"I am Kapitan Schirmer, Herr Hauptmann," Schirmer said in German, examining him carefully and unabashedly, "I thought you might be more comfortable taking your meals here."


"That's very kind of you, mi Capitan," Peter replied in Spanish. "Thank you."


"Ah, you speak Spanish. Good."


Schirmer then introduced him to the other officers at the table. Not all the ship's officers came to the first dinner, but eventually Peter understood that these included Schirmer, his first, second, and third mates; the chief engineer, his first, second, and third assistant engineers; and the ship's doctor. There were no other passengers at the table; obviously he was being given a special privilege.


The next morning, at breakfast, Schirmer invited him to visit the bridge. And when Peter went up later that morning, waiting for permission to enter, Schirmer loudly and formally announced, "Hauptmann von Wachtstein has the privilege of the bridge."


Peter knew virtually nothing about the customs and protocol of the sea. But he was a soldier, and understood that an order had been issued, and that he was being granted the privilege of permanent access to the bridge—this was not a good-for-only-one-visit invitation. Schirmer showed him around the bridge and the chart room, introduced him to his second mate (who had not been at dinner the night before), and then announced that Peter would be more comfortable in the supercargo cabin on the bridge deck, not presently in use, and that if he had no objection, he would have the steward move his things from his cabin on the passenger deck.


"Mi Capitan," Peter replied, "I don't know what 'supercargo' is. It sounds like either gold bullion, or diamonds, or something stowed outside on the deck under a tarpaulin, rather than downstairs in the hold." Schirmer laughed.


"Below decks,Herr Hauptmann, not downstairs," he said, and then went on to explain that there was a cabin reserved for the senior hierarchy of L.M.A.E.—a company executive, for example, or an L.M.A.E. master or chief engineer traveling as a passenger.


"In that case, mi Capitan, I accept," Peter replied. "Thank you very much."


Peter had a strong temptation to suspect that he was being given all of these privileges because he was such a naturally charming fellow, but he resisted it. More likely, Schirmer, whose name was obviously German in origin, was extending a sort of Germanic privilege. Or else Capitan Schirmer was possibly treating Hauptmann von Wachtstein like a fellow officer.


By the third day out of Lisbon, they were on a partial first-name basis: Schirmer started to call him "Peter." Peter, however, decided that good manners and protocol required that he continue to call Schirmer "Capitan," and did so.


On the fifth day out, very late at night, as they were playing chess in Capitan Schirmer's cabin, Schirmer told him the real reason he granted Peter the privilege of the captain's table and the supercargo cabin. Of the one hundred and five passengers aboard the General Belgrano, thirty-nine, including the couple from Heidelberg and their children, were Jewish.


"I didn't know, Peter, whether or not you were a Jew-hating Nazi," Schirmer said, meeting his eyes, "but it was clear to me that you were making the Steins uncomfortable. And making things worse, the Argentineans at the table are rooting for the English in this war. He was educated in England and works for our railroad, which was designed and built by the English."


"I am not, mi Capitan, either a Nazi or a Jew-hater."


"I didn't think you would be, just to look at you, but I had no way of knowing."


"I wonder how they got out of Germany," Peter blurted, thinking aloud.


"I have no idea," Schirmer replied. "The L.M.A.E. office in Lisbon makes sure they have an entrance visa to Argentina and a paid-for ticket, and that's all we care about."


"There are a number of Germans, mi Capitan, myself and my father and many of our friends included, who loathe the Nazis and are ashamed at their treatment of Jews."


"As far as I am concerned, the subject is closed. All is well that ends well, Peter. I find you a delightful dinner companion and an even more delightful opponent at chess. You are not quite as good as I am, but you're good enough to give me a very good game."


"Our final breakfast, Peter," el Capitan Schirmer said on the morning of December 13, as they lingered over their coffee. "I shall miss your smiling face, an island of joy in this sea of sour-pusses."


The Chief Engineer snorted. "There is something wrong with a man who leaps out of bed when he doesn't have to," he said.


"You Spaniards feel that way," Schirmer said. "We of German stock regard each day as a glorious opportunity to do something constructive."


"Carajo!"—roughly, Oh shit!


"Pay no attention to him, Peter. He has been bitter since the day he discovered he is known as 'Tiny Prick' among the girls under the El Puente Pueyrred?n"—a railroad bridge in La Boca.


The Chief Engineer stood up and held out his hand to Peter.


"If I don't see you again, it's been a pleasure, Peter. I'm in the telephone book. If you have a free moment, give me a call, and I will take you to El Puente Pueyrred?n and ask the girls themselves to tell you what they call el Capitan."


Peter stood up.


"Thank you, Sir, for the privilege of your company."


As they shook hands, there was a subtle change in the ambient vibrations of the ship. The Chief Engineer cocked his head.


"Stop engines," he said. At the same instant, Peter reached the conclusion that the vibration was gone, and that meant the engines had stopped.


Schirmer nodded, and turned to Peter.


"They were on the radio this morning," he said. "They are sending people to meet you aboard the pilot boat. Maybe you should get dressed."


For the last ten days of the voyage Peter had been dressing just as the ship's officers dressed—in white shirt and shorts loaned to him by Capitan Schirmer.


"Yes, Sir. I suppose I'd better. Con su permiso?"—With your permission? (May I leave you?)


The officer's steward had his perfectly pressed and starched summer khaki uniform hanging on the door of his cabin.


I wonder how much I should tip him. He's really taken good care of me. I should have asked Schirmer. I will miss him. I will miss the whole damned thing, the steward, the good food, the officers at the table, but especially Schirmer.


When he left his cabin, he saw Schirmer standing on the flying bridge, looking down at the sea. He went to him and asked about the tip. Schirmer told him, then pointed down.


Peter turned. A good-looking launch, with a good deal of varnished wood and gleaming brass, was alongside. A ladder had been put over the side, and a tall stocky man in an ornate uniform was very carefully climbing up it. Waiting to follow him was a much thinner man in a Wehrmacht colonel's uniform. He removed his cap and dabbed at his forehead and shaved head with a handkerchief.


Those are winter uniforms. Why the hell are they wearing winter uniforms in this heat?


The Belgrano's second mate was on deck with a couple of sailors.


Probably waiting for the clown in the ornate uniform— what the hell is that, anyway?— to fall off the ladder.


"I suppose I'd better go down there," Peter said.


Schirmer nodded and grunted.


Peter went down the two ladders to the main deck. He reached the railing as the second mate helped the clown in the fancy uniform onto the deck.


Peter noticed for the first time that there was a brassard with a red swastika on the clown's left sleeve.


That makes him a Nazi.


The clown looked at Peter sternly.


The sonofabitch expects me to salute him. Fuck him. That's not a military uniform. Maybe Nazi party, probably diplomatic corps. I am a soldier; I exchange salutes with soldiers.


"Guten Morgen," Peter said politely.


The Wehrmacht Colonel came on deck a moment later.


Peter saluted, a military salute.


"Guten Morgen, Herr Oberst."


"Herr Hauptmann," the Colonel replied as he returned the salute.


The clown in the fancy uniform held out his right arm stiffly in the Nazi salute. Peter glanced up at the flying bridge. Schirmer was still leaning on the rail, watching the little ceremony. He was smiling, as if amused.


"I am Anton von Gradny-Sawz, First Secretary of the Embassy of the German Reich to the Republic of Argentina," the clown announced, "and this is Oberst Karl-Heinz Gr?ner, the Military Attach?."


"Hauptmann von Wachtstein," Peter said, "and this is Claudio Saverno, Second Officer of the Belgrano.''


"Welcome aboard the Belgrano," Saverno said in Spanish.


A third man, in mussed civilian clothing, stepped off the ladder onto the deck.


"Mi Capitan," Saverno said. "El Capitan Schirmer is on the bridge. Would you care to join him?''


"Hola, Bernardo!" Schirmer called down loudly. "Come on up!"


"Is there somewhere we can talk?" Gradny-Sawz asked.


"Claudio, may I use the mess?" Peter asked.


"Of course, Peter. I'll send the steward with coffee and whatever."


"Gracias, amigo."


Peter gestured to show the way.


"Will you follow me, please, gentlemen?"


He led them to the mess.


"I was led to believe, Herr Hauptmann," Gradny-Sawz opened the conversation, "that you have been invested with the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. May I ask why you are not wearing it?"


"I wasn't aware this was a formal occasion."


"It is a very formal occasion, Herr Hauptmann," Oberst Gr?ner said dryly.


"And can you get into a proper uniform?" Gradny-Sawz asked.


