's estancia isn't lighted," he said. "Which means that it would have to be flown in during daylight hours. I think Mart?n would hear that an unmarked airplane had landed before it could be pushed into the hangar."

"Who's Martin?" Delojo asked.

"You don't know?" Clete asked, a tone of disgust in his voice. "He's the Bureau of Internal Security guy in charge of watching me. And probably of watching you, too, as soon as he hears you're in Argentina."

"Well, then, we're going to have to do some thinking about this, aren't we?" Graham said.

"And, this being the situation," Quinn said, "this brings us back to inserting Ashton's team by parachute, doesn't it? Which was my original thought on the question."

"I think Clete's original objections to that remain valid," Graham said.

"Sir, with respect," Quinn said, "we drop Jedburgh teams into France and the lowlands every day."

"We're talking about Argentina, not France," Clete said. "It's a hell of a lot farther from Brazil to Buenos Aires Province than it is across the English Channel."

"And whatever chance Clete might have to influence the new government—presuming that goes well—would be destroyed if it came out that we were parachuting OSS teams into Argentina," Graham said. "I repeat, Clete's original objections to that remain valid. It is not an option at this time."

"Yes, Sir," Quinn said.

"I think you had better message Brazil to have the team prepared to infiltrate from Brazil across the Uruguay River into Corrientes Province," Graham said.

"Yes, Sir."

"You work, Clete, on getting the airplane into Argentina, and I'll work on it at this end."

"Yes, Sir," Clete said.

"And also, until Delojo has time to get his feet on the ground, you be thinking about infiltration across the Ri? Uruguay."

"Yes, Sir."

"Anything else, Clete, that we should talk about here and now?"

"Colonel, the priorities," Clete said. "What's more important, me getting close to the Grupo de Oficiales Unidos or taking out the replenishment vessel?"

"That decision is going to have to come from the President," Graham said. "There has been enormous diplomatic pressure about the Reine de la Mer. And what he might decide today might very well change tomorrow."

"Great!" Clete said.

Graham stood up and put out his hand.

"Good luck, Clete. We'll be in touch."

[TWO]

Centro Naval

Avenida Florida y Avenida Cordoba

Buenos Aires

2110 5 April 1943

A dark-blue 1939 Dodge four-door sedan pulled to the curb and a man stepped out of the backseat. The man—tall, fair-haired, light-skinned, in his mid-thirties, and wearing a light-brown gabardine suit—leaned down and put his head in the open passenger-side front-door window.

"Come back for me in an hour and a half," he ordered the driver, a somewhat younger man in a nearly identical suit.

“S?, mi Coronel," the driver said.

The man then turned and quickly mounted the shallow flight of stairs on the corner of the building and pushed his way through the revolving door of the Centro Naval.

"Buenos tardes, mi Coronel," the porter manning the guest-book table said, and then, when el Teniente Coronel Alejandro Bernardo Mart?n had finished signing in, reached into a table drawer and handed him a small envelope.

"Muchas gracias," Mart?n said.

He turned his back to the porter and quickly checked the flaps for signs of tampering. Finding none, he tore the envelope open. It contained a single sheet of paper. It was blank. He turned it over, and the other side was blank too.

He jammed the sheet of paper and the envelope into his trousers pocket and turned back to the porter.

"Marching orders," he said with a smile. "If Se?ora Mart?n should telephone, please tell her I am in compliance with her orders."

“S?, mi Coronel," the porter said, exchanging a knowing smile with the doorman. Another wife-mandated shopping mission. It happened all the time. The Avenida Florida, between Avenida Cordoba and the Plaza San Martin, holds a number of department stores, ranging downward in size and prestige from the Buenos Aires branch of London's Harrod's to tiny one-man closet-size vendors.

Martin, shaking his head as if in resignation, passed back through the revolving door, turned onto Avenida Florida, and started toward Plaza San Martin. He turned into Harrod's and quickly bought a pair of socks. Though he didn't need them, they came packed in a readily identifiable Harrod's paper bag. He then left, turning right again onto Florida and walking briskly toward Plaza San Martin. After one other stop, to buy a copy of La Nation, he walked to the end of Florida, crossed the street that circles the Plaza San Martin, and went into the park.

He ambled down the curving paths between (and sometimes under) the massive, ancient Gomero trees—some said to be four hundred years old—and then sat down on one side of a double bench. A tall, good-looking man in his twenties, who was wearing both the uniform of a Capitan of Cavalry and the de rigueur cavalry officer's mustache, sat on the other side of the bench, facing away from the Circulo Militar toward the River Plate.

Mart?n took a quick look at the Circulo Militar. The magnificent Italian-style building had been built in the late nineteen century as a private residence by the owners of La Prensa, the second of Argentina's major newspapers. They had subsequently given it to the Army, as a small token, some said, of the family's admiration for that body. Others snickered knowingly when this explanation for the donors' multi-million-dollar generosity was offered.

Mart?n picked up La Nation and opened it.

"Nothing," he said softly. "It is not in either the house on D?az, or in the guest house on Libertador."

The Capitan, whose name was Roberto Lauffer, could not resist shrugging, but he looked the other way and covered his mouth with his handkerchief before he replied.

"Then it has to be at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo," he said.

"I can't get anybody in there," Mart?n said. "And even if I could, I don't have the combination to the safe. And it's a Himpell, German, built like a battleship. The only way to open it without a combination would be with a blowtorch. Or explosives."

"The dealer?" Capitan Lauffer asked.

"Don't you think I tried that?" Mart?n said icily. "One of the many advantages of a Himpell safe is the ease with which the combination can be changed by its owner."

"You don't think anyone else has the combination? Suboficial Mayor Rodriguez?"

"I think el Coronel Frade had the only combination, and in his mind, not written down somewhere." Mart?n said.

"I will relay this to General Rawson," Capitan Lauffer said.

"I'll give you something else to ruin his dinner," Mart?n said. "Humberto Duarte got a cable an hour ago from el Coronel Frade's son, asking that the funeral be delayed until he gets here."

"He's coming back?"

"He will leave Miami tomorrow on the Panagra flight"—Pan-American Airways-Grace Airlines.

"And Duarte will delay the funeral?"

"Of course he will."

Capitan Lauffer exhaled audibly.

"I will so inform General Rawson," he said.

"The room has been inspected for listening devices, but. . ."

"I understand," Lauffer said.

"I think that's everything for now," Mart?n said.

"Yes, Sir," Lauffer said, rising. He then walked through the park toward the Circulo Militar.

When Teniente Coronel Mart?n assumed his duties with the Ministry of Defense's Bureau of Internal Security as "Chief, Ethical Standards Office," he was given responsibility for keeping an eye on the Grupo de Oficiales Unidos. For the G.O.U., it was correctly suspected, were planning a coup d'?tat against the regime of President Ramon S. Castillo.

In the meantime, Coronel Martin's relationship with the G.O.U. had changed. A new set of circumstances had forced him to choose sides. On the one hand, he now accepted that his hope to remain apolitical and perform his services for whoever was constitutionally in office was wishful and naive. And on the other hand, he realized that he had chosen the right side, at least morally. Whether right would prevail was entirely another question.

In this light, he saw that his duty now was to prevent those with ties to President Castillo from learning more than was absolutely necessary about the activities of the G.O.U.

The worst possible contingency was thatOutline Blue would fall into the hands of President Castillo's supporters. ForOutline Blue was the detailed plan for the coup d'?tat, complete in every detail, including the names of the officers involved and the roles they would play; everything except for the date and time of execution.

In view of the danger, only one complete copy ofOutline Blue was assembled. This was entrusted to el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade. who had written most of it and was el Presidente of G.O.U. Frade was now dead, assassinated, Mart?n believed, at the orders of the German Military Attach?, acting on orders from Germany. His assassination served two German purposes—to keep Frade from becoming President, and to remind other senior Argentine officers that Germany could punish its enemies as well as reward its friends.

