Honor Bound

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HONOR

BOUND

I would like to thank Mr. William W. Duffy II, of the United States Embassy in Buenos Aires, and Colonel Jose Manuel Men?ndez, 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 10 August 1993

Chapter One

[ONE]

Henderson Field

Guadalcanal. Solomon Islands

0645 1 October 1942

Three Grumman F4F Wildcats approached Henderson Field from the west in a shallow descent from 15,000 feet.

These three single-engine fighters represented one hundred percent of the aircraft available to Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-221—which put them at thirteen planes short of the sixteen they were authorized. The Cactus Air Force, and ultimately the United States Marine Corps, obviously had to do something.

The remaining pilots of VMF-221 had heard two fairly credible rumors about what they would do.

According to the most pleasant rumor, any day now they would return to Henderson and find the taxiways and sandbag revetments crowded with sixteen glistening, new, well-maintained Wildcats of a Marine fighter squadron flown in from an aircraft carrier to replace VMF-221.

To those who desperately wished to believe this rumor, it didn't make much sense to send replacement aircraft and pilots to a squadron that had already suffered a loss of two hundred twenty percent of its original aircraft and seventy percent of its original complement of pilots. The only sensible solution was to bring in a fresh squadron.

The other theory attempted to account for the reason why VMF-221 had neither received enough aircraft and pilots to replace operational losses, nor had been relieved and replaced by a fresh Marine Fighter Squadron. According to this rumor, the plan was to replace all Marine aircraft with planes, pilots, and maintenance personnel of the U.S. Army Air Corps.

It was almost a matter of faith among Marines on Guadalcanal that somewhere in the rear areas was a vast cornucopia of U.S. Army Air Corps materiel and personnel perfectly suited for service on the island; all that had to be done to start this wealth flowing to Guadalcanal was for the Army brass—in particular General Douglas MacArthur—to belatedly recognize that the Army and the Marine Corps were on the same side in this war.

Those who were looking for proof of the Army Air Corps' materiel wealth and their ability to send some of it to Guadalcanal seemed to find it whenever Boeing B-17 "Flying Fortresses"— huge four-engine bombers with an eight-man crew—appeared at Henderson Field. The squadron of Bell P-40 fighters stationed at the field offered further proof... to those looking for it.

True, the B-17s didn't hit Japanese warships with any notable consistency, and the P-40s had arrived without the proper oxygen systems and thus couldn't operate above 12,000 feet. But that did nothing to dissuade the We Will Be Relieved By The Army Air Corps theorists of VMF-221. The B-17s bristled with .50-caliber Browning machine-gun turrets, carried 500-pound bombs, and were larger than any planes the Marines or Navy had, while the Bell fighters mounted a through-the-propeller hub cannon larger than any weapon in the Marine Corps arsenal and were more effective in a ground-support role than the Wildcats.

As soon as the big brass came to their senses and realized how the Cactus Air Force was hanging on to Henderson Field by their fingernails (just as perilously as the Marine Corps was holding on to Guadalcanal itself), a finger would be snapped and a vast aerial armada of Army Air Corps aircraft would appear. Or so went the rumor.

The leader of the three-plane flight of VMF-221 Wildcats was unconvinced by both theories. He was First Lieutenant Cletus Howell Frade, USMCR, a lanky—hundred fifty-five pounds, just over six feet tall—dark-haired twenty-two-year-old.

Lieutenant Colonel Clyde W. Dawkins, USMC, Commanding Officer, Marine Air Group 21, had told him (and Frade believed him) that the Corps was not only fully aware that the First Marine Division and MAG-21 were indeed hanging on to Guadalcanal by their teeth, but was doing everything humanly possible to get them reinforced. With a little luck, it might be possible to find some planes somewhere, and an aircraft carrier to ferry them within flying distance of Guadalcanal. In the meantime, they would have to fight with what they had. It was not the first time in the history of the Marine Corps, Dawkins had reminded him, that Marines had been out on a limb fighting a nasty war in some miserable location without adequate supplies. And it would not be the last.

This information had led Cletus Frade to strongly suspect that he would not be going home from Guadalcanal in one piece. Or alive. The odds were against it. So far he had been lucky. Very lucky. But luck inevitably runs out. The odds increase to a point where, following the laws of probability, you lose.

He tried to avoid such thoughts, but that was impossible. So he tried to keep in mind what his uncle Jim had told him over and over: "There's no point worrying about things you can't control." Uncle Jim had raised him; but before that he'd been a Marine in France in World War I. So whenever Clete started to think about the growing probability that he would either be killed or badly injured, he tried to force his mind off the subject by imagining more attractive things.

Sometimes conjuring up the meal he intended to eat when he got home to New Orleans worked. But most often he turned to his memories of undraped female bodies. Recently, however, when he forced his mind off the unpleasant possibilities, he found himself turning more to food than to women. He supposed this was because he was undernourished and debilitated by the climate, like every other Marine on the 'Canal.

He weighed right at one-eighty when, fresh from Pensacola, he joined VMF-221—in time for the Battle of Midway. On 10 August, three days after the 1st Marine Division invaded the island, he was down to one-seventy. That was the day he flew a Wildcat off the ferry-carrier USS Long Island onto the airfield the Japanese had started and the Marines had made marginally operational. This had since become famous—or infamous—as Henderson Field (named after a Marine aviator who'd died at Midway).

He was now down to one fifty-five. His ribs showed under skin that was dotted and pocked with the festering bites of tropical insects. When he brushed his teeth, the brush came away bloody; and his tongue could move both his incisors and some of his other teeth.

Every one of the original F4Fs was gone—some shot down in daily combat, some crashed on landing or takeoff, and some destroyed by Japanese naval artillery bombardment, or by Japanese bombers or Zeroes strafing the field. Sixteen of the original nineteen pilots were also gone—some lost in combat, some killed or injured in aircraft accidents, and three killed by Japanese twelve-inch naval artillery shells—while they were cowering like rats in holes in the sandy soil. And gone, too, were all but three of the replacement aircraft, and many of their pilots.

It was difficult to believe that he would be luckier than the others. It was much more likely that the name Frade, Cletus H., 1/LT would appear on some After Action Report followed by the letters KIA, or MIA, or WIA (Killed I n Action, Missing I n Action, Wounded In Action).

When Henderson Field appeared below, Clete reached up and pulled his goggles down over his eyes, then looked out his open cockpit to his right, at his wingman, who three days before had reported aboard VMF-221 as a replacement pilot. The new man's eyes were on him.

Clete made two gestures: He tapped his own goggles to order the new guy to put his goggles on. After that he pointed downward, then made a circular motion, signaling that they were to make a circular descent to the airfield. The new guy, with an exaggerated bobbing of his head, signaled that he understood his orders.

Clete then looked to the left and repeated the circular descent signal to the pilot of the F4F flying twenty-five feet off his wing-tip, and who already had his goggles in place. There was another exaggerated nodding of the head to signal his readiness to comply with his orders.

Clete took a final look at his instruments. Everything was in the green. He was sure that he had taken a couple of hits—indeed, there were fresh eruptions in the aluminum skin of his right wing—but apparently nothing important had been hit.

He pushed the nose of the Wildcat down and to the right, retarded the throttle, adjusted the prop, and began his descent.

A thousand feet indicated off the deck, he put the F4F into a much sharper turn, simultaneously pulled back on his stick, and released the cog that held his wheels in place. The forces of gravity came into play, pulling the wheels from the retracted position. The manual crank one was supposed to use for this spun rapidly and more than a little dangerously, but the wheels came down. The forces-of-gravity technique was specifically prohibited by U.S. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics regulations, but BuAir regulations seemed irrelevant on the 'Canal.

He leveled off, headed out to sea, turned, and made a straight-in, shallow approach to Henderson. Several B-17s were parked near the Pagoda—the control tower—and three F4Fs were on the taxiway by the threshold of the runway, waiting to take off.

The moment his wheels touched down, he knew he was in trouble. The Wildcat veered sharply to the right, taken over by forces far too strong for him to overcome using his rudder.

Time seemed to move very slowly as adrenaline started to pump.

Either my right wheel is gone, or the strut is not fully lowered.

No. I would already have started to cartwheel.

I'm going off the runway, that's for sure.

What I've probably got is a punctured tire.

The choice is to stick with it and see what happens— which means I will either run into a revetment or a parked airplane. If I don't cartwheel first. Or to take my chances putting the nose in the ground— which means I will turn over.

He cut the master switch, released the wheels lock, and shoved the stick forward.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then came a screech of tortured metal as the propeller bit into the earth. And he felt himself being thrown against his shoulder harness with a force infinitely stronger than an arrested landing on an aircraft carrier.

And then the F4F flipped over on its back, and there was a horrifying screech of tearing metal as it slid across the field.

And then, with a lurch that threw him against the side of the cockpit, the airplane stopped.

He tried to move and couldn't.

You've got to get out of here. Dead switch or not, this thing is going to blow up.

He managed to put his hands on the shoulder and seat-belt buckle, and to lift it. He fell out of the airplane onto the ground.

My God, I can't move! What did I do, break my back?

I can smell avgas!

Worse, he could see it leaking from a ruptured tank.

I don't want to go this way!

He managed to start crawling. Every breath hurt, and he was convinced he had broken a rib, several ribs. He couldn't use his left arm. There was no pain, it just didn't work.

He crawled toward the tail, pushing himself with his feet.

God, don't let me burn!

And then hands, strong hands, were clutching the thin material of his Suit, Flying, Cotton, Tropical.

He was dragged across the ground.

More than one guy has to be doing that. Two.

There was the-whoosh of gasoline igniting.

Whoever was dragging him stopped doing that, and suddenly someone was lying on top of him. The weight hurt his ribs.

After a moment, a voice said: "I don't think it's going to blow up."

Some of the weight pressing him into the ground came off. Then the rest of it.

"You all right, Lieutenant?" a voice asked.

"I don't know," Clete replied, truthfully.

He tried to roll over, to get his face out of the dirt.

Strong hands pressed him back.

"I think you better wait until the Corpsmen show up before you try to move," a voice said—a suggestion that was in fact an order.

God, he thinks my neck is broken! Or my back! Is that why I don't feel any pain, except when I breathe?

He heard the sound of a jeep engine approaching, and then the particular squeal of a jeep's brakes.

And then there were hands, fingers probing him.

"You with us, Lieutenant?" a gruff but surprisingly gentle voice inquired.

"Yeah."

"It looks like you bent your airplane," the voice said. "Can you move your legs?"

Clete moved them.

"How about your arms?"

"I know I can move the right one," Clete said, and demonstrated.

"I'm going to roll you on your back. If it starts to hurt, yell."

It hurt, but he didn't feel much real pain.

He found himself staring up into the face of a rough-hewn Navy Corpsman, who looked far younger than Clete imagined from hearing his voice.

The Corpsman was manipulating his left arm.

"Any pain?"

"It feels like it's asleep."

The Corpsman pinched his upper arm painfully.

"Hey!"

"How about here?" The Corpsman chuckled, and painfully pinched the skin on the back of his hand.

Clete said, "Shit."

"It looks like you had a good landing, Lieutenant," the Corpsman said.

"What?" Clete asked incredulously.

"I thought you guys say any landing you can walk away from is a good one."

"I didn't walk away," Clete argued. "Somebody dragged me."

"Close enough," the Corpsman said. "What we're going to do now is put you on a stretcher, haul you to the hospital, and let a doctor have a look at you."

Lieutenant Colonel Clyde W. Dawkins, USMC, walked up to the hospital bed of First Lieutenant Cletus H. Frade, USMCR. Dawkins was commanding officer of Marine Air Group 21. He was a tall, thin, sharp-featured man in the middle stage of male-pattern baldness, and he was wearing khakis, sweat-stained at the armpits and down the back. Over his arm he carried a Suit, Flying, Cotton, Tropical; a T-shirt; and a pair of skivvy shorts.

"I have been led to believe, Lieutenant Frade," he said, handing Clete the clothing, "that you have once again disgraced the United Marine Corps. I am here to rectify that situation."

This was intended as a joke, but was not received that way. Frade's face showed embarrassment, even humiliation.

"Clete, for Christ's sake, that was a joke," Dawkins went on hastily. "Believe me, you are not the first aviator who ... had a small bowel problem... going through something like you just went through. Including your beloved MAG commander."

"I used to think that 'shitting your pants' was just a figure of speech," Clete said.

"Now you know it's not," Dawkins said. "I'm just surprised this was your first time."

"Sorry about the airplane. Skipper," Clete said, wanting to get off the subject.

"What happened?"

"It veered to the right on touchdown. I probably had a flat; I don't think the strut collapsed."

"Feinberg told, me he saw you taking hits from the tail gunner of the Betty ..." Dawkins said, referring to a Japanese bomber aircraft.

Feinberg? Who the hell is Feinberg? Oh, the New Guy.

"... just before her wing came off," Dawkins went on. "How many does that make, Clete?"

"I thought I felt something," Clete said, sitting up on the cot to demonstrate with his hands the relative positions of the aircraft. "I took her from above and to the left, and was pulling up..."

He was naked under the sheet, and Dawkins noticed the ulcerated insect bites and the ugly blue-black of his left arm and shoulder.

He must have really slammed into the side of the cockpit,Dawkins thought. I'm surprised nothing was broken.

"How many does that make, Clete?" Dawkins asked again.

Clete shrugged.

"Don't tell me you don't know," Dawkins chided.

"Six. The Betty was confirmed?" Dawkins nodded. "Then seven," Clete finished.

"Seven is enough to be a certified hero," Dawkins said.

"Sir?"

"There was a radio overnight," Dawkins said. "Right from Eighth and Eye.(Headquarters, USMC, is located at Eighth and "I" Streets in Washington. D.C.) Your name has apparently been added to the roster of certified heroes."

"Sir, I don't under—"

"The War Bond Tour, Clete," Dawkins explained. "A dozen certified heroes have been chosen to tour the West Coast to inspire civilians to buy War Bonds, or maybe to rush to the recruiting office. Maybe both. Anyway, you're on it."

Don't get your hopes up. At the last minute something will happen and they'll change their minds.

"I thought you had to have a medal to get that."

"Your DFC, your second, has come through."

"When would I go?"

"The radio said 'will proceed immediately.' So if you feel up to it, you can be on this afternoon's R4D to Espiritu Santo." The R4D was the Navy/Marine Corps version of the Douglas DC-3 (C-47) transport aircraft.

"No shit?" Clete blurted.

"A particularly inappropriate vulgarism, wouldn't you say, Mr. Frade, under the circumstances?"

Frade blushed. This made him look even younger than his twenty-two years.

"Frade, you're one hell of a pilot and a good Marine. I'm going to miss you around here."

Frade blushed even deeper.

"Can I ask a favor?" Dawkins asked.

"Yes, Sir. Of course."

"Stop by the office. Say, at 1400. Precisely, as a matter of fact, at 1400. The R4D leaves at 1430. I'd be grateful if you would mail a letter for me, to my wife, when you get to the States."

"Yes, Sir, of course. 1400."

I did not tell him,Dawkins thought, that there will also be a small ceremony waiting for him then, during which the Commanding General of the First Marine Division will pin the Distinguished Flying Cross (Second Award) on his chest. Like most good Marine officers, he is made uncomfortable by such events. He just might not show up. And I do want him to mail the letter to my wife.

"I'm glad you walked away from that one, Clete," Dawkins said, offering him his hand.

"I'm sorry I wrecked the airplane, Colonel."

"What the hell, Clete, when we run out of airplanes, maybe they'll call the war off."

[TWO]

Headquarters, Sixth Army

Stalingrad, USSR

3 October 1942

Oberstleutnant Wilhelm von Steamer waited patiently just inside the closed office door until the tall, taciturn, fifty-two-year-old commander of the Sixth Army, General Friedrich von Paulus, raised his eyes from the documents on his desk and indicated without speaking that he was prepared to hear what von Steamer had on his mind. He then came to attention.

"Herr General, BrigadeF?hrervon Neibermann asks for a moment of your time. He says it's quite important."

Waffen-SS BrigadeF?hrerLuther von Neibermann was Political Adviser to the Sixth Army. Like many—perhaps most—military commanders, von Paulus did not like political advisers. They got in the way of military operations, for one thing. For another, they had their own lines of communication to Berlin, over which they offered their own opinions of the conduct of the operations they were involved in. Von Paulus did not consider himself above criticism, but criticism from someone who was not a professional soldier was hard to swallow.

Waffen-SS BrigadeF?hrerLuther von Neibermann's rank was honorary. Before the war he was in the Foreign Ministry, where he had early on been smart enough to align himself with the National Socialists. In von Paulus's opinion, he had risen higher in the Foreign Ministry hierarchy than he had any right to, based on his intelligence and his suitability. He was a short, paunchy, bald man of forty-two, who looked ludicrous in his black uniform with the death's-head insignia. Von Paulus loathed him, and what he stood for; but he was of course careful not to let his feelings show.

More than one senior officer's military career had ended when unsupported and unjustified accusations of defeatism had been leveled by a political adviser. Von Paulus was determined that wasn't going to happen to him.

"Did he say what's on his mind?" von Paulus asked.

"He said it was a sensitive matter of importance."

"Ask the BrigadeF?hrerto come in, please."

Von Steamer turned and opened the door.

"The General will see you now, Herr Brigadefuhrer," he announced.

Von Neibermann marched in, crossed over to von Paulus's desk, and clicked his heels, then gave the stiff-armed Nazi salute and the now ritual greeting, "Heil Hitler!"

Von Paulus touched his forehead with a gesture that might have been a salute, muttered something that might have been "Heil Hitler," and then met von Neibermann's eyes.

"How may I be of service, Herr Brigadefuhrer?"

“Herr General, it is with deep regret that I must inform you of the death in battle of StandartenF?hrervon Zainer."

Von Paulus was genuinely sorry to hear this. He knew von Zainer. He had never quite understood why a man of good family, with a strong military heritage, had elected to transfer to the Waffen-SS—even though that was the path to more rapid promotion than he would have found in the Panzertruppen. All the same, von Zainer had been a good, even outstanding soldier, first in Poland, then in France, and now here.

"I am very sorry to hear that," von Paulus said. "Are you familiar with the circumstances?"

"The Standartenfuhrer was making an aerial reconnaissance, Herr General. His Storch was shot down."

The Fieseler Storch was a single-engine, two-place observation aircraft, the German equivalent of the Piper Cub.

"The fortunes of war," von Paulus said.

It was typical of von Zainer to personally conduct his own reconnaissance, with the risk that entailed, although such actions were officially frowned upon for senior officers (a Waffen-SS Standartenfuhrer held a rank equivalent to an Oberst, or colonel). But von Zainer probably had his reasons, von Paulus decided. And now he was dead, so criticism was out of place.

"He had Captain Duarte with him, Herr General."

Von Paulus's raised eyebrows told von Neibermann that the name meant nothing to him.

"The Argentine, Herr General," von Neibermann explained. "Hauptmann Jorge Alejandro Duarte."

Von Paulus, now remembering, was genuinely sorry to hear this too. The young Argentine Cavalry captain had been an extraordinarily nice-looking young man; and during the few minutes of the Argentine's courtesy call, von Paulus had realized that Duarte did not view his attachment as an observer as a vacation from his duties at his embassy in Berlin but as a learning experience for a professional officer.

"I don't quite understand," von Paulus said.

"Captain Duarte volunteered to fly the mission, Herr General."

Von Paulus now remembered Hauptmann Duarte telling him— with the enthusiasm of a young, energetic officer—that he had asked for and been granted a detail to the Aviaci?n Militar branch of the Argentinean Army. In his words: "Aircraft are the cavalry of the future."

He was not supposed to do that,von Paulus thought. He was an Argentine. Argentina is neutral. Taking an active role was a violation of the Geneva Convention.

Not that the Russians would have paid any attention to his neutral status if they'd been able to lay their hands on him. That was probably his rationale for doing what he should not be doing.

"Have we recovered the bodies?" von Paulus asked.

"Von Zainer's men recovered them within minutes, Herr General," von Neibermann said admiringly. "The Storch went down in the Volga."