"By proper, mein Herr, I gather you mean winter?"


"The Colonel commanding the Husares de Pueyrred?n," Colonel Gr?ner said, "was kind enough to advise me the uniform of the day for the ceremony on the dock will be the winter dress uniform."


"Jawohl, Herr Oberst."


"A squadron of the Husares, plus a military band, and a delegation of Argentine officials, military and civilian, will be on the dock," Gr?ner went on, "to accept the remains of Hauptmann Duarte from your custody. We will accompany them from the dock to the late Hauptmann Duarte's home. Here is the schedule we have been given. Do you speak Spanish?"


He handed Peter two sheets of paper stapled together.


"Jawohl, Herr Oberst," Peter repeated.


There was a vibration as the engines engaged.


"Following which," Gradny-Sawz said, "you will be taken to the Frade Guest House. Until the ceremonies are completed, you will reside there as the guest of Colonel Jorge Guillermo Frade, uncle of the late Hauptmann Frade, and former colonel commanding the Husares de Pueyrredon. I wish to speak to you about that."


"Oh?"


"It is a singular courtesy on the part of the Frade family to you. Your conduct during that period is of great importance, if you take my meaning."


In other words, I am not to get drunk and piss all over the carpet, right?


"I understand."


"Though it is his custom to have newly assigned members of the embassy staff as guests in his home, under these circumstances, Ambassador Graf von Lutzenberger will not be able to share his home with you. He has asked me to express his regret."


"That is very gracious of the Ambassador," Peter said.


"In other words, you will be at the service of the Frade family tonight and tomorrow," Oberst Gr?ner said. "We don't know what plans, if any, they have for you. But if they have made plans, and you were not available, there is a question of bad manners."


"I understand, Herr Oberst."


"And what plans have you made for the removal of the late Hauptmann Duarte's remains from this ship?" Gradny-Sawz asked.


"I believe el Capitan Schirmer will remove them from the hold with a crane and lower them onto the dock," Peter said, with a straight face.


He thought he saw a glimmer of amusement in Colonel Gr?ner’s eyes.


"I don't know how long it will take us to reach the dock," Gradny-Sawz said, Peter's subtle sarcasm having escaped him, "but may I suggest that you change into a proper uniform, including the Knight's Cross, Herr Hauptmann?"


The Husares de Pueyrred?n were mounted on absolutely beautiful horses and looked as if they were about to charge into Bosnia-Herzegovina and lop off rebellious heads with their sabers, or impale rebellious bodies on their lances, thus keeping peace in Emperor Franz-Josef s domain.


The Army band, not nearly so ornately uniformed as the Husares, played "Oid, mortales" ("Hear, O Mortals"—the Argentinean national anthem) as the casket was lowered off the Belgrano onto a horse-drawn artillery caisson. Salutes were exchanged between German and Argentinean officers, and then the official party formed up behind the caisson.


With the drums of the band beating out the Argentinean equivalent of "slow march," the procession marched off the dock and into the streets of Buenos Aires, with the cavalry bringing up the rear. Policemen halted traffic. Pedestrians stopped and faced the street as the procession marched by—some of them respectfully removing their hats, and most of them crossing themselves.


It was a long walk to the Avenida Alvear, and it was almost brutally hot. First Secretary Gradny-Sawz, Peter noticed with some pleasure, was not only sweat-soaked, but had not managed to avoid stepping into the horse dung left by the six animals drawing the caisson.


They had some trouble passing the caisson through the gate at the Duarte mansion—the lead horse tried several times to rear. But finally the caisson was in place, and eight Husares—almost certainly officers, Peter decided, although he could not read Argentinean insignia—unstrapped the casket, and struggling under its weight, carried it into the foyer of the mansion.


The official delegation followed. A man and a woman stood just inside the door, with a rank of servants behind them. The woman was in mourning black, broken only with a strand of very large pearls, her face concealed behind a veil.


A short fat officer who looked almost ludicrous in his Husares uniform was ahead of Peter in the line. When he reached the couple, he said, "Se?or Duarte, Se?ora de Duarte, I have the honor to present Capitan Freiherr von Wachtstein of the German Air Force, who had the sad duty of bringing Capitan Duarte from Germany."


Duarte's father shook his hand limply and said, "How do you do?"


"May I extend the condolences of the Luftwaffe and the German people on your loss?" Peter said.


"Thank you," the father said.


"My son is now home, thanks to you, Captain," the mother said. "And with the Blessed Jesus and all the angels in his heavenly home."


Peter felt like crying.


You dumb shit,he thought angrily, you left this to go fly a Storch and be a hero at Stalingrad? It wasn't even your goddamned war!


The short fat man tugged at his arm and led him away.


"I am Coronel Alejandro Sahovaler," he said. "I have the honor of commanding the Husares de Pueyrred?n."


"A sus ?rdenes, mi Coronel."


"El Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade, uncle to the late Capitan Duarte, has arranged for you to be put up at the Frade family guest house. Unfortunately he had pressing business at his estancia, and could not be here today. Se?ora de Duarte telephoned me this morning to ask me to take you to the guest house. I was of course honored to be of service. May I do that now?''


"You're very gracious, mi Coronel," Peter said, and then spoke what came into his mind: "My luggage? It's still aboard the ship."


"It has been taken to the Avenida Libertador house," Sahovaler said. "It is no problem."


Well, in that case, I suppose that nobody closely examined my luggage and found the money.


"May I have a minute to speak with el Coronel Gr?ner, mi Coronel?"


"Of course."


Gr?ner was standing with Gradny-Sawz. Gr?ner and Sahovaler knew each other, while Gradny-Sawz had to be introduced. Peter explained that Sahovaler had offered to drive him to the guest house. The announcement visibly pleased Gradny-Sawz.


"I will be in touch, Hauptmann von Wachtstein," Gradny-Sawz said. "If not sooner, within a day or two."


"Thank you," Peter replied.


Sahovaler had an open Mercedes sedan—an Army car—waiting outside. The driver was wearing a Husares uniform, complete to bearskin hat. They rode regally from Avenida Alvear to Avenida Libertador. On the way, Coronel Sahovaler told Hauptmann von Wachtstein that he was sure el Coronel Frade would be in touch with him very shortly to make sure he was not left alone in the Guest House.




[TWO]


Coronel Sahovaler was wrong. Since el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade had no intention whatever of participating in the nonsense on the pier, or to put on a hot dress uniform to march through horse droppings on the streets of Buenos Aires in the heat of summer, and since Cletus had "business" in Punta del Este— Frade hoped this was nothing more dangerous than meeting young women in brief bathing costumes—he had indeed found pressing business at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.


It happened to be legitimate. He was entertaining overnight el Coronel Ricardo Lopez, commander of the 2nd Regiment of Infantry. Wattersly had informed Frade that when he and Kleber talked with him, they were unable to move him off the fence. Wattersly suggested that Frade talk to him himself. Under the circumstances, he had had no choice but to go along.


He would entertain L6pez royally. And if there seemed to be an opportunity, he would reason with him himself. If that failed, the 2nd Regiment of Infantry would have to be placed in the Against column. There were only two columns, For and Against. If the 2nd Infantry went in the Against column, it would have to be neutralized.


He also completely forgot that he had promised his sister to arrange to put up the German officer at the Guest House. Knowing her brother's tendency to let promises slip his mind, Se?ora Beatrice de Duarte had called the Guest House and checked. When it turned out he had indeed forgotten, she asked Se?ora Pellano to take very good care of the young German officer who brought Dear Jorge back to Argentina. Then she called el Coronel Sahovaler to make sure he had a ride.




[THREE]


Customs Shed


Buenos Aires, Argentina


2135 13 December 1942


The plan to smuggle the walkie-talkies past customs was Tony's. It was novel, simple, and it worked:


"If you never saw one of these before," Tony said, "the odds are that nobody here has."


"So?"


"We'll tell them they are portable radios that don't work."


"You've lost me."


"We don't try to hide them. We make believe we took them over there to listen to music on the beach."


Clete could think of no better way to bring the radios into Argentina. Besides, even if the ruse didn't work and they confiscated the radios, it would divert attention from the "wooden" boxes loaded with straw chickens, ducks, and fish.


They pried thean/prc-6 motorola corp. Chicago, ill. labels from the walkie-talkies; then they each put one of them on clear display in their luggage.


The customs officer was fascinated with the radios, and very sympathetic. After he put a radio to his ear and heard only a hiss, he offered the professional opinion that they probably dropped them, or else got them wet on the beach.


He pawed perfunctorily through the chickens, ducks, and fishes in the "wooden" boxes, smiled, and waved them through.