But preventing Frade from becoming the next President of the Argentine Republic, Mart?n believed, was the primary cause of the assassination. For if the coup d’?tat succeeded, that would have happened. The Germans did not want the President of Argentina to lead the nation away from its current status, which was Neutral, leaning heavily toward the Axis, to Neutral, leaning toward the Allies. Or worse: leading Argentina to a declaration of war against the Axis.

Six months before, the Germans, with reason, considered el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade a friend. He was a graduate of the German Kriegsschule—literally, "War School." It was, roughly, the German military staff college, combining the American Command and General Staff College and the War College, and he was known to hate the United States in most of its aspects.

That changed within a matter of weeks, when the norteamericanos, in a brilliant ploy, dispatched to Argentina an Office of Strategic Services agent, who was, among other things, a Marine Corps aviation officer who had fought in the Pacific. More important, he was the son, estranged from infancy, of el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade.

The Germans then made the tactical blunder of attempting to assassinate the son. The attempt failed, and the son went on to carry out his mission, the sinking of the Reine de la Mer.

For Frade, blood proved stronger than the political belief that the Germans were fighting a near holy war against godless communism. He not only assisted his son in the sinking of the Reine de la Mer— -by making his airplane available to find the ship—he also used his influence to ensure their escape from the country if they were caught trying to destroy the Reine de la Mer —by obtaining, for instance, Argentine passports for the OSS team.

Probably as bad, from the German point of view: el Coronel Frade was quoted in both La Nation and La Prensa as believing the Allied statement— which the Germans of course denied—that Germans had imprisoned several hundred thousand Jews for use as slave laborers. In fact, he went on to state he was convinced that the number of Jews in concentration camps was well over a million.

When el Coronel Frade's sudden, unexpected, and well-known change of sides became apparent to the Germans, Mart?n believed, the decision was made to assassinate him.

The death of Frade not only saddened Coronel Martin—he genuinely liked him—it brought with it serious problems. If, in the course of normal postmortem activities—which would include going into el Coronel Frade's safe-deposit boxes and personal safes—the Operations Order fell into the wrong hands, the coup d’?tat would fail and those involved would be exposed. People involved in a coup d’?tat are either saviors of their country or traitors.

Mart?n didn't think Castillo would actually stand all those involved against a wall, or even see that all of them would be tried by court-martial and sentenced to long prison terms. Just perhaps the dozen or so people of the inner circle. But however short the list of the inner circle, one of the names there would certainly be Teniente Coronel Alejandro Bernardo Martin's.

Mart?n forced this uncomfortable line of thought from his mind and turned to the business immediately at hand. He was too deeply involved now to get out, even if he went directly to Castillo and exposed everyone. And he knew he was simply incapable of doing that. It was a question of honor. He had made his choice, and he would have to live with it.

Although he had been in the intelligence and counterintelligence business long enough to know that nothing should surprise him, he was nevertheless surprised that the sweep for listening devices of the room where Minister of War Teniente General Pedro P. Ramirez was about to take dinner with el General Arturo Rawson had found nothing. That was the meaning of the blank sheet of paper in the envelope at the Centro Naval. And he was equally surprised that the Federal Police were showing no interest in the meeting itself—at least none he could detect. For it was Ramirez's responsibility to order the coup; and if the coup succeeded—now that Frade was dead—Rawson was likely to be the next Presidente of the Argentine republic.

It occurred to Mart?n that perhaps the meeting had been called off, and for some reason this had not been brought to his attention. Or it could be that the Federal Police had not been able to place a microphone in the building. Getting caught doing so would have been very embarrassing. If he were the Federal Police official charged with watching General Ramirez he would be very careful not to anger him: the coup d’?tat might succeed.

With all that in mind, he decided to wait until Ramirez and Rawson actually appeared. And so he read La Nation, and glanced frequently across the street at the Circulo Militar.

At 2130, Teniente General Pedro P. Ramirez arrived in his official car before the ornate gates of the Circulo Militar, seconds after the private 1940 Packard 220 sedan of General Rawson.

General Ramirez, seated in the rear of the Mercedes with his aide-de-camp, Mayor Pedro V. Querro, graciously signaled Rawson's chauffeur to precede him through the gates of the imposing mansion. This caused General Ramirez's chauffeur—who was not used to giving way to other vehicles—to suddenly and heavily apply his brakes.

Mart?n almost laughed out loud as Mayor Querro, a tiny, immaculate, intense man with a pencil-line mustache, a look of outrage on his face, abruptly slid off the slippery dark red leather seat onto the floor. General Ramirez fared better; he managed to keep his seat by bracing himself against the back of the front seat. Shaking his head in amused disbelief, Mart?n neatly refolded his La Nation and, carrying the Harrod's paper sack containing the unneeded socks, started back for Avenida Florida and the Centro Naval.

[THREE]

Neither General Rawson nor his chauffeur was aware of General Ramirez's and Mayor Querro's difficulty retaining their seats and their dignity. The chauffeur dropped Rawson off at the entrance, then drove into the mansion's interior courtyard to park the Packard.

Rawson, a good-looking, silver-haired man in his fifties, with a precisely trimmed mustache, was wearing a well-cut, somewhat somber dark-blue business suit. He stood beside the entrance and waited for Ramirez and Querro, who were in uniform—green tunics with Sam Browne belts, pink riding breeches and highly polished riding boots. Except for their leather-brimmed caps, with their stiff, gilt-encrusted oversize crowns, Ramirez and Querro looked not unlike U.S. Army cavalry officers.

"Arturo," General Ramirez greeted him, touching his arm affectionately.

"Mi General," Rawson replied, nodding at Mayor Querro.

"You are getting a little chubby," Ramirez said. "We will have to find something useful for you to do, take some of that off."

"I am, with a long list of exceptions, entirely at the General's service," Rawson said.

Ramirez laughed, and the three passed through doors held open for them by neatly uniformed porters.

Inside the building, at the foot of a curving flight of marble stairs, another porter (like most of the Circulo Militar's employees, a retired Army sergeant) stood by the Register in which members of the Circulo Militar were supposed to sign their names on their arrival.

Aware that neither General Ramirez nor General Rawson ever complied with that regulation—or with any other they found inconvenient—and that the Membership Committee would not say anything about their breach of that rule—or of any other rule—the porter inscribed their names in the Register.

"Where have you put el General?" Mayor Querro asked, somewhat arrogantly, as Ramirez started up the stairs.

"In Two-B, mi Mayor," the porter said.

"With a little bit of luck, there will not be a gaggle of women next to us," Rawson said.

"With a little bit of luck, perhaps there will be," Ramirez said. "Women in groups not only don't listen to each other, but to anyone else, either."

Rawson laughed, as he was expected to, and wondered if Ramirez was getting a little nervous.

Why not? When one is plotting a coup d’?tat, and the details of that operation may soon be on the desk of the man you hope to depose, one may be excused for being a little nervous.

Two-B, on the second floor of the mansion, was a small private dining room, with a table capable of comfortably seating ten guests. Four places had been set, with an impressive display of silver and crystal, at opposite ends of the table. A sideboard was loaded with bottles of whiskey, half a dozen kinds of wine, two silver wine coolers, and appropriate glasses.

Capitan Lauffer, who had been inspecting the wine, came to attention when the two general officers entered the room, as did two waiters in brief white jackets.

"Here you are, Roberto," Rawson said. "I think that when it's my time to pass through the pearly gates, you'll have gotten ahead of me there, too, and will be holding them open for me."

"Mi General," Lauffer said, and bowed his head toward General Ramirez.

"How are you, Lauffer?" he asked, smiling. He then turned to one of the waiters and pointed: "And put everyone at one end of the table," he ordered. "I don't want to have to shout at my guests."

Both waiters quickly moved to obey.

Rawson looked around the room, then put his hand to his ear and looked questioningly at Lauffer.

"El Coronel Martin, Sir, tells me the room is clean. He also suggested discretion, Sir."

Rawson nodded, satisfied that the room was indeed free of listening devices. He knew Teniente Coronel Mart?n to be a very knowledgeable, and reliable, security officer.

