Death and Honor

[THREE]

Third Floor Lounge Hipódromo de San Isidro Buenos Aires Province, Argentina 1255 7 July 1943

Humberto Valdez Duarte, a tall, slender, superbly tailored man of forty-seven, with a hawk nose and, plastered to his skull, a thick growth of black hair, walked into the lounge and looked around until he saw Cletus Frade, then walked quickly toward him.

The Hipódromo de San Isidro—the racetrack—provided seats in six stands for a hundred thousand spectators. Today, there was perhaps half that number of racing aficionados seated in them.

The Third Floor Lounge was reserved for members, and thus sat atop the members stand. Its plate-glass windows offered a clear view of the finish line and of the entire 2.8-kilometer racing oval.

Frade, wearing a necktie and tweed sports coat and slacks, was sitting alone at a table near the windows. He was puffing on a large black cigar and his hand rested on a long-stemmed wineglass.

As Duarte approached the table, he fondly called out, “Cletus!”

Frade smiled at the voice, stood up and put out his hand—then retracted it. He suddenly remembered he was in Argentina, where male relatives and good friends exchange kisses, not shake hands.

Frade thought of Humberto Duarte as both a good friend and a relative. Duarte was married to his father’s sister and had proved to be a good friend.

They embraced. Duarte detected that Cletus was uncomfortable with the physical greeting but not offended.

“How’s my Tía Beatrice?” Frade dutifully asked.

Beatrice Frade de Duarte had, as Frade somewhat unkindly thought of it, gone around the bend on learning that her only child had gotten himself killed at Stalingrad. She was under the direct attention of a psychiatrist—almost around the clock—and in a tranquilized fog. Seeing Frade, who was the same age as her late son and alive, usually made her condition worse.

Duarte’s face contorted, and he held up both hands in a helpless gesture.

Before Frade could say anything, Duarte asked, “Have any trouble finding it?”

He sat down, and raised his arm to catch the attention of a waiter.

“Finding it?” Frade said. “No. Enrico knew where it was. Getting in posed a couple of problems.”

Duarte frowned. “How so?”

“When I went to the gate to this place, a guard asked if he could help me, so I said, ‘How do I get to the Third Floor Lounge?’ He put his nose in the air and asked why I wished to go to the Third Floor Lounge. I didn’t like his attitude, so I told him I wanted to get a couple of drinks and maybe pick up some girls. Then he put his nose up even higher and told me that was quite impossible, the Third Floor Lounge was for members only. I asked him if he had a list of members, and if so to have a look at it, as I thought I might be a member. And gave him my name. So he stiffly told me to wait, please, and disappeared. Then he showed up with two other guys—they were wearing dinner jackets and looked like a headwaiter and his assistant. The older of them asked me if I was really Don Cletus Frade of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo. I said, ‘That’s me.’ They were considering this when Enrico, having parked the car, showed up—”

“Cletus, you didn’t try to bring Enrico up here!” Duarte said, chuckling.

“Yeah, I did,” Frade said, and discreetly pointed to a table at the side of the room. Enrico Rodríguez was sitting there with what looked like an untouched glass of beer. A raincoat covered a long, thin object that could have been a shotgun. “Actually, if the headwaiter hadn’t recognized Enrico, I’d still be downstairs arguing with him.”

“But they did let you in,” Duarte said, shaking his head.

“Only after I was so kind as to put this on,” Frade said, lifting a necktie.

“You came here without a necktie?” Duarte said, chuckling again.

“I almost came in khaki pants and a polo shirt, but Dorotea wouldn’t let me out of the house that way.”

“Cletus, you are impossible. A delight, but impossible.”

Two men in dinner jackets were now hovering near the table.

“Don Humberto,” the older of the two said. “It is so nice to see you, sir.”

“Manuel, I don’t think you know my nephew, do you? Cletus, this is Señor Estano, the general manager.”

“I don’t believe I have had that privilege,” Estano said. “I regret, Don Cletus, the difficulty earlier. I can assure you it will not happen again.”

“And I assure you, señor, that I shall never appear at the door again without a necktie,” Frade said, putting out his hand. “I’m sorry about that.”

“They should have known,” Estano said, nodding at one of the oil paintings on the wall. “The physical resemblance is undeniable.”

“Yes, isn’t it?” Duarte said, then added, “I’ll have some of whatever Don Cletus is drinking.”

“What else would he—or you—drink but a pinot noir from Bodegas de Mendoza?”