"Buenas. noches, Se?ores."


"Buenas noches," Clete replied, and motioned for a porter to carry their luggage toward the taxi line. He carried one of the "wooden" boxes and Tony carried the other.


As they walked toward the line, he asked Tony if he wanted to have dinner at the guest house, or else go out somewhere.


"Thanks, no, Clete," Tony replied. "What are we going to do with this stuff, now that we've got it?"


"I'll keep it," Clete said. "That would probably be the safest thing."


"I was thinking that maybe you could give the radios to Ettinger. Maybe he can figure out what to do when the batteries go dead."


"Right."


"And I'd like to take the detonators. I want to take a good look at them, to make sure how much dry-cell juice I'm going to need."


"Good thinking. But we can drop the radios off at Ettinger's apartment on the way to yours. And then we'll drop the detonators at yours, and get some dinner."


"I think I'll pass, Clete," Tony said. "Unless you really want some company."


"Just an idea. I'll bring the radios to David tomorrow."


"What I'm going to do, Clete," Tony said, as if worried that he'd hurt Frade's feelings, "is go find a church. Light a candle. Say 'thank you.' You want to come along?"


"I think I'll pass on that, Tony," Clete said. "If I went to church, the steeple would fall off. But say 'thank you' for me, too, will you?"


"I will," Tony said, wondering if it was a sin for him to be glad Clete didn't want to go to church with him. The church he had in mind was near the Ristorante Napoli. Afterward, he would drop in to the Ristorante Napoli for his dinner. She just might be there.


Hell, she might even be in the church. Odds are that she's Catholic, and nice Catholic girls go to church.


They took their turn in the taxi line, and finally climbed into one. Clete told the driver to take them to Tony's apartment on Avenida Corrientes.


It was quarter past ten when the driver pulled up before the gate at 4730 Avenida Libertador. There were lights on over the drive and above the door, but the gates were closed, and the smaller pedestrian gate beside the vehicular gate was locked; he could see no light coming from the servants' quarters. Since Se?ora Pellano had not known when to expect him, he presumed she had simply gone to bed.


Finding the keys he needed, then wrestling with the ancient lock on the gate, and then carrying his luggage and—carefully— both "wooden" boxes from the cab to the front door took another five minutes.


He paid the cabdriver, then moved everything inside the house.


I'll bring these boxes upstairs— duty first. I'll take them apart, put the pieces on a shelf in one of my closets, and then I'll come down here and have a very stiff drink. I was more afraid smuggling this stuff past customs than I let on.


He was almost to the elevator when he heard, faintly, Beethoven's Third Symphony on the radio or the phonograph. Then he saw a crack of light under the double doors to the library.


Who the hell can that be? My father?


He walked to it and pushed it open with his foot.


A young man in a quilted, dark-red dressing gown was slumped in one of the armchairs, a cognac snifter resting on his chest. A cigar lay in the ashtray on the table beside him.


Who the hell is this?


"Buenas noches, Se?or."


The young man was startled. He quickly put the cognac snifter on the table, rose, and smiled.


"Buenas noches," he said.


"Yo soy Cletus Frade."


"El Coronel Frade?" the young man asked incredulously.


"No," Clete chuckled, "el Teniente Frade. El Coronel is my father."


The young man bowed and clicked his heels.


"Mucho gusto, Teniente. Yo soy el Capitan Hans-Peter Freiherr von Wachtstein, de la Luftwaffe."


Holy shit! This must be the guy who brought the body from Germany. And you told him you were a lieutenant. Brilliant, Frade, fucking brilliant! He speaks Spanish perfectly.


"Se?or, please, Capitan. I am no longer a lieutenant. Better yet, please call me Clete."


"I'm called Peter," von Wachtstein said, offering his hand. "Am I in your chair?"


"Sit down," Clete said.


“The lady who runs this place told me to make myself at home. So she asked if it would be all right if she went to evening mass," Peter said. "I took the liberty of coming down here and playing the phonograph, and helping myself to the cognac. Was that all right?"


"The cognac is a fine idea. Give me a minute to take my things to my room, and I'll join you."


"Let me help you."


"Not necessary."


"I would like to."


"Thank you."


Peter followed Clete back into the reception foyer and picked up the second "wooden" box.


"Delightful," he said, admiring the straw chickens, ducks, and fishes. "For your children?"


"I have no children that I know of," Clete said as they stepped into the elevator.


"I have none that I acknowledge," Peter replied.


They smiled at each other.


"I was drinking when I bought these," Clete said. "At the time it seemed like a splendid idea."


Peter chuckled.


"Se?ora Pellano has a herd of grandchildren," Clete said. "They will not go to waste."


"How nice for the grandchildren."


They put the "wooden" boxes inside the door to Clete's apartment, then made a second trip with his luggage, and finally returned to the library.


"It's a beautiful and unusual, house," Peter observed as Clete helped himself to the cognac.


"To your health, Peter," Clete said, raising his glass.


"And yours, Clete," Peter replied in English.


"The house was built by my granduncle Guillermo," Clete said, and went on to relate the history of Uncle Bill and the house.


It'll give me a chance to decide how to handle this,he thought. I am obviously in the presence of mine enemy.


Capitan von Wachtstein was properly appreciative of the story of Granduncle Guillermo, chuckled a final time, and then met Clete's eyes.


"You said you were formerly a lieutenant," he asked amiably. "In the Argentine Army?"


"No," Clete said.


"I could not help but observe your watch," von Wachtstein said in a polite challenge. "I have seen such watches before."


"Have you?"


"On the wrists of American aviators shot down over France and Germany. They are very good watches."


"You are a very perceptive man, mi Capitan."


"Possibly. And you have a very interesting Spanish accent.


Why do I think that my being here may be very awkward for both of us?"


"I am not a professional officer, mi Capitan," Clete said. "I have no idea what conduct is expected of an officer, even a former officer, when he meets an enemy officer in a neutral country."


"And in his father's house," Peter replied. "I, on the other hand, am a professional officer, and I haven't the faintest idea either. My father, however—my father is a Generalmajor, and presumably should know about these things—served in France in the First World War and often told me about the armistice, the unofficial armistice, declared between the English and the Germans on Christmas Eve. Do you suppose, as officers and gentlemen, that we might pretend it's Christmas Eve? We'd only be off by a couple of weeks. Less."


"I think that would be a splendid solution," Clete said. "Merry Christmas, Captain. Peter.''


They shook hands.


"Frohliche Weihnachten, Clete," Peter said. "You were a pilot, right?"


Clete nodded.


"I could tell," Peter said. "Not only by the watch. Pilots are better-looking, more charming, and far more intelligent than other officers."


"More modest, too," Clete said.


"Absolutely. What did you fly?"


"Wildcats, Grumman Wildcats."


"You're a fighter pilot. So am I. Most recently Focke-Wulf 190s. I had a Jaeger squadron near Berlin."


"I was in the Pacific. Midway and Guadalcanal."


Their eyes met and locked for a moment.


"We heard about Guadalcanal," Peter said. "My father told me that the Japanese military attach? assured him that the Americans would be forced into the sea within weeks. My father said he did not think so."


"We were hanging on by our teeth for a while," Clete said. "But we're there for good now, I think."


"Are the Japanese pilots competent? And their aircraft?"


"The Zero is a first-class fighter," Clete said. "And some of the Japanese pilots, two in particular, were very good."


Peter chuckled in understanding.


"You were shot down twice?"


"Shot down twice, disabled once. I was able to bring it in dead-stick."


"Over Russia, especially in the Steppes, losing an engine is not much of a problem. You can sit down almost anywhere. Over Western Europe, it is a problem. The farms are smaller, and in France, in Normandy in particular, the edges of the fields are fenced with rock."


"I guess you know from experience?"


"Yes. Your Flying Fortress—B-17?"


Clete nodded.


"... is formidable."


"We have a saying—about pilots and watches—that you can always tell a B-17 pilot in the shower. He's the one with the big watch and the small prick."


He had to explain "prick" to Peter, the Mexican-Spanish vulgarism not being the same as the Spanish-Spanish; but eventually Peter laughed appreciatively.


I'm running off at the mouth,Clete thought, somewhat alarmed, which means I'm getting drunk. Why? I've only had three of these. What I should do, obviously, is politely tell mine enemy "good night," go to bed, and sort this all out in the morning. To hell with it. We have a gentleman's agreement that it's Christmas Eve, and I like this guy.


He picked up the cognac bottle, poured some in Peter's glass, and then refilled his own.


"I will not ask what an American Air Force officer is doing in Argentina," Peter said.