"Did he find anything?" Mayor Querro wondered aloud.

"I think he would have said something, Sir," Lauffer said.

"What else did he have to say?" Rawson asked.

Ramirez waved his hand in a gesture signaling Lauffer that he should not answer in the presence of the waiters. Lauffer nodded his understanding.

Querro walked to the sideboard, waited until he had Ramirez’s attention, and then pointed at a bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label scotch.

"If that's champagne, I'd rather have that," Ramirez said, indicating one of the coolers with his hand.

One of the waiters moved quickly to take a bottle of champagne from the cooler and started to peel off the metallic wrapping at the neck.

"I think that's what I'd better do, too," Rawson said. "What for you, Lauffer?"

"Nothing, Sir. Thank you."

"Oh, have a glass of wine," Ramirez said. It was an order, and Lauffer understood it.

"Thank you very much, Sir," he said.

The champagne was poured and offered on a tray by one of the waiters.

"Thank you," General Ramirez said, taking a glass, and then adding, "Please leave us now."

He took his glass and walked to the ceiling-high French doors that overlooked Plaza San Mart?n and its ancient, massive Gomero trees.

Rawson sipped his champagne and waited for Ramirez to turn to him. When he did not, he walked to the window and stood beside him.

San Martin, Belgrano, and Pueyrred?n,( Jose de San Mart?n, "The Great Liberator" Manuel Belgrano, and J. M. de Pueyrred?n are revered as the fathers of Argentina.) Ramirez thought, stood a hundred and thirty years ago, looking at those very same trees, looking out onto the River Plate, and deciding to pay the price, whatever it was, to see Argentina free and democratic. Is that what we're doing ? Or will we be just one more junta in a long line of juntas who decided they were the salvation of Argentina? And were, more often than not, wrong.

"You seem very pensive, mi General," Rawson said.

"I suppose I am, but if you are asking, 'Are you having second thoughts?' the answer is no," Ramirez said, and met Rawson's eyes. "I regret the necessity of having to do what we have no choice but to do; but el Presidente has made it quite clear he has no intention of leaving office, no matter how the election turns out."

"No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent," Rawson said.

"Are you quoting someone?" Ramirez asked.

"Abraham Lincoln."

"Ah, Lincoln! Honest Abe. What did they call him, 'The Great Emancipator'?"

"I asked myself if that isn't what we—with the best intentions—are about to do ourselves? Govern without consent?" Rawson said.

"And what did you answer yourself?"

"Depending on how you look at it, we intend to either preserve or restore democracy," Rawson said. "If we do that, we are right. If we don't, if we seize power and then retain it—for whatever noble reason—we will be no better than Castillo."

"Anything else?"

"More North Americans were killed in Lincoln's Civil War than were killed in the First World War, more than they will probably lose in this one. I don't even like to think what would happen here if what we plan turned into a civil war. Look at Spain . . . brother against brother, God only knows how many thousands, hundreds of thousands, died over there."

"Argentina is not Spain," Ramirez said sharply, and then, more softly, "So you are having second thoughts?"

"I had second thoughts. The conclusions I drew you just expressed with some eloquence: 'I regret the necessity of having to do what we have no choice but to do.' And I deeply regret that Jorge is no longer here to lead us."

"I asked myself what would happen if we did nothing," Ramirez said. "Just do nothing. Castillo might get reelected. That's unlikely, but possible. Or even if he seizes power rather than step down. What real harm would that do? Aside from the obvious answer that he and his cronies are robbing the treasury dry—"

"We are in agreement," Rawson interrupted him. "We regret the necessity . . ."

"Yes, we have had this conversation before, haven't we, Arturo?" Ramirez said. "Let's put philosophy away for a moment and hear what Lauffer has to tell us."

Lauffer, who had been waiting near the wine coolers for a summons, walked to them.

"Our friend," he said quietly, "believes what we are looking for is very likely in the country."

Ramirez grunted. He had suspected that all along.

"In any event, what we seek is not in Buenos Aires in either house," Lauffer said.

"I didn't think it would be," Rawson said. "What about the money?"

"We are proceeding in the belief that the money will be withOutline Blue, mi General."

"Either house?" Ramirez asked.

"The one on Avenida Coronel Diaz, or el Coronel's guest house across from the Hipodromo on Libertador," Lauffer clarified.

"If there is someone listening to this conversation," Rawson said, "and he has half the brains he was born with, he already has figured out who, and what, we're talking about. Can we stop acting like characters in a bad movie?"

Ramirez looked at him, and after a moment shrugged.

"What does Mart?n have to say about finding what we're looking for at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo?" he asked.

"He said, Sir, that seems impossible. Getting in the house at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo by itself would be difficult. And there is a good safe . . ."

"A Himpell, in the shrine," Rawson said.

"What?" Ramirez asked. "What shrine?"

"You never saw the shrine to the blessed norteamericano?" Rawson asked.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Ramirez said.

"Jorge had a private library at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo," Rawson said. "More or less full of photographs and other material devoted to his son. The safe is behind the books. A portion of the bookcase moves outward."

"Why do you call it a shrine?"

"That's how I think of it," Rawson said. "I meant no disrespect, either to God or to Jorge. . . ."

"Where do you suppose the combination to that safe is? Do you suppose Se?ora Carzino-Cormano might have it?" Ramirez said, getting back to the subject.

Claudia Carzino-Cormano's only slightly smaller Estancia Santo Catalina bordered Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.

"Coronel Mart?n believes only Coronel Frade had the combination," Lauffer said.

"Well, it wouldn't hurt to ask her," Ramirez said, paused, and went on. "God, if he'd only married her! Why in God's name didn't he marry her! They were living in sin for years! If they had married, even if she didn't have the combination, she could have ordered the safe opened."

"He didn't marry her because he wanted to leave everything he owned to his son," Rawson said. "I thought you knew that. But that's neither here nor there. We have to deal with the situation as it is. What are our options?"

"Send el Coronel Mart?n to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo with orders to open the safe—even if he has to use explosives," Mayor Querro said.

"You don't really think we could do that without attracting the attention of the Polic?a Federal, do you, Pedro?" Ramirez said sarcastically. "And that, for obvious reasons, is the last thing we want to do."

"Another option," Rawson said, "is to do nothing about the safe. . . ."

"Hope no one gets into it before we act?" Ramirez asked. He thought that over a moment, then went on. "Assemble another complete Operations Order, you mean. That's possible, I suppose."

"What other choice do we have, mi General?"

"Sir, we need the money," Querro said. "What about that?"

"Damn!" Ramirez said.

"Sir," Lauffer said uneasily, "el Coronel Mart?n asked me to tell you that there has been a radio from the son—"

"From el Coronel Frade's son?" Rawson interrupted.

"Yes, Sir. Asking to delay the funeral services until he can get here. He leaves Miami tomorrow."

"Wonderful!" Ramirez said. "And the first thing he's going to do is head right for that safe!"

"Why do you say that?" Rawson asked. "I can't believe that Jorge discussedOutline Blue with him."

"I'm not so sure about that," Ramirez replied. "But that's not what I meant. What I meant was that, under the law, the moment Jorge died, everything he owned became the son's patrimony."

"I'm not sure that's so," Rawson said. "He's an American. For one thing, we can deny him a visa."

"He doesn't need a visa, he's an Argentine."

"He's not an Argentine. My God, he served in the American Navy!"

"Corps of Marines," Ramirez corrected him. "But he was born here and is legally an Argentine. He has an Argentine passport. Jorge got him one just before he became involved with blowing up the Reine de la Met:"

"We could detain him," Rawson said.

"On what pretext? The Americans would howl in outrage, and Castillo would wonder why we did that. About our only choice is to appeal to him— maybe Claudia Carzino-Cormano could appeal to him—to let us carry out the work his father began."

"And if he says no?"

Ramirez shrugged.

"I'm open to a better suggestion," he said.

"He's close to Se?ora Carzino-Cormano," Rawson said. "And he knows her relationship to his father."