“Indeed, what else?” Duarte said.

“This is a ’39,” Estano said.

He snatched a glass and then a wine bottle from the waiter.

“We still have several cases here, and there’s more on Calle Florida, of course.”

He poured wine into the glass and Duarte sipped it appreciatively.

“Very nice,” he said.

“I, from time to time, have a small sip myself,” Estano said. “Would you like menus now, or perhaps wait a few minutes?”

“Give us a few minutes, please,” Duarte said as Estano added wine to both their glasses.

After Estano had left, Cletus said, “Okay. You want to explain all that to me?”

“All what?”

“Why was he so sure we would drink this? I told the waiter to bring me a nice, not-too-sweet red.”

“You own Bodegas de Mendoza,” Duarte said. “Which is well known— perhaps even famous—for the quality of its pinot noir. And ’39 was a particularly good year.”

“I thought I owned a vineyard called Bodegas Frade.”

“You do. You own both. Actually, you own four vineyards.”

“Well, that explains that, doesn’t it? And why are there cases of it on Calle Florida?”

“Because that’s where the Jockey Club is.”

“Oh, yeah. My father took me there. Fantastic place.”

“You haven’t been back?”

Frade shook his head.

“Your father must have arranged for your membership right after you came down here.”

"I suppose. I know he did that at the Círculo Militar.”

“We could have had lunch there,” Duarte said. “Either the main club, or the Círculo Militar.”

It was a question Frade elected not to answer. “And what was that business about the ‘undeniable physical resemblance’?”

“Six men are credited with founding the Jockey Club, in 1876, in a restaurant called Foyot de Paris. Your great-grandfather, second portrait from the left, was one of them.”

“Oh, boy!”

“And now may I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Why the sudden interest in the Hipódromo de San Isidro?”

“That was Dorotea’s idea. I asked her where we could have lunch so that (a) I could be pretty sure the guy at the next table was not working for El Colonel Martín, and (b) I would not run into my Tío Juan. She first said at the Jockey Club, then changed her mind and said here would be even better.”

“I knew it was too much to hope that you’d developed a sudden interest in thoroughbred racing. Well, Dorotea was right. I don’t think Martín could get past the guard downstairs.”

“And my Tío Juan?”

Duarte shook his head.

“This and the Jockey Club are beyond his pocketbook, Cletus. Well beyond.”

“Then I’m not liable to run into him here?”

“No, you’re not. But if you want my advice—which I’m sure you don’t— maybe you should invite him here for lunch sometime.”

“I can’t stand the sonofabitch. You know that.”

“El Coronel Perón can be very useful to you, Cletus.”

“So everybody keeps telling me. Actually, that’s the reason I asked you to meet me here. I wanted to ask you how useful he would be to me if I wanted to start an airline.”

“ ‘Start an airline’?” Duarte parroted, almost startled by the announcement.

Frade nodded.

“You mean here?”

Frade nodded again.

“Argentina has an airline.”

“Not a very good one,” Frade said. “The few airplanes Aeropostal has are small and old, and they only fly to a couple of places, none of them out of the country.” He paused. “Not like Varig, for example.”

“Cletus, you will forgive my asking, but has this anything to do with what El Coronel Martín and some others—completely without justification, of course—think you are doing?”

Frade ignored the question.

“Varig, the national airline of Brazil, is flying Lockheed Lodestars—just like mine—all over South America. As an Argentine, I feel a little embarrassed that Argentina isn’t. Doesn’t this embarrass you?”

Duarte rolled his eyes.

“Cletus, you may or may not know this, but Brazil is an ally of the United States in their war with Germany, and the Americans—”

“Humberto, you may or may not know this, but I seem to remember that America is also at war with the Japanese—actually, I have some painful memories of their airplanes—and with Italy, too, although from what I hear, the Italians don’t seem to have their heart in it. How many hundred thousand of them surrendered in Africa?”

Duarte, smiling, shook his head and went on: "... and the Americans are therefore willing to sell to Brazil certain aircraft they are not willing to sell to Argentina.”

“Well, if the Americans think that the Argentines think the Germans and the Japanese are going to win the war, doesn’t that make sense?”

“Argentina is neutral in this war, Cletus, and you know it.”

“So people keep telling me. But let’s not go down that street. If what you say is true, why doesn’t Aeroposta buy some airplanes from Germany? Could it be that Germany doesn’t have any airplanes to sell?”

