Death and Honor

[ONE]

Aboard Varig Flight 525 Above Durazno, Uruguay 1505 17 July 1943

“Yes, I would. Thank you very much,” Cletus Frade said in response to the stewardess’s question if he would like another glass of merlot.

“And me, too, if you please,” Gonzalo Delgano said, flashing his most dazzling smile at her.

And then he watched her walk forward in the cabin.

“I forgot about that,” Frade said. “But you really are going to enjoy that, aren’t you, Señor Jefe de Pilotos?”

“Forgot about what?”

“You get to pick the stewardesses.”

“Excuse me?”

“You ever see an American football game, Gonzo?”

“In the newsreels,” Delgano said, confused.

“All those enormous young men, rushing at each other, knocking each other down, getting their teeth knocked out, breaking their arms and legs?”

Delgano nodded.

“Ever wonder why they do it?”

“It is sort of brutal, isn’t it?”

“In the newsreels you saw, did they show the cheerleaders?”

“Excuse me?”

“The pretty young girls in short skirts bouncing around?” He raised his arms above his head in a punching motion. “ ‘Go Aggies! Go Aggies!’ They’re called ‘cheerleaders.’ ”

“Yes, now that you mention it. Very interesting.”

“That’s why they do it,” Clete said seriously.

“That’s why who does what?”

“The young men are so willing to have their arms broken and their teeth knocked out. The winning team gets their pick of the cheerleaders. If you score more than twelve points, you get two.”

Delgano looked at him in shock, then realized his chain had been pulled.

“Holy Mother of God, Cletus, for a moment I actually believed you.”

“Same thing with chief pilots,” Frade said. “If he doesn’t dump more than one airplane in six months, or forget to put the wheels down for the same period of time, he gets his pick of the stewardesses.”

Delgano shook his head in disbelief.

“If I didn’t know better, I would think you’re a lunatic.”

The stewardess returned with their wine.

“My friend here tells me you can’t get to be a Varig stewardess unless you are forty years old or the mother of three or more children,” Frade said to her. “I told my friend that couldn’t possibly be true. Is it?”

“Do I look like I’m forty? Or have children?”

“That’s what I told him,” Frade said, nodding agreeably. “As I said, I didn’t believe it.”

“You will have to excuse him, señorita,” Delgano said, his face flushed with embarrassment. “He’s a norteamericano, and they’re all crazy.”

Frade pulled his Argentine passport from his suit jacket and held it out to the stewardess.

“Two glasses of wine and he gets like that. I wouldn’t give him any more, if I were you.”

The stewardess smiled brightly at Frade, gave Delgano a dirty look, and retreated down the aisle.

Delgano shook his head again.

“I’m glad I did that,” Clete said.

“You mean, made an ass of yourself?”

“A chief pilot is not permitted to lose his temper. You might want to write that down. No, what I meant was take my passport out.”

“I’m afraid to ask why.”

“Because it reminded me I’m an Argentine citizen.”

“You remembered! But what does that mean?”

“When we get to Pôrto Alegre, I think it would be best if you dealt with the local officials.”

“Now I’m really afraid to ask why.”

“Well, the last time I was here—when I picked up my Lodestar—I left under something less than ideal conditions.”

“Meaning what?”

“I now understand that the tower was ordering me to return immediately. But I don’t speak Portuguese, so I didn’t understand him, and kept going.”

“Holy Mother of Christ!”

“Well, actually, I did understand him, but I really didn’t want to go back and have to explain who the people I had aboard were, and why we hadn’t gone through immigration.”

“Ashton and the others and the radar,” Delgano said, shaking his head.

El Capitán Gonzalo Delgano of the Bureau of Internal Security had been waiting at the landing strip of the Second Cavalry Regiment in Santo Tomé when Cletus Frade had landed the Lodestar after flying it there from Pôrto Alegre.

There had been an unofficial arrangement with senior officers involved with Operation Blue for Clete to use the Santo Tomé airstrip to get the Lodestar into Argentina against Brazilian wishes. They wanted it available to Generals Ramírez and Rawson—and other senior officers—so they could flee the country if the coup d’état failed.

Clete had seen this as an opportunity to get Team Turtle—and more important, the radar—off the American air base in Pôrto Alegre and into Argentina surreptitiously and without running the risk of having the radar grabbed by either Brazilian or Argentine authorities.

It would have worked had not the decision to put Operation Blue into action been made. This meant that the Operation Blue officers needed the airplane at Campo de Mayo as soon as possible, and Delgano had been sent to Santo Tomé to make sure they got it.

The discovery that the Lodestar carried a heavily armed OSS team and a radar set complicated things more than a little. Clete announced that if Delgano and the BIS arrested Team Turtle they could get someone else to fly the Lodestar—knowing they had no one qualified to do so.

In the end, in the opinion of then-Lieutenant Colonel Martín of BIS, who by then had allied himself with Generals Ramírez and Rawson, having the plane available overrode all other considerations. Team Turtle and its radar had gone to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, and Clete had flown the Lodestar to Campo de Mayo.

The coup d’état was successful. Martín and Delgano were promoted for their contributions, and neither of them seemed to recall that there were half a dozen American OSS agents operating a radar station and doing only God knew what else on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.

“Yeah,” Clete said. “Ashton and the others and the radar.”

“I didn’t know this before,” Delgano said.

“Yeah, I know. For all I know, the Brazilians have stopped looking for an American name C. Frade. And I am now an Argentinean businessman with the same name, a passport to prove it, and intend to cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s when we go through immigration at Pôrto Alegre. Having said that, I still think it would be best if you dealt with the Brazilian authorities.”

Delgano considered that and nodded.

“You’re an amazing man, Cletus. Nothing you do surprises me anymore. I wouldn’t be surprised if you had Frogger and his wife in your luggage.”

“Who?” Clete asked, smiled, and raised his glass of merlot to Delgano.