"What I suggest is that we treat him as an honored guest who has suffered a terrible loss, and as soon as possible have Claudia talk to him. Does that make sense to you?"

“S?, Se?or, of course," Rawson said.

"I'll go see Claudia tonight," Ramirez said. "I know she's in Buenos Aires."

"If nothing else, perhaps Claudia can keep him away from the safe until after we act," Rawson said, warming to the idea. "We don't needOutline Blue. We just, have to keep Castillo from laying his hands on it."

Ramirez grunted thoughtfully.

"But as Pedro pointed out, we cannot putOutline Blue into operation without the money. We're going to have to get into that safe," he said. "Blowing it open is a last resort. Which means we have to deal with the son. Agreed?"

“S?, mi General." Rawson said.

"The possibility exists, Se?or, that Suboficial Mayor Rodriguez has the combination," Querro said. "If he does, it would solve a lot of problems."

"As I understand it, he is in the hospital being guarded by the Polic?a Federal. Any conversation any of us might have with him would be recorded," Raw-son said.

"It's agreed, then," Ramirez said, "that we will deal with the son, through Claudia. Is that correct?"

Rawson nodded.

"And now I suggest, gentlemen," Ramirez said, closing the discussion, "that we have our dinner."

“S?, mi General," Lauffer said, then walked to the door and pushed the button that would summon the waiters.

Chapter Four

[ONE]

Avenida Pueyrred?n 1706, Piso 10

Capital Federal, Buenos Aires, Argentina

0755 9 April 1943

While there were many things in Argentina Hans-Peter Freiherr (Baron) von Wachtstein had come to admire, from the food to—especially—the women, the Argentine concept of time was not among them. It was not a question of whether an Argentine would ever be on time, but instead, of how late an Argentine was going to be, a period that ranged from a minimum of fifteen minutes to an hour.

Argentines ascribed this character flaw to their Spanish heritage, but that was so much nonsense. Peter had been to Spain. He knew Spaniards regarded their timepieces as instruments of civilization rather than as decorations for the wall and/or jewelry for the wrist.

When this casual disregard for an agreed-upon schedule was tied in with another national character flaw, forgetfulness—such as forgetting the door key to the place where they were supposed to be long minutes before—Peter, normally a placid, sometimes quite charming young man, tended to lose his temper.

In the situation at hand, his maid—a Paraguayan Amazon who outweighed him by at least thirty pounds—had agreed to daily present herself at his apartment at 0700, to prepare coffee according to the ratio of beans to water that he had laid out, to awaken him at 0715, and to have coffee, two soft-boiled eggs, rolls and/or bread, marmalade, and butter waiting for him when he came into the dining room at 0730.

He did not think it was too much to ask, and consequently was more than a little annoyed when his slumber was disturbed by the unpleasant grinding of the service-elevator door opening on his floor, followed almost immediately by the unpleasant clanging of the service-entrance doorbell. When he consulted his wristwatch, it indicated 07:54:45.

The facts spoke for themselves. She was not only fifty-four minutes late, again, but she had forgotten her key, again.

Peter, who was a blond, blue-eyed, compactly built twenty-four-year-old, jumped out of bed. Pausing only long enough to snatch a towel from where he had dropped it on the bedroom floor and wrap it around his waist—he slept naked—he walked quickly out of his bedroom.

The apartment was furnished with heavy, Germanic-looking furniture, rented, like the apartment itself, from an Ethnic German-Argentine family who were happy to make these available at a very reasonable price to a man like von Wachtstein. They considered this act a small contribution to the war effort and the Thousand Year Reich.

He walked quickly through the living room to the kitchen and finally reached the service-entrance door, rehearsing all the harsh and unkind things he was going to say to Se?ora Dora.

After some trouble with the lock—during which the bell clanged twice, impatiently, in his ear—he got the door open, swung it wide, and was struck dumb.

His caller was not his maid, but a black-haired twenty-year old Argentine female of extraordinary beauty named Alicia Carzino-Cormano. He had known Alicia socially since the previous December and in the biblical sense for approximately fifteen days.

"Liebchen!" he finally blurted.

"May I come in?"

He stepped back from the door and she walked past him. He closed the door, reached out his hand, and touched her shoulder, whereupon she turned to him, came into his arms, rested her face against his chest, and clung to him desperately.

"Liebchen, what's wrong?"

"I'm frightened," she said.

"About what?"

"Everything," she said.

Well, that makes two of us.

She pushed away from him and smiled up at him.

"Sorry," she said.

"Don't be silly," he said. "Sorry for what?"

"I'm supposed to be at mass," she said. "Confession and then mass. That's what I told Isabela. Mother really sent me here."

"Why?"

"Humberto called Mother very late last night. Cletus arrives here this afternoon. Mother thought you'd want to know, and she didn't want to use the telephone."

I don't suppose it's very likely Cletus has the combination to his father's safe, but I'm grasping for straws.

"Yes, of course."

He leaned down and kissed her, very chastely, on the forehead.

"I'd better put some clothes on," he said. "Dora is an hour late. She's liable to walk in any second."

She nodded.

"You want to make some coffee? I won't be a minute."

She nodded again, and smiled.

He walked back to his bedroom and began to take clothing from his closet. He sensed he was not alone, and turned.

Alicia was standing in the bedroom door.

"Do you think they're going to try to kill Cletus, too?" she asked.

Probably. And this time they may succeed. Coming back here was insanity.

"I don't think so, sweetheart," he said. "And Cletus can take care of himself."

"They will, you know they will," Alicia said, and he heard her voice starting to break. And then she ran into his arms again.

"He'll be all right, baby," Peter said, stroking her hair, hoping he sounded far more confident than he felt.

"I've been thinking," Alicia said. "About Brazil."

"That's just not possible, sweetheart," Peter said. "We've talked about that."

They had talked about it in her mother's apartment immediately after the murder of el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade. She wept then, too. It was the second time he had seen her weep. The first time was the afternoon at Estancia Santo Catalina, when she became a woman and told him she was weeping with happiness.

In her mother's apartment she wept with grief over the loss of el Coronel Frade. Understandably. For most of her life he had filled the role of father for her. But that wasn't the only reason she wept. The primary cause of her misery was that Hans-Peter von Wachtstein, whom she loved, was a German, a German officer, and she could see nothing in their future but grief and misery and probably death.

She announced through her tears that the only hope they had was for him to desert, to cross the border into Brazil, and turn himself in. Brazil would treat him as a prisoner of war. Though this would separate them for now, he would live through the war; and after the war, they would be together.

He knew then that Alicia, who was as hardheaded as her mother, would not be satisfied with a "Sorry, that's just not possible" answer. He had to tell her why it was not possible for him to desert. Not everything, of course, not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But some truths, and some major omissions.

He told her that he had been charged by his father with salvaging a portion of what was already becoming the ashes and rubble of Germany, so that the people who lived on the von Wachtstein estates in Pomerania would have enough to rebuild their lives once the war was over.

He told her that it was a matter of honor for his father and himself to do so; that they had an obligation, as von Wachtsteins, to do what they could for the several thousand people who depended on the von Wachtsteins to care for them, as von Wachtsteins had cared for their people for centuries.

He told her that he had brought a large amount of money with him—in U.S. dollars, Swiss francs, and English pounds—when he came to Argentina.

He told her that Cletus Frade had asked his father's help in investing the money secretly, and that el Coronel Frade and his brother-in-law, Humberto Valdez Duarte, the banker, were helping him not only in that, but also in moving more money out of Germany through Spain and Switzerland into Argentina, and that he simply could not abandon the project.

He told her that if he deserted, his father would almost certainly be arrested and placed in a concentration camp.

He did not tell her that if it came to the attention of the Sicherheitsdienst of the SS that he and his father had been hiding money outside Germany, they would both be tried by a Nazi court, all the family lands and other property would be confiscated, and they would both be executed.

He did not tell her that Humberto Valdez Duarte had come to him as soon as he could after the murder of el Coronel Frade to tell him there was a major problem regarding the financial transactions: el Coronel Frade held all the records for these in the safe at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo. Unless they could get into the safe before it was opened by officials of the Argentine government, the transactions would come to light... and the records would be turned over to the Germans by German sympathizers.