If the Russians had found the bodies and had recognized an Argentinean uniform, there might have been complications,von Paulus thought. And then he wondered, Is that what's bothering von Neibermann?

"Be so good, Herr Brigadefuhrer, to inform me of the time of the burial service. I would like to attend."

"Herr General, there are political ramifications of this unfortunate incident."

"You mean because he was flying the airplane when he should not have been?"

"I mean because he died fighting communism."

"I don't quite follow you, Herr Brigadefuhrer."

"I think the body should not be buried here," von Neibermann said. "It should be escorted to Berlin, and turned over to the Argentinean Ambassador. I would not be at all surprised if they wished to repatriate it."

Von Paulus said nothing. He waited, his face impassive, for von Neibermann to continue.

"There is enormous propaganda potential in this incident, Herr General," von Neibermann said. "This brave officer's unfortunate death at the hands of the communists could well serve to maintain—indeed, to buttress—Argentine sympathy for our cause."

"What exactly do you think I should do, von Neibermann?"

"I believe Captain Duarte's remains should be transported to Berlin immediately, by air. I have been informed that your permission, Herr General, is required for space on a transport aircraft."

"The transport aircraft are being used to evacuate our badly wounded," von Paulus said, thinking aloud. "And officer couriers."

"I respectfully submit, Herr General, that this is an extraordinary circumstance."

"Very well," von Paulus said, and raised his voice: "Von Steamer!"

Oberstleutnant von Steamer appeared almost immediately.

"Arrange for a priority for Brigadefuhrer von Neibermann to transport a body to Berlin..."

"For the body and myself," von Neibermann added. "I think under the circumstances that is appropriate."

And it will give you a chance to go to Berlin, won't it? And regale the Austrian Corporal and his henchmen with tales of your bravery at Stalingrad? Perhaps with a little luck, you might not have to come back.

"Do it, please, Willi," von Paulus said.

"Jawohl, Herr General," von Steamer said.

[THREE]

Headquarters, Company "A"

76th Parachute Engineer Battalion

82nd Airborne Division

Fort Bragg, North Carolina

1345 5 October 1942

Captain John R. McGuire, commanding Able Company of the Seventy-sixth, had not been told why it had been deemed necessary to demolish and remove from the site the World War I power-generating station. The stocky, muscular, twenty-four-year-old graduate of West Point had been informed only mat his company was charged with the mission.

The station was situated in a remote corner of the enormous Fort Bragg reservation on what was now a 105- and 155-mm artillery impact area. It consisted of several sturdy brick buildings, now gutted, and a 150-foot brick chimney. The rusting hulks of half a dozen World War I Ford-built tanks were scattered around it, as if protecting it. Most of these were half buried in the ground, and were also now showing scars where they had been hit by artillery.

The mission could be regarded in two ways: As a dirty, unnecessary job dreamed up by some jackass at Division Headquarters. In an artillery impact area, it would be just a matter of time until the chimney and the buildings around it were reduced to rubble. Or as an opportunity to give his men some realistic, hands-on training in demolitions and using bulldozers and other heavy equipment.

Captain McGuire elected to see the mission in the latter regard. He thus received permission from Battalion to delay the prescribed company training for five days, successfully arguing that it would benefit the men of his company more not only to practice their skills, but to become familiar with how other specialists performed their duties.

In other words, the entire company would watch the second platoon rig explosive charges on the chimney and the gutted buildings (these would be designed to knock the chimney down and reduce the massive brickwork to large chunks). Then the entire company would watch the first platoon, using air-hammers, reduce the large chunks of masonry to sizes which the third pla toon would then load onto trucks and haul away. During all of these operations, everyone would lend a hand, wherever possible; they'd all get their hands dirty. Finally, everyone would get a chance to watch the company's bulldozers scrape the area and turn it back into bare ground.

Since Captain McGuire thought of himself as something of an expert in the skills required for this project, he had given it a good deal of thought. In his judgment, it would take two days to lay the initial demolition charges. Using the available engineer manuals, he had precisely calculated the explosive needed to topple the chimney and shatter the brickwork of the surrounding buildings.

It would then take another two days, using both explosives and air-hammers, to reduce the chunks to manageable sizes, and a final day to load everything up, truck it off, and bulldoze the site.

He had kept this information to himself. In his view, the best way for his platoon-leading lieutenants to learn how to do something was to do it themselves—using the available manuals as a guide, of course.

Because Second Lieutenant Anthony J. Pelosi commanded his second platoon, he was charged with toppling the tower. After Pelosi surveyed the site, he came up with an Explosives Requirement that, in Captain McGuire's judgment, was woefully insufficient for the task.

Even so, McGuire decided to let Pelosi fail. When Pelosi blew his charges and the chimney and the buildings still stood, he would learn the painful and humiliating truth that he didn't know nearly as much about demolitions as he thought he did.

Pelosi's overconfidence was perhaps understandable. Very soon after he arrived in Able Company, Pelosi informed McGuire that in Chicago, where he came from, his family operated a firm called Pelosi and Sons Salvage Company; his father was one of the sons. McGuire instantly concluded that the firm was connected with used auto parts or something of that nature; but that did not turn out to be the case. Rather, the business involved the salvage of bridges, water tanks, and other steel-framed structures. The first step in the salvage process, Lieutenant Pelosi went on to explain, was knocking the structure down. This was normally accomplished by explosives.

While he was not arrogant about it—Pelosi was really a nice kid, who had the makings of a good officer—he was nonetheless unable to conceal his conviction that he knew more about explosives and demolition than anyone he'd met in the Army.

After Pelosi gave him his Explosives Requirement list, his more than a little annoying aura of self-confidence inspired McGuire to go back and recalculate the explosives necessary for the job. Recalculation confirmed McGuire's belief that all Pelosi's charges were going to do was make a lot of noise.

Captain McGuire's major problem with Pelosi, however, was not his misplaced self-confidence, but his application for transfer. McGuire was trying to be philosophical about it.

For one thing, he told himself, no officer is indispensable. Losses of officers, either through routine transfers or eventually in combat, were inevitable; and as commanding officer, he should be prepared to deal with them. For another, when a young, full-of-piss-and-vinegar second lieutenant, fresh from both Officer Candidate School and the Parachute School at Fort Benning (in other words, he had volunteered for both OCS and Airborne), saw a notice on the Bulletin Board soliciting volunteers for an unspecified military intelligence assignment—volunteers who were parachute-qualified officers fluent in one or more of a dozen listed foreign languages—it was to be expected that he would volunteer.

Lieutenant Pelosi was not quite old enough to vote; and, Captain McGuire was quite sure, he had not yet lost either his boyish enthusiasm or his boyish taste for adventure. He almost certainly saw himself parachuting behind enemy lines, Thompson submachine gun in hand, a la Alan Ladd or Tyrone Power in the movies. On the ground, when he was not blowing up Mussolini's headquarters, he'd spend his time in the arms of some large-breasted Italian beauty. (He was fluent in Italian; where else could they send him?)

If real life actually worked that way, McGuire thought, he would have been happy to see Pelosi go. But McGuire had been around the Army, long enough—his father, also a West Pointer, had just been promoted to Brigadier General—to view somewhat suspiciously the recruitment of parachute-qualified officers with foreign language skills.

Military Intelligence, for example, needed people to read the Osservatore, the Vatican newspaper, to see if there was anything there that could remotely be of interest to the U.S. Army. After receiving permission to recruit volunteers, Military Intelligence had decided to recruit from the Airborne Forces, since a selection process eliMi?ating all but the most intelligent and highly moti vated officers had already been performed.

Captain McGuire did not believe that Military Intelligence would be crippled if Second Lieutenant Pelosi did not join its ranks. Able Company, however, needed him. He possessed a quality of leadership that McGuire to a large degree found missing in his other lieutenants.

McGuire was therefore determined to retain at all costs the services of Second Lieutenant Pelosi in Able Company.

First he tried to counsel the young officer, suggesting to him that he could make a greater contribution to the war effort right here in Able Company than he could reading the Vatican newspaper behind a desk someplace. When that failed (Pelosi was polite but adamant), McGuire wrote what he frankly thought was a masterful 1st Indorsement to Pelosi's application for transfer, outlining his present value to Able Company and his potential usefulness in the future, and recommending that for the good of the service, the application should not be favorably considered.

He then led the Battalion Sergeant Major to understand that he would not be heartbroken if Lieutenant Pelosi's application for transfer became lost.

Next, he tried, and failed, to have the battalion commander declare Pelosi as essential, and thus ineligible for transfer.

"The only thing you can do is talk him out of it, Red," the battalion commander said. "There's nothing I can do to keep the application from going forward."

That had been more than a month ago, long enough for Captain McGuire to begin to hope that Pelosi's application would never reemerge from the maw of Army administration—like so many other documents inserted into it.

But this morning it had finally surfaced.

And now there was one last hope ... because it actually looked like MI had sort of shot themselves in the foot: When Pelosi saw what they'd done, he could, after consideration, withdraw his application for transfer. An officer could change his mind about a volunteer assignment. People decided every day, for example, that they'd rather not jump out of airplanes anymore. Since parachute duty was voluntary, they could quit. This MI assignment was also voluntary; Pelosi could change his mind about it.

When the charges Pelosi had been laying all morning (in half the time McGuire felt was necessary to do a proper job) failed to do more than make noise, a chastened, humiliated Second Lieutenant Pelosi might be willing to listen to reason. Instead of jumping all over his ass, McGuire was going to be kind and understanding.

When McGuire's jeep reached the power station, he found the company scattered over a small rise two hundred yards from the chimney, some on the ground, some sitting on trucks and three-quarter-ton dozers, scrapers, and the flatbed tractors that had carried them to the site.

When they saw the company commander's jeep, some of the noncoms started moving among the men, to get them up and at least looking interested.

McGuire turned toward the chimney and saw Second Lieutenant Pelosi coming out of one of the gutted buildings. He signaled for his driver to head for the chimney.

When he drove up, Second Lieutenant Anthony J. Pelosi saluted crisply, smiled, and said, "Good afternoon, Sir. I'm glad you could come out. I'm just about ready to blow this sonofabitch."

McGuire returned the salute.

"I'm glad you waited until I came out here, Pelosi," McGuire said, more than a little annoyed.

Pelosi picked up on the sarcasm.

"Sir," he said, a little uneasily. "The Captain did not say he wished to be here when I blew it."

No, I didn't,McGuire realized. It never entered my mind that you would come close to having your charges in place before fifteen or sixteen hundred.

"No problem, Lieutenant. I'm here now. You say your charges are laid?"

"All I have to do is hook up the detonator, Sir. This was my final look-around."

"Well, let me have a look," McGuire said.

He gestured for his driver to take the jeep over to where the company waited for the show to start, then walked around the site, following the electrical cord to the various places Pelosi had laid his charges.

They were in much the same places he would have chosen himself, the difference being that he would have used at least twice as much explosive.

"You're sure you're using enough explosive?"

"Yes, Sir. If anything, I used a little more than I had to."

That, Lieutenant, is the voice of ignorance speaking.

He noticed more wire on the ground and followed it with his eyes. The first pair disappeared under one of the derelict World War I tanks.

"Would you care to explain that to me, Lieutenant?"

Pelosi looked uncomfortable.

"Sir, it was my understanding that the Captain wanted this to be a familiarization exercise for the men."

"And?"

"Since I had a little extra stuff, and the time, I had some of the noncoms lay charges under those old tanks. I figured they would like to see something blow they had laid themselves."

"You didn't use all the stuff—the explosives—you asked for?"

"No, Sir," Pelosi said, and pointed to several canvas satchels. "Even after rigging the tanks, that was left over."

Pelosi, you are about to make a three-star horse's ass of yourself in front of the entire company. All they are going to see is a couple of puffs of smoke. I really hate to see that happen, but it's too late to do anything about it.

"Pelosi, you're sure about what you've done? The men expect to see that chimney come down."

"It'll come down, Sir. That's not my first chimney."

OK. A dose of humiliation is often just what a second lieutenant needs.

"I'll give you a hand with your excess explosives," McGuire said, and bent to pick up one of the canvas satchels. He started toward the rise where the company was waiting. Pelosi picked up the other satchel, caught up with him, and fell in step.

"You'll remember, Tony," McGuire began conversationally, "that I was suspicious of it when we talked about you volunteering for the Military Intelligence assignment?"

"Yes, Sir."

"There is no greater joy in a man's life, Pelosi, than being able to say, "I told you so."

"Sir?"

"Your orders are in," McGuire said, and, taking them from the lower right pocket of his field jacket, handed Pelosi a quarter-inch-thick stack of mimeograph paper.

HEADQUARTERS

82nd Airborne Division

Fort Bragg, N.C.

5 October 1942

SPECIAL ORDERS:

NUMBER 207:

EXTRACT

***************

56. 2nd Lt PELOSI, Anthony J 0-459967, CE, USAR, is relieved from Co ‘‘A’’ 76th Para Eng Bn, 82nd A/B Div this sta, and transferred to WP 4201st Army Detachment, National Institutes of Health Building, Washington D. C. AUTH: TWX Hq War Department, Subj: ‘‘Transfer of Officer’’ dtd 10 Oct 42. Off auth US Govt Rail Tvl. No Delay En Route Leave Is Auth. Off is not auth shipment of household goods or personal automobile, and is not authorized to be accompanied by dependents. Approp: S99-99999910.

***************

BY COMMAND OF MAJOR GENERAL RIDGWAY:

OFFICIAL:

Charles M. Scott, Jr.,

1st Lieutenant, AGC

Acting Adjutant

"The National Institutes of Health?" Lieutenant Pelosi asked wonderingly.

"Well, I told you it was going to turn out to be something like that," McGuire said. "But maybe, Pelosi, just maybe, I could go to the Colonel and see if he could get you out of this."

"You think he could?" Lieutenant Pelosi asked.

"Well, it wouldn't hurt to ask. I'll have the company clerk type up a letter for you, saying that you've changed your mind."

Lieutenant Pelosi looked at Captain McGuire but said nothing.

They were approaching the small rise. A network of wires leading from the chimney, the buildings, and the tanks came together at a waist-high wall of sandbags. Two noncoms were behind it, guarding a canvas-cased detonator.

"You mean you want to go to the Army detachment at the National Institutes of Health?" McGuire asked incredulously.

"What I want to do now, Sir, is take down that chimney," Pelosi said, walking toward the firing pit. "I don't like leaving primed charges laying around any longer than I have to."

If I don't get him to change his mind now, that's the end of it. He'll be so humiliated that he'll be willing to go to the National Institutes of Health as a ward boy.

The two noncoms came to attention.

"You two join the company on the hill," McGuire ordered, and waited until they had gone.

"You didn't need them anymore, did you, Pelosi?"

"I just wanted to know where the detonator was, Sir. I didn't want one of the men to start doing this himself."

He took the detonator and began to hook wires to it.

"Pelosi, I don't like to see an officer, any officer, but especially one I like and in whom I see a good deal of potential, embarrassed in front of his men."

"Sir?"

"The charges you laid, Lieutenant," McGuire said sternly, "are wholly inadequate. When you twist that handle, all you're going to get is a large bang and a puff of smoke. Now, what I'm going to do is call this off and lay them properly."

Pelosi met his eyes.

"Sir, with respect, when I blow this, the chimney will come down. If it doesn't, I'll withdraw my application for transfer."

Better to have him here, even humiliated, than to humiliate him by relaying his charges and then see him go.

"You have a deal, Lieutenant," McGuire said.

"With your permission, Sir?"

McGuire nodded.

"Fire in the Hole!" Pelosi shouted, in a surprisingly loud voice, repeated the shout twice, and then twisted the handle of the detonator.

McGuire looked at the chimney. As he expected, there was a dull explosion, a faint suggestion of fire, and a small cloud of smoke.

He looked at Pelosi. His face bore a look neither of surprise nor embarrassment, but of satisfaction.

McGuire turned back toward the chimney. As he watched, as if in slow motion, the 150-foot-tall brick chimney shuddered, then seemed to fall in on itself, settling toward the ground erect, in an almost gentle motion.

There were shouts from the men on the rise, and then applause.

McGuire saw now a large cloud of dust at the base of the chimney as it seemed to disintegrate in front of his eyes.

Pelosi had meanwhile connected a second set of wires to the generator. McGuire watched as he twisted the handle. There was now a rumbling roar from the crashing bricks, over which nothing could be heard, and the dust cloud at the base was thick, and nothing could be seen through it.

McGuire wondered if the second set of charges had gone off. But after a moment, he judged that they had, for the cloud at the base of the chimney had grown. Pelosi was already connecting a third set of wires to the detonator.

He waited the forty-five seconds or so necessary for most of the dust cloud on the ground to disperse enough to show everybody that the walls of the buildings were down, shattered into six-foot segments, and lying on their sides. Then he twisted the handle again.

This time there was a series of small explosions. After each, one of the World War I tanks flew into the air, one of them at least fifty feet.

McGuire met Pelosi's eyes as another burst of cheers and applause came from the company on the rise.

"The First Sergeant can collect this gear and get the company back to the Post. You can ride with me, and collect your gear, at the BOQ," Captain McGuire said. "I'll see about getting you a ride into Fayetteville. With a little bit of luck, you might be able to get a berth on the 7:05 to Washington."

Chapter Two

[ONE]

Schloss Wachtstein

Pomerania

8 October 1942

"You are talking treason, you realize," Generalmajor Graf Karl-Friedrich von Wachtstein said softly, without emotion. The short, slight, nearly bald fifty-four-year-old very carefully placed his crystal cognac snifter on the heavy table in his library, men leaned back in his chair, raised his eyes to Generalmajor Dieter von Haas, and waited for his old friend to reply.

"I am talking about saving Germany, Karl," von Haas said.

"The Austrian Corporal is protected by a regiment, each of whose members devoutly believes he is the salvation of Germany."

"He will destroy Germany, and you know it."

' 'You are not the first to come to me, Dieter,'' von Wachtstein said.

"I am ashamed that I was not."

"I told them all the same thing: I believe any attempt to assassinate Hitler is doomed to failure."

"So is Freddy von Paulus's mission at Stalingrad," von Haas interrupted.

"And that in the unlikely happenstance that such an attempt did succeed," von Wachtstein went on, ignoring him, "we might not—Germany might not—be at all better off. His successor would be Hermann Goering. We would exchange a psychopath for a drug addict. And upon the death of Herr Schicklgruber, the slime around him ... and I include the entire inner circle... would immediately put into operation their own plans to get rid of Hermann. There would be chaos."

"Wouldn't anything be better than what we have now, Karl?" von Haas asked.

"I'm not at all sure," von Wachtstein said.

"I thank you for hearing me out, Karl."

"I have not turned you down," von Wachtstein said.

"That's what it sounded like."

"I have a condition ... a price."

Von Haas could not quite mask his astonishment. And obviously to find time to carefully consider his reply, he leaned forward and picked up the bottle of Remy Martin and poured from it carefully into his glass.

"There would be, of course," von Haas began carefully, "a substantial realignment of the General Staff. I feel sure..."

"My God, Dieter!" von Wachtstein flared. "Have we grown so far apart that you really believed I was thinking of a promotion?"

Von Haas met his eyes.

"Karl!" he said, and shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

"I have given two sons to this war," von Wachtstein said. "I am thinking of the third. I am thinking of the family. This insanity will pass. I want a von Wachtstein around when it does."

"Peter," von Haas said.

"Peter," von Wachtstein repeated, nodding his head. "I have been thinking about honor. As strange and alien a concept as that has become. I have concluded that Peter has made all the contribution to this war, save giving his life, that honor demands."

"The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross," von Haas said.

"From the hands of the Austrian Corporal himself," von Wachtstein said. "He was in Spain with the Condor Legion, in Poland, Russia, and France. He has been five times shot down, and twice wounded."

"What do you want for him?"

"I want him out of the war and out of Germany."

"I don't quite understand."

"I want him assigned to some procurement mission, or some embassy as a military attach?. To some neutral country. Not Italy or Hungary or Japan. He speaks Spanish. Somewhere in Latin America."