"Thank you," Clete said quickly. "An ex-officer. And I was a Marine, not in the Air Corps."


"A Marine? What is a Marine?"


"Soldiers of the sea," Clete said.


"Ah, yes. I have heard of the Marines. An elite force. They are like our SS."


"An elite force," Clete said coldly. "But not at goddamn all like your SS."


Their eyes locked again.


"There is propaganda on both sides in a war," Peter said. "Some of the SS—perhaps most—are fine soldiers."


"I think we better change the subject, Peter."


"And some are despicable scum," Peter went on.


"I know why you're here," Clete said. "You escorted Jorge Duarte's body, right?"


Peter nodded, then said, "My father arranged it. He wanted me out of the war, out of Germany."


Gott, I must be drunk!Peter thought. Why did I tell him that?


"I don't understand."


"I lost my two brothers, and my mother, in this war," Peter said. "My father wanted to preserve the family."


"I'm sorry," Clete said.


That was sincere,Peter thought. He meant that.


"Just before you came in here, I was wondering, with the assistance of Herr Martel"—he held up his brandy snifter—"if I have done the honorable thing."


"You said your father arranged it. Could you have stopped him?"


"I was wondering about that too. I didn't try."


"I was glad to get off of Guadalcanal," Clete said. "I figured I was running out of percentages."


"Excuse me?"


"You can only go up and come down in one piece so many times," Clete said. "Eventually, you don't come back. We call it the percentage."


"Yes," Peter agreed. "But you felt no ... obligation of honor... to remain?"


"I did not ask to be relieved, but I was glad when I was."


"I got drunk when I was relieved," Peter said. "I told myself I did it because I did not wish to be relieved. Now I am wondering if I really wasn't... glad."


"I thought maybe you were with Duarte when he was killed," Clete said.


"Never met him. I was told he was killed at Stalingrad flying a Storch, a little high-wing monoplane used for artillery spotting, carrying people around, that sort of thing."


"That he wasn't supposed to be flying in the first place. My father told me that if he had any idea he was putting him in the line of fire, he never would have let him go over there."


"What sort of a fellow was he?"


"I never met him," Clete said.


"Really? I thought he was your cousin."


"He was. But I never met him. Or his parents. Or, for that matter, my father, until a couple of days ago."


"I met them this afternoon. That was very difficult. I had the feeling they were asking, 'What are you doing alive when our son is dead?' "


"I had exactly the same feeling when I met them," Clete said.


"How is it you never met them?"


Clete told the story, including the cover story of his heart murmur and his job down here making sure the Argentines weren't diverting American oil products to the Germans. The lies made him uncomfortable, especially after "mine enemy" had been so openly sincere.


"Does that mean you can't fly anymore?"


"No. It just means I can't fly for the Marines."


"I miss flying," Peter said. "And I don't think I'll be doing much, if any, flying here."


"My father has a light airplane. If I can persuade him to let me use it, I'll take you for a ride."


"I would like that," Peter said seriously. "Thank you very much."


Se?ora Pellano came into the library a few minutes after one to find Se?or Cletus and the young German officer standing by the fireplace making strange movements with their hands, like little boys pretending their hands were aeroplanes.


They seemed embarrassed that they had been drinking. There was no reason for that.


She told them she had gone to midnight mass at the Basilica de Nuestra Se?ora del Pilar, which was why she was so late, and asked them if they would like anything to eat.


But they thanked her and said they were about to go to bed.


For about half an hour she sat on a little stool behind the door of the corridor that led from the foyer to the kitchen, until she heard them—sounding very happy if perhaps a little drunk—tell each other goodnight.




[FOUR]


Calle Olavarria


La Boca, Buenos Aires


1135 13 December 1942


As he prepared to enter the Church of San Juan Evangelista, Tony was telling himself for the tenth or twelfth time that he was making a fool of himself, a church seemed to be on every other corner, and the odds of her showing up at this one were one in nine zillion. That was when he saw her coming around the corner from the direction of Ristorante Napoli.


She wasn't as well-dressed as the last time he saw her. She was wearing a simple cotton dress and sandals, with a shawl around her shoulders and over her head. But she was even more beautiful than he remembered, like one of the statues of the Virgin Mary in St. Rose of Lima's, back in Cicero.


Seeing him standing by the church door seemed to surprise her, even to frighten her, as if he might do something bad to her, and she quickly averted her eyes.


Tony had gathered his courage. "Buenas noches, Se?orita," he said, smiling. It wasn't all that much different from Italian.


She looked at him and just perceptibly smiled, but did not speak.


He waited a good three minutes before following her inside the church, among other things debating the Christian morality of trying to pick up a girl there. He finally decided it was all right, he wasn't trying to fuck her or anything.


He had a little trouble finding her in the church; it was dark inside. And when he did find her, he had trouble finding a seat that would give him a view of something besides the back of her head.


But even that wasn't so bad. He stepped on some old lady's foot and she yelped, and he said without thinking, "Scusi," in Italian, and the old lady answered him in Italian. She said he was a clumsy jackass, but she said it in Italian, and that made him think that maybe the girl also spoke Italian—why not? She had gone into the Ristorante Napoli, and this was an Italian neighborhood. Maybe if he had a chance to say hello to her again, he could try it in Italian and wouldn't sound like the neighborhood idiot trying to talk to her in Spanish.


He said a prayer for his family, and thanked God for not getting caught in Uruguay. And he asked God's protection when they tried to blow a hole in the ship. And then he asked God, "Please let me meet her." And for a moment he wondered if he should have done that, but decided there was nothing wrong with it, he had no carnal lusts for her or anything like that.


Once she turned around and saw him. And even in the dim light—he didn't think there was a bulb bigger than forty watts in all of Argentina, and the ones in here looked like refrigerator bulbs—he thought he saw her blush.


When she stood up and left, walking past him out of the church, she didn't look at him, although he knew damned well she had seen him. He hurried after her, and saw her heading toward the Ristorante Napoli. He waited until she disappeared around the corner and then walked quickly after her.


What the hell, it was three blocks to the ristorante, maybe I can catch up with her.


She turned another corner, a block away from the Ristorante Napoli, and he walked faster so he wouldn't lose her. And in case she went in some house or something, he would know where she lived.


When he turned the corner, she was waiting for him.


"If my father sees you following me, he will cut out your heart with a knife," she said. In Italian!


His mouth went on automatic. He was startled to hear himself say, "Oh, please don't tell your father. I am just a poor Italian boy far from home and all alone."


Boy, did I put my foot in my mouth with that stupid line.


But she smiled.


"You're telling the truth?"


Tony held up his right hand.


"I swear to God!" he declared passionately.


"Where are you from? The North?"


"Cicero."


"Where?"


"Cicero, Illinois. Outside Chicago. In the United States of America."


"You're telling the truth?"


"I swear to God, on my mother's honor."


"I have never heard of Cicero, Illinois," she said.


"It's a nice place. You would like it. You ought to visit there sometime."


There you go again, asshole! Think before you open your goddamned mouth!


"You are an American?" she asked in disbelief.


"I am an American."


"If you are an American, you must speak English."


"I do."


"Say something in English."


"What do you want me to say?" Tony asked in English.


"Say you are a poor Italian boy far from home and all alone."


"I really am," Tony said in English.


"You can't speak English!"


"I am a poor Italian boy far from home and all alone," Tony quickly said in English.


Her eyes widened.


"I think I maybe believe you," the girl said.


"I swear to God."


She smiled and took his arm.


"It is not right to be alone and far from home," she said. "Come, I will take you home with me and we will have a glass of wine for you, and a cake."


I don't believe this! Thank you, God!


She took him to the Ristorante Napoli, which was closed, and through a door that opened on a stairway that led to a little apartment over the restaurant.


Her father—Tony recognized him as the guy who gave him the good meal the first time he went to the restaurant—and her mother and some younger brothers and sisters were there.


Her father didn't recognize him.


Thank God, after that bullshit story I handed him about being from some village near the Austrian border!


The girl told her family they had met in the church and that he had told her he was alone, and she had brought him home for a glass of wine and a cake. Her mother raised her eyebrows the way Tony's grandmother used to raise hers; but her father gave him a glass of wine, and then another, and some kind of pastry her mother said she made special for the family and not for the restaurant. And then everybody just sat there sort of uncomfortable, so Tony took the hint and decided he better get the hell out of there before he made a pest of himself, and started to go.


He shook hands with everybody and then the girl went down the stairs with him to the street, and he gathered his courage and blurted, "I'd really like to see you again."


"Impossible."


"Why is it impossible? We could have a cup of coffee or something. Dinner."