“Are you suggesting that the Americans would be willing to sell airplanes to Argentina?”

“Just for the sake of argument, let’s say I have reason to believe this Argentine could buy, say, a dozen—maybe more than a dozen—Lockheed Lodestars.”

“You didn’t answer me before when I asked if this has anything to do with what El Coronel Martín—and others—suspect you are doing for the OSS.”

Ignoring the reference again, Frade went on: “Just think what that would mean, Humberto, if you went out to El Palomar to catch a plane to Pôrto Alegre and instead of getting a Brazilian airplane, you could get on one with the flag of Argentina painted proudly on the vertical stabilizer? Wouldn’t that make your heart beat proudly?”

Duarte shook his head but didn’t reply.

“Or you wanted to fly to Mendoza, where I know you do business, and there at El Palomar was a shiny new Lodestar with—what? ‘Argentine Air Lines’ has a nice ring to it—painted on the sides of the fuselage to fly you there in comfort and safety, instead of one of Aeropostal’s junkers?”

“Now that I know you’re serious about this, may I suggest we have our lunch and afterward continue this conversation while I show you around the hipódromo? ”

“That’s probably a very good idea. I may be paranoid, of course, but I feel curious eyes burning holes in the back of my head.”’

“You’re not paranoid,” Duarte said. “Some of those looking at you curiously were wondering who you were, at first sitting here all by yourself with no member having you as his guest. The others, having asked Señor Estano and been told, are naturally curious to see what El Coronel Frade’s long-lost American son looks like.”

“How do they know I’m an American? You just told me I look like my great-grandfather. ”

“Cletus, you are slumped in your chair with your legs stretched out in front of you, something that’s not often seen in here, and on your feet are boots of a type never seen here and certainly not in the Jockey Club.”

“If I had known everybody was going to be so curious about me, I’d be working on a chaw of Red Man.”

“ ‘Red Man’?”

“Chewing tobacco. That’d give them something to talk about when I spit.”

He mimed the act.

“Oh, God, Cletus! For a moment I thought you were serious.”

“What makes you think I’m not?”

Duarte shook his head and waved his hand over his head to summon a waiter.

Frade pointed to a family crest engraved in a two-foot square of pink marble set in the wall beside what was the entrance to a long, vine-covered stable.

“This mine, too?”

Duarte nodded and smiled.

“Your grandfather used to say he made a lot of money breeding thoroughbreds for the family while his brother—your Granduncle Guillermo—lost even more betting on them.”

“Not only money,” Clete said. “My father told me he bet on a slow horse and lost the guesthouse across from the downtown racetrack.”

“Your grandfather bought it back, and your granduncle was banished to Mendoza. When your grandfather died, your father and Beatrice stopped racing altogether. Your father said there was enough of a gamble in just breeding and dealing in horses. You’re still pretty heavily invested in that. I was hoping you were going to become involved yourself. You know horses.”

When my grandfather died, Frade thought, his property, under the Napoleonic Code of Inheritance, was equally divided between his two children.

My father then bought out his sister’s share; that money became her dowry for when she married Humberto.

And now, when Beatrice and Humberto die, since Cousin Jorge went for a ride he shouldn’t have taken in a Storch at Stalingrad and there being no closer blood relative, everything will come to me.

Jesus Christ, what a screwed-up law!

Even my father thought so.

When he explained it to me, he used as an example a family with two children, a son and a daughter. The son takes off for Paris and spends his life chasing women, boozing it up, never even sending a postcard. The daughter spends her life caring for their parents, and can’t even get married.

Yet, when the parents die, the Napoleonic Code splits everything fifty-fifty.

“Instead of doing what El Colonel Martín suspects I’m doing, you mean?” Frade asked.

Duarte nodded.

“Let’s go find ourselves a clean stall in here and talk about that,” Frade said.

“I really believe, Humberto, that El Colonel Martín and I have reached an accommodation, ” Frade said, his arms crossed and leaning with his back against the wooden wall of an empty stall.

“How so?”

“This is my opinion, okay? Backed up by what’s happened, or hasn’t happened.”

“Understood.”

“I was sent down here—Martín has figured this out—to stop the Germans from replenishing their submarines from quote neutral unquote ships in the Río de la Plata. I’ve done that. The Reine de la Mer was sunk by an American submarine. Martín—and everybody else, including General Ramírez—knows that, and that I had something to do with it.