He also did not tell her—or Humberto Valdez Duarte—that there was another document in el Coronel Frade's safe, a letter from Generalleutnant von Wachtstein to his son. Nor did he tell them that if this letter came to light, Generalleutnant von Wachtstein would be put to death by garroting, unless he died first of torture during the SS interrogation.

Schloss Wachtstein

Pomern

Hansel—

I have just learned that you have reached Argentina safely, and thus it is time for this letter.

The greatest violation of the code of chivalry by which I, and you, and your brothers, and so many of the von Wachtsteins before us have tried to live is of course regicide. I want you to know that before I decided that honor demands that I contribute what I can to such a course of action that I considered all of the ramifications, both spiritual and worldly, and that I am at peace with my decision.

A soldier's duty is first to his God, then to his honor, and then to his country. The Allies in recent weeks have accused the German state of the commission of atrocities on such a scale as to defy description. I must tell you that information has come to me that has convinced me that the accusations are not only based on fact, but are actually worse than alleged.

The officer corps has failed its duty to Germany, not so much on the field of battle, but in pandering to the Austrian Corporal and his cohorts. In exchange for privilege and "honors," the officer corps, myself included, has closed its eyes to the obscene violations of the Rules of Land Warfare, the Code of Honor, and indeed most of God's Ten Commandments that have gone on. I accept my share of the responsibility for this shameful behavior.

We both know the war is lost. When it is finally over, the Allies will, with right, demand a terrible retribution from Germany.

I see it as my duty as a soldier and a German to take whatever action is necessary to hasten the end of the war by the only possible means now available, eliminating the present head of the government. The soldiers who will die now, in battle, or in Russian prisoner-of-war camps will be as much victims of the officer corps' failure to act as are the people the Nazis are slaughtering in concentration camps.

I put it to you, Hansel, that your allegiance should be no longer to the Luftwaffe, or the German State, but to Germany, and to the family, and to the people who have lived on our lands for so long.

In this connection, your first duty is to survive the war. Under no circumstances are you to return to Germany for any purpose until the war is over. Find now some place where you can hide safely if you are ordered to return.

Your second duty is to transfer the family funds from Switzerland to Argentina as quickly as possible. You have by now made contact with our friend in Argentina, and he will probably be able to be of help. In any event, make sure the funds are in some safe place. It would be better if they could be wisely invested, but the primary concern is to have them someplace where they will be safe from the Sicherheitsdienst until the war is over.

In the chaos which will occur in Germany when the war is finally over, the only hope our people will have, to keep them in their homes, indeed to keep them from starvation, and the only hope there will be for the future of the von Wachtstein family, and the estates, will be access to the money that I have placed in your care.

I hope, one day, to be able to go with you again to the village for a beer and a sausage. If that is not to be, I have confidence that God in his mercy will allow us one day to be all together again, your mother and your brothers, and you and I, in a better place.

I have taken great pride in you, Hansel.

Poppa

Keeping the letter had been insanity. Simple common sense dictated that he should have burned it immediately after reading it. But he was reluctant to do so, feeling that it was likely to be the last word he would ever have from his father. And further, el Coronel Frade encouraged him to keep it.

"It will be important, Peter, after the war," el Coronel said to him. "Not only personally for you, but to counter the argument that every German, every German officer, supported Hitler and the Nazis."

El Coronel Frade offered to keep the letter for him, and Peter gave it to him. And now there seemed to be a very good chance that it would wind up in the wrong hands.

Peter was stroking Alicia's hair with his left hand, while his right hand held her back. As he did this, he became aware of the warmth of her back, and then the pressure of her breasts against his chest. He kissed the top of her head, tenderly.

Christ, I love her. Which, under the circumstances, is probably the worst thing I have ever done to a woman.

He became aware of the warmth of her breath against his chest, and her fingers on his naked back, holding him close to her. And then that her breath had become uneven, shuddering, and that the muscles of her back were tensing.

He pushed his body away from hers as he felt the warmth of her belly through the towel.

She took her left hand from his back and raised it to his face. He looked down at her.

"Christ!" he said.

She raised her face to his and kissed him hungrily. Her hand slipped off his face, down his chest, and there was a sudden violent movement as she jerked the towel off his body.

It was only when he heard the knock at the door, and Dora's voice calling, "Se?or! Se?or!" that he vaguely remembered hearing the telephone ring.

"What is it?" he called.

"El telefono, Se?or. El Coronel Gr?ner, Se?or."

Alicia was lying on him. He felt her breasts rubbing against his chest as he reached for the bedside telephone.

"Guten Morgen, Herr Oberst."

"I had the odd thought, von Wachtstein, that if you had nothing better to do today, you might wish to come to work. Loche will be there shortly."

The line went dead.

Peter looked at his watch. It was twenty past nine.

"What is it?" Alicia asked.

"Gr?ner. He's sending his car for me."

"What time is it?"

"Nine-twenty."

"What happened?"

"What happened!"

"You must think . . ."

"I think I love you, is what I think," he said, and squirmed out from under her and got out of bed.

The clothing he had so carefully laid out on the bed—a tweed jacket, gray flannel trousers, a stiffly starched white shirt, and a finely figured silk necktie— was in a heap on the floor, mixed with Alicia's dress and lingerie.

He dressed quickly and sat on the edge of the bed to slip his feet into tan jodhpurs. Alicia moved on the bed. He felt her arms around him, and then she moved farther and he found her breast in front of his face. He kissed her nipple.

"I want to wake up every morning for the rest of my life like this," she said.

"Liebchen!"

"God, I love you so much!"

He disentangled himself and stood up.

"I'll call you later," he said, and headed for the door. Then he stopped and went back to the bed, sat down, and put on the other jodhpur. As he did so, Alicia kissed the back of his neck.

There had always been a fantasy in Russia. Going back to civilization. Being warm. Bathing in unlimited hot water. Having all you wanted to eat, especially beef and fresh vegetables. Having a young beautiful naked sweet-smelling woman in your bed. Even more fantastic than that. Having a young beautiful naked sweet-smelling woman in your bed because she was in love with you, not because it was a feather in her hat to wave in the faces of her peers around the Hotel am Zoo, or the Adlon, for having bedded a wearer of the Knight's Cross.

Well, you've had it all, Peter. The fantasy come true. But it's not what you thought it would be like, is it?

G?nther Loche was sitting in the living room

"Guten Morgen, Herr Freiherr Major," Loche said, standing up and coming almost to attention. He was a muscular, crew-cutted, blond, twenty-two-year-old, who was wearing a suit that seemed two sizes too small for him. An Ethnic German—he had been born in Argentina to German immigrant parents and was an Argentine citizen—he was employed by the German embassy as driver to the Military Attach?, Oberst Karl-Heinz Gr?ner. Loche considered it a great honor to be of service to von Wachtstein, for Major von Wachtstein was everything he wanted to be. A very young major, a Luftwaffe fighter pilot, the recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, and, from what he'd seen, a smashing success with the ladies.

"Good morning, Loche," Peter said.

"I have taken the liberty of ordering coffee for the Herr Freiherr Major," G?nther said, pointing to a cup and saucer.

“Thank you very much," Peter said.

If youweren’t so stupid, G?nther, I think I would loathe rather than pity you.

When Peter arrived at the Embassy, both Gr?ner and First Secretary Gradny-Sawz were waiting for him. Three days before, Gr?ner told him, a radio message from Berlin had alerted them that "a distinguished personage," not further identified, had departed Berlin aboard a Condor aircraft of Lufthansa, the German national airline, for Buenos Aires, "for liaison with the Ambassador." That morning there had been a second message, this one from the German Consulate in Cayenne in French Guiana, informing the Embassy that the Condor had departed Cayenne and could be expected to land in Buenos Aires at approximately 1500 hours.