"It's impossible."


"Why is it impossible?"


"I have a job. I work all week."


"You have to have some time off."


"Very little."


"You have to have some," Tony argued. "You're off now, for example. Are you working tomorrow? Tomorrow's Sunday!"


She hesitated before replying, "No. But my family will be visiting relatives."


"All day?"


"From five."


"What about between now and five?"


"It's not a very good idea."


"Please!"


"It's crazy."


"Let me at least buy you a cup of coffee."


"I should not do this, but..."


"But what?"


"You come here at nine-thirty tomorrow. We take the train to El Tigre. We have a cup of coffee, maybe a little sandwich, and then we come back. OK."


What the hell is El Tigre?Tony wondered. "The Tiger"? What the hell does that mean? Who the hell cares?


"Nine-thirty," he said. "I'll be here."


"It's crazy," she said one last time, and then turned and went up the stairs.




[FIVE]


4730 Avenida Libertador


Buenos Aires


0925 14 December 1942


First Lieutenant Cletus Howell Frade, USMCR, opened his eyes and found himself staring at Hauptmann Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein of the Luftwaffe, who was in a khaki uniform. Clete noticed the swastika on his pilot's wings. It made him uncomfortable.


"What the hell do you want?" he inquired, somewhat less than graciously.


"It is almost half past nine," von Wachtstein said.


"What the hell are you, a talking clock? Get the hell out of here!"


"There is an officer here to move me to a hotel," Peter said.


Clete sat up. His brain banged against the interior of his cranium. His dry tongue scraped against the cobblestones on his teeth. His stomach groaned. His eyes hurt.


"What did you say?" he asked.


Behind Peter, he saw Se?ora Pellano carrying a tray on which was a coffeepot, a large glass of orange juice, and a rose in a small crystal vase. She was smiling at him maternally.


"Buenos dias, Se?or Cletus," she said.


Christ, that's all I need. A smiling face and a goddamned rose!


"Buenos dias, Se?ora Pellano," he said, and smiled. It hurt to smile.


“There is an officer here, a Coronel Kleber. He is to move me to a hotel," Peter said. "He claims it is to make me more convenient to your uncle's house. But I think someone finally remembered that you are living here."


"Oh, Christ," Clete said.


"Our armistice is over, I am afraid," Peter said.


"Looks that way."


"I would suggest, Clete, that our armistice be a secret between us; that we both say we were unaware the other was in the house. There are those, I am afraid, who would not understand how it was between us."


"Oh, shit!" Clete said.


"You agree?"


"Oh, hell. Yeah, sure. You're right."


"I thank you for your hospitality, Clete," Peter said, and put out his hand. Clete shook it.


Peter took his hand back, came to attention with a click of his heels, and saluted.


With a vague movement of his arm, Clete touched his hand to his right eyebrow, returning the salute.


Von Wachtstein did an about-face and marched out of the room.


I shouldn't have been so fucking casual with that salute. He meant his. I'll be damned if that bullshit they gave us at Quantico isn't true— that a salute is a gesture of greeting that is the privilege of warriors. The least I could have done was return it, not wave at him. Nice guy. Damned nice guy.


"Se?ora, I very much appreciate the breakfast, but could you come back in a couple of hours?"


"Se?or Clete," Se?ora Pellano said, setting the tray on the bed and fluffing his pillows, "it would be better if you had the coffee. Se?or Nestor will be here in twenty minutes."


"Se?or Nestor?"


"I told him you were not feeling well, and he said it was very important."


"Thank you, Se?ora," Clete said, and reached for the orange juice. "I will receive him."


"S?," she said, and then, "And you may have your car at any hour between twelve and three."


"What car?"


"There was a call from Se?or Mallin's secretary yesterday. Your car has arrived. The necessary papers have been accomplished, and you may go to the customs at any hour between twelve and three to take it from them."


"On Sunday?"


"It is a courtesy to Se?or Mallin," Se?ora Pellano said. "Or perhaps to your father."


"Won't it wait until tomorrow?"


"The officials will be there waiting for you, Se?or," she said.


In other words, you ungrateful bastard, go pick up the goddamn car.


"Thank you," Clete said. "Se?ora, would a little present for the man who has my car be in order?"


"A small gift of money would be nice. Or perhaps a few bottles of wine."


"Is there any here?"


"But of course. I will pack something appropriate for a small gift."


Sixty seconds after he stepped under the shower, there was a telephone call for him, surprising him not at all.


"Have them call back!" he ordered.


"It is your father, Se?or Cletus."


"Good morning, Cletus. It is your father calling."


"Good morning."


"I only a few hours ago learned—I am at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo—that you have returned from Uruguay."


"I got in late last night."


"And was an angry man with a pistol chasing you?"


"I beg your pardon?"


"I thought perhaps that a jealous husband had cut short your stay."


"No. Nothing like that. I just had enough."


"When I was your age, I never had enough. Did you meet the other guest at the house?"


Clete hesitated just perceptibly before replying.


"Just to say hello, to wish him a Merry Christmas. Se?ora Pellano tells me that he has left."


"It is of no importance. The people who arranged for him to stay there were not aware that it is now your residence," Frade said. "Tell me, have you plans for the day?"


"No, Sir."


"May I make a suggestion?"


"Certainly."


"I will send Enrico in the station wagon to you. He will bring you to the estancia, and you and I will have an American dinner. A rib of beef, with Worcestershire pudding. And perhaps a ride afterward. How does that sound to you?"


He means Yorkshire,Clete thought, smiling, and then: Is he alone out there? Lonely?


"I have someone coming to see me now; and, between twelve and three, I have to pick up my car at the port."


"Excuse me?"


"My car has arrived from New Orleans. Se?or Mallin has arranged for me to pick it up today between twelve and three."


"Then you do not wish to come?" His disappointment was evident.


"No, Sir. I'm just telling you what I have to do before I can come."


"I will call a friend in the Ministry of Customs," Frade said. "When you arrive at the port, there will be no problems."


"I think Se?or Mallin has already arranged that."


"I will call my friend. There will be no problems with Customs. And then Enrico, in the station wagon, will come from here to there and lead you back to the estancia."


"I can read a map. Is there someplace I can get a map?"


"Yes, of course you can read a map. Ask Se?ora Pellano to prepare one for you."


"Well, then, I'll be there as soon as I can."


"I will be waiting with great expectations," el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade said, and the phone went dead.


Se?ora Pellano was standing there during the conversation, making Clete a little uncomfortable—he was wearing only a towel around his waist.


"Se?ora, could you make a map showing me how to drive to my father's estancia? I am going to have dinner with him."


"Marvelous," she said. "He will be pleased. I will draw you a map."


"I have a better idea," Clete said impulsively. "Why don't you ride down there with me? And show me the way?"


"I am not sure el Coronel would be pleased."


"You don't work for him, you work for me," Clete argued. She considered that a moment.


"Yes, that is true," she said. "And I could see my family, my sisters, my brother, my aunts."


"Then you're coming," Clete said.


"If you wish, Se?or Cletus," she said.




Chapter Thirteen




[ONE]


4730 Avenida Libertador


1005 14 December 1942


"It's a little early for that, isn't it?" Jasper C. Nestor asked with disapproval, indicating Clete's beer. But he softened the criticism by smiling and adding, "Is beer drinking at this hour another of those barbarous Texas customs we hear so much about?''


"It's medicinal," Clete said. "My uncle Jim taught me that. When you are all bent out of shape the morning after, a beer is far superior to coffee, prairie oysters, et cetera, et cetera. Can I offer you a cup of coffee? Tea?''


"I'll have coffee, thank you, if that would be convenient," Nestor said. "I presume you were celebrating your successful trip to Punta del Este."


"Our successful passage through Argentine customs with our souvenirs," Clete said. "I was really worried about that."


"Speaking of souvenirs, Clete: They didn't find the walkie-talkies in your room."


"I regret to inform you, Sir, that you'll have to fill out the appropriate form certifying that the walkie-talkies were lost in combat."


"If you need radios, Clete, ask me for them."


"All right."


"Where are they?"


"The explosives are here," Clete said, pointing at a large wardrobe. "Pelosi has the detonators."


"And the radios?"


"You mean the radios that were expended in the service of the United States? Those radios?"


"They're really upset about those radios. Apparently they are in very short supply."


"I thought they might be. Pelosi tells me they're brand-new."


Nestor's face tightened, but he didn't respond. He changed the subject: "The ship we're talking about has been positively identified. It's the Reine de la Mer. She sailed from Lisbon November thirteenth, so she should be arriving here in the next day or two. She may call at Montevideo first."


