Death and Honor

[FOUR]

El Palomar Air Field Campo de Mayo Military Base Buenos Aires Province, Argentina 1525 4 July 1943

As the airliner taxied up to the terminal, Colonel A. F. Graham saw—not surprising him at all—that El Coronel Alejandro Bernardo Martín had elected to meet Varig Flight 207.

Martín, wearing a well-cut suit and an overcoat, was standing outside the terminal building with a group of immigration and customs officers. He was a tall, fair-haired, light-skinned thirty-six-year-old who carried the euphemistic title of “Chief, Ethical Standards Office” within the Ejército Argentino’s Bureau of Internal Security. In fact, he was the most powerful—and, making him even more dangerous, the most competent—intelligence officer in Argentina.

It had been necessary for Graham to get a visa for travel to Argentina. Said visa had been stamped at the Argentine embassy in Washington inside a diplomatic passport issued with the greatest reluctance by the State Department. The passport identified Graham as a career State Department officer with the personal rank of under secretary. The Department of State, in requesting Graham’s visa from the Argentine embassy, had declared he was traveling to Argentina to coordinate security and other matters at the U.S. embassy.

No one was fooled. But both the Argentines and the Americans understood the rules of the game. Graham would have diplomatic status in Argentina, protecting him from arrest. Theoretically, if he was caught with twenty pounds of dynamite in the act of placing it under the Casa Rosada—Argentina’s pink equivalent of the White House—all that could happen to him would be to be declared persona non grata and expelled from the country, after which the Argentine ambassador in Washington would “make representations” to the U.S. secretary of State.

As a practical matter, both sides understood that if he were caught trying to blow up Casa Rosada—or in some other outrageous activity—he would be shot, after which the American ambassador in Buenos Aires could “make representations” to the Argentine foreign minister.

There were Argentines in Washington carrying diplomatic passports—most of them running errands for the Germans—with no more right to theirs than Graham had to his. They were under constant surveillance by the FBI, as Graham would be under constant surveillance by the BIS in Argentina.

But as diplomats they were protected against arrest and could not be questioned, which obviated the necessity of coming up with some imaginative excuse to explain one’s presence where one was not supposed to be.

Anything less than really outrageous behavior was tolerated by both the United States and Argentina. It was in their mutual interest.

And there was a simple, logical explanation as to why Graham found El Coronel Martín meeting his Brazilian airline flight not surprising. There was no question in Graham’s mind that within an hour of his acquiring the visa— no longer than it had taken to encrypt the message—somebody from the Argentine embassy had gone to Western Union, or Mackay Radio, and sent a cable informing the BIS that Graham was coming to Buenos Aires.

What had somewhat surprised Colonel A. F. Graham were the airplanes that had carried him from Natal, Brazil, to Argentina. They were both Lockheed Lodestars.

He’d flown from Miami to Natal—with fuel stops in Trinidad and Belem— in great luxury aboard a Panagra Boeing 314—the same “Dixie Clipper” that had in January flown President Roosevelt to the Casablanca Conference. It was an enormous forty-two-ton flying boat powered by four 1,600-horsepower engines. Aboard was a bar and comfortable bunks, and first-class food had been served by Panagra stewards in crisply starched white jackets.

They’d spent the night in luxurious accommodations in Belem, then flown the next morning on to Natal, an eight-hour flight during which they had averaged a bit over 125 miles per hour. This was as far south as the big seaplanes went. From Natal, they either flew across the South Atlantic to British Gambia on the African Coast or returned to Miami.

The Panagra flights to Natal always carried high-priority supplies and senior officers bound for the large U.S. Army Air Forces base at Brazil’s Pôrto Alegre, and thus routinely were met by a USAAF plane from Pôrto Alegre. The last time Graham had gone to Argentina, that aircraft had been a B-24 and everyone had had to sit on the floor.

This time, the airplane had been a Lodestar—one painted olive drab, making it in USAAF parlance a C-60—fitted out to transport seven passengers in the comfort befitting Air Forces senior officers.

That had made Graham wonder how long there had been a plethora of Lodestars before Hap Arnold had confided in Roosevelt the amazing success of the aircraft production system.

And when he’d gone to the civilian side of the airfield at Pôrto Alegre to board a Varig flight to Buenos Aires, he again had been surprised to see that it too was a Lodestar, also apparently brand new, but this time configured as a normal airliner with seats for fourteen passengers.

The stewardess told him that the Brazilian airline had recently acquired a dozen of the airplanes.

This, of course, forced him to think of Roosevelt’s “suggestion” that Cletus Frade start an airline in Argentina. He wondered if Roosevelt had other reasons for making the suggestion. In his experience with the President, the reason advanced for one idea or another was most often not the real one.

Graham, admiringly, not pejoratively, thought that Franklin Delano Roosevelt could have given lessons in political maneuvering to Niccolò Machiavelli.

Colonel Martín was standing just inside the immigration and customs booths in the terminal.

“Colonel Martín, what a pleasant surprise!” Graham greeted him cheerfully in Spanish, putting out his hand.

“Have a nice flight, did you, Colonel?”

“Actually, I think you’re supposed to call me ‘Mr. Secretary,’ ” Graham said.

“What is that saying of your Corps of Marine infantry, ‘Once a Marine, always a Marine’?”

“And that is actually the ‘Marine Corps’ instead of what you said,” Graham replied. “Tell you what: Why don’t you call me ‘Alejandro’? Or better yet, ‘Alex’?”

“I’m afraid that would annoy my German friends—you know how fond they are of their titles and ranks—who might think we were being too friendly, but thank you just the same.”

“And we must never forget evenhanded neutrality, right?”

“You understand my problem,” Martín said, smiling. “But perhaps, when we are alone, and we are sure no one can hear or is watching, we can call one another by our Christian names.”

“I’d like that, but I understand the BIS is always watching and listening.”

“So I’ve heard,” Martín said. “Are you going to be with us long, Mr. Secretary? ”

“Probably not long at all,” Graham said. “Perhaps we could have lunch.”

“You’ll be staying where?”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to ask me that,” Graham said. “But in the spirit of friendship, I’ll tell you: at the Alvear Palace.”

“I thought you perhaps might be staying with Major Frade.”

“Are you referring to Don Cletus Frade, by any chance?”

Martín, smiling, snapped his fingers and shook his head ruefully.

“I just can’t seem to get it straight in my mind that he’s no longer an officer of your Corps of Marines, but one of our most respected estancieros.”

“Perhaps you should write it on the palm of your hand, if you have trouble remembering. And to answer another question you shouldn’t be asking: I feel sure that sometime during my visit, I will avail myself of Don Cletus’s famous hospitality.”

“When you see Don Cletus, please express my regards?”

“I’ll be happy to.”

“May I offer you a ride into Buenos Aires, Mr. Secretary?”

“I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you.”

“Not at all. The Alvear is right on my way.”

“Then thank you, Colonel.”