"That will be difficult to arrange," von Haas said, thinking aloud.

"Dieter, if you don't have anyone high up in the Foreign Ministry, your coup doesn't have a chance. And I am not as important to your plans as you have suggested I am."

"I will see what can be arranged, Karl."

"You will arrange it, or this conversation never took place."

"Where is he now?"

"He commands a Jaeger squadron near Berlin. Focke-Wulf 190s."

"Oberstleutnant?"—First Lieutenant.

“Hauptmann"—Captain.

"He's young to be a Hauptmann."

"He was eighteen when he went to Spain as a Feldwebel"— a sergeant.

"After," von Haas chuckled, "he was sent down from Marburg, ('Philip's University, in Marburg an der Lahn, in Hesse. It was to Marburg that the Russian and East European royalty sent their children to be educated, and at Marburg that Roentgen discovered the X ray.)

I recall."

"You and I, Dieter, came very close to being sent down from

Marburg," von Wachtstein said. ;

"They were better times, weren't they?" von Haas said. He looked at his watch. "It's a long drive to Berlin. I'd better be going."

Von Wachtstein stood up.

"Understand, Dieter, that my desires for Peter are not wishful thinking. Your telling me that you're sorry, you tried, but it couldn't be arranged will not be enough."

"I understand," von Haas said, and put out his hand.

"What do they say in Spanish? 'Vaya con Dios'? Vaya con Dios, Dieter. Go with God."

Von Haas met his eyes, nodded, and turned and walked out of the room.

[TWO]

The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel

Los Angeles, California

12 October 1942

When Lieutenant Cletus Howell Frade, USMCR, stepped out of the tub onto a bath mat, the telephone was ringing.

He walked quickly, naked and dripping, into the bedroom to answer it, wondering both who it could be and how long the telephone had been ringing. It had been a long time since he'd had access to either unlimited hot water or privacy; he'd been in the shower for a long time.

He picked up the telephone on the bedside table.

"Hello?"

"¿El Teniente Frade?"

"S?, yo soy el Teniente Frade."

"Yo soy Graham, Teniente, Coronel A. F. Graham."

"Yes, Sir?"

"Are you alone, Lieutenant?" Graham asked, in Spanish.

"S?, mi Coronel."

"I'd like a word with you. Have you been drinking?"

"Not yet, mi Coronel."

Hell of a question,Clete thought, and a reply that was a little too flip for a lieutenant talking to a colonel.

"See if you can hold off for half an hour or so," Colonel Graham said, a chuckle in his voice. "I should be there by then. Nine twenty-one, right?"

"Yes, Sir."

The telephone went dead. Clete put the handset back in the cradle and walked toward the bedroom.

Jesus, did he speak Spanish to me?

I'll be damned if he didn't. That entire conversation was in Spanish. Pretty good Spanish at that. What the hell was that all about?

Clete dried himself slowly and carefully, partly to take advantage of the stack of thick, soft towels the hotel had so graciously provided for his comfort, and partly because his long exposure to soap and hot water had softened and loosened the scabs—perhaps twenty-five of them—on his legs and chest.

An incredible number of insects lived on Guadalcanal, and each variety there became addicted to Cletus's blood. Sometimes, it seemed as if they fought among themselves for the privilege of taking their dinner from him and leaving behind a wide variety of irritations. These ranged from small sting marks to thumbnail-size suppurating ulcers.

After he finished drying, Clete walked on the balls of his feet from the bathroom to the wood-and-canvas rack beside the chest of drawers that supported his suitcase. He took from it his toilet kit—once a gleaming brown leather affair, now looking like something a mechanic was about to discard. From this he took a jar of gray paste. Despite the assurances of the Medical Corps, U.S. Navy, that the stuff was the very latest miracle medicine to soothe what the doctors somewhat euphemistically called "minor skin irritations," he suspected that it was Vaseline.

He returned to the bathroom and with a practiced skill applied just enough of the greasy substance to protect each "minor skin irritation" without leaving enough residue to leave greasy spots on his clothing. He then returned to his toilet kit, carried it back into the bathroom, and shaved—in the process slicing the top off several "minor skin irritations." He dealt with these new wounds by applying small pieces of toilet paper to his face. When he examined himself in the mirror, he concluded that if he was going to look like a properly turned out officer of the U.S. Marine Corps, he'd need a haircut.

He went back into the bedroom and dug into a large brown Kraft paper bag, taking from it a brand-new T-shirt and cotton boxer shorts.

The Public Affairs Officer Escort had taken Clete and the other "heroes" to the Officers' Sales Store almost directly from the Martin Mariner that had flown them from Espiritu Santo to Pearl Harbor. There, the Escort Officer suggested mat they might wish to acquire new linen. Clete Frade bought six sets of underwear, six khaki shirts, six pairs of cotton socks, and two field scarves, which was what the Corps called neckties. And then, because the very idea that anyone would sleep in anything but his underwear or his birthday suit seemed absurd, he bought two sets of what their label identified as "Pajamas, Men's, Cotton, Summer."

Since there was no room in his one suitcase for his new acquisitions, he carried them in the paper bag the rest of the way— on a Pan American Clipper from Pearl Harbor to San Diego, and then on a chartered Greyhound bus from 'Diego to Los Angeles.

The new T-shirt was usable as is, and he put it on, but the boxer shorts reflected the Naval Service's fascination with fastening small tags to garments with open staples. He sat down on the bed and removed eight of them—he counted—from various places on his shorts. He had just pulled the shorts on when there was a knock at the door.

It was a bellman, carrying a freshly pressed uniform. Clete went to the bedside table, opened the drawer where he had placed his wallet, his watch, and his Zippo lighter and cigarettes, and found a dollar bill. He gave it to the bellman, then hung the uniform on the closet door. When he turned, he noticed for the first time on the bedside table on the other side of the bed, an eight-by-ten-inch official-looking envelope. It wasn't his, and he was sure that it hadn't been there when he'd gone into the bathroom for his shower.

He picked it up. It contained something other than paper, something relatively heavy. He opened the flap and dumped the contents on the bed. Insignia spilled out: two sets of first lieutenant's silver bars and a new set of gold Naval Aviator's wings—and bars of ribbons, representing his decorations. There was the Distinguished Flying Cross, with its oak-leaf cluster signifying the second award; the Purple Heart Medal with its oak-leaf cluster; and the ribbons representing the I-Was-There medals: National Defense, and Pacific Theatre of Operations, the latter with two Battle Stars. The ribbons were mounted together.

The Public Affairs people again,Clete thought. The Corps doesn't want its about-to-go-on-display heroes running around with single ribbons pinned unevenly, one at a time, to their chests; they should be mounted together. And God knows, I have never polished my first John's bars from the day I got them. And my wings of gold are really a disgrace, when viewed from the perspective of some Corps press agent; they're scratched, bent, and dirty.

I wonder if this stuff is a gift from the Corps, or whether they will deduct the cost from my next pay.

Clete dropped the brand-new set of glistening gold wings on the bed, then picked up the telephone.

"Room Service," he ordered when the operator came on the line.

"Room Service," a male voice said.

"This is Lieutenant Frade in nine twenty-one,” he said. “I would like a bottle of sour-mash bourbon, Jack Daniel's if you have it, ice, water, and peanuts or potato chips, something to nibble on."

His voice was soft, yet with something of a nasal twang. Most people he'd met in the Corps thought he was a Southerner, a Johnny Reb, but some with a more discerning ear heard Texas. Both were right. Clete Frade had been raised in New Orleans and in the cattle country (now cattle and oil) around Midland, Texas. He'd spent his first two years of college at Texas AandM, and then, when his grandfather had insisted, finished up (Bachelor of Arts) at Tulane.

"Lieutenant," Room Service said, hesitantly, "you understand that only the room is complimentary?"

"I didn't even know that," Clete said. "But if you're asking if I expect to pay for the bourbon, yes, of course I do."

And I damned sure can afford it. There's four months' pay in Sullivan's boots.

Sullivan was—had been—First Lieutenant Francis Xavier Sullivan, of Cleveland, Ohio, and the 167th Fighter Squadron, U.S. Army Air Corps. The Corps and the Navy had flown Grumman Wildcats off Henderson Field and Fighter One on the 'Canal. The Army Air Corps, those poor bastards, had flown Bell P-39s and P-40s. The story was, and Clete believed it, that the P-39s and P-40s had been offered to, and rejected by, both the English and the Russians before they had been given to the Army Air Corps and sent to the 'Canal. They were both essentially the same airplane, a weird one, with the engine mounted amidships behind the pilot. The one good thing they had was either a 20- or a 30-mm cannon that fired through the propeller hub. But they were not as fast or as maneuverable as the Wildcat, which meant they were not even in the same league as the Japanese Zero. And in a logistical foul-up that surprised Clete not at all, they had been sent to the 'Canal with the wrong oxygen-charging apparatus, so they could not be flown over 12,000 feet.

The pilots flying them fought, in other words, with one hand tied behind them. And one by one they were shot down, Francis Xavier Sullivan among them.

Clete and F.X. made a deal. If Clete didn't come back, F.X. could have Clete's two bottles of Jack Daniel's sour-mash bourbon; and if F.X. didn't come back, Clete could have F.X.'s Half Wellington boots, which, conveniently, fit him perfectly. The second part of the deal was that each had promised the other— presuming, of course, that one of them came through—that he would visit the other's family and tell them a bullshit story about how the fallen hero had died—"quickly, without pain, he really didn't know what hit him."

F.X. went in while supporting the Marine Raiders on Edson's Ridge. He got his P-40 on the ground in more or less one piece, and he was alive when it caught fire. The Raiders heard him screaming until finally, mercifully, the sonofabitch blew up.

Clete went to F.X.'s tent while F.X.'s Executive Officer was inventorying his personal gear. About the only thing that wasn't worn out, or covered with green mold, was the boots. F.X. had spent a lot of time caring for his boots. They would, he claimed, get him laid a lot when they were given a rest leave in Australia. F.X. had heard that from a fellow who'd flown with the Eagle Squadron of the Royal Air Force before the United States had gotten into the war; women liked men who wore boots.

Clete was tempted not to claim the boots, but decided in the end that a deal was a deal. F.X. damned sure would have claimed the Jack Daniel's.

While he waited for the bourbon, he pinned the new insignia to his new shirt and freshly pressed tunic. The new shirt, being new, was not stiff with starch. Before long, he knew, it would look limp and floppy, not shipshape.

Is there a regulation someplace that orders shirts to be washed and starched before wear? I wouldn't be a damned bit surprised.

There was a knock at the door. When he opened it, a different bellman pushed in a tray on wheels; the tray held a bottle of Jack Daniel's, a battered silver bowl full of ice, a silver pitcher that presumably contained water, and two glass bowls, one filled with mixed nuts and the other with pretzels. There was also a newspaper, which Clete thought was a nice touch.

He took the bill from the bellman and signed it. When he turned back to the bellman, he was holding the newspaper open, so that it was ready to read when Clete took it.

"Welcome home, Lieutenant," the bellman said, meaning it.

"Thank you," Clete said. "It's good to be home."

"You're here," the bellman said, pointing at the photograph on the front page of the Los Angeles Times. It showed a dozen Marines standing by the Greyhound bus in front of the hotel. The headline above them read:

Guadalcanal Heroes Receive Key to City From Mayor

Clete looked at his photograph.

My God, I look like a cadaver! Do I really look that bad, or is it just the photograph?

"Thank you," Clete said.

The bullshit begins.

After he joined the other returning pilots back on Espiritu Santo—in the absence of more deserving heroes, he decided, he was apparently a last-minute addition to the roster—and they were waiting for further air transportation, via Pearl Harbor, T.H., to U.S. Navy Base, San Diego, California, there was a lot of talk, naturally, about why they were being sent home.

No one believed that their pleasure, or comfort, or even physical well-being had anything to do with it. The Marine Corps did not act that way. It was certainly not a reward for a job well done, either.

All they'd been told, probably all that anyone knew, was that the orders came as a radio message from Eighth and I.

It wasn't until they were actually given their orders at Espiritu (a twenty-copy stack of mimeographed paper), minutes before they boarded the Martin Mariner, that the words "War Bond Tour" came up. And these gave Clete little more information than Dawkins had already told him:

The following officers,the orders read, are detached from indicated organizations and temporarily attached to the USMC Public Affairs Office, Federal Building, Los Angeles, Cal, for the purpose of participating in a War Bond Tour.

That 1/Lt Frade, C. H., USMCR was detached from VMF-229 was sort of a joke, for little—if anything—of Marine Fighter Squadron Number 229 remained to be detached from. After Clete wrecked his Wildcat, VMF-229 was down to two airplanes and four pilots. There were almost no mechanics, or clerks, or cooks either. As more of VMF-229's Wildcats and their pilots had been shot down, crashed, or simply disappeared than had been replaced, the mechanics and clerks had been transferred to other squadrons.

What, exactly, a baker's dozen of battered fighter pilots who resembled not at all the handsome Marine aviators of the movies and recruiting posters could possibly have to do with a War Bond Tour was something of a mystery, until one of them realized that they all had one thing in common besides membership in the Cactus Air Force and their surprising presence among the living. They each—he polled the jury to make sure—had shot down at least five Japanese aircraft. They were all aces. Two were double aces, and one was working hard on being a triple.

"They're putting us on fucking display, is what they're doing!" one of them announced in disgust.

There were groans. Some of these were genuine, Clete thought—including his own. And some of them were pro forma. There was really nothing wrong with being identified as a hero. For one thing, as one said with a certain fascination in his voice, it would probably get them laid. Clete Frade had absolutely nothing against getting laid, but he was uncomfortable with the notion of considering himself a hero. In his mind, what he'd done was only what he had been ordered to do.

He had not volunteered to fly at Midway, where he shot down his first Japanese shortly before being shot down himself and earning his first Purple Heart. And he had not volunteered to go to Guadalcanal. He was sent there, and he flew off Henderson and Fighter One because he was ordered to. So far as he was concerned, with one exception, he owed his seven victories to luck. He could just as easily have been killed. He was not a hero. On the chartered Greyhound bus from San Diego to Los Angeles, a public relations major stood in the aisle and delivered a little speech, the straight scoop about what was going on, Clete Frade realized then.

"What this is all about, gentlemen," the major said, "is civilian morale. The powers that be have decided that civilian morale needs a shot in the arm. You may have noticed that so far in this war, we haven't done very well: The Japanese took Wake Island away from the Marine Corps, and the Philippines away from the Army. In other words, we have had our ass kicked—with two exceptions.

"The two exceptions, the only times we have at least hurt the Japanese a little, were Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle's B-25 raid on Tokyo and the Corps' invasion of Guadalcanal. From what I've heard, we almost got pushed back into the sea at Guadalcanal, and that fight, as you all well know, is by no means over. But at least it looks to the public as if the Armed Forces, especially the Marine Corps, have finally done something right.

"So what has this got to do with you? You're Marine officers. You will carry out the orders you are given cheerfully and to the best of your ability. Your orders in this instance are to comply with whatever orders we feather merchants in Public Affairs give you. Generally speaking, this will mean being where you are told to be, sober, in the proper uniform, and wearing a smile. This will, it is hoped, convince the civilian populace that after some initial setbacks, the Marines finally have the situation under control. This, in turn, may encourage people to buy War Bonds, and it may even convince some of our innocent youth to rush to the recruiting station so they can share in the glory.

"An effort will be made to have someone from Public Affairs present whenever you are interviewed by the press. Keep in mind that the purpose of this operation is to bolster civilian morale. I don't want to hear that any of you have been telling the press about what went wrong on Guadalcanal, and that certainly means you are not at liberty to say anything unflattering about the Navy, or the Army, or indeed the Corps.

"The tour will last two weeks, and possibly three. When it is over, you will be given a fifteen-day delay en route to your new assignments. The tour will start on Monday, which will give you an opportunity to get your uniforms in shape. Tonight you are free. Which does not mean you are at liberty to get drunk and chase skirts. Use the time to call home, if you like, to have a good meal, and—repeating myself—to have your uniforms pressed and your shoes shined. Sometime early tomorrow morning, you will be informed where you are to gather for specific instruction in what will be expected of you."

After the bus delivered them to the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, and the senior officer among them had received the Key To The City from the Mayor, they were assigned to rooms. Clete Frade's first priority then was a long, hot shower.

"Is there anything else I can get for you. Lieutenant?" the bellman asked.

"How about a large-breasted, sex-starved blonde?" Clete asked with a smile.

From the look on the bellman's face it was evident that he thought Clete meant it.

"Just kidding," Clete said.

"Lieutenant," the bellman said, "I don't think you're going to have any trouble finding women."

"I hope not," Clete said.

Clete went back to the bedside table, took another dollar, and gave it to the bellman.

Then he made himself a drink—carefully—savoring that luxury too. Just a little water and one large ice cube, which he twirled around the glass with his finger. He took a sip.

Then he put the glass down and got dressed. He was not pleased with his reflection in the mirror. His shirt collar was not only limp, it was too large. The tunic, for which he paid so much money, hung loosely on Him. He looked like a stranger, wearing somebody else's uniform.

How the hell much weight did I lose over there?

The new set of shiny gold Naval Aviator's wings displeased him. In a moment, he decided that was because they added to the illusion that whoever was looking back at him from the mirror was not Clete Frade.

He took the tunic off and replaced the new wings with his old ones. Then he put the tunic back on and looked at his reflection again.

Better,he thought. Much better. They are a connection with reality, with the past.

Finally, he sat down on the bed, reached inside Francis Xavier Sullivan's left Half Wellington boot, and pulled out the wad of twenty-dollar bills he had been paid in Pearl Harbor. They were folded in half. He took three of these, put them in his trousers pocket, then flattened out the stack that remained and put them in the left lower pocket of his tunic. After that, he pulled the boots on and walked around the room until they settled around his feet.

He picked up his drink and raised it.

"Francis Xavier, old pal. Thank you," he said aloud, and took a healthy sip of the bourbon.

He started for the window, intending to push the drape aside to see what was outside. Before he reached it, there was a double knock at the door. He turned and went to it and opened it.

A Marine officer stood there. He was a short, trim, tanned, barrel-chested, bald-headed, bird colonel wearing a pencil-line mustache. He carried an expensive, if somewhat battered, civilian briefcase. There was something vaguely Latino about him.

Hell, yes, he spoke to me in Spanish. I'll bet three-to-five that Colonel A. F. Grahams first name is either Alejandro or Antonio. And the "F" is for "Francisco."

"Buenas noches, mi Coronel," Clete said.

"May I come in?" Colonel A. F. Graham asked in Spanish.

"Yes, Sir."

Clete stood out of the way, let Colonel Graham into the room, and closed the door.

"I thought I asked you to hold off on the drink until we had a chance to talk," Graham said, still in Spanish.

"With all respect, Sir, the operative word was 'asked.' "

"Then I shall have to remember to choose my words carefully when dealing with you," Graham said, smiling.

"May I offer you a drink, Colonel?"

"Yes, thank you. Bourbon?"

"Yes, Sir."

Clete made the drink and handed it to Colonel Graham.

"For the record, Sir, this is my first," Clete said.

"Good," Graham said.

“I have no intention of disgracing the Corps on this War Bond Tour, Colonel."

"I'm sure you don't," Graham said.

"Why are we speaking Spanish, Sir? May I ask?"

"I wanted to confirm that you spoke Spanish, and that it wasn't pure Mex-Tex Spanish."

"I can speak pretty good Mex-Tex, Colonel."

Is that what he wants? This War Bond tour is going to Texas, the Southwest, and the Corps's looking for somebody who speaks Spanish to give patriotic speeches to the Mexican-Americans? Good God!

"Sir," Clete said in English, "my Spanish isn't all that good and I am a lousy public speaker."

Graham looked at him for a moment in confusion, and then, understanding, he smiled.

"Very nice. Jack Daniel's?" he said, now in English.

"Yes, Sir."

"Actually your linguistic ability has nothing to do with the War Bond Tour," Graham said, and took a sip of his drink. "And for that matter, neither do I."