"Which causes all sorts of problems for me, of course," Gradny-Sawz, who was in charge of protocol, said importantly. "Whoever our distinguished visitor is, he's arriving in the midst of all the folderol the natives have laid on to bury Oberst Frade."

Gradny-Sawz was a tall, mildly handsome forty-five-year-old with a full head of luxuriant reddish-brown hair. The hair, he believed, was his Hungarian heritage. As he frequently told people, flashing one of his charming smiles, he was a German with roots in Hungary who happened to be born in Ostmark. (When Austria was absorbed into Germany in the Anschluss of 1938, it officially became Ostmark.) He would usually manage to add that a Gradny-Sawz had been treading the marble-floored corridors of one embassy or another for almost two hundred years, first for the Austro-Hungarian Empire and now for the Thousand Year Reich.

"Yes," Peter said. "I can understand that."

"So, Peter," Gradny-Sawz said, "we've decided that you will meet the distinguished personage at the airfield. Using Oberst Gr?ner’s car and driver."

"Yes, Sir."

"In uniform, Peter," Gr?ner said.

"Yes, Sir."

"A complete uniform, meine lieber Hans," Gradny-Sawz added. "Modesty is a fine thing, but distinguished personages should be reminded that some of us who are waging war on the diplomatic front have also seen combat service."

That was a reference to von Wachtstein's Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. which he had received from the hands of the Fuhrer himself, and Gradny-Sawz's own Iron Cross First Class from service in the First World War.

Luftwaffe pilots and Wehrmacht infantry and panzer officers joked that the award of the Iron Cross First Class to well-born junior officers attached to the General Staff Corps was usually automatic if they had gone three months without contracting a social disease or making off with the mess funds.

"Yes, Sir."

"Oberst Gr?ner will arrange suitable accommodations for Herr Distinguished Personage at the Alvear Plaza, to which you will carry him from the airport. I will suggest to the Ambassador that he entertain Herr Distinguished Personage at dinner, at which time it will be decided whether or not Herr Distinguished Personage will accompany us to the Edificio Libertador for the official visit. You, my lieber Hans, are invited to the latter. Wearing your Knight's Cross. You are not invited to dine with the Ambassador."

"Yes, Sir."

"And I will stay here and try to coordinate everyone's schedule with the natives."

"Will you want me to send someone with you to handle the diplomatic pouches?" Gr?ner asked. "Or can you handle both?"

"I can handle both, Sir."

"You'd better be going then," Gr?ner said. "I told Loche to bring my car around and wait for you."

"Jawohl, Herr Oberst."

[TWO]

Aboard Pan American-Grace Airlines Flight 171

The Ciudad de Natal

Above Montevideo, Uruguay

1505 9 April 1943

There was a break in the cloud cover. Through it, 11,000 feet below, they could see Montevideo. But when they moved out over the river Plate toward Buenos Aires, the cloud cover closed in again, and there was nothing beneath them but what looked like an enormous mass of pure white cotton batting.

Buenos Aires was 105 miles away. At 165 miles indicated, call it forty minutes. Ten minutes out over the 125-mile-wide mouth of the River Plate, the First Officer looked at the Captain, and the Captain nodded.

They were flying a Mart?n 156, a forty-two-passenger flying boat powered by four 1,000-horsepower Wright Cyclone engines. The First Officer took the plane off Autopilot, made the course correction, then retarded the throttles just a tad, worked the trim control, and then put it back on autopilot.

They would make a long, slow descent for the next twenty-five minutes, and with a little luck, break out of the cloud cover at, say, 4,000 feet, with Buenos Aires in sight.

Two minutes later, the Ciudad de Natal slipped into the clouds, and there was nothing to be seen through the windshield but an impenetrable gray mass.

Ten minutes after that, with the altimeter indicating 8,500 feet, they broke out of the cloud cover. Now they could see the River Plate beneath them, and here and there a dozen assorted vessels, small and large, some under sail, and some moving ahead of the lines of their wakes. Neither the Captain nor the First Officer could see whitecaps; their landing therefore would probably be smooth.

"Tell the steward to pass the word we'll land in twenty minutes," the Captain ordered. Then he added, "I'll be damned, look at that."

The First Officer looked where the Captain was pointing, out the window beside his head.

"I'll be damned," the First Officer unconsciously parroted when he found what had attracted the Captain's attention.

A thousand yards away, on a parallel course at their altitude, was a very long, very slender, very graceful aircraft. It looked something like the Douglas DC-3, particularly in the nose. But it had four engines rather than two. It was painted black on the top of the fuselage, and off-white on the bottom. On the vertical stabilizer and on the rear of the fuselage were red swastikas, outlined in white.

"Is that a Condor?" the First Officer asked. (The Focke-Wulf 200B Condor, first flown in 1937. was a twenty-six-seat passenger airplane, powered by four 870-horsepower BMW engines, built for Lufthansa, the German airline. The 200C was a military modification, turning the aircraft into an armed, long-range reconnaissance/bomber aircraft.)

"I can't think of anything else it could be," the Captain said.

"He's come a hell of a long way in something that won't float," the First Officer said, a touch of admiration in his voice. "Nice-looking ship, isn't it?"

The Captain grunted, then said, "Tell the steward to ask that ex-Marine to come up here."

The First Officer nodded and got out of his seat.

They met the ex-Marine, a good-looking kid, in Weather Briefing in the Pan American terminal in Miami. The Weather Briefing facilities were off limits to the general public, but there he was—dressed in a tweed jacket, tieless button-down-collar shirt, gray flannel slacks, and cowboy boots—standing in front of the wall-size maps holding the latest Teletype weather reports in his hands.

There was a brief conversation:

"I don't think you're supposed to be in here. Sir," the pilot said.

"Probably not," the young man said. "But I used to be an aviator, and I like to check the weather between where I am and where I'm headed."

"Used to be?"

"I used to be a Marine," the young man said.

"Where are you headed?"

"Buenos Aires," the young man replied, and then, when he saw the look of surprise in the Captain's eyes, added, "Probably with you. Panagra 171?"

"Right," the Captain replied. "What's it look like?"

"Not a cloud in the sky," the young man said. "Which probably means we'll run into a hurricane thirty minutes out of here."

"Let's hope not," the Captain said, and added, "See you aboard," which ended the conversation.

The Captain, as was his custom, checked the passenger manifest with the steward before takeoff. It was often useful to know who was aboard, whether some Latin American big shot, or some exalted member of the Pan American hierarchy. The Captain had once carried Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh in the back, the man who had not only been the first to cross the Atlantic alone, but had laid out many—maybe most—of PAA's routes to South America. If he had not checked the passenger manifest that day, he would never have known "Lucky Lindy" was aboard, and would have kicked himself the rest of his life for blowing the chance to actually shake the hero's hand and offer him the courtesy of the cockpit.

The steward reported that there was nobody special aboard 171 that day, just the usual gaggle of diplomats and Latins of one nationality or another. No Americans this trip. The captain wondered what had happened to the ex-Marine who said he was going to Buenos Aires.

When he took his ritual walk through the cabin, he saw him.

"I thought you were an ex-Marine," the Captain said, stopping by the Marine's seat. "The steward said we're not carrying any Americans."

"You don't have to be an American to be a Marine," the Marine said. "I'm an Argentine citizen. Going home."

The Captain was curious about that, but to ask any questions would be close to calling him a liar. And he knew Customs and Immigration carefully checked all passengers.

"Well, we'll try to get you home quickly and in one piece," the Captain said, and then his curiosity got the better of him. "Not as fast as—what did you fly in the Marine Corps?"

"Wildcats, F4F's," the young man said, and then, as if he sensed the Captain's suspicions, added, "with VMF-221 on Guadalcanal."

"These boats aren't as fast as a Wildcat," the Captain said with a smile, now convinced the young man was what he said he was. "But a hell of a lot more comfortable."

Because he had made the flight before and was thus really aware of how long it took to fly from Miami to Buenos Aires, Clete Frade had stocked up on reading matter in Miami.

He hadn't bought enough. When the steward came down the aisle to softly inform him that the Captain requested his presence in the cockpit, he was reading the April 1, 1943, edition of Time magazine for the third time.