"OK."


"The next step will be locating her when she arrives in Argentinean waters. We're working on that," Nestor said, and then changed the subject. "Did Ettinger have any luck with Klausner when he went back to see him?"


"I haven't seen him since we got back. I thought I would drop by his place this morning. But since we know what ship it is, isn't that moot?"


"It is entirely possible that one of the other ships is also a replenishment vessel. This business is important to the Germans, and they have a reputation for being thorough."


"I don't know if he went back to see Klausner or not," Clete said. "But if he did ... I can't believe that declaration won't affect Klausner. Even if Ettinger doesn't tell him the figure is millions of people murdered, not thousands."


"You say you plan to see David today?"


Clete nodded. "This morning."


"Ask him to call me at home, please," Nestor said. "Better yet, ask him to come for drinks and dinner—say, at seven."


"Yes, Sir."


"I suppose that habit is hard to break, isn't it? The Southern custom of addressing one's elders as "Sir.' Military courtesy only buttresses it."


"Sorry," Clete said. "I'll try ..."


"Why don't you come for drinks and dinner too?"


"Thank you, but I have a previous engagement. As soon as I pick up my car at the port, I'm driving to my father's estancia. Unless you..."


"That is more important. How long will you be there?"


"I don't know. I hadn't thought about that."


"I'm sure you'll return in time for the Duarte boy's funeral."


"He wasn't a boy," Clete said. "He was a captain. Maybe a foolish one, but a captain."


"Figure of speech. No slight intended."


"I had an interesting conversation about el Capitan Duarte last night," Clete said. "With Captain von Wachtstein of the Luftwaffe."


"With whom?" Nestor asked. His surprise was evident.


"The German officer who escorted my cousin's body home,"


Clete said. "Somebody's signals crossed—the arrangements were probably made long before I showed up down here—and they put him up here in the Guest House. He was in the library when I came in last night."


"And?"


“It was really very civilized. We wound up talking about flying. Somebody, some German officer, came and fetched him this morning. I rather liked him, as a matter of fact."


"He's an enemy officer, for God's sake! And you were drinking!"


"What should I have done?" Clete asked.


"You told him you were a Marine officer?"


"An ex-Marine officer, with a medical discharge for a heart murmur. He's a clever fellow. He saw my watch." Clete raised the Hamilton chronograph. "And recognized it as a military pilot's watch."


"If you weren't wearing that watch ..."


"I thought about that, Mr. Nestor, before I came down here: If my cover story were true, and I had acquired a watch like this, would I wear it? The answer was yes, I would. They're very good watches."


"By now, you must realize that Colonel Gr?ner, the German military attach?—and the representative of the Sicherheitsdienst—knows that you are a Marine officer."


Clete felt anger welling up in him. Nestor was making it clear he thought Clete was a fool.


I may be an amateur down here, but I'm not a fool."Perhaps not," he said. "Von Wachtstein might have elected to tell Colonel Whatsisname—the attach?—nothing more than that he met me. And isn't it likely that Colonel Whatsisname has friends in the Centro Naval? Wouldn't they already have reported to him that my father introduced me there as a former Marine?" For a moment, Clete thought Nestor was about to chew him out. His face showed that he didn't like being argued with. But finally, he smiled.


"Well, then," he said. "With the exception of this unfortunate encounter with the German captain, things seem to be going well, don't they? Falling into place, so to speak." "They seem to be."


"Except, of course, for those walkie-talkies. I wish you would reconsider that, Clete."


"You mean the walkie-talkies that fell in the rice paddy and were lost? Those walkie-talkies?"


Nestor met his eyes and then put out his hand.


"Well, Clete. Have a good time at your father's estancia. Call me when you come back and tell me about it."


"Yes, S—Jasper."


"Better," Nestor said, then smiled and walked toward the elevator.




[TWO]


Calle Monroe 214


Belgrano, Buenos Aires


1100 14 December 1942


"Got a present for you, David," Clete said when Ettinger let him into his apartment. "I know you've always wanted your very own handmade straw chicken."


Ettinger looked at him strangely.


There was indeed the head of a straw chicken sticking out the top of the shopping bag Clete had borrowed from Se?ora Pellano.


"I'm glad to see you back, Clete. Everything apparently went well?"


Clete removed the chicken from the bag, then the two walkie-talkies.


"These are portable radios," Clete said. "They work well. I didn't return them to the people who left them in our room in Montevideo. They—and Nestor—are very upset about that. But I thought we might be able to use them. If Nestor asks, you don't know anything about them."


"He's the Station Chief, Clete."


"I've been thinking about that," Clete said. "I've concluded that from time to time, as the commanding officer of this team, I'm going to have to do things the way I call them. Such as 'losing' these radios. If you can't live with that, tell me now."


"I've been thinking about that too," Ettinger said after a moment. "It says in the Bible that a man cannot have two masters. So far as I'm concerned, you're calling the shots, Lieutenant Frade."


"Thank you," Clete said. "Now tell me, are these radios going to be useful?"


Ettinger picked up a walkie-talkie and looked at it.


"I've seen schematics for these," he said. "This is the first one I've ever actually looked at. If this works the same as the one in the schematics, the frequency is crystal controlled. Unless I can get my hands on some crystals, we can only talk to each other ... or to somebody on the same frequency. I think I can up the power, though, to maybe five, six watts. And maybe if I can rig a wire antenna, instead of this telescoping one, I can get us some additional range." He paused thoughtfully, then said, "To answer your question, Lieutenant, yes, I think they'll be very useful."


"Any chance you could find crystals here?"


"Not from the Argentines," Ettinger said. "But maybe from the Navy."


"The Argentine Navy?"


"OurNavy," Ettinger said, and smiled when he saw Clete's confusion. "I've been having long lunches in the dock area, trying to pick up anything I could overhear. Yesterday a Teniente of the Armada Argentina let a salesman from S.A.P. know that he—"


"What's S.A.P.?"


"It stands for Servicios de Proveedores Asociados, literal translation, Associated Service Providers. They are actually ship victualers. Anyway, this Teniente was looking for a little gift in exchange for steering a little business toward the S.A.P. guy... specifically, providing fresh meat, fruits, and vegetables to a United States Navy destroyer, which will call at Buenos Aires over Christmas. The Alfred Thomas, DD-107."


"You even know the name?" Clete said. "I'm impressed."


"Her arrival here is probably classified SECRET," Ettinger said. "It's really true, Clete, that loose lips sink ships."


"What's she doing here?"


"I think we're just showing the flag. To let the Argentines know that we control the seas down here, and all the Germans can do is sneak the odd submarine in and out of the Bay. Or maybe they just wanted to give the sailors aboard shore leave on Christmas. Or they have been running all over the Atlantic looking for German submarines and are out of food. Who knows?" "A destroyer would have aboard the crystals you're talking about?"


"Probably. If they did, could we get them?" "I don't know. If I ask Nestor, that'd be admitting I have the walkie-talkies; and he'd want them back. Let me think about it.


In the meantime, you don't let Nestor know that you have them."


Ettinger smiled at him. "What radios?"


"We better not count on help from the Navy."


“OK. Just a thought. Rigging a power supply for it will be no problem. All I'll need is regular flashlight batteries, and some tape to hold them together."


"You are a very clever fellow, aren't you, Dave?"


"Flattery will get you everywhere, mi Teniente."


"I've got to go," Clete said. "I'm on my way to pick up my car, and I have my father's housekeeper waiting in the taxi. Christ, I almost forgot: You're invited for dinner at Nestor's. Drinks and dinner. Seven o'clock. He wants to know if you showed Klausner that declaration."


"I did, and he doesn't believe it. Damn him!"


"On the face of it, it's incredible."


"It shouldn't be to Klausner," Ettinger said bitterly. "Well, I'll see you later, then?"


"No. I'm not going to be at Nestor's. I'm going to my father's ranch."


"Really? What do you think of him now that you've met him? Or shouldn't I ask?"


"I really haven't made my mind up," Clete said. "His fangs and horns aren't nearly as long as I have been led to expect."


Ettinger chuckled.


"Thank you, David."


Ettinger put out his hand.


"A sus ?rdenes, mi Teniente," he said.


Clete left the apartment and went downstairs to Se?ora Pellano and the waiting taxi.




[THREE]


Suite 701


The Alvear Palace Hotel


Buenos Aires


1115 14 December 1942


The medical treatment considered most efficacious by Hauptmann Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein of the Luftwaffe for overindulgence in spirits was, perhaps not surprisingly, exactly that considered most efficacious by First Lieutenant Cletus Howell Frade,


USMCR. Almost immediately after he was taken to his new living quarters, Peter called Room Service and had them send up a bottle of beer.