"Sir, I don't understand ..."

“Adding you to the War Bond Tour roster seemed a convenient way of bringing you back from Guadalcanal without raising any awkward questions. Conveniently for me, you turned out to be a bona fide hero."

What the hell is he talking about?

"I don't consider myself any kind of a hero, Sir."

"In my experience, few bona fide heroes do," Graham said matter-of-factly, meeting his eyes. "What it is, Frade—why I asked you to hold off on the whiskey—is that I wanted to have a talk with you, to ask you a couple of important questions. And I wanted you to be sober when I did."

"A talk about what, Sir?"

"Let me ask the important question first, to save your time and mine," Graham said. "Would you be willing to undertake a mission involving great personal risk?"

"Excuse me?"

"The nature of which I am not at liberty to discuss right now," Graham went on, "beyond saying that it's outside the continental limits of the United States and is considered of great importance to the war effort."

This man is absolutely serious. What the hell is this all about?

"Colonel, Sir, with respect, I have no idea what you're asking of me."

"Then I'll repeat the question: Are you willing to undertake a mission involving great personal risk outside the continental limits of the United States?"

He didn't say "overseas." He said "outside the continental limits of the United States.''

Oh!

"Has this something to do with my father?" Clete asked.

"You weren't listening, Lieutenant," Graham said. "I said I was not at liberty to discuss the nature of this operation."

Sure, it has to do with my father. I could see that in your face, and the only possible thing about me that would interest an intelligence type like you is my father— and that's certainly what you are, Colonel, an intelligence type. And Argentina is "outside the continental limits of the United States,' as opposed to 'overseas.'

"Colonel, are you aware that I hardly know my father, that I wouldn't recognize him if he walked into this room?"

"Yes, I am," Graham said. "But that's the last question on that subject I'm going to answer. Or let you ask."

"Until I volunteer for this mission of yours, you mean?"

Graham nodded.

"Colonel, I just got home from Guadalcanal."

Graham nodded. "I told you, I arranged that. To save me a trip over there to have this conversation."

"This— mission.It's that important?"

Graham nodded, then said, "It's that important."

"Do I have to decide right now?"

"That would make things more convenient for both of us."

"And what if I say yes now, hear what you have to say, and then change my mind?"

"I wondered if that possibility would occur to you. The answer, frankly, is that there's really nothing I can do but appeal to your patriotism."

"Isn't patriotism supposed to be the last refuge of the scoundrel?" Clete asked, smiling.

"I've heard that said," Graham replied, smiling back at him. "I'm not sure if I believe it. I'm an Aggie—just as you were once, for a while. We Aggies take words like 'patriotism' and 'honor' seriously." (An Aggie is an alumnus of the Texas Agricultural and Mechanical Institute.)

"At least some of us do," Clete said. He met Graham's eyes for a moment, then said, evenly, "OK."

Graham nodded, then walked to the chest of drawers and laid his briefcase on it. He opened the briefcase, took out a form, closed the briefcase, laid the form on it, then took a fountain pen from his shirt pocket and extended it to Frade.

"Would you please sign this?"

Clete walked to the chest of drawers, then bent over Graham's briefcase and read the form.

SECRET

The United States of America

Office of Strategic Services

Washington, D.C.

Acknowledgment of Penalties Provided by the United

States Code for the Unauthorized Disclosure of National

Security Information

The undersigned acknowledges that the unauthorized disclosure of any information made available to him by any officer of the Office of Strategic Services will result in his prosecution under applicable provisions of the United States Code (including, where applicable. The Rules for the Governance of the Naval Services and/or The Manual For Courts-Martial, 1917) and that the penalties provided by law provide on conviction for the death penalty, or such other punishment as the court may decide.

Cletus Howell Frade

Executed at Los Angeles, California,

this 12th day of October 1942

Witness: :

A.F. Graham Colonel, USMCR

SECRET

He knew I was going to sign this, didn't he? My name and the date are already typed in on the form,Clete thought, and then, This is a little melodramatic, isn't it? And then, What the hell is the Office of Strategic Services?

After a moment's hesitation, he asked that aloud.

"What's the Office of Strategic Services?"

"Sign that, Lieutenant, or don't sign it," Graham said, and now there was a tone of annoyance in his voice. "Make up your mind."

Clete scrawled his name on the form. Graham retrieved the form and his pen and signed his name as witness, then put the form into his briefcase.

"OK, Lieutenant Frade, now you can ask questions," he said.

"What is the Office of Strategic Services?"

"An agency of the federal government which reports directly to the President. It performs what are somewhat euphemistically known as strategic services for the government."

"In other words, you're not going to tell me."

"You will be told what you have the need to know."

"What does the Office of Strategic Services want from me?"

"As you guessed, it wants you to go to Argentina. You will command a three-man team with the mission of taking out a merchant vessel—a merchant vessel of a neutral country, which we have determined is replenishing German submarines operating off the coast of South America. These submarines are doing considerable damage to shipping down there. We have to lessen that. But additionally, if you can find the time, we'd like you to dream up other ways to make things difficult for the Germans, the Italians, and the Japanese in Argentina."

"I don't know anything about... sabotage... that sort of thing."

"The other members of your team do," Graham interrupted.

"So the only reason I can think of that you want me for something like this is because of my father. You know my father is an Argentine ... Argentinean, right?"

"Of course. And you're right."

"Did you hear what I said a minute ago, that I wouldn't recognize my father if he walked into this room?"

"We know that too. Actually, we know more about you, Frade, than you probably know yourself. For example, are you aware that you hold Argentine citizenship?"

"I've always been told that Americans can't hold dual citizenship."

"So far as our government is concerned, we can't. So far as the Argentine government is concerned, you were born there, therefore you are an Argentine citizen."

"I haven't been there since I was an infant," Clete said.

"Yes, we know," Colonel Graham said, a touch of impatience in his voice.

He turned to his briefcase and came out with a five-by-seven-inch photograph and handed it to Clete.

“El Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade,” Graham said, pronouncing it "Frah-day." "He looks rather like you, or vice versa, wouldn't you say?"

Clete examined the photograph. It showed a tall, solid-looking man with a full mustache. He was wearing a rather ornate, somewhat Germanic uniform, and stepping into the backseat of an open Mercedes-Benz sedan. In the background, against a row of Doric columns, was a rank of soldiers armed with rifles standing at what the Marine Corps would call "Parade Rest." Their uniforms, too, looked Germanic, and they were wearing German helmets.

Christ, he does look like me. Or, as Colonel Graham puts it, vice versa.

Well, it looks as if I will finally get to meet my father.

Do I want to? I don't feel a thing looking at this picture. He's a stranger. And he certainly has made it pretty goddamned plain that he doesn't give a damn for me. I'm the result of a youthful indiscretion, as far as he's concerned. Maybe, probably, even an embarrassment.

I wonder how he will react when I show up down there.

"Excuse me, Se?or. I'm sure you don't remember me, but I happen to be what they call the fruit of your loins."

"That was taken last summer," Graham said after a moment.

"Where?" Clete asked. "In Berlin?"

"No." Graham chuckled. "That's Buenos Aires. On Independence Day. Their Independence Day—July ninth. They make just about as much of a fuss over theirs as we do over ours."

"I wasn't aware he was in the Army," Clete said.

"He's retired. They—people of a certain class and influence— wear uniforms on suitable occasions. This was taken before the traditional Independence Day Mass at the Metropolitan Cathedral. Jos? de San Martin, El Ubertador, is buried there. Do you recognize the insignia? Your father's a colonel of cavalry. And like Generalleutnant Hasso von Manteuffel of the Wehrmacht and our own Major General George S. Patton, he's a graduate of the French Cavalry School at Saint-Cyr. And the German Kriegs-schule."

Clete looked at Colonel Graham and saw amusement in his eyes.

"And whose side is he on in this war?" Clete asked.

"Argentina, as you probably know, is trying to sit this war out as a neutral. Generally speaking, their Navy, which was trained by the English, is pro-Allies. The Army, which is trained by the Germans, is generally pro-Axis. We don't know exactly where your father stands. If, 'in addition to your other duties,' you could tilt him toward our side, that would be nice."

"Is that the real reason you want me to go down there? To try to work on my father?"

"No. As I said, if you could tilt your father toward us, that would be a bonus. But you're being sent down there to take out the 'neutral' submarine replenishment vessel. What we're hoping—your father is a very powerful man down there—is that the BIS ..."

"The what?"

"The Bureau of Internal Security, which is sort of their FBI, except that it's under the Ministry of Defense. They're very good, I understand, trained by the Germans. What we're hoping is that once the BIS find out your father is el Coronel Frade, they may elect to be a little less enthusiastic, a little less efficient in investigating you, than they would ordinarily be."

"How are they going to know he's my father? Are you going to tell them?"

"They'll find out. I told you, they're very good."

"When does all this start to happen? I was promised a leave. I want to go to Texas...."

"I understand," he said. "We know about your uncle, too. That must have been tough...."

"Sir, do I get a leave or don't I?"

"Yes, of course. There will be time for you to visit both Midland and New Orleans."

"Thank you," Clete said.

Graham looked into Clete's eyes for a moment, then nodded. He looked at his watch.

"We have a compartment on the Chicago Limited," he said.

“We have an hour and a half to make it. I think you'd better start packing."

"I just take off? What about the War Bond Tour? Won't they miss me?"

"They will be told that you're on emergency leave because of an illness in your family," Graham said. "Do you suppose I could have another drink, while you pack?"

[THREE]

Office of the Director

Office of Strategic Services

National Institutes of Health Building

Washington. D.C.

15 October 1942

"You wanted to see me, Colonel?" Colonel A. F. Graham asked as he stood in the door. He was in civilian clothing.

"Come on in, Alex," Colonel William J. Donovan, a stocky, well-tailored man in his fifties, replied. As Graham walked into the office, Donovan added, "Actually, I wanted to see you three days ago, and then the day before yesterday, and yest—"

"I was on the West Coast," Graham said. "I sent you a memo."

"Carefully timed to arrive after you left," Donovan said. He was smiling, but there was a tone of rebuke in his voice.

"Amazing town, this Washington," Graham said. "It only takes a couple of months for an honest man to become as devious as any lifelong bureaucrat."

"Tell me something, Alex," Donovan asked; he was clearly enjoying the exchange. "How did you manage to run the country's second-largest railroad without knowing how to delegate responsibility?"

"The third or fourth largest, actually. Depending on how you count—by trackage or by income. The Pennsylvania and the New York Central make more money; and the Union Pacific, the Sante Fe, and the Chicago and Northwestern all have more trackage."

Donovan smiled tolerantly at him. Unlike most of the upper echelon of the OSS, Colonel A. (for Alejandro) F. (for Fredrico) Graham was not awed by Colonel William R. Donovan, Director of the Office of Strategic Services—and World I Hero, spectacularly successful Wall Street lawyer, and intimate, longtime friend of his Harvard classmate, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States.

Probably because Graham was himself a World War I hero, Donovan often reflected. And had an even greater income from running his railroad than he himself had. And had a loathing for politicians, even those who made it to the White House.

Donovan was pleased when he was able to recruit Graham for the OSS and to steal him from the President (Roosevelt was talking about making Graham "Transportation Czar"; the theft annoyed the President, but he got over it). There were a number of reasons why he was truly valuable; high among these was his reputation for not backing down from a position he believed to be the right one.

"But to answer your question, Colonel," Graham went on. "By knowing what things should be delegated, and what things the boss should do himself."

"We even have an Assistant Director for Recruitment around here. Did you know that?"

"Actually, he's a Deputy Assistant Director," Graham said. "He works for me. Did you ever really read the manning table?"

"No," Donovan said, and laughed. "I have an Assistant Director named Graham who does that sort of thing for me. Whenever he comes to work."

"I thought it was important, Bill," Graham said. "That's why I went myself."

"Your memo said your trip was in connection with the Argentina problem," Donovan said, his tone making it a question.

Graham nodded.

"Then let me clear the air. There will be no violation of Argentine neutrality by United States Naval or Army Air Corps forces. I took that all the way to the top. The State Department won."

"The top" meant the President of the United States.

"I thought that's what would happen," Graham said. "That's why I went recruiting in California. We need more assets down there."

Donovan nodded his agreement and then asked, "Any luck?"

"A very interesting young Marine. Young fellow named Frade."

"The Marine Corps ... no, Holcomb himself... has been complaining that we're taking too many of his officers." Thomas Holcomb was then Major General Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps.

"You'll have to deal with Holcomb. This one we need."

"Why?"

"This one—he flew at Midway, and they just gave him a second DFC—not only comes with a large set of balls, he speaks Spanish fluently. And his father is very interesting."

"Who's his father?"

"El Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade."

"And who is el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade?"

"He is the ?minence grise of the G.O.U."

"It's not nice, Alex, to force your boss to confess his ignorance."

"It stands for Grupo de Oficiales Unidos," Graham explained. "They are planning a coup against the President of Argentina. With a little bit of luck they'll succeed."

"This fellow's father? The Argentine colonel?"

Graham nodded.

"The last briefing I had," Donovan said, "claimed that the Argentinean military, to a man, supported the Axis. Or at least the Germans."

"Then you weren't listening closely. The 'Argentines are Pro-Axis' business is simply not so. Just because they wear German helmets doesn't mean they're all Nazis. There's a good deal of pro-British sentiment among much of the officer corps, and the bureaucracy."

" 'Pro-British'? As differentiated from 'Pro-Allies'? Or 'Pro-American'?"

"They don't particularly like us; they like to think they should be the doMi?ant power in this hemisphere. And we've never had a presence down there the way the British have. And they're a practical people, Bill. After Dunkirk, noble sentiment aside, who would you have bet would win the war in Europe? After Pearl Harbor, or especially after Singapore and the Philippines fell to the Japanese—patriotism aside—who would you have bet on to win the war in the Pacific?"

"The question of the moral right and wrong is not in the equation, so far as they're concerned?"

"As it is in ours, you mean? We violated every description of neutrality I've ever heard when we had the U.S. Navy looking for German submarines in the North Atlantic, long before we were in the war."

"You disapprove of what we did, Alex?"

"No. The point I'm making here is that the Argentine government has taken greater pains to be neutral than we ever did— even the one now in place, under Castill?, who is a fascist."

"Then you weren't at the briefing where I heard that they're closing their eyes to the Germans' refueling and replenishing their submarines in the River Plate."

"I set up that briefing for you," Graham said. "I hoped you would pay attention when Major Kellerman made the point that the German submarines are being supplied by neutral—not German—vessels," Graham countered. "And not by the Argentines."

"That's splitting hairs," Donovan said.

Graham met Donovan's eyes and shrugged. Then he said, "If it were not for those U-boats, Bill, Brazil almost certainly would still be neutral." (In January 1942, Brazil broke diplomatic relations with Germany, Italy, and Japan. Within weeks, German submarines began attacking Brazilian shipping. The United States immediately started to equip the one-year-old Brazilian Air Force with North American B-25 Mitchell bombers, Consolidated Catalinas, Lockheed Hudsons, and PV-1 Venturas for antisubmarine warfare. In August 1942, following a major submarine effort against Brazilian shipping (seventeen ships were lost), Brazil declared war on Germany and Italy.)

"The trouble with that," Donovan countered, "is the feeling in Argentina that whatever Brazil does, Argentina should take the other side."

"That's only among some people in Argentina," Graham argued. "I still have hopes that we can get Argentina to see the light."

"What we don't want down there is a war between Brazil and Argentina. That strikes me as a real possibility. They don't like each other, and I'm afraid that one of your Argentine coronels is going to decide that if they get in a war with Brazil, Germany will have to help them."

"I think Germany likes things just as they are. They're getting Argentine beef, leather, wool, other foodstuffs," Graham said. "And they have their hands full in Africa and Russia. And I really don't think Argentina wants to pick a fight with Brazil. They know that we can supply Brazil a lot easier than Germany can supply them."

"You hope," Donovan said.

"I think they know, Bill. From what I have seen, they have pretty good intelligence."

"So I heard at the briefing," Donovan said.

"What we will see now," Graham went on, "is whether they are wise enough to close their eyes to our blowing up one—or more—of the neutral ships who are replenishing the German submarines. Which we have to do before the Brazilians start seriously thinking about doing it themselves. They know we would have to support them if they got into a war with Argentina; that certainly has a certain appeal to some of their coronels.''

Donovan nodded his agreement again.

"What I don't understand, Alex," he said, "is why you're devoting so much of your time and effort to this."

"It's my mission," Graham said, and then added, "Unless something has happened to change that?"

"I simply meant that Newton-Haddle has no doubt that his team down there will have no trouble in putting the German ship out of action."

" 'His' team?" Graham asked, and now there was ice in his voice.

"Newton-Haddle told me he trained them personally," Donovan said. "That's all I meant."

Colonel Baxter F. Newton-Haddle, U.S. Army Reserve, was the OSS's Assistant Director For Training, and ran the Country Club (the OSS operated a training school in Virginia at a requisitioned country club). He was a wealthy Philadelphia socialite, the archetypal WASP, as Donovan privately thought of him. Donovan was also aware that Graham, who had seen combat with the Marines in France in World War I, thought he was a strutting peacock.

Graham's face showed that Donovan's explanation hadn't mollified him.

"It may be replenishment ships, plural," he went on. "That wouldn't surprise me. Even if they take out the ship now in the River Plate..."

“Whenthey take it out, not if,” Donovan interrupted, with a smile he hoped would remove the tension. "Think positively, Alex."

"... there is little question in my mind," Graham went on as if he had not heard a word, "that die Germans will send another to replace it—or several others."

"OK," Donovan said. "And you think one team isn't enough? Your mission, Alex, your decision."

That satisfied him,Donovan thought, judging from the look on Graham's face. And then he developed the thought: If the bad blood between Newton-Haddle and Graham gets out of hand, and I have to choose between them, I need Graham more than I need Newton-Haddle.

"Thank you," Graham said. "Frankly, I wasn't sure where I stood."

"Your mission, Alex," Donovan repeated. "Just tell me about it."

"When I get the second team down there, the primary mission of both teams will remain the interruption of the replenishment of German submarines and any merchant raiders which may still be active there. I think we have to make two points to the Argentines: First, there is a limit to our patience; we won't let them look the other way while the Germans replenish their warships in their waters. And second, we are willing, and capable, of playing hardball ourselves."

"Who's on the second team besides the son of Colonel Whatsisname?"

"Frade," Graham furnished. "The second man is a second lieutenant I found in the 82nd Airborne Division. His family is in the industrial demolitions business in Chicago. I watched his father demolish a grain elevator next to my right-of-way in Wisconsin. Great big brick sonofabitch, eight stories high and a quarter of a mile long. He dropped it in on itself without getting so much as a loose brick on my tracks. If this kid is half as good as his father, he's just what I need."

"A second lieutenant?"

"And scarcely old enough to vote," Graham said. "The third man on the team will be a Spanish Jew with German connections whose family was in Dachau ... murdered there, it looks like. I found him in the Army's Counterintelligence Corps at Camp Holabird in Baltimore. He's an electrical engineer, and according to Dave Sarnoff at RCA, a pretty good one."

"When do you plan to send these people to Argentina?"

"As soon as the explosives kid, his name is Pelosi, and Ettinger the Jewish chap have gone through a quickie course at the Country Club. And after we take care of their papers and make their cover stories credible."

"Which are?" Donovan asked.

"Ettinger is well-educated, multilingual; and he's been through the CIC training program. I want to talk to him myself—I haven't done that yet. But I think he will fit unobtrusively into the Bank of Boston, if I can convince Nestor that he can't use him for anything else until the replenishment-ship problem is solved."

"Jasper Nestor's the Station Chief in Buenos Aires," Donovan thought out loud. "He may have other ideas where to use this fellow."

"And this is my mission," Graham said sharply. "Which I have been led to believe is the most important thing we have going down there right now. I hope Nestor understands that."

"I'm sure he does. Nestor is a good man," Donovan said. Then, suddenly and perversely unable to resist the temptation to needle Graham, he added: "Colonel Newton-Haddle thinks very highly of him."