It reported that the American First Armored Division was almost at the Tebaga Gap—whatever the hell that was—in Tunisia; that the Red Army had retaken Anastasyevsk, in the Kuban, north of Novorossiysk—wherever the hell that was; maybe near the Russian oil fields the old man had talked about?—and that 180 Japanese bomber and fighter aircraft operating off aircraft carriers and from the Japanese base at Rabaul had attacked Guadalcanal and Tulagi in the Solomon Islands, and that further attacks were anticipated.

He knew damned well where Guadalcanal and Tulagi were.

There was something unreal about sitting here in a leather-upholstered chair drinking champagne when people he knew—unless they'd all been killed by now—were climbing into battered, shot-up Grumman Wildcats to go up and try to keep the Nips from dumping their bomb loads on, or strafing, Henderson Field, Fighter One, and the ammo and fuel dumps on the 'Canal.

He drained his glass of champagne, unfastened his seat belt, stood up, and made his way forward to the cockpit.

"I thought you would be interested in that," the Captain said, jabbing his finger in the direction of the Condor making its parallel approach.

Clete Howell stared.

"Jesus," he said. "What is that?"

"I think it's a Condor," the Captain said, and then, attracting the engineer's attention, he called, "Charley, isn't there a pair of binoculars back there somewhere?"

"Yes, Sir," the engineer replied, and pulled open a drawer in his console, rummaged through it, and came up with Zeiss 7 x 57 binoculars. He stood up and handed them to the Captain, who handed them to Clete.

"Nice-looking bird," Clete said a minute or so later, taking the binoculars from his eyes. "I wonder where it came from."

"We were just talking about that," the Captain said. "Probably from Portugal, then from somewhere in Africa, and then across the drink to French Guiana. Wherever he came from, with the fuel he would have to have aboard, he can't be carrying much."

"That's the first German airplane I've ever seen," Clete said.

"They used to have regularly scheduled service before the war," the Captain said. "And I think I remember hearing that they sold Brazil a couple of those. Aerolineas Brasilia, or something like that. But that's the first one I've ever seen, too, and I've been coming down here for a long time."

"It would be almost a shame to shoot down something that pretty, wouldn't it?" Clete said, thinking aloud.

The Captain chuckled.

"Put such thoughts from your mind," he said. "You're out of the Marine Corps and back in neutral Argentina. From here on in, when you see a German, all you can do is look the other way. Or maybe say, 'Buenos dias, Fritz.'"

Clete chuckled, then said, "Look, there he goes. I guess he'll land at El Palomar." In 1943, El Palomar was the civilian airport on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

The Captain looked. The Condor was banking away to the right.

"Pretty bird, isn't it?"

"Thank you, Captain. I appreciate your courtesy," Clete said.

"My pleasure," the Captain said. "Welcome home!"

[THREE]

Sea Plane Terminal

River Plate

Buenos Aires, Argentina

1525 9 April 1943

When Panagra's flight 171 appeared in the sky, obviously about to land, Mayor Pedro V. Querro, to Capitan Roberto Lauffer's carefully concealed amusement, became nearly hysterical.

"Lauffer," he ordered in a fierce whisper, "the boat's not here! Call them! There's a phone in there!" He pointed to the Customs and Immigration shed. "Ask where the hell it is!"

“S?, Se?or," Lauffer said. "Who should I call, Se?or?"

Generals Ramirez and Rawson looked at the two of them.

"The School of Naval Warfare! They promised me a boat! And it's not here!"

"Is that what you're looking for, Mayor?" General Rawson asked, pointing.

A highly varnished speedboat was five hundred yards away, splashing through the swells on the river's muddy water. The flag of Argentina flapped at its stern and some sort of naval pennant flew from a short flagpole on the bow.

"That would appear to be it, Se?or," Querro said.

"I personally have found the Navy to be very reliable," Rawson said, and winked at Lauffer, whose father, a friend, was a retired Naval officer.

The speedboat arrived at the quay before the two boats moored there—the Customs and Immigration boat and the larger boat that would take off the passengers—began to make their way out to meet the Mart?n flying boat. By then the aircraft had landed, and was in the process of turning around to taxi to the buoy that it would be tied to.

Meanwhile, the speedboat stopped in the water, the coxswain having apparently decided to wait until the other boats had left. When he saw that. Mayor Querro signaled almost frantically for it to approach the quay, then turned to Lauffer.

"Well, Lauffer, are you waiting for a formal invitation?" he said, then hurried down the stairs and jumped onto the Customs and Immigration boat to wait for the Navy speedboat.

Lauffer descended the stairs and joined him.

"What's going on?" one of the Customs officers asked.

"The Minister of War," Querro announced grandly, gesturing toward the quay, "is personally meeting a distinguished passenger on the Panagra flight."

As soon as the Navy speedboat came close, Querro jumped into it, then turned impatiently to wait for Lauffer.

"Out to the plane!" Querro ordered the moment Lauffer had stepped aboard.

The coxswain immediately gunned the engine, which almost caused Querro to lose his footing.

Pity,Lauffer thought. The idea of Querro taking an unintended bath in the River Plate had a certain appeal.

Lauffer was looking forward to meeting Se?or Cletus H. Frade, about whom he had heard a good deal but had never actually seen. Lauffer had been in the Army for seven years without hearing a shot fired in anger. According to what he'd heard, Frade fought at Guadalcanal, was twice shot down, and downed seven Japanese airplanes. All before he came to Argentina, where he apparently bested two assassins sent to kill him, and then was responsible for the sinking of an armed cargo ship.

"Distinguished passenger, my ass," Querro said softly. "If I had my way, he'd never make it from the plane to the shore."

“S?, Se?or," Lauffer said.

Clete Howell looked out the window, now splashed with water, as the Mart?n 156 taxied in a sweeping turn from the end of its landing roll toward the buoy where it would be moored.

Is it really, on a flying boat, a "landing roll"? Land planes roll, on their wheels, until they're slowed down enough to taxi. Flying boats, which have no wheels, obviously can't roll. So what do flying boat pilots call it? "The landing slow-down"? Or maybe "the landing splash"?

Who cares ? What difference does it make ?

That's the champagne working on me. I had damned near a whole bottle, which wasn't too smart, since I may have to use my brain when I get to Customs and Immigration carrying an Argentine passport, issued here, which does not have an Exit Stamp. What am I going to say if the guy asks me how I got out of the country without an Exit Stamp?

Damn! Colonel Graham should have thought of that!

What the hell, when all else fails, tell the truth, or something close to it. I left Argentina on my American passport, duly Exit Stamped.

The forty-odd other passengers aboard Pan American-Grace Airlines Flight 171 all seemed to be out of their seats, collecting their cabin baggage.

Three boats were headed out from shore, obviously to meet the flying boat. There had been two the last time, a Customs boat and a graceful, narrow, varnished wooden powerboat. Pan American Grace had permanently chartered it from the owners of a fleet of substantially identical boats in El Tigre, a Buenos Aires suburb that Clete's father had described to him, accurately, as "an undeveloped Venice."

The one leading the procession looked like a Navy boat of some sort, sort of an admiral's barge, carrying two officers.

Obviously to meet some big shot. I wonder who?

The admiral's barge reached the flying boat before it was tied up, and then moved close.

Those are Army officers, not Navy. What's that all about?

The hatch in the side of the fuselage opened, and the two officers came aboard. One of them, a small and intense major, spoke somewhat arrogantly to the steward.

That major's a feisty little bastard. Why are small people like that?

The major came down the aisle, shouldering past the passengers collecting their belongings.

Jesus, he's coming to me!

"Teniente Frade?" the little major asked, with a patently insincere smile.

"Se?orFrade," Clete said.

"I was led to believe you served as a Teniente in the Norteamericano Corps of Marines, Se?or."

"I served as a major in the U.S. Marine Corps, Major."

Clete thought he saw amusement in the eyes of the good-looking captain standing behind the major.