When the treatment seemed to work, he called Room Service again and repeated the order.


When it was delivered, he carefully locked the door, then dragged a large steamer trunk from the corner where the bellman left it and opened it. And then, with the blade of a pocketknife issued to all Luftwaffe personnel on flying status, he began to pry loose the cardboard covering the trunk's bottom.


The removal of the cardboard revealed a half-inch-thick layer of currency, neat stacks of Swiss francs, English pounds, United States dollars, and Swedish kronor. According to his father, he now had the equivalent of just over five hundred thousand dollars in American money. His father would additionally apply for permission to transfer to Peter the equivalent of five thousand dollars American to defray the costs of establishing himself in Buenos Aires in a manner befitting an official representative of the German Reich, with monthly payments of one thousand dollars to follow.


"Some Foreign Ministry bureaucrat will almost certainly lower those numbers, just to feel he's doing his duty to the Austrian Corporal," Generalmajor Graf Karl-Friedrich von Wachtstein had said, "but I'm sure they will not deny the request entirely. Just try not to spend it all on the same Se?orita."


When the memory brought tears to his eyes, Peter told himself that the cognac of the previous evening was working on him, as well as the beer now, not foolish and maudlin sentimentality.


He thumbed through a stack of United States twenty-dollar bills, then pulled one out in curiosity and examined it. On one side was a picture of a long-nosed man with flowing silver hair. His name was Jackson. He seemed to recall the Americans had a President named Jackson.


And a general named Jackson. Stonewall Jackson. Defeated the British at New Orleans in 1812. 1812? Same man? Did the Americans put pictures of general officers on their currency? Did American generals become Presidents?


On the other side of the bill was a picture of the White House.


A very attractive, if not very imposing, edifice. Didn't the British burn this building to the ground in 1812? Or was it. . . the what? The Rebels— theConfederates— in theCivil War who burned it? There was a Confederate cavalry officer by the name of J.E.B. Stuart. . . a magnificent warrior. Graf Wilhelm Karl von Wachtstein, then an Oberstleutnant, rode with him as an observer. Because J.E.B. Stuart was not a professional officer, he did not know it was impossible to haul artillery around the battlefield with cavalry horses. The proper method of employing artillery required building emplacements, and then spending a good deal of time and effort "laying in" the cannon, so that the field of fire was known. Ignorant of all this, Stuart hauled his cannon about the battlefield at a gallop, and fired his cannon at the enemy with no preparation whatever, except loading the piece.


With great effectiveness.


Great-grandfather came home to Germany and wrote a book about his experiences, devoting a substantial portion of it to the proven merits of attaching artillery to cavalry, for great mobility and firepower on the battlefield. Peter's father told him they used the book as a reference at the War College, and that he knew for a fact that it greatly affected the thinking of General Hasso von Manteuffel when he was a student. And consequently it had a great effect on the evolution of the Blitzkrieg philosophy that proved so effective against France and, at least initially, against Russia.


There was a knock at the door.


Who the hell is that?


"I am asleep, come back in two hours!"


"Please, Hauptmann von Wachtstein, open the door," someone replied in German.


Peter quickly closed the steamer trunk and went to the door and opened it. A small, skinny, middle-aged man in a business suit stood there, holding a gray homburg in his hand.


"May I please come in, Herr Hauptmann? I am Ambassador von Lutzenberger."


"I beg your pardon, Your Excellency, I had no idea," Peter said. He opened the door wide, and then with a curt bow and a click of his heels, he stepped aside.


"I've been told you often open your mouth before you think," von Lutzenberger said.


He walked around the suite, opening doors, even looking into the bathroom, and then returned to Peter.


"It is important that we have this conversation," he said. "And more important that no one else is privy to it."


"Jawohl, Excellenz."


“I was given a rather interesting appraisal of your character by Generalmajor Dieter von Haas," von Lutzenberger said. "It came to me out of the normal channels. By hand specifically, from the Ambassador of Portugal. Do I make my point, Herr Hauptmann?"


"Yes, Sir."


“Dieter von Haas wrote that you are a fine young officer... but with a lamentable tendency to drink and talk too much for your own good—and the good of people around you."


"I regret that Generalmajor von Haas has such a low opinion of me, Your Excellency."


Von Lutzenberger ignored the reply.


"I presume the money came through safely, and without official notice?" he asked.


"I was checking when you knocked," Peter said, nodding at the steamer trunk.


"In a week or so, I will be in a position to make suggestions about its disposition," von Lutzenberger said. "Von Haas's letter reached me only a few days ago, and I have not had the time to make the necessary inquiries. I think it will be safe enough with you for the time being."


"Yes, Sir."


"There are several questions of immediate importance. First, when you were at the Frade house, did you happen to meet the son?"


"Yes, Sir."


"And?"


"We had a drink."


"That's all?"


"He told me he served in the American Corps of Marines. He was a pilot."


"Do you think he is a former officer? Or is he still serving?"


"I have no way of knowing, Your Excellency."


"His father is a very important man in Argentina." He met Peter's eyes for a moment, then continued. "I do not have all the details as yet about the son's actual business here. We may safely assume, however, that he is a serving officer and that he is not here on holiday. But his father may be of great use to us, presuming I can somehow convince the Abwehr and Sicherheitsdienst to do nothing foolish. Which brings us to the Abwehr and Sicherheitsdienst in the Embassy, where they are embodied in one man, Oberst Karl-Heinz Gr?ner. You will explain to Gr?ner— and you'll tell my first secretary, Herr Gradny-Sawz, the same— that while you encountered the Frade boy, there was nothing more than an exchange of brief courtesies. You will pretend to be greatly surprised if they inform you he is an American officer."


"Jawohl, Excellenz."


"My residence, my office, and my telephone lines are regularly inspected to detect listening devices. I am regularly assured there are none—by Oberst Gr?ner. Consequently, I am very careful of what I say in my office, in my home, and on the telephone. Do you take my point, Herr Hauptmann?''


"Yes, Sir."


"After you are presented to me tomorrow by Gr?ner, I will, as a courtesy to your father, whom I know socially, have you as a guest in my home. You will remain there until you have completed your duties vis-a-vis Hauptmann Duarte and my staff can find you a suitable apartment. I regret that our relationship thereafter will be formal and distant. This is doubly unfortunate, inasmuch as Frau von Lutzenberger and your mother were close, and I myself hold your father in the highest regard," he met Peter's eyes again, "in these difficult times."


"I understand, Your Excellency."


"This conversation never took place."


"Yes, Sir."


"Watch your drinking and your mouth, von Wachtstein."


"Yes, Sir."


Ambassador von Lutzenberger nodded, turned, and walked out of the room.




[FOUR]


The Port of Buenos Aires


1200 14 December 1942


When Clete and Se?ora Pellano left the taxi, the Buick was waiting for him, along with half a dozen customs officials. The Buick looked like hell, despite an obviously fresh, if none-too-skillful, wash job.


The paperwork was taken care of. All he had to do was sign an acknowledgment of receipt of the vehicle in an undamaged condition.


A customs officer— obviously the senior man,Clete decided, in deference to my father or Se?or Mallin or both —walked to the car with him and watched somewhat nervously as Clete threw his and Se?ora Pellano's bags on the backseat, then got behind the wheel.


The engine fired as soon as he stepped on the starter; and it quickly settled down to produce its entirely satisfying Buick Straight Eight exhaust rumble. The smoothness, so quickly, surprised Clete, and he looked at the water-temperature gauge. The engine was warm; it had obviously been running recently. He remembered now that the customs officer standing by the side of the car exhaled audibly in relief when the engine started. Having friends — or a parent— in high places is very nice.


"Excuse me, Se?or," the customs officer said. "Be so kind. Inform me how you did that?"


"Did what?" Clete said, and then understood. "On this model the starter is mounted with the accelerator pedal. To start the engine, it is necessary only to press the accelerator."


"Magn?fico! We looked—I myself looked—for the starter button, and could find none. It was necessary to call a mechanic to ... how you say, jump-start?"


"Short the starter leads," Clete furnished.


"Precisely," the customs officer said. "A marvelous invention!"


"Thank you, and thank you for your many courtesies."


"De nada," the customs officer said, offering his hand. After Clete shook his hand, he stepped back and saluted.


Clete put the Buick in gear and drove off, feeling fine, wondering if the Virgin Princess would be as fascinated with the step-on-the-gas-pedal starting technology as the customs guy was.