Good God, why did 1 say that? The last thing I want to do is antagonize him!

Graham's eyes, ice cold, locked on Donovan's for a moment. Then, his eyes still cold, he flashed Donovan a gloriously insincere smile.

"What is it they say, Bill, about birds of a feather?"

Donovan laughed, hoping it sounded more genuinely hearty than it felt.

"And the explosives expert? What about his cover?"

“Frade's family is in the oil business. Howell Petroleum: Mostly in West Texas and Louisiana, but with interests in Venezuela, including one conveniently known as Howell Petroleum (Venezuela). Conveniently, it sends two or three tankers a month to Argentina. Argentina would like to buy more oil. Howell Petroleum (Venezuela) is going to accommodate them. This will require the opening of in office in Buenos Aires to make sure the petroleum is not diverted. Meanwhile, the Germans are desperate for petroleum, especially for refined product, and don't seem to care what it costs. Money talks. And especially loudly in Argentina, or so I'm told. So it's credible to establish an office down there to make sure that Howell oil is consumed within Argentina. And that gives a credible cover to the Marine—his middle name is Howell—and to Pelosi, as well. He's been around enough tank farms and refineries—if only to demolish them—to look like he knows what he's doing."

Donovan nodded.

"That should work," he said. "Tell me more about your plans for the Marine vis-a-vis his father."

"That's a wild card. The boy was born there. But he was with his mother when she died in the United States. He was an infant then and stayed here. He was raised by an uncle and aunt, and later lived with his grandfather, Cletus Marcus Howell..."

"I know the name," Donovan interrupted.

"... in New Orleans. The grandfather loathes and despises the father, and very possibly has poisoned the son against him. In any event, they don't know each other. We'll just have to see what happens when they get together."

"Best case?"

"El Coronel is overcome by emotion at being united with his long-lost American son, and tilts our way, bringing the Grupo de Oficiales Unidos with him."

"Worst?"

"He hasn't been in touch with his son since he was in diapers. The child may be something el Coronel wishes never happened, and he won't be at all happy to have his son show up down there."

"But you think we should play the card?"

"Absolutely. I don't like to think about the consequences in South America if we found ourselves involved in a war against Argentina. If somebody asked me, I wish Brazil had remained neutral."

"You're talking about J. Edgar Hoover's major intelligence triumph," Donovan said.

J. Edgar Hoover, the enormously politically powerful director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, claimed sole authority for all United States intelligence and counterintelligence activity in Latin and South America. While not publicly challenging Hoover's position or authority, President Franklin Roosevelt had nonetheless authorized Donovan's OSS to operate in South America.

"You're not suggesting Hoover thinks we would be served by a war between Brazil and Argentina?'' Graham asked, surprised.

"Of course not. Whatever Edgar is, he's no fool."

"Best scenario," Graham went on, "Argentina sees the light and joins the Allies. Next best, Argentina remains neutral, leaning toward us. Next best, Argentina remains neutral, leaning the other way. Worst, Argentina gets in a war with Brazil and becomes a de facto if not de jure member of the Axis powers. Anything we can do to keep the worst scenario from coming into being seems to me to be worth the effort. The Frade father-son card isn't much, but you play what you have. Sometimes you get lucky."

"I agree," Donovan said. "But be careful, Alex," he said.

"And keep me posted. Personally, not with one of your memorandums."

"Right," Graham said. He raised his eyebrows, asking, Is that all?

"It's always a pleasure to see you, Alex," Donovan said drolly. "We really should do this more often."

Graham laughed. "The very next time I'm in town," he said, and then walked out of Donovan's office.

Chapter Three

[ONE]

The Country Club

Fairfax County, Virginia

1115 16 October 1942

The brick pillars which just over a year before had supported the country club's crest and the legend "Private Club—Members Only" remained; but the sign with the club's name had been taken down. Twenty yards down the macadam road, just barely visible from the highway, two new signs, each painted on a four-by-eight-foot sheet of plywood, one on each side of the road, announced that this was a U.S. Government Reservation and trespassers would be prosecuted. Eighty yards farther down the road, a guard shack had been built. On either side of the road, a twelve-foot hurricane fence, topped with coiled barbed wire, disappeared into groves of trees.

The guardhouse was manned by two men in blue, vaguely police-type uniforms. They had badges pinned to zipper jackets, and were armed with Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum revolvers.

When Graham's 1942 Plymouth station wagon came down the road, one of the guards stepped out of the shack and waved it, unnecessarily (a striped pole barrier hung across the road), to a stop. As Graham rolled down his window, the guard leaned over and looked in the car.

Graham offered the guard a small leather wallet, holding it open. It contained an identification card with a photo on it. The guard knew Graham by sight, but the security Standing Operating Procedure dictated that no one would be passed through without proper identification, not even an Assistant Director of the OSS.

"Good morning, Colonel," the guard said.

"Morning," Graham replied, then nodded his head toward Staff Sergeant David G. Ettinger, Army of the United States, who was sitting beside him. "The Sergeant is with me."

"Yes, Sir," the guard said; he didn't seem at all surprised that an Army sergeant was wearing a well-cut civilian suit. "Sergeant, may I see some identification? Dog tags?"

Ettinger, a tall, dark-eyed, sharp-featured man, with very light brown hair, reached into the pocket of his tunic and came out with a small, folding leather wallet much like the one Graham had shown the guard. The guard took it, said, "Just a moment, please," and went into the guard shack.

"I've heard about this place," Ettinger said.

There was a faint accent, but not readily identifiable. In New York City, it would go unnoticed, Graham observed when he first met Ettinger.

"From what I've heard," Graham said, "you will quickly learn to loathe it."

"I've heard that, too," Ettinger said.

"Perhaps our security here isn't as tight as we like to think," Graham said. "I'm sure it couldn't be that there are loose lips at the Counterintelligence Corps Center."

"What they told us in training was that there are loose lips everywhere, Sir," Ettinger said.

Graham smiled. In the eighteen hours since he met Ettinger, he had come to like him. He had a droll sense of humor... not unlike his own. And he quickly became convinced (good things as well as bad often come in threes) that he was right in choosing Ettinger to round out the Argentine Team. It could have gone the other way. Ettinger could have been as fluent in Spanish as Graham himself, as knowledgeable about radio as David Sarnoff himself, and wholly unsuitable for the Argentine Team.

The guard returned to the car with a clipboard and a visitor's badge: a plastic-covered, striped card hanging from a dog-tag chain.

"Sergeant, would you sign this?" the guard asked. "It's a receipt for the visitor's badge. Wear it at all times when you're on the reservation."

He handed the clipboard across Graham to Ettinger, who looked carefully at what he was being asked to sign before signing it and handing it back. When the guard passed him the visitor's badge, he looped the chain around his neck.

The guard inside the shack pressed a lever, and the striped steel pole barrier rose into the air.

"Thank you," Graham said to the guard by the car and drove onto the reservation.

"I had something like this when I was in kindergarten," Ettinger said, examining the visitor's badge.

Graham chuckled. "Where was that?"

"Madrid," Ettinger said.

"They called it a 'kindergarten'?"

"It was run by Germans," Ettinger said simply.

Graham turned a curve on the narrow road and a large field-stone and brick building, the Club House, came into view.

"And how did the members of this place react when it was placed in public service?" Ettinger asked.

"There were howls of protest that it was too much of a sacrifice to ask for the war effort," Graham said. "Except from the finance committee, who saw their patriotic sacrifice as a means to fill up the treasury. I hate to think what this place is costing the taxpayer."

"It's rather beautiful, isn't it?"

"I'm sorry to tell you, David, but you won't be living here. Just over the hill—out of sight of this, of course—they've built standard barracks for the trainees."

"For some reason, I am not surprised."

Graham stopped the Plymouth in front of the main entrance and opened his door.

"Leave your bag. If they don't offer to take you to the barracks, I will. But come with me now, please. I want you to meet the man who runs the place."

Another security guard in a police-type uniform sat at a desk just inside the door to the lobby. He rose to his feet as soon as he saw Graham, but did not make it quite to the door before Graham opened it himself.

"Good morning, Colonel," the guard said.

"Good morning."

"Colonel, the Colonel would like to see you."

The Colonel, the other colonel, was the Deputy Assistant Director for Training, Colonel Baxter F. Newton-Haddle.

"As his peers played golf and polo," Colonel Donovan had announced in a stage whisper, just before he introduced Graham to him, "Newton-Haddle played soldier. I think the greatest disappointment of his life was when Georgie Patton told him he was too old to come on active duty. But he's that rare bird for us, the round peg in the round hole."

Their reserve colonelcies, Graham often thought, were the only things he and Newton-Haddle had in common. He had kept his reserve commission after the First War, too, and worked his way up in the Marine Corps Reserve, as Newton-Haddle had in the Army.

But for him it was a serious business, not a game. From what he had seen of Newton-Haddle, Donovan had been right about him. Newton-Haddle loved to "play soldier." Graham did not think the war was a game, an activity to be enjoyed.

Graham led Ettinger up a wide flight of marble stairs to the second floor. Newton-Haddle's secretary, who was one of the very few women at the Country Club (he brought her with him from his office at the First Philadelphia Trust Company), rose from behind her desk when she saw Graham.

"Colonel Newton-Haddle expects you, Colonel. Go right in." When she saw Ettinger start to follow Graham, she quickly added, "Colonel, I think the Colonel would rather see you alone for a moment."

Graham ignored her and went to the door. It opened on a spacious, paneled room with windows overlooking the South Course.

"You wanted to see me, Newt?"

Newton-Haddle, a lithe and trim sixty-year-old who looked at least fifteen years younger than his age, was wearing Army-green trousers and a tieless, open-collared khaki shirt adorned with colonel's eagles and parachutist's wings. He stepped quickly from behind his desk and strode toward Graham with his hand extended.

Bounded,Graham noticed, like a gazelle. Not walked.

"Alex," he said, "you look fit."

"Appearances are deceptive," Graham said.

"I tried to call you before," Newton-Haddle said. "Your secretary told me you were coming down."

"Newt, this is Mr. Ettinger," Graham said. "I think he's going to be quite valuable."

"SergeantEttinger, isn't it?" Newton-Haddle said, nodding at Ettinger, and not offering his hand.

"He's a CIC Special Agent," Graham said. "They're called 'Mister,' right?"

"But now he belongs to us, Alex," Newton-Haddle said. "So he's no longer a CIC agent, right?"

"I've arranged for him to keep his credentials until he actually leaves for Argentina, Newt," Graham said, with an edge in his voice. "I thought they might come in handy."

"I don't mean to sound argumentative, Alex," Newton-Haddle said argumentatively, "but here we operate on a military basis. We use our ranks."

"That's one of the reasons I'm here, Newt," Graham said. "I wanted to talk to you about that."

"About how I run the training school?"

"About David's training here," Graham said.

"Oh."

"I rather doubt that there will be time for him to complete the entire course. I want to get this team down there as soon as possible."

"Of course. We all do. But certainly you don't want him sent down there half-trained, inadequately trained?"

"He's had the CIC training. What he needs from you, in whatever time is available..."

"How much time are we talking about, Alex?"

"Documents is working on his papers. He needs a visa, which the Bank of Boston has to arrange for via the Argentine Consulate in Boston. Since we want as few eyebrows raised as possible, we can't push too hard for that. Still, I don't think he will be here for more than ten days or two weeks, and I think we had better operate on the ten-day idea."

"There's not much I can do for him—nothing personal, Sergeant—in ten days."

"Run him through as much explosives training as time permits, and if there is any time left over, work on his swimming, and maybe even infiltration techniques. Explosives first."

"Whatever you think is best for him, of course," Newton-Haddle said. "We'll do our best for him. Sergeant, I wonder if you'd be good enough to wait outside for a moment while I have a word with Colonel Graham?"

"Certainly, Sir," Ettinger said, and left the office, closing the door behind him.

"What's on your mind, Newt," Graham said, "that you didn't want the sergeant to hear?''

"Alex, we're friends, right?" Newton-Haddle asked. He waited until Graham nodded. "And so I may speak with candor?"

"Please do."

"It's always difficult when one feels one must—when duty requires that one must—point out to a friend where one feels the friend, so to speak, is going off half-cocked."

"We're friends, Newt. Have a shot at it."

"I see a great deal of potential in the men of your team, a potential I would really hate to see disappear down the toilet. Even Pelosi..."

"Even Pelosi?" Graham asked.

"His knowledge of explosives is extraordinary ..."

"He cut his teeth, so to speak, on a stick of dynamite," Graham said. "That's why I picked him."

“I would like to keep him here as an instructor, at least for the time being."

"He's going to Argentina, Newt, sorry. But now that you've brought up Pelosi, and his extraordinary skill, can I suggest that you get him to teach Ettinger as much as he can while they're here?"

"By the time Pelosi reaches Argentina," Newton-Haddle said, ignoring the suggestion, "the problem there will be solved. The team down there will have taken out the ship. I trained them myself, and they're good."

"I'm sure they are, and I hope—of course I hope—that they can take out that damned ship long before the backup team gets to Argentina. But we can't bank on that happening. We need a second team down there as soon as we can get them there. A little redundancy never hurts, Newt. And I have been charged with taking out the replenishment vessel. He goes, sorry."

"There is, of course, a good deal to what you say," Newton-Haddle said charmingly. "There always is. It is always better to err on the side of caution."

"I'm glad you understand," Graham said.

"Which brings us to Lieutenant Frade," Newton-Haddle said.

Graham's patience with Newton-Haddle was about exhausted.

"If you're going to bring up again my refusal to send him through here, Newt, save your breath. He needs a rest-and-recuperation leave, not your version of Parris Island recruit training."

"He's the asset it would really be criMi?al to flush away."

"Get to the point, please, Newt. I have to get back to Washington."

"I think we should give more thought to the use of this one-of-a-kind asset than we have so far."

“I discussed the use of this one-of-a-kind asset with Colonel Donovan yesterday," Graham said. "He seems to find that the use I came up with is satisfactory."

"How would you feel about a meeting between you, Bill, myself—and possibly even Jasper Nestor—to look into Lieutenant Frade's potential worth a little more deeply? I'm sure Nestor could be here in forty-eight hours if the Bank of Boston called him home for an 'emergency consultation' or some such. That would justify getting him a seat on the Pan American Clipper from Buenos Aires..."

"By 'Bill' are you by any chance referring to Colonel Donovan, Colonel Newton-Haddle?" Graham asked icily.

"No disrespect was intended. This is just a conversation between friends."

"To answer your question, Colonel," Graham went on, "I have no interest in discussing this mission with either you or Mr. Nestor, other than to inform you what will be required of you. Now is that clear enough, or should I get on the telephone and ask Colonel Donovan to personally make the point that operations are not your concern?''

"Now, Alex, there's no point in flying off the handle..."

"Do you take my point, Colonel, or should I get Colonel Donovan on the phone?"

"I take your point," Newton-Haddle said after a moment.

"Colonel, I am now going to take Mr. Ettinger to meet Lieutenant Pelosi. I am going to inform Lieutenant Pelosi that he is to devote the rest of the time he is here—however long that might be—to imparting to Mr. Ettinger as much as possible of his knowledge of explosives and demolition techniques. I am going to tell him that you will help him in any way you can, and I want you there when I tell him."

"If you wish."

"I don't know how it is in the paratroopers, Colonel, but in the Marine Corps, the proper response when given an order is to respond with die words 'Yes, Sir.' "

After a long moment, Colonel Baxter F. Newton-Haddle said, "Yes, Sir."

[TWO]

Big Foot Ranch

RFD #2, Box 131

Midland, Texas

1115 21 October 1942

First Lieutenant Cletus Howell Frade, USMCR, put his arm around the stocky, short-haired blond woman standing beside him at the grave and hugged her. Then he said, his voice breaking, "Christ, Martha, I'm sorry."

Clete was wearing a brand-new Stetson, dark-brown worsted woolen work pants, somewhat battered Western boots, and a heavy sheepskin coat. The woman, who was in a fur-collared trench coat, turned and smiled up at him and put her hand to his cheek.

"He was too damned young, but he had a good life, honey," she said. "And he was so damned proud of you!"

The tombstone, an eight-foot-wide, five-foot-high block of Vermont marble, readhowell in the center. Below, to the left, in slightly smaller letters, it read,

JAMES FITZHUGH HOWELL Gunnery Sergeant USMCR WWI

March 3, 1895-August 11, 1942

To the right had been chiseled,

MARTHA WILLIAMSON HOWELL

June 11, 1899-

"We got to the 'Canal on the tenth of August," Clete said. "We flew off an escort carrier as soon as they got the field operational. I didn't even get the damned notification until the twentieth."

"You wrote me, honey," Martha Howell said.

"If I'd been in the States, I probably could have got an emergency leave," Clete said. "But not from the 'Canal."

"Honey, don't apologize for something you couldn't control," Martha said. "And there was nothing you could have done. He just keeled over in the bar of the Petroleum Club, and that was it."

"Goddamn!"

Martha moved out from under his arm, walked to the pole-and-chain fence surrounding the small cemetery, and pointed to' one of the poles.

"You know what that is, Clete?"

"Looks like drill pipe," he said.

"It is. I was going to use cast iron, but the cast iron place in New Orleans is out of business for the duration, so I had them cut up some pipe, and weld some chain to it to keep the cattle off. I thought I'd get the cast iron after the war, but now I'm not so sure. What's wrong with drill pipe? And chain. God knows, in his life he wrapped enough chain around drilling strings."

"Looks fine to me the way it is," Clete said.

"That's good, for there's room in here too for you and yours, whenever that happens," Martha said.

His eyebrows went up, and she saw it.

"He left you the ranch, Clete," Martha said. "Less mineral rights. You get some of those, too, but he wanted you to have the ranch."

"Jesus! What about the girls?"

The girls, both students at Rice University in Houston, were Martha and Jim's daughters. For all practical purposes, they were Clete's sisters.

"He asked them first, and it was all right with them. They don't want to live out here in the sticks. I get what they call 'lifetime use.' It's all pretty complicated. You better find time when you see your grandfather to have him, or one of his lawyers, explain it to you. There's a provision in there that if you 'die without issue,' it reverts to the girls. Or their 'issue,' I forget which. Do we have to talk about this now?"

Clete shook his head no.

Then he said, "I'm surprised."

"I don't see why you should be. You weren't only his nephew. The way things happened, you were the son I could never give him."

He looked at her, then back at the tombstone.

"Seen enough?" Martha asked. "It's as cold as a witch's teat out here."

"Why, Miss Martha, how you talk!"

She walked to the pipe-and-chain fence and stepped over the chain, then slipped behind the wheel of a 1940 Cadillac coupe. Clete followed her and got in the passenger side.

"There should be a bottle in the glove compartment," Martha said as she started the engine. "I think I'd like a little taste about now."

He opened the glove compartment. Inside was a quart of Jack Daniel's, unopened, a leather-bound flask, and a Smith and Wesson .357 revolver in a holster. He shook the flask, heard it gurgle, unscrewed the top, and handed it to Martha. She put it to her lips and took a healthy swallow, then handed it back to him. He took a healthy swallow.

"Are you going to have time to go to Houston before you go where you're going?" Martha asked. "The girls will want to see you."

"I don't know," he said. "Probably. I'll know for sure when Colonel Graham tells me when he wants me in New Orleans."

"What are you going to do in New Orleans?"

"Except have the Old Man find fault with the way I blink my eyes, you mean?"

The Old Man was Cletus Marcus Howell, Martha's father-in-law and Clete's grandfather.

"He's not that bad, Clete."

He laughed.

"You didn't say what you're going to do in New Orleans."

"Mine not to reason why, Ma'am, mine but to ride into the Valley of Death, or wherever it is. You keep forgetting, Ma'am, that I'm just a lousy first lieutenant, and they don't bother to tell me a hell of a lot. Just do it."

She chuckled.

He purposefully changed the subject. "Jim's pistol is in the glove compartment. Did you know that?"