"MayorFrade, I am Mayor Querro, who has the honor of presenting the compliments of Teniente General Ramirez, the Argentine Minister of War."

"How do you do?"

"This is Capitan Lauffer, Mayor Frade."

"How do you do, Capitan?"

"I have the honor of presenting the compliments of General Rawson, mi Mayor," Lauffer said. "And may I offer my condolences on the death of el Coronel Frade, under whom I was once privileged to serve?"

"Thank you very much," Clete said.

"If you will give your baggage checks to Capitan Lauffer, Mayor Frade, he will deal with that. I will take you to General Ramirez."

"What about Customs and Immigration?" Clete asked.

"Capitan Lauffer will deal with that. Will you come with me, please?"

As soon as the admiral's barge moved alongside the quay, Major Querro jumped out, then extended his hand to assist Clete in leaving the boat.

Clete ignored the hand, more because he thought being assisted offered more risk of taking a bath than jumping out himself.

Major Querro motioned for him to precede him up a flight of stairs cut into the massive stone blocks of the quay.

A half-dozen ornately uniformed senior officers, coronels and generales, of the Argentine Army were lined up at the top of the quay behind an officer whom Clete recognized—he had been introduced to him by his father—as General Pedro P. Ramirez, the Argentine Minister for War.

Ramirez marched over to Clete, saluted him crisply, then put out his hand. The others raised their hands to the leather brims of their high-crowned uniform caps.

"Se?or Frade," Ramirez said, "please accept the most profound condolences of the Ejercito Argentina"—Argentine Armed Forces—"and my personal condolences, on the tragic loss of your father, el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade."

"You are very kind, mi General," Clete replied as Ramirez emotionally grasped his hand.

One by one, the other officers identified themselves and shook Clete's hand. One of them, a General Rawson, he also recognized, and remembered his father telling him they were old friends.

"Our cars are here, Se?or Frade, if you will come this way?" Ramirez said.

A crowd of people stood behind a barrier waiting to greet the incoming passengers. One of them Clete recognized—a slight, somewhat hunch-shouldered, thickly spectacled man in his late twenties wearing a seersucker suit and carrying a stiff-brimmed straw hat and a briefcase. His name was H. Ronald Spiers, and he was a Vice Consul of the Embassy of the United States of America.

As two policemen shifted the barrier to permit General Ramirez and his party to pass, Spiers stepped forward.

"Mr. Frade?"

Clete stopped.

"I am here on behalf of the Embassy, Mr. Frade," Spiers said. "To offer the condolences of the Ambassador on your loss, and to assure you the American Embassy is prepared to do anything within our power to assist you in any way."

"That's very kind of you," Clete said. "Thank you very much, but I can't think of a thing right now."

"We are ready to assist in any way we can," Spiers said.

"Thank you very much," Clete said, and offered his hand.

Spiers has a handshake like a dead fish,Clete thought, but at least Colonel Graham will know, as soon as a message can be encrypted and transmitted, that I not only got into the country without trouble, but am being treated like the prodigal son returning.

General Ramirez seemed to be annoyed at the delay.

Outside the building stood a line of official cars. Ramirez led him to the largest of these—a soft-top Mercedes limousine, said to be identical to that provided for field marshals in the German Army.

"Your father is lying in state in the Grand Salon of Honor in the Edificio Libertador," General Ramirez said when they were inside. "We can go there directly, if you like. Or if you would like to compose yourself, we can go to your father's home."

"What happened to my father, General?"

"Banditos," General Ramirez replied, exhaling. "They blocked the road near Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo. Your father, who had the courage of a lion, apparently resisted, and was shot to death."

Well, that's the official version, apparently. Now I have to find out what really happened.

"And Suboficial Mayor Rodriguez? Was he with my father?"

"Yes."

"And how is he?"

"He is in the Argerich Military Hospital," Ramirez said. "He will recover."

"If you please. General. I would like to see him."

"Of course. I will arrange it."

"I mean now. Sir."

Ramirez looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, then nodded.

"Whatever you wish, Se?or Frade," he said, and leaned forward on the seat to give the driver his orders.

"For whatever small comfort this might provide, Se?or Frade," Ramirez said, "the people who did this outrageous act did not get away with it. They were located by the Provincial Police and died in a gun battle which followed."

Clete's mouth ran away from him.

"He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword," he said sarcastically, mentally adding, And dead men tell no tales, right, like about who hired them?

The sarcasm was not apparent to General Ramirez.

"And if we are to believe the Holy Scripture," he said, "they will burn in hell through eternity for their mortal sin."

Chapter Five

[ONE]

El Palomar Airfield

Buenos Aires, Argentina

1535 9 April 1943

Sometimes a Condor flight came twice a month, most often once a month, and the last flight before this one had been five weeks ago. Whenever he went to meet one, Major von Wachtstein was always relieved and a little surprised that the Condor had made it at all. He knew aircraft: Before coming to Argentina he had flown in Spain with the Condor Legion, and with fighter and fighter-bomber squadrons in Poland, Russia, and France, and had commanded a squadron of Focke-Wulf 190s defending Berlin.

It was one hell of a long flight from Berlin to Buenos Aires, and the shooting down of transport aircraft of the enemy was just as legal under the Geneva Convention as torpedoing their merchant ships.

First, the Condor had to make the 1,436 miles from Berlin to Portugal. There were few places over Germany, and fewer over occupied France, where one could not reasonably expect to encounter an Allied fighter.

The skies over neutral Spain and Portugal were safe, but fifteen minutes out of Lisbon toward Dakar, in French West Africa on the next leg of the flight, the Condor lost the protection of Portuguese neutrality. To avoid Allied aircraft certain to be alerted to its departure by Allied agents at the field, it had to fly far out into the Atlantic. Now that the Americans were in Morocco, that was a real threat.

It was about 1,800 miles from Lisbon to Dakar. Marshal Petain's officially neutral Vichy French government had no choice but to permit a German civilian aircraft to make a fuel stop at the Dakar airfield. But once the Condor left Dakar, the danger of being shot down was replaced by the danger of bad weather and running out of fuel. It was 2,500 miles from Dakar to Cayenne in French Guiana on the South American continent, and another 2,700 miles from Cayenne to Buenos Aires.

To avoid detection and interception on the Cayenne-Buenos Aires leg, the Condor had to fly at least one hundred miles off the coast of Brazil. Brazil had declared war against the Axis powers, and the Americans had given them some armed long-range maritime reconnaissance aircraft. On that leg the Condor faced dangers both from enemy aircraft and from the hazards of an incredibly long flight. Only a few years before, any aircraft that had successfully completed a flight of that distance would have made headlines. It was still a magnificent achievement.

Major Freiherr von Wachtstein privately thought the Condor flights were an exercise in idiocy. For one thing, they required a great deal of fuel. And the Condor, like any aircraft, had a finite weight-carrying capability. The unavoidable result was that when the Condor took off there was very little weight available for either passengers or cargo. Usually the planes arrived carrying only half a dozen passengers, a dozen or so mailbags, and the diplomatic pouches.

He thought, again very privately, that there were only two reasons for making the Condor flights at all, and both were connected with the convoluted thinking of the upper hierarchy of the National Socialist German Workers' Party. First: Someone as important as Reichsmarschal Hermann Goring, head-of all things in aviation in Germany, the Luftwaffe (Air Force), and Lufthansa (the national airline), probably felt that maintaining the flights increased—or at least maintained—Nazi prestige.

The effects on Nazi prestige when an Allied fighter pilot—inevitably—got lucky, happened across the pride of Germanic aviation, and shot it down had not occurred to Der Grosse Hermann.

The second reason, even more convoluted, and thus even more likely in the Nazi never-never-land, was that the Condor often carried high-ranking members of the Nazi hierarchy aboard. It was a matter of prestige for them to fly aboard a Condor; they would seem much less important if they traveled abroad on a civil aircraft of a neutral power.

As Peter von Wachtstein stood behind the fence, watching the Condor taxi up to the terminal building, the face of the pilot was familiar. They had flown together in Spain.