“Sinking the Reine de la Mer proved that we know what they were doing, know the identity of the ships that are violating Argentine neutrality, and are prepared to send submarines—or whatever else it takes—into the Río de la Plata to stop it. Argentineans, no matter how much they dislike Americans or love Der Führer, do not want naval battles in the Río de la Plata. Somebody high up in the government has told the Germans to do their submarine replenishment somewhere else. And that’s what they’re doing. They send supply U-boats from Europe and they rendezvous on the high seas.”

He waited a moment, and after Duarte nodded his understanding, went on: “I know—but they don’t know I know—that my aircraft mechanic, his name is Carlos Olivo, works for Martín. So Martín knows that every time our radar picks up something interesting, a ship we don’t know about, I get in the Lodestar and fly out over the muddy waters of the Río de la Plata and have a look at it. If it’s suspicious, Martín gets an ‘anonymous’ call. Martín knows where it comes from. I keep my people on the estancia, and Martín doesn’t come onto the estancia looking for them or the radar, or ask where I’ve been in the Lodestar.”

“You seem pretty sure of all this,” Duarte said.

“I am. Now, while I have no idea why President Roosevelt wants an airline down here—”

“Roosevelt? That’s where this idea comes from?”

Frade nodded. “There’s all sorts of possibilities, one being that he wants to stick it to Juan Trippe of Panagra, but I just don’t know. Anyway, it has nothing to do with what I’m doing for the OSS. I’ll see to that.

“Martín, being Martín, will suspect otherwise. I would, in his shoes. So what I have to do is convince him that I’m as pure as the driven snow. To that end, the pilots of this airline will be Argentine. The whole operation, except for maintenance supervisors and some American airline pilots who will come down here to train the pilots and maintenance people and set it up, will be Argentine. And the cherry on the cake will be that my Tío Juan will be one of the investors and play an active role. I don’t know if he’ll be suspicious or not.”

“You can count on it that he will, Cletus.”

“Then good. Let him snoop wherever he wants to. There will be nothing for him to find, because there will be nothing.”

“You said you want Perón to be one of the investors.”

“Right.”

“Before we get to who the others might be, where is Perón going to get the money to invest? He doesn’t have anything but his army pay.”

“The Anglo-Argentine Bank is going to loan it to him. When I talk to the sonofabitch, I’m going to tell him that I’m absolutely confident that the Anglo-Argentine Bank would be delighted to loan an important man, such as himself, whatever he needed for this business venture.”

“The board won’t like that,” Duarte said. “Where’s the collateral?”

“You’ve just been telling me how wise I would be to be nice to the sonofabitch, that he’s destined to become really important. Tell the board the same thing.”

“If you’re going to be in business with him, it might be a good idea for you to stop referring to him as ‘the sonofabitch.’ ”

“Yes or no? If necessary, I’ll guarantee his loan, but I’d rather he thought I had nothing to do with it. And that Martín learned that, too.”

Duarte didn’t reply directly. “And the other investors?”

“Why do I think you’re not slobbering at the mouth to get a piece of my get-rich-quick scheme?”

“Because I’m a banker, and I recognize a risky venture when I see one. Who else, Cletus?”

“My father-in-law, for one. Señora Carzino-Cormano, for another, and possibly even—I don’t know if she has any money—Señora Alicia Carzino-Cormano de von Wachtstein.”

“Alicia? Because of her husband?”

“How could I possibly be doing something anti-German with my airline if the wife of Major Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein is a major investor? I suspect the Germans would tell him to get as close to it as he could.”

“But not with the money we hope the German embassy doesn’t know about?”

Frade shook his head.

“Not with that money, no,” he said. “I don’t care who the investors will be so long as I hold sixty percent. I need fifty-one percent for control, and the other nine because I don’t want something unexpected to happen that will cut my piece below fifty-one percent.”

Duarte looked at him for a long moment.

“Cletus, you are very much like your father,” he said. “Remembering your father showing up in the Third Floor Lounge drunk as an owl and in full gaucho regalia—which happened more than once—I was not surprised to see you there, in cowboy boots and tie-less. But I confess I am surprised a little to see that you also have his business acumen. You’ve given this airline idea a good deal of thought, haven’t you?”

Frade nodded, then said, “Does that mean you’re not dismissing the idea out of hand as lunatic?”

“Actually, it seems like a pretty good idea. I’ll have to ask some questions, and give it some thought, of course.”

“Of course. Thank you, Humberto.”