"That's my pistol," Martha said. "His guns are in town. They had to inventory them when they probated the will. You got them, too, of course, except for the .250-3000 Savage. Beth killed her first deer with that, and he thought she should have it."

They rode in silence for several minutes down the dirt road— really no more than tracks in the land leading down from the highest spot on the ranch toward the ranch house, which was built in a small valley to get it out of the wind.

"Your car is in town," Martha said, breaking the silence, "up on blocks. But if you're going somewhere where you can have a car, maybe you'd better get it running."

"I thought I would go into town anyway, to have a drink at the Petroleum Club. Is somebody at the house?"

"Juanita's there. I just hope she doesn't find out you're here and didn't stop by there first to see her."

"It was after midnight when I got to Midland," Clete said.

"Well, we'll fix you some lunch, so that you'll have something in your stomach before you hit the P-Club bar, and you go see Juanita. Before you go to the P-Club."

"You don't want to go with me?"

"I don't think I could handle that, not yet, honey," Martha said.

"I'm not sure if I'll be able to either," Clete said. "But I think I should go."

"Just go easy at the bar, honey. AH the booze in the world isn't going to bring him back."

"Yes, Ma'am," Clete said.

He turned on the seat to look at her.

I really love this woman. She is not biologically my mother; but that's what she is in fact. She took me in when I was eighteen months old and she was for all practical purposes just a bride. I was her husband's sister's motherless child, and she still raised me as her own. I must have been four or five before I understood that I had another mother, a dead mother.

"Martha," Clete said. "I don't know if I ever told you before, I don't know why I didn't, but I love you."

She turned to look at him quickly.

"Clete, honey, that's nice. That's real nice. But you didn't have to say it. I know."

She returned her attention to the road for a moment, then said, "I think I could use another little taste, honey. Or did you drink it all?"

[THREE]

The Petroleum Club

Midland, Texas

1615 21 October 1942

The very black, very dignified bartender in the very white jacket handed Clete Howell a Jack Daniel's and water. He was still feeling the pulls he'd taken in Aunt Martha's car and really didn't want the drink; but it occurred to him that if Uncle Jim happened to be peering over the edge of his cloud looking down, he would like to see him having what he himself drank in his club.

"Were you here when it happened, William?" Clete asked.

"Yes, Sir, Mr. Clete. I was."

Clete looked at him, waiting for him to go on.

"There's not much to tell, Mr. Clete," the bartender said. "He hadn't been in here long. He was sitting right where you are, with Mr. Dennison. He said he had a headache, that it must be the new hat..."

"This hat," Clete said, touching his new Stetson.

"Yes, Sir. I thought that might be it. And he took it off and laid it on the bar and said he was going to the gentlemen's, and when he got to the door... I was watching ... he just... he just fell down."

"Miss Martha told me it was a cerebral hemorrhage," Clete said.

"Yes, Sir. Well, Mr. Dennison and I run over there, and Dr. Sayre was out in the lounge with Mrs. Dennison, and he came running, and I went back to the bar to call an ambulance, and I was still on the phone when Dr. Sayre said he was gone."

"A good way to go, wouldn't you say, William?" Clete said.

"Yes, Sir. I thought about that. What he was talking about to Mr. Dennison was that a hole had come in that morning flowing a thousand barrels. It was a wildcat they put down with their own money. I had a one-twenty-eighth interest in the hole. It was, a happy time."

"Thank you, William."

"We're going to miss Mr. Jim around here, Mr. Clete, for a long time."

"Yeah," Clete said.

William went to the end of the bar and picked up a towel and started to polish a whiskey sour glass. The telephone under the bar rang. He picked it up, then returned, carrying the handset on a very long coiled cord to Clete.

"There's a gentleman in the lobby asking to see you, Mr. Clete."

"You have a name?".

"No, Sir. He's on the phone."

Clete held out his hand for it.

"Hello?"

"Clete, I'm sorry to intrude on your leave, but I have to talk to you."

Christ, it's Colonel Graham. I thought he'd send me a telegram, or call.

"Yes, Sir."

"Do you think you could possibly squeeze in a few minutes for me in your busy schedule?"

"Yes, Sir. Of course. I'm just a little surprised you're here."

"I'm an amazing man. I thought you understood that. Would you tell this fellow to let me in, please?"

"Let me speak to him, Sir."

Clete picked up his glass and walked out of the bar into the lounge. It was furnished with tables and red-leather-upholstered captain's chairs, for ladies and for business conversations. The tables were arranged far enough apart to make it difficult to hear what was said at the adjoining tables.

He picked out one of the tables and stood beside it until he saw Graham entering the room, then signaled to him with his raised glass.

Graham was in somewhat mussed civilian clothing, and looked in unabashed curiosity around the room as he walked to Frade.

"Good afternoon, Sir," Clete said.

Graham smiled at him. "Howdy, Tex," he said. "Have you got a cowboy hat to go with that outfit?"

"As a matter of fact, I do. A brand-new Stetson, by the way. A family heirloom, so to speak."

"Why don't we sit down?" Graham asked, and sat down.

Clete set his glass on the table and sat down across from him.

Another very black barman in a very white jacket appeared almost immediately.

"I'll have whatever Mr. Frade is drinking," Graham said. He turned and smiled at Frade. "Very nice place," he said.

"You have any trouble finding it?"

"No. I called your aunt from the airport—I'm on my way to California again, and the pilot said he could refuel here just as well as someplace else. So I told him to stop here."

"What are you in?" Clete interrupted, in a pilot-Pavlovian reflex.

"A TBF"—a torpedo bomber—"on its way to San Diego," Graham said. "Anyway, your aunt Martha said you would either be at her house or here; and she gave me the number. So I called the house and a very nice lady told me I'd just missed you and that you were coming here."

"Juanita," Frade said.

"We had a nice little chat about you," Graham said. "You apparently learned your Spanish from her?"

Frade nodded. "She was my aunt Martha's nurse when she was a child in East Texas. And then she came out here when my aunt was married and started all over again with me."

The waiter delivered Graham's drink.

Graham took an appreciative sip, waited until the waiter was out of earshot, then asked, "How are you feeling?"

"I'm all right, thank you."

"No signs of malaria? Sometimes it shows up ..."

Clete shook his head. "I feel fine. I can't eat as much as I thought I would when I got home...."

"The stomach actually shrinks on a diet like you had on Guadalcanal," Graham said.

"And I don't seem to be able to handle as much of this as I used to be able to," Clete said, holding up his glass.

"The ideal OSS agent would be a tea-total," Graham said, smiling. "Maybe that's a good thing."

"I wondered when you were going to get around to that," Clete said, returning the smile.

"A number of things have happened," Graham said. "Is there any reason you couldn't be in New Orleans on the first of November? That's ten days, and the first is a Sunday."

"No, Sir. No problem. Where do I go in New Orleans?"

"I know from experience that the chow and the bunks at 3470 St. Charles Avenue are a little better than average," Graham replied. "Anything against you staying there?"

It was the address of Cletus Marcus Howell's mansion.

"I didn't know you were familiar with those accommodations, Sir."

"Your grandfather was more than hospitable when I went to see him."

"I didn't know you'd been to see him."

"And more than cooperative. He's quite a fellow."

Now that he had a moment to think about it, Clete was not surprised that Colonel Graham had gotten along well with the old man. Strong men like other strong men. And if he liked you, the old man could be the personification of Southern charm and hospitality.

But that raised the question of why Graham had gone to see the old man.

"I'm on my way to Australia, and I wanted to talk to you before you go to Argentina."

"Yes, Sir."

Graham saw the look of surprise on Clete's face, and decided an explanation would not hurt.

"There are some people in the Pacific, believe it or not, who are not convinced that the OSS can be useful. One of them happens to be General MacArthur. I'm going down there to try to change his mind."

"Really?"

"We also serve, we who try to charm and reason," Graham said.

Clete chuckled.

"The other two men on your team," Graham said, turning to the business at hand, "are both soldiers."

"Yes, Sir?"

"They are Second Lieutenant Anthony J. Pelosi, who was in the 82nd Airborne, and Staff Sergeant David G. Ettinger, who has been a Special Agent in the Counterintelligence Corps. People in the CIC often don't wear uniforms; or if they do, they wear them without rank insignia. They're called 'Mister.' Did you know that?"

"No, Sir."

"Ettinger is Spanish, and a Jew. Most of his family—they had a German, primarily Berlin, branch—has been murdered by the Nazis. He's been working with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, trying to make sure that Spanish and German Jewish immigrants and refugees are what they say they are."

"Sir?"

"That they haven't been sent to the United States by the Abwehr or Sicherheitsdienst—German military intelligence and Secret Service, respectively."

"Do they try to do that?" Clete asked, fascinated.

"Not often, but enough to make it necessary to spend a lot of man-hours on the problem. People who should know tell me Ettinger was very good at what he was doing. Pelosi is from Chicago, and is really knowledgeable about explosives; his family is in the demolitions business. Even Colonel Baxter F. Newton-Haddle seems awed by his expertise."

"Sir, I don't know who Colonel..."

"Colonel Baxter F. Newton-Haddle is Deputy Director for Training," Graham explained. "He runs the Country Club, our training center in Virginia. Both Pelosi and Ettinger are there— or were there until this morning, when I sent them on leave."

"I don't know about the 'Country Club' either, Sir."

"You went through Parris Island as an enlisted man, didn't you? And before Parris Island, when you were at Texas A and M, you spent a summer at Fort Benning, right?''

"Yes, Sir."

"So you haven't missed anything by not going to the Country Club, except Colonel Newton-Haddle's welcoming speech. During that he customarily brandishes his dagger and tells the incoming class he will turn them into efficient killers ... or they'll die trying."

"Really?" Clete smiled.

"I shouldn't mock him. He renders a service. But you didn't need it, so you didn't go there. Anyway, Ettinger will be in New Orleans on Monday, November two, and Pelosi the following day. They will travel separately, for obvious reasons. And a team will come down from Washington to brief you. Ettinger will go to Buenos Aires, via Miami, on Wednesday, November four. His cover will be a job at the Bank of Boston, where the Buenos Aires station chief is a vice-president.

"His name is Jasper F. Nestor. We do the best we can to compartmentalize—" Graham interrupted himself. "Can you remember that name? Jasper F. Nestor?''

"Jasper F. Nestor," Clete repeated. "Yes, Sir."

"As I said, we try to compartmentalize as much as we can. Ettinger obviously has to know who Nestor is, but he has been told, and I'm telling you now, that Pelosi doesn't have the need to know that name."

"Yes, Sir."

"Jasper may or may not, it's his decision, put you in touch with the commanding officer of the team that's already down there. But you won't meet the other members of that team. Get the idea?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Pelosi's cover, and yours, will be Howell Petroleum. This subject will be gone into in greater detail in New Orleans. But, in shorthand, the Argentines want more Howell Petroleum. The U.S. government wants to make sure they consume that petroleum and don't sell it to the Germans. Conveniently, on your medical release from the Marine Corps ..." He paused, then added: "You did not serve on Guadalcanal, by the way. Your heart murmur was discovered while you were in flight school."

"My heart murmur?"

"Your heart murmur," Graham confirmed. "Conveniently, anyhow, you were available to go to Buenos Aires to make sure the oil goes where it is supposed to go. You will very visibly occupy yourself with that, by the way. The BIS ... you remember what that is?"

"Bureau of Internal Security."

Graham nodded, and continued, "... will certainly be watching you. You and Pelosi will apply for Argentine visas at their consulate in New Orleans, and then fly down there. Pelosi has some other training, how to sink a ship, to go through first. But the sooner we can get you down there, the better."

"Yes, Sir."

"It is entirely likely that by the time you reach there, the team already in place will have taken care of the 'neutral' replenishment ship. But the Germans will certainly replace it, and that will have to be dealt with. As long as the Germans keep sending ships in, we are going to take them out."

"Yes, Sir. But..."

"But what?"

"Colonel, I don't... Colonel, from what you tell me, both Ettinger and Pelosi know how to do this sort of thing. I don't know anything about it."

"I wondered when you would consider that."

"I started thinking about it on the train to Chicago," Clete said. "And I haven't stopped."

"Why you, in other words?"

Clete nodded. "Because of my father?"

"Certainly because of your father," Graham said. "But that's not the only reason. Clete, by now you must have learned there's no way to tell beforehand how a man is going to behave in combat."

He waited until he saw acceptance of the premise on Clete's face.

"And that the way you stay alive in combat is by making on-the-spot decisions what to do when unexpected things come up, things that were not covered in your training. You stay alive by thinking on your feet. You've proved you can do that."

"But I still don't know anything about taking out ships."

"You've proved that you can think on your feet. You would be qualified for this job if your father didn't exist."

"I feel like I'm going to find myself up to my ass in alligators," Clete blurted.

"You will be," Graham said, smiling. "But you'll be all right. If I didn't think you would, I wouldn't be sending you down there.

"You might want to consider taking your car with you," Graham said, changing the subject. "You'd be expected, I think, to do that."

"How do you know about my car?"

"Your grandfather told me," Graham said. "I told you, he's been very helpful."

"How would I get it down there?"

The idea of sending his car—a Buick convertible, as it happened—anywhere by ship, in wartime, came as a shock. The car belonged to another life, a life that ended when he went into the Corps.

"I would recommend E.L.M.A.," Graham said matter-of-factly. "It stands for Empresa Lineas Mantimas Argentinas. They have direct service between New Orleans and Buenos Aires."

He saw the look of surprise or confusion on Clete's face, and added: "Argentina is neutral. Both we and the Germans scrupulously observe that neutrality. We don't sink Argentinean flagged ships, and neither do they."

"And who's going to pay for shipping my car?" Clete asked as that thought passed through his mind.

"Howell Petroleum. We will reimburse them, of course. And we will reimburse them for your Howell Petroleum salaries and living allowances. Technically, you're supposed to turn back to the government any excess over your military pay and allowances, but I don't know of anyone in the OSS who has actually done that."

"If my grandfather thinks we're going down there to kill Argentines, I'm sure he'd be willing to underwrite all costs," Clete said.

"I did get the feeling that he's not overly fond of your father," Graham said.

Clete looked at him and smiled.

"I really hope, Clete, that you won't have to kill anyone," Graham went on. "Killing people makes things sticky. And no matter what, just make sure of the main thing—if it comes down to your team having to do it—make sure that Pelosi and Ettinger keep the replenishment ship—ships—from replenishing German submarines."

"How am I going to know where those ships even are? Where will I get the explosives?"

"The briefing team will cover most of that, and Nestor will be helpful, once you're there."

Clete shook his head and shrugged.

"Colonel, I really hope you know what you're doing."

"I believe we do. I'm sure you'll live up to our expectations. Actually, telling you that was the main reason I wanted to see you before you go down there, the reason I ordered the refueling stop here."

"That sounds suspiciously like a pep talk."

"I hope so. That's what it's supposed to be," Graham said. "And now that that's done, I'd better get going."

He stood up and put out his hand. Clete got belatedly to his feet.

"One more thing, to answer the question I suspect has been running through your mind: No, you would not be more useful flying for the Corps. This is more important."

"Yes, Sir."

"Good luck, son," Colonel Graham said, shook his hand, and walked out of the lounge. Clete watched him go, and was surprised when he reappeared almost immediately.

"I'm going to need a ride to the airport," Graham said, somewhat sheepishly. "Can you call a cab for me?"

"I've got a car," Clete said. "I'll take you."

[FOUR]

35 Beerenstrasse

Berlin/Zehlendorf

1530 29 October 1942

Hauptmann Freiherr—Captain Baron—Hans-Peter von Wacht-stein swore when he saw a Feldgendarmerie (Military Police) roadblock barring access to the Avus, a four-lane superhighway leading into Berlin. The line of cars they were holding up was long. This translated to mean they were not only checking the vehicles to ensure the trip was authorized, but also the people in the cars to make sure they had proper documents. The check would take twenty minutes, perhaps longer.

Von Wachtstein—his friends called him "Peter"—was a blond, blue-eyed, compact young man of twenty-four who was the commanding officer of Jagdstaffel 232 (Fighter Squadron 232). Peter slowed and started to pull to the left to enter the line of waiting cars, then changed his mind.

"I am, after all, on official business," he said aloud.

He drove the Horche convertible sedan along the line of parked cars. A Feldgendarmerie Feldwebel, holding a stop sign on a short pole, stepped imperiously into the roadway and signaled for him to stop. He held up the sign and waved his free hand, palm out.

Von Wachtstein applied the brakes as he rolled down the window. The Horche started to skid on the icy cobblestones of the entrance road. The Feldgendarmerie Feldwebel jumped out of the way. The Horche finally came to a rest, cocked on the road.

Peter immediately opened the door and stepped out; the one thing he didn't need was an annoyed Feldgendarrnerie Feldwebel. That could keep him out here all afternoon.

"Are you all right?" Peter asked, hoping he sounded genuinely concerned.

The Feldwebel was annoyed, but he saw that he was dealing with an officer (and Peter was sure he had taken into account that the car was a Horche, and probably that the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross was hanging around his neck). He managed a tight smile as he saluted.

"The one thing wrong with a Horche is that they are as unmanageable on ice as a cow," Peter said, returning the salute with a smile. He reached into the inside pocket of his leather jacket and extended both his identity card and the teletype from the Oberkommando der Luftwaffe (General Headquarters, Air Force), which ordered Hauptmann von Wachtstein to present himself as soon as the press of his duties permitted, but no longer than forty-eight hours from the time the message had been sent, to the office of the Chief of Protocol.

"A magnificent vehicle, Herr Hauptmann," the Feldwebel said. "Is it yours?"

"My father's," Peter said.

"And your father is?"

"Generalmajor Graf von Wachtstein."

That wasn't exactly true. The car had been Karl's. Peter had been using it ever since word came that the eldest of the three von Wachtstein sons had laid down his life for the Fuhrer and the Fatherland in some unknown Russian village. But Karl, his father's namesake, had been only an Oberstleutnant (a lieutenant colonel); and Feldgendarmerie Feldwebels could be counted upon to be far more impressed with a Generalmajor than an Oberstleutnant.

"Thank you, Herr Hauptmann," the Feldwebel said, returning Peter's identity card and the yellowish sheet of teletype paper. He turned and blew a small brass whistle. Peter had seen and heard them before; they reminded him of children's whistles.

"Pass the Herr Hauptmann," the Feldwebel called loudly, then turned back to Peter and saluted. "Drive carefully," he said. "All Berlin is a sheet of ice."

"Thank you for your courtesy," Peter said, and stepped back into the Horche.

The encounter made him feel a little better. Among people like the Feldwebel, there was still something left of their old attitude toward their betters, a certain respect.

Driving reasonably carefully, it took him fifteen minutes to reach Sven Hedin Strasse in Zehlendorf, where he stopped the car and looked across the small park there—its grass had been raped to build a bomb shelter—toward the house, actually a small mansion, at 35 Beerenstrasse.

Now that he was in Berlin, it was clearly his duty to turn off Sven Hedin Strasse onto Onkel Tom Allee and drive the three or four kilometers to Luftwaffe Headquarters and present himself to the Chief of Protocol for whatever nonsense that idiot had in mind.

On the other hand, the teletype had said "no later than forty-eight hours" from the date-time seal on the message, and that gave him until 10:05 tomorrow morning. He'd been a soldier long enough to learn that one never reported in more than five minutes before the specified time.

Furthermore, the house at 35 Beerenstrasse was occupied by a lady he'd recently met. The lady was a film actress at the UFA studios. She and some other women, a small band, and a juggler, of all things, visited the small field in the country where Jagdstaffel 232 was based in order to entertain the troops. Afterward, Hauptmann von Wachtstein considered it his duty to ask the troupe to dinner in the officers' mess. The lady's husband, who identified himself as a member of Propaganda Minister Goebbels's staff in the Propaganda Ministry, sat on one side of him, and the lady on the other.

The lady's husband was an overfed, pompous little man, obviously some fifteen or twenty years older than his wife, who would probably have been still selling stamps in some rural post office had he not had the wisdom to join the National Socialist Party before the Austrian Corporal came to power.

The moment he saw the lady, a tall, graceful blonde with a splendid bosom, Peter sensed that she found him attractive. Proof came at dinner, when her knee, then her shoe, and ultimately her shoeless foot came looking for him under the table.

He of course asked her for the privilege of the first dance after dinner. Though the dance was brief, it gave her opportunity to rub her bosom against him and to suggest that he come see her the next time he came to Berlin.

"Alois is very often out of town on Propaganda Ministry business," she told him.

Of course, it was possible that she may have had more to drink than she should have (she liked his cognac very much). Or, for that matter, she might simply have been teasing him. So Peter approached her invitation with understandable caution.

One of the great shocks of his life occurred a year before, when he learned that what appeared to be an unquestioned invitation in the eyes and attitude of a stunning redhead was really nothing more than a desire for him to betray interest in her. That way she could complain to her husband and remind him that she was still attractive.

He put the Horche in gear, turned toward Onkel Tom Allee, and then made two left turns back toward Beerenstrasse.

The door was opened by a gray-haired woman. She was not in uniform, but she was clearly a servant.

"I am Hauptmann Freiherr von Wachtstein," Peter announced. "Is Frau Nussl at home?"

Nussl was her husband's name. Professionally, the lady was known as Lillian Hart.

"I will see," the gray-haired woman announced, and closed the door in his face.

Frau Nussl appeared three minutes later.

"God, I was afraid you'd do this," she greeted him.

Peter was prepared. He'd learned from the painful mistake with the redhead.

"I'm visiting Berlin on official business, Frau Nussl," he announced formally, and thrust a paper-wrapped parcel at her. "I hope you will accept this as a small token of the gratitude of the officers and men of Jagdstaffel 232 for your kindness in visiting us."

Laughing, she took the parcel and said, "Come back at five, or five-fifteen," then closed the door in his face.

Peter, sensing that his face was flushed, returned to the Horche and headed again for Onkel Tom Strasse.

What I will do tonight, after I see the Protocol idiot, is go to the Hotel Adlon. The Knight's Cross is usually enough to motivate some patriotic fraulein there to visit your room for its view.

The way my luck is running, there will be no rooms in the Adlon. Maybe the Hotel am Zoo. The one thing I will not do is be back at 35 Beerenstrasse at five or five-fifteen.

"Is that the only uniform you have with you, von Wachtstein?" Oberst Howze asked, annoyance in his voice.

"Herr Oberst, I regret that it is. The teletype said nothing about uniforms."

"You are having luncheon at the Foreign Ministry tomorrow," Howze said. "That uniform is inappropriate. Something will have to be done."

“Herr Oberst, if I may?” Oberstleutnant Huber said.

Oberst Howze nodded.

"May I suggest, Herr Oberst, that under the circumstances, his uniform may be very appropriate. It is the uniform worn by officers who are flying every day against the enemy. In that sense, it may be viewed as a token of respect for the late Hauptmann Duarte; that we are taking a man from the lines, so to speak, as a token of our respect."

Oberst Howze grunted.

"At least get your trousers pressed and get rid of those boots," Howze said to Peter.

"Yes, Sir. Herr Oberst, may I inquire?"

"All I know, von Wachtstein, is that if you pass muster at luncheon tomorrow, you will be traveling to Argentina as the Assistant Military Attach? for Air. And escorting the body of an Argentine who killed himself at Stalingrad, flying a Storch."

"Sir..."

Howze held up his hand impatiently to stop him.

"It will all be explained to you tomorrow, von Wachtstein," he said, and added to Oberstleutnant Huber, "Go with him. Make sure he has at least decent shoes. He can't have luncheon at the Foreign Ministry in flight boots!"

At almost exactly five o'clock, after failing to obtain an explanation from Oberstleutnant Huber either about the luncheon or about Argentina, Peter went back to the Horche, dropped a new pair of low quarter shoes from the Officers' Sales Store onto the passenger seat, and drove out of the Oberkommando der Luftwaffe complex.

The more he thought about it, the chances of his finding a room at either the Adlon or the Hotel am Zoo seemed remote. If he'd had a couple of days to telephone ahead, it might have been different. That left taking a room in one of the smaller hotels around the Zoo, or off the Kurfurstendamm. They catered these days to a warm-sheets clientele; but that would be all right, in a pinch. Or he could go to the bar of one of the better hotels, and with luck he might find a patriotic fraulein with an apartment. Or as a last resort he could take her to a small hotel. But that would not solve the problem of the pressed trousers.

There was, of course, always Frau Nussl. She had said to come back.

Her maid! Certainly her maid could press my pants!

He drove back down Onkel Tom Allee and ultimately to 35 Beerenstrasse.

This time Frau Nussl herself opened the door to him.

"I couldn't have you in with Frau Leiss here," Frau Nussl greeted him.

"I understand," Peter said.

"The cognac is marvelous!" Frau Nussl said. "I started without you, the minute she was out of the door."

"I have a friend in Paris who sends it to me," Peter replied idly, and then asked, "Your maid is gone, I take it?"

"You seem disappointed," Frau Nussl said.

"I have to have my trousers pressed," Peter said.

"Really?"

"Really. Is there a cleaner's shop nearby?"

"It's probably closed," she said. "But there's an iron somewhere. AH we have to do is find it. Can you do it yourself?"

"Sure."

"It's probably in one of the closets upstairs, it and the board," she said. "Let's go see. One of those lovely bottles of cognac is already up there."

There was, in fact, a small but completely equipped linen closet Peter set up the folding ironing board and plugged the iron in.

Frau Nussl handed him a snifter generously served with cognac.

"I'd offer to do that for you, but I honestly don't know how," she said.

"Is there a robe or something I could borrow? You lose the crease unless you let them cool for fifteen or twenty minutes."

"ThatI can arrange," she said, and went down the corridor.

Peter took a healthy swallow of the cognac and felt it warm his body.

Argentina? Assistant Military Attach? for Air? Accompanying a body? What the hell is going on?

Frau Nussl returned with a heavy silk robe.

"It's Alois's. Almost unworn," she said. "When he puts it on, it drags on the floor."

"It'll do fine," Peter said. "It won't take me long. Thank you."

He closed the door, took his trousers off, and laid them on the board while he waited for the iron to grow warm.

The door opened.

"I wondered," Frau Nussl said, "what you would look like without your pants."

Frau Nussl had changed into a dressing robe.

"Oh, really?"

"And I thought you just might be idly curious to see what I looked like without mine," Frau Nussl went on, flicking the opening of her gown back and forth to give him, however briefly, that opportunity.

"Won't that wait?" she asked. "Isn't there something I could do to get you to put that off for a while?"

"You just did it," Peter said, and unplugged the iron.

Chapter Four

[ONE]

The Diplomatic Reception Room

The Foreign Ministry of the German Reich

Berlin

1205 30 October 1942

"There he is," Wilhelm von Ruppersdorf, Deputy Foreign Minister for South American Affairs, said softly to the three men sitting with him at a small table, and rose to his feet.

The others followed suit. Hauptmann Hans-Peter von Wachtstein looked toward the door. A uniformed guard was leading a tall, dark-haired, and dark-skinned man in a business suit across the marble-floored reception area toward them.

Von Ruppersdorf took a few steps forward, smiled, and put out his hand.

"Buenas tardes, mi Coronel," he said.

Von Ruppersdorf’s Spanish, Peter had learned three quarters of an hour before, was impeccable. He had served for three years at the Embassy in Buenos Aires, he informed Peter then.

The tall, dark-skinned man smiled, showing a handsome set of teeth, and shook von Ruppersdorf’s hand.

"Colonel Per?n, may I present Brigadefiihrer von Neibermann, Oberst Susser, and Hauptmann Freiherr von Wachtstein?" von Ruppersdorf said. “Gentlemen, Colonel Juan Domingo Per?n, of the Argentine Embassy."

Per?n shook hands with each of them in turn. He seemed to look askance at Peter, which Peter felt was understandable.

Despite my new shoes and pressed pants, compared to these three, I look like a bum.

Von Ruppersdorf was wearing a morning coat, Brigadefuhrer von Neibermann was wearing an SS dress uniform, complete to dagger suspended from a silver brocade belt, and Colonel Susser was in the prescribed Luftwaffe walking-out uniform. Peter was wearing a leather uniform jacket which showed signs of having spent some time in a cockpit.

Another usher appeared, carrying five glasses of champagne on a tray. One by one the men took a glass.

"The late Captain Jorge Alejandro Duarte," Brigadefuhrer von Neibermann said, raising his glass.

He mispronounced every other syllable, Peter noticed, despite the coaching he'd been given by von Ruppersdorf before they came into the reception room.

"Hear, hear," Colonel Susser said.

"A tragic loss," von Ruppersdorf said.

"El Capitan Duarte," Peter said, raising his glass and then taking a sip.

Not bad,Peter thought. German Sekt, of course, not as good as French champagne, but the Foreign Ministry of the German Reich certainly could not serve French champagne in its reception room.

He was more than a little hung over and as dry as a bone, and had to resist the temptation to drain his glass and hold it up for another. He sensed Colonel Juan Domingo Per?n's eyes on him.

"I would like to apologize for my appearance, mi Coronel," Peter said. "When I was summoned to Berlin, I had no idea it was to take lunch with a distinguished foreign statesman."

"I'm not a 'distinguished statesman,' Captain," Per?n said with a smile. "Like you, I am a soldier. I am here to learn something about your social services. And if I was looking closely at you, it was to see if that is indeed the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross."

"Hauptmann Freiherr von Wachtstein received that decoration from the hands of the Fuhrer himself," Brigadefiihrer von Neibermann gushed.

"Where did you learn your Spanish, Captain?" Colonel Per?n asked Peter, ignoring von Neibermann. "You speak it extraordinarily well."

"In school, mi Coronel," Peter replied, "and then I served in Spain."

"With the Condor Legion," Brigadefuhrer von Neibermann furnished.

"You will have no trouble making yourself understood in Argentina, Captain," Per?n said.

"You think the Freiherr would be suitable, then, for the sad duty of escorting the remains of Captain Duarte, mi Coronel?" von Ruppersdorf asked.

"I should think that Captain Duarte's family—we are acquainted—would be honored that such a distinguished officer would be spared from his duties for the task," Per?n said.

"It is a token of the respect of the government of the German Reich for Captain Duarte," von Ruppersdorf said. "His loss is deeply regretted."

"We feel that Captain Duarte fell for the Fatherland," Brigadefuhrer von Neibermann said solemnly. "That he was one of us."

Per?n looked at him. Peter saw the sudden hardness in his eyes.

That was going a bit too far, Herr Brigadefuhrer.

"Did I understand you to say that you know Captain Duarte's family, Colonel Per?n ?" von Ruppersdorf asked quickly.

"I am acquainted with his parents," Per?n said. "His uncle, Colonel Jorge Guillermo Frade, is an old friend. We shared a room at the School of Cavalry as lieutenants, and we were at Command College together."

"I see," von Ruppersdorf said. "Then this is a personal loss for you, too, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is," Per?n said simply.

"Would you like another glass of champagne, Colonel?" von Ruppersdorf asked. "Or shall we go into lunch?"

"Two glasses of champagne, except when I am in the company of a beautiful woman, gives me a headache," Per?n said.

"The same thing happens to me," Peter was astonished to hear himself blurt, "the morning after I have been with a beautiful woman."

Per?n looked at him, astonished. And just at the point where Peter had become convinced that he had really put his foot in his mouth, Colonel Per?n laughed. Heartily.

"Are you sure you have no Argentine blood, Captain von Wachtstein?" he asked.

"No, Sir," Peter said. "I am a pure-blooded Pomeranian, two-legged variety."

Per?n laughed again, delightedly, and touched Peter's arm.

"You will fit right in in Buenos Aires, Captain," Per?n said.

[TWO]

1420 Avenue Alvear

Buenos Aires, Argentina

1430 31 October 1942

The chauffeur of the 1941 Buick Roadmaster station wagon, a heavyset man in his forties, glanced at the man in the front seat beside him and saw that wherever his attention was, it was not on the Avenue Alvear.

"Mi Coronel," he said, "the gates are closed."

Jorge Guillermo Frade, who was wearing a gray linen suit and a soft straw snap-brim hat, looked out the window and saw that was indeed the case. The twenty-foot-high double cast iron gates in front of his sister's house were unquestionably closed. He also glanced around and realized that Enrico, on seeing that the gates were closed, had elected to stop right where he was, in the middle of the Avenue Alvear, to wait until the problem was solved for him. At least four cars behind him were blowing their horns.

"Make the turn, Enrico," Frade said softly. "Pull as far onto the sidewalk as you can, so as not to block traffic, and then leave the car, enter through the small gate, and either open the driveway gates or have someone open them for you."

"S?, mi Coronel."

Enrico is not stupid,Frade thought. It is simply that he has not mastered—never will be able to master—Buenos Aires traffic. He can alone and without difficulty maneuver a troop, a squadron, the entire regiment of the Husare di Pueyrredon at the gallop in a thunderstorm, but a closed gate, one that he cannot leap over or go around, is simply beyond his understanding. As is the notion that it is not acceptable behavior to simply stop in the middle of a busy street because you don't know what to do next.

Enrico made the turn, sounded the horn to warn pedestrians on the sidewalk, and stopped the Buick with its nose no more than six inches from the massive gate. He applied the parking brake, turned off the engine, and stepped out of the car.

As soon as he was out, Frade slid across the seat, turned on the ignition, and started the engine. He saw Enrico enter the courtyard inside the fence and move immediately to the gate. There was an enormous brass padlock and a chain holding the gate closed. Enrico threw up his hands in disgust, then trotted toward the twenty-foot-high double doors of the mansion.

Maybe they're not here? Is it possible they would have gone off to their estancia without telling anyone? After Jorge was killed, anything is possible. So what will I do? It's three hundred kilometers out there!

He saw Enrico banging the cast iron clapper on the door.

If there is a clapper, use that. Doorbells sometimes do not work.

The door was opened by Alberto, Beatrice and Homer's butler. Enrico pointed indignantly toward the closed gates and the Buick sitting outside them. Alberto looked stricken, then disappeared into the house, leaving the door open.

A moment later, one of the other servants appeared, this one in an apron. He was armed with an enormous key for the enormous padlock.

His name is Roberto...Ricardo... and he is Alberto's nephew, Frade remembered. Or a second cousin, something like that.

Between the two of them, they got the gates open, and Frade drove inside.

When he left the car, Alberto was standing there.

"My apologies, mi Coronel," he said. "We did not know you were coming, and we are not receiving."

"It's all right," Frade said. "My sister is at home?"

"I have told the Se?ora you are here. You will be received in the library, mi Coronel."

Frade walked into the house. There was a huge foyer, furnished with heavy, leather-upholstered furniture, tables along the walls, and a fountain, not presently in use, in the center. The floor was marble.

He walked into the library, which was carpeted and quite dark. Alberto followed him in, turning on lights and opening the curtains on two windows which looked out onto the garden.

"May I take your hat, mi Coronel?" Alberto asked. "And may I bring you something?"

Frade handed him the hat.

"I would like a drink," he said. "I know where it is. Would you get me some ice? And some agua mineral con gas?"

While Alberto left to fetch ice and soda water, Frade went to what appeared to be—and had once been—an ancient chest of drawers and tugged on one of the pulls. The entire front opened to him, after which he slid out a tray that held half a dozen bottles of spirits and as many large, squat crystal glasses. He took a bottle of Dewar's scotch and poured three fingers' worth in a glass.

He looked at it a moment, then took a healthy swallow, grimacing slightly as the whiskey passed down his throat. Then he refilled the glass to a depth of two fingers and waited for Alberto to bring the ice and soda.

When his sister and her husband walked into the library, he was sitting in a chair apparently taking his first sip of a drink. No one spoke. He rose as Beatrice came toward him, took two steps toward her, and kissed her on the cheek. A real kiss—he could taste her face powder.

Beatrice is still a handsome woman,Frade thought. She looks ghastly right now, but even so, she seems much younger than Humberto... and they are what? Forty-six. Beatrice is actually six months older than Humberto, now that I think about it.

"People mean well," Humberto Valdez Duarte, his brother-in-law, a tall, slender man, said as he put out his hand. "But they— we closed the gate, hoping they would think we were gone away, or take the suggestion that we are not receiving."

"I understand," Frade said.

"What is that you're drinking, Jorge?" Beatrice asked, then went on without giving him a chance to reply. "Will you have something to eat?"

"The scotch is fine, thank you," he said.

"We went to eight o'clock mass," Beatrice said.

"Did you?"

"At Our Lady of Pilar," (The Basilica of Our Lady of Pilar (completed 1732), on Recoleta Square, is considered to be the most beautiful church in Buenos Aires. It is adjacent to the Recoleta Cemetery, which dates to 1822 and contains the remains of the most prominent Argentine families, interred in magnificent marble tombs (many of these tombs have as many as five subterranean levels, each holding three levels of caskets on open shelves, access to which is by stairways leading down from the ground floor). Humberto said, evenly, but looking at Frade.

Christ, I know what's coming.

"And then afterward, we went to Recoleta," Beatrice went on.

There is a dreamy quality to her voice, and to the way she behaves. I hope to God she doesn't become addicted to whatever she's taking.

"We visited the Duarte tomb," Beatrice went on, "and of course ours. I left flowers on Mommy's casket and Daddy's."

"I haven't been there in almost a year," Frade said, thinking aloud.

"Humberto said I shouldn't ask you, because you wouldn't know," Beatrice said, "but I have been wondering, Jorge, do you -think there was a mass when they buried our Jorge?''

"I don't know about a mass, Beatrice, but I'm sure there was a priest. They have chaplains in the German Army, as we do. Beatrice..."

"And I would really like to know, Jorge," Beatrice said, looking at him, "whether you think—after this horrible war, of course—there are chances of our bringing him home, to put him to rest in Recoleta, with the Duartes?"

"Actually, Beatrice, that's why I'm here," Frade said.

"Excuse me?"

I don't think she will understand what I have to tell her. Thank God Humberto is here.

"There has been a radio message, Beatrice. Do you remember Juan Domingo Per?n? El Coronel Juan Domingo Per?n?"

She considered that a full fifteen seconds before shaking her head no. There was confusion all over her face.

"He and I were lieutenants together. And then we were at the Command College. He's in Germany, studying welfare and retirement, and social services for the poor."

Beatrice laughed brightly.

"Whatever are you talking about, Jorge?"

"It appears that the Germans are arranging to send Jorge home, Beatrice," Frade said. "Per?n was called to the Foreign Ministry and introduced to—actually, he was asked to approve of—the German officer who will escort the remains."

"The Germans are sending Jorge home?" Beatrice asked.

"Odd, that you were told and not me," Humberto said.

Frade was genuinely fond of his brother-in-law—despite his penchant for taking offense when none was intended. He was annoyed with him now, but kept that from his voice when he replied.

"I'm sure there will be a formal notification. Probably by the German ambassador. But Per?n knew Jorge was my nephew, and he sent unofficial word to me through our military attached By radio. The mail service is nonexistent these days. Rather than telephoning, someone from the Defense Ministry took it all the way out to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo. As soon as I received it, I brought it here."

"When are they sending Jorge home?" Beatrice asked.

"I don't know that yet, Bea," Frade said gently. "I'm sure as soon as the details are known, you will be informed."

"We can have a mass, a high requiem mass, at Our Lady of Pilar," Beatrice said. "I'll have to tell the Bishop."

"There will be time for that, mi amor," Humberto said.

"And Jorge, there are still those lovely cedar caskets at San Pedro y San Pablo? Aren't there?"

Years and years before, their father somehow came onto a stock of cedar. He had a cabinet maker at the estancia turn it into caskets. It was not, Frade thought, the only odd thing the old man did after he turned sixty. But at least half a dozen cedar caskets remained stored in the rafters of the old carriage house. All that had to be done to them was to outfit the interior.

"Yes, there are," Frade said.

"That will make it nice," Beatrice said. "We will put Jorge in with the Duartes, but in a casket from Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo."

God, she's out of her mind. If she had had more than the one child, she would be far better off.

"Yes," Frade agreed, "that would be nice."

"I must talk to the Bishop and see what is involved," Beatrice said.

"Beatrice, it'll wait until tomorrow," Humberto said.

"Nonsense," she said. "I've known him since he went into the seMi?ary. He'll have time for me."

She walked out of the room.

When he was sure she was out of earshot, Frade asked, "What is she taking?"

Humberto shrugged helplessly.

"I don't know. Something the doctor gives her."

"She is not herself," Frade said.

"Of course she's not herself," Humberto snapped. "She's lost her only child in a war he had no business being involved in."

"That's not what I mean, Humberto," Frade said.

"When she doesn't take her pills, she weeps. For hours, she weeps," Humberto said.

"She is your wife," Frade said.

"Meaning what?" Humberto snapped.

"Meaning that while I am concerned to see her drugged that way, it is not really any of my business."

"The doctor comes every day," Humberto said. "I can only presume he knows what he is doing. And of course it's your business. She's your sister. You love her."

"I wept when I heard what happened to Jorge," Frade said. "I have some small idea of what you are going through."

Tears welled in Humberto's eyes.

"Why don't you make yourself a drink?" Frade asked.

"Yes," Humberto agreed quickly. "Will you have another?"

Frade shook his head no, and murmured, "No, gracias."

When Duarte was at the chest-of-drawers bar, with his back to Frade, he said, "Jorge, I want you to know how much I appreciate everything you have done. I don't know how we would have managed without you."

"I have done nothing," Frade said.

"But you have, dear Jorge," Humberto said, turning and walking to Frade and handing him a drink. "And we both know it."

Frade put his arm around Humberto's shoulders and hugged him.

"And what of your boy?" Humberto asked. "I realize I do not have the right to ask, but..."

"My latest information is that he has entered the Marine Corps..."

"The what?"

"The Marine Corps. They are soldiers, an elite force. He will be trained as a pilot. Presumably, he will soon go to the war. As I understand it, the Marine Corps is fighting the Japanese in the Pacific."

"I will pray for him," Humberto said. "Now, after what has happened to my Jorge, I will pray very hard for your boy."

With a masterful effort, Colonel Jorge Guillermo Frade controlled his voice and replied, "Thank you, dear Humberto."

[THREE]

3470 St. Charles Avenue

New Orleans, Louisiana

1615 1 November 1942

It was growing dark enough for people to turn their headlights on, and it was raining hard, the drops drumming on the convertible's roof. It hadn't been raining long enough, though, for the rain to clean the road grime from the windshield, and it was streaked. As he drove down St. Charles Avenue past the Tulane University campus, Clete noticed a couple walking slowly through the rain, sharing the man's raincoat. He had done that himself, more than a few times, when he was at Tulane.

They're in love,he thought, or at least in lust.

He'd noticed similar couples on the Rice University campus in Houston. And he'd admired a spectacular brunette in Bern's sorority house, when he was taking tea with the house mother—a "ceremony" that gave Beth and Marjorie the chance to show off their brother, the Marine Aviator Hero fresh home from Guadalcanal.

He even went back to his hotel and put his uniform on for that. Protesting, of course, and telling himself at the time that he was doing it only to indulge Beth and Marjorie, who actually wept when they saw him standing in the foyer of the sorority house. They were going to miss their father at least as much as he did, he told himself then. And since there was little else he could do for them, putting on his uniform so they could display their Brother the Hero seemed not so much of a sacrifice.

When the brunette proved to be fascinated with Marine Green and Wings of Gold, it seemed for a moment to be a case of casting bread upon the water. But he didn't pursue it. For one thing, he wanted to spend as much time alone with the girls as he could; and for another, they had enough trouble without being labeled as the sisters of that awful fellow who took Whatsername out and tried to jump Whatsemame's bones in the backseat of his Buick.

Perhaps he'd have a chance in New Orleans to make a few telephone calls and do something about his celibacy. It was a very long time since he'd even been close to a woman. On the 'Canal, he thought a good bit about a nurse he'd "met" in San Diego ... that is to say, he walked into the hospital cafeteria and the nurse who thirty minutes before had drawn his blood asked him to share her table. She was also a brunette, deeply tanned, and magnificently bosomed. Her uniform was very tightly fitted; and if you looked—and he had—you could see a heavenly swell at the V neck of her whites.

There hadn't been time to pursue that—he'd boarded the Long Island the next morning.

He hadn't even gotten close to a woman at Pearl Harbor.

He switched on the turn signal, waited for a St. Charles Street trolley to clatter past in the opposite direction, and headed up St. Charles. Then he turned off the street onto the drive of a very large, very white, ornately decorated three-story frame mansion.

No car was parked under the portico, which probably meant that his grandfather, Cletus Marcus Howell, was not yet home from the office. He glanced at his watch; he'd probably be home any minute. That meant he would be greatly annoyed when he drove up and found another car occupying the space where he intended to park the car and get into his house without getting rained upon.

Clete stopped under the portico and stared unhappily at the garage, a hundred yards behind the house. The three doors of the former carriage house were closed. Unless things had changed, they were closed and locked. He couldn't get inside even if he drove there. All he would do was get wet.

"To hell with it!" he said aloud, then turned off the key and opened the door. He reached across the seat and picked up his Stetson, put it on, and got out. He was wearing khaki trousers and boots and a faded, nearly white shirt frayed at the neck. The sheepskin coat was in the backseat. After a moment, he remembered that, and reached in and got it.

The Buick would eventually go into the carriage house. Despite the best efforts of New Orleans' best exterMi?ators, there were rats in there, and he didn't want them eating the jacket. Or gnawing through the Buick's roof to get at the sheepskin.

Was all that concern about the old man's convenience the normal behavior of a Southern gentleman? Or am I still afraid of him?

He was almost to the mahogany-and-beveled-glass door when it swung open to him.

"Welcome home, Mr. Cletus," Jean-Jacques Jouvier greeted him enthusiastically. The old man's silver-haired, very-light-skinned Negro butler was wearing a gray linen jacket, which meant it was not yet five. At five, Jean-Jacques would change into a black jacket

"J.J., it's good to see you," Clete said, and wrapped his arm around his shoulders. This seemed to make J.J. uncomfortable, which was surprising, until Clete looked past him into the downstairs foyer and noticed Cletus Marcus Howell, Esquire, standing there with his hands locked together in front of him.

"Welcome home, my boy," Cletus Marcus Howell said.

Cletus Marcus Howell was tall, pale, slender, and sharp-featured. He wore a superbly tailored dark-blue, faintly pinstriped three-piece suit, with a golden watch chain looped across his stomach.

"Let me have your things, Mr. Cletus," Jean-Jacques said. Clete handed the Stetson and the sheepskin jacket to him, then started toward his grandfather.

"Grandfather," Clete said.

"You could have telephoned," the old man said as Clete approached.

"I hoped to be here before you came home from the office."

"I telephoned to Beth," the old man said. "She told me when you left Houston. I arranged to be here for your arrival."

Clete put out his hand, and the old man took it. And then, in an unusual display of emotion, took it in both his hands.

"You don't look as bad as Martha and Beth said you did," the old man said. "Both used the same term, 'cadaver.' "

"How is your health, Grandfather?" Clete asked, aware that the old man was still holding on to his hand.

"I am well, thank you," the old man said, and then, as if suddenly aware of his unseemly display of emotion, let Clete's hand go. "Why don't we go into the sitting room and ask Jean-Jacques to make us a drink."

He didn't wait for a reply. He turned on his heel and marched across the foyer through an open double sliding door to the sitting room. It was a formal sitting room, furnished sometime before the War of Rebellion and unchanged since ... with one exception: over the fireplace, the oil painting, from life, of Bartholomew Fitzhugh Howell (1805-1890), who had built the house in 1850, had been replaced by an oil painting of equal size, painted from a photograph, of Eleanor Patricia Howell Frade (1898-1922), who had been both born in the house and buried from it.

Clete followed him. The old man walked to a cigar humidor on a marble-topped cherry table, opened it, and took from it a long, thin, nearly black cigar.

"Will you have a cigar, Cletus?"

"Yes, thank you."

“Would you like me to clip it for you?”

"Yes, thank you."

The old man took from the table an old-fashioned cigar cutter—something like a pair of scissors—walked to the fireplace, carefully clipped the cigar's end, let the end drop into the ashes of the fire, and then walked to Clete and handed it to him.

"You will excuse my fingers," he said.

"Certainly."

"It was cold, the radio said it was going to rain, and you always like a fire, so I asked Jean-Jacques to have the houseman lay one."

"That was very thoughtful of you," Clete said.

Jean-Jacques produced a flaming wooden match. Clete set his cigar alight while the old man repeated the end-clipping business over the fireplace with another cigar from the humidor. Jean-Jacques went to him and produced a fresh flaming match. When the old man's cigar was satisfactorily ignited, he asked,

"What may I bring you gentlemen?"

"Ask Mr. Cletus, Jean-Jacques," the old man replied. "He is the returning prodigal; we should indulge him."

"Oh, I don't see how you could call Mr. Cletus a prodigal, Mr. Howell," Jean-Jacques said.

"You have not been in contact with a certain Colonel Graham, Jean-Jacques," the old man said. "Prodigal is the word. You're familiar with the Scripture, Jean-Jacques?"

" "There is more joy in heaven ...'?"

"Precisely," the old man said. "Cletus?"

"What I really would like, J.J.—"

"I wish you would not call him that," the old man interrupted. "It's disrespectful. I've told you that."

"Mister Howell, Mister Cletus can call me anything he wants to call me, unless it's dirty."

"Not under my roof he can't," the old man said.

"Jean-Jacques, could you fix me a Sazerac?"

"I certainly can, it will be my pleasure. And Mr. Howell, what for you?"

"I'll have the same, please, Jean-Jacques."

"And will you be taking dinner here, Mr. Howell?"

"That has not been decided, Jean-Jacques," the old man said.

"Yes, Sir," the butler said, nodded his head in what could have been a bow, turned, and walked out of the room.

The old man watched him go, then turned to Clete.

"One of your men is here," he said. "The Jew. I understand there is a certain secrecy involved, and I didn't want Jean-Jacques to hear me tell you."

"His name is Ettinger, Grandfather. Staff Sergeant Ettinger. He lost most of his family to the Nazis."

If Cletus Marcus Howell sensed reproof in Clete's voice, he gave no sign.

"Then there should be no question in his mind, wouldn't you agree, about the morality of going down there and doing whatever Colonel Graham wants you to do to the Argentines?"

"The Germans killed his family, Grandfather, not the Argentines."

"The Argentines are allied, de facto if not de jure, with the Germans. Two peas from the same pod. Certainly, you must be aware of that."

Clete didn't reply.

"Anyway, Staff Sergeant Ettinger is in the Monteleone. He arrived yesterday, and telephoned. I told him you were due today or tomorrow, and would contact him. Then I called one of the Monteleones, Jerry, I think, and told him I would be obliged if he would see that Staff Sergeant Ettinger is made comfortable."

"That was gracious of you, thank you."

"Simple courtesy," the old man said. "I was going to suggest, now that you're here, that we take him to dinner. Would that be awkward? If it would, we could have him here."

"Why would it be awkward?"

"As I understand it, there is a line drawn between officers and enlisted men."

"Well, I've never paid much attention to that line. And I would guess that Ettinger will be in civilian clothing."

"We could take him to Arnaud's," the old man said. "It's right around the corner from the Monteleone, and it has a certain reputation."

In other words, unless absolutely necessary, no Jews in the house. Not even Jews who are bound for Argentina to kill Argentineans.

"Arnaud's would be fine. It's been a long time."

"When we have our drink, you can call him," the old man said. "Do I correctly infer that you are no longer wearing your uniform?''

"Yes. I have a new draft card, identifying me as someone who has been honorably discharged for physical reasons."

"Have you your uniform?"

"It's in the car. They are in the car."

"Your dress uniform among them?"

"Yes."

"And your decorations?"

"Yes. Why do you ask?"

"I thought I would have your portrait made," the old man said. "In uniform. I thought it could be hung in the upstairs sitting room beside that of your uncle James."

"I'm not sure there would be time="

"I don't mean to sit for a portrait," the old man said impatiently. "That's unnecessary. They can work from photographs. Your mother's portrait was prepared from snapshots."

"Yes, I know."

"When you know something of your schedule, we'll make time for a photographer. It will only take half an hour or so."

"If you'd like."

Jean-Jacques returned, carrying a silver tray on which were four squat glasses, two dark with Sazeracs, two of water, and two small silver bowls holding cashews and potato chips.

Clete and the old man took the Sazeracs. Jean-Jacques set the tray down on a table.

"Just a moment, please, Jean-Jacques," the old man said. Then he turned toward the oil portrait of the pretty young woman in a ball gown hanging over the fireplace.

"If I may," Cletus Marcus Howell said, raising his glass toward the portrait. "To your mother. May her blessed, tortured soul rest in God's peace."

"Mother," Clete said, raising his glass.

"And may your father receive his just deserts here on earth," the old man added.

Clete said nothing. He sometimes felt a little disloyal that he couldn't share the old man's passionate loathing for his father. Based on his grandfather's frequent recounting, over the years, of that chapter of Howell family history, he understood the old man's hatred: He held el Coronel Frade accountable for the death of his only daughter. But Clete's mother died when he was an infant, and he had no memories of his father.

That's about to change. I'll certainly meet him in Buenos Aires. And he probably won't have horns and foul breath. But he is obviously a sonofabitch of the first water. I've never known the old man to lie. And Uncle Jim and Aunt Martha have silently condemned him as long as I can remember. Both believed, and practiced, the principle that unless you can say something nice about someone, you say nothing. Anytime I asked them about my father, they answered with evasion and a quick change of subject.

If nothing else, it should be interesting to finally see the man— how does the Bible put it?—from whose loins I have sprung.

Been spranged?

He smiled, just faintly, at his play on words.

Clete saw in the old man's eyes that he had seen the smile, and hoped it wouldn't trigger anything unpleasant, The old man looked at him intently for a moment, then turned to the butler.

"Jean-Jacques, would you please call the Monteleone and see if you can get Mr. Ettinger on the line for Mr. Cletus?"

Clete took a healthy sip of his Sazerac.

It is true,he thought, that the only place you can get one of these is here. Strange but true. You can take all the ingredients with you, right down to Peychaux's Bitters — as I did to Pensacola— but when you make one, it's just not a Sazerac.

He looked up at his mother's portrait and had a thought that disturbed him a little: Jesus, she looks just like the brunette in Beth's sorority house, the one I think I could have jumped.

"I have Mr. Ettinger for you, Mr. Cletus," Jean-Jacques said, handing him the telephone.

"Ettinger?"

"Yes, Sir."

"This is Clete Howell."

"Yes, Sir. I was told that you would be arriving about now."

"Is there anyone else there?"

"No, Sir. There was a telegram several hours ago, saying that the ... people from Virginia... will be here tomorrow morning. And I was told that Lieutenant Pelosi will be on the Crescent City Limited tomorrow. He'll be coming here. I don't know about the others."

"Have you made plans for dinner?"

"No, Sir."

"Good, then you can have it with my grandfather and me. Would eight be convenient?"

"Sir, I don't want to impose."

"You won't be. Can you be in the lobby at eight, or maybe outside, if it's not raining?"

"Yes, Sir."

"You have civvies?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Wear them," Clete said.

"I was told to, Sir."

"And one more thing, Ettinger... David... from here on out, we will dispense with the military courtesy."

"Yes, S— All right," Ettinger said.

Clete thought he heard a chuckle.

"Eight o'clock," he said, and hung up.

Cletus Marcus Howell nodded his approval.

"Jean-Jacques, would you please tell Samuel we will need the car at seven-forty? And then call Arnaud's and tell them I will require a private dining room, for three, at about eight?"

"Yes, Sir," Jean-Jacques said.

"And finally, Mr. Cletus has left his luggage in his car. Would you bring it in and unpack it for him, please? And, as soon as you can, see to having his dress uniform pressed, or cleaned, or whatever it takes?"

"Mr. Cletus's car is in the carriage house, Mr. Howell," Jean-Jacques said. "His luggage is in his room. Antoinette's already taking care of his laundry, and she heard what you said about painting Mr. Cletus's picture, so she's already working on the uniform."

"Thank you."

"Can you think of anything else, Cletus?"

"I think I would like another Sazerac, Jean-Jacques, if you could find the time."

"If you fill yourself with Sazeracs, Cletus, you won't be able to appreciate either the wine or the food at Arnaud's."

"Grandfather, I am prepared to pay that price."

"You might as well fetch two, please, Jean-Jacques," the old man said.

"Yes, Sir," Jean-Jacques said. He turned and started out of the room. When his face was no longer visible to the old man, he smiled and winked at the young one.

[FOUR]

Schloss Wachtstein

Pomerania

1515 1 November 1942

Generalmajor Graf Karl-Friedrich von Wachtstein, wearing a leather overcoat over his shoulders, walked into the library and found his son slumped in an armchair facing the fireplace, a cognac snifter in his hand.

"It's a little early for that, isn't it, Peter?" he asked, tossing the overcoat and then his brimmed uniform cap onto a library table.

Hauptmann Hans-Peter von Wachtstein turned and looked at his father but didn't reply or stand up. After a moment, he said, "I've just come from turning over my staffel."

"You're celebrating, then? Peter, I really wish you hadn't started drinking," the Graf said.

"I'm all right, Poppa. A little maudlin, perhaps, but sober. I was just telling myself I should be celebrating. But it doesn't feel that way."

"My father once told me that the best duty in the service is as a Hauptmann, in command of a company. In your case, a staffel. Giving up such a command is always difficult. Perhaps you should consider that it was inevitable..."

"Inevitable?"

"You would have had to turn it over when your majority comes through; and that should be, I would think, any day now. With a little luck, before you go to Argentina."

"I had the most disturbing feeling, as a matter of fact," Peter said, "particularly afterward, when we all had a cognac in the bar, that it was a funeral, or a wake, that we were all seeing each other for the last time."

"I've had a bad day, a bad week, myself," Graf von Wachtstein said.

"I brought Karl's car out here," Peter said, changing the subject. "I didn't know what to do with it. I thought perhaps you might want to use it."

The Graf picked up the bottle of cognac and found a glass.

"Now that I think about it," Generalmajor von Wachtstein said, "one of these might be in order." He raised the glass. "To your new assignment."

"Thank you. Did you hear what I said about the Horche?"

"I might as well use it, I suppose," the Graf said. "Otherwise it will be taken for the greater good of the German Reich. Ferrying some Nazi peasant's mistress to the opera, for example."

Peter grunted. "You must have had a bad week."

"The Luftwaffe has not been able to—will not be able to— provide von Paulus's troops at Stalingrad with a tenth of the supplies he needs. But when this is brought to the attention of the Austrian Corporal, he replies, in effect, 'Nonsense, Goering has given me his word, the supplies will be delivered.' "

"And you were the bearer of those bad tidings?"

"No. Fortunately not. Unser F?hrer is made uncomfortable by people like me. I have been reliably informed that he has said that the Prussian officer class are defeatists to the last aristocrat."

Peter laughed. "Aren't you? Aren't we? There's no way we can win this war, Poppa."

"I really hope you are careful to whom you make such observations."

"I'm talking to you, Poppa. The war was lost when we were unable to invade England," Peter said. "Perhaps before that, when we were unable to destroy the Royal Air Force."

"I think we should change the subject," Graf von Wachtstein said. "Have they told you when you're going?"

"They are having trouble with the corpse," Peter said. "Or the casket for the corpse. They have to line it with lead, which apparently comes in sheets. But the Foreign Ministry can't seem to find any lead in sheets. They are working on the problem; I have been told to hold myself in readiness."

"And are you ready?"

"There is of course a rather detailed list of the uniforms a military attach? is required to have. I have been given the necessary priorities for such uniforms. Unfortunately, priority or no priority, there does not seem to be the material available in Berlin. The Foreign Ministry is working on the problem."