If I am goddamn fool enough to actually call her up and ask her if she still wants to take the ride she asked for.


Jesus Christ, why does she have to be only nineteen goddamned years old? And an innocent, virginal nineteen-year-old at that?The good feeling about the Buick lasted until he reached the port gate and its guard shack. The heavy steel gate was open, and the guard on duty smilingly waved him through. Just outside the gate, there was a small, permanent watercourse, about six inches deep and perhaps a foot wide.


When he crossed it, there was an awful thump, as if the whole goddamned rear end were about to fall off.


He drove, very slowly, for a block or two, listening for the sounds of a fatal defect—the clutch tearing itself to pieces, for example—and then pulled into a side street, stopped, and got out.


He tried to slam the door. It wouldn't close. He tried it again, then took a closer look to see what the hell was wrong with it.


The door panel was falling off.


Jesus Christ! How did that happen?


He tried to push the little clips back in place with his thumb. That didn't work. They needed the jolt from a hammer. There was—at least the last time he looked—a tool kit in the trunk. He reached through the window and pulled the key from the ignition.


"There is trouble, Se?or Clete?" Se?ora Pellano asked.


"I don't think so. Just checking."


When he opened the trunk, the mysterious thump was explained. The spare tire was not mounted where it should have been: flat on the trunk floor against the right fender well and held in place with a bolt passing through the floor plate. When he passed over the bump, the tire flew up and down.


How the hell did that come loose?


I'll be a sonofabitch; they searched the car. They took the spare out to see what I might have hidden in there, and they didn't know how to put it back the way they found it. That also explains the loose door panel.


He pressed hard on the sidewall of the spare. It had been deflated, obviously to dismount it. And he found scratches on the paint of the wheel. And then they forgot to reinflate it—or else they didn't have time to do that.


He bolted the spare wheel in place, found the hammer, and tapped the door-panel clips on both doors back in place. They had managed to properly reinstall the rear seat panels, however, which fastened with screws.


He finally slipped behind the wheel and started the engine again.


"All fixed, Se?ora Pellano," he said. "Among my many other accomplishments, I am a master mechanic."


"I am not surprised," she replied seriously.


Sorry, Princess. No ride in the Buick. If Internal Security is watching me this close, you don't want to be anywhere near me. What the hell was I thinking about?




[FIVE]


Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo


Near Pila, Buenos Aires Province


1715 14 December 1942


A dark-maroon Beechcraft stagger-wing and a Piper Cub were parked beside a wind sock about a thousand yards from the grove of trees surrounding the ranch house—the trees looked to Clete like several acres of long-established, at least a century old, hardwood. He wondered if his father flew the Beechcraft, then decided that was unlikely. Since there was probably a pilot, that would probably complicate his laying his hands on the stagger-wing.


And then there is that other problem, Cletus, my boy, you've never flown a stagger-wing. Well, so what? You never flew a Wildcat either before the first day you flew one. If you can fly a Wildcat, it would seem logical that you can fly a stagger-wing.


When Clete pulled up, el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade was sitting in an armchair on the wide verandah of the ranch house. He held a large, very black cigar in one hand; and in the other was a large, squat glass, dark with whiskey. He was wearing a white polo shirt, riding breeches, and glistening boots.


"Welcome to San Pedro y San Pablo," Frade said, moving down the shallow stairs toward the car.


The cigar, Clete saw, was freshly lit. The drink was fresh. So was the shave: A dot of shaving cream was by his father's ear.


He got all dressed up to meet me. Jesus, that's nice.


"I brought Se?ora Pellano along with me to show me the way," Clete said as he shook his father's hand.


"I hope that is all right?" Se?ora Pellano asked.


"Of course it is, Marianna," Frade said. "I should have thought of it myself."


"Gracias, mi Coronel," she said.


"Nice-looking automobile," Frade said. "The latest model?" He took a closer look and proclaimed indignantly, "It's filthy."


"It just came off the ship."


"They should have prepared it for you at the dock," Frade said indignantly. "I was assured that everything would be taken care of." But then he brightened. "No problem. Enrico will see to it that it is washed and waxed."


"That's not necessary," Clete protested.


"Nonsense. Enrico will be pleased. He admires fine automobiles. Marianna, would you be good enough to have someone take care of Se?or Cletus's luggage, and have someone send for Enrico, and then ask if they can prepare a little snack for Se?or Cletus and myself?"


"S?, mi Coronel."


"Come sit on the porch with me," Frade said. "I do not normally take spirits before seven, but your visit is a special occasion for me. And perhaps you would like a little something... what is it they say, 'to cut the dust of the trail'?"


"Yes," Clete said, restraining a smile. "Thank you, I would." Se?ora Pellano walked into the house. Thirty seconds later, a procession of three servants marched onto the porch, one of them heading for the car, the other two pushing wheeled tables. On the first of these was arrayed an enormous plate of hors d'oeuvres. And on the second Clete saw enough whiskey of various sorts for a party of eight.


He had that set up, too. It took half an hour to make that tray of food. How did he know exactly when I would arrive? Ah hah, those guys galloping over the fields on those beautiful horses with the funny-looking, hornless saddles. He had people out there waiting.


"We will have a drink, or perhaps two, and then you will decide when we should have our dinner. It will be simple, just you and I. It will take no more than an hour to prepare." "Thank you," Clete said.


"I did not know when you would arrive, of course, so I was about to take a ride," Frade said.


Sure you were. Where's the horse, Dad?"I saw some beautiful animals a couple of miles back," Clete said.


"We take pride in our animals," Frade said. "I am sure that your uncle James taught you to ride?"


"Yes, Sir."


"Perhaps we will have time to ride tomorrow."


"I'd like that," Clete said.


"I don't know about riding clothes ..." Frade said, almost in alarm.


"I'm wearing all I need," Clete said, hoisting his trousers to reveal his boots. "Anyway, Uncle Jim always said that a man who couldn't ride bareback really couldn't ride."


"Yes, I recall, James was a fine horseman. And your mother rode extremely well for a woman. So it is in your blood from both sides."


Enrico appeared. There was no look of recognition on his face.


"¿,Mi Coronel?"


"Enrico, this is my son, Se?or Cletus, former Teniente of the U.S. Marine Corps. Cletus, Enrico is former Suboficial Mayor"— Sergeant Major—"of the Husares de Pueyrred?n. We were together there for many years, weren't we, Enrico?"


My father doesn't know how he got home from the Guest House the night he passed out. Or he knows, and we are pretending we don't.


"S?, mi Coronel. A sus ?rdenes, mi Teniente."


Enrico smiled at him warmly as Clete shook his hand.


Whaddayasay, Gunny? How they hanging? Still one below the other?


"Be so good, Enrico, to prepare Se?or Cletus's automobile. Have it washed and waxed, and you—personally—check all the mechanicals."


"S?, mi Coronel."


The drink prepared by the maid was at least a triple. Clete sipped a small swallow, put it down, and then stood up.


"I need the gentlemen's," he said.


"Emilia, show Se?or Cletus to his apartment," Frade ordered the maid who was passing the hors d'oeuvres and mixing the drinks.


He was distracted by other things before he reached the apartment. When he entered the house, he found himself in an enormous foyer. Off of this opened three corridors. The maid led him down one of those, and then Se?ora Pellano intercepted them.


"I wish to show you something, Se?or Cletus," she said, and opened the door of one of the rooms.


Whatever I'm about to be shown, the maid doesn't like it a goddamned bit, to judge by that horrified look on her face.


Se?ora Pellano entered the room ahead of Clete, snapped on the lights, then stood to one side.


It was something like a small library. There was a leather armchair, with a footstool and a chair side table on which sat a cigar humidor and a large ashtray. There was a library table, on which rested a stack of leather-bound albums. And hanging over the fireplace there was a large oil portrait of Elizabeth-Ann Howell de Frade with her infant son Cletus in her arms.


Cletus Marcus Howell smiled rather artificially in a photograph taken before the altar of the Cathedral of St. Louis on Jackson Square in New Orleans. The Old Man was in morning clothes, standing beside His Eminence, the Archbishop of New Orleans, Uncle Jim, and the bridal couple.


There was a wall covered with framed photographs: Clete Frade, aged nine, taking first place in the Midland FFA Sub-Junior Rodeo Calf-Roping Contest; Cadet Corporal Cletus Frade in the boots and breeches of the Corps of Cadets of the Texas Agricultural and Mechanical Institute; Clete Frade, looking as if he had already been at the post-tournament refreshments, with the rest of the Tulane Tennis Team ...


"Marianna! How dare you bring him in here!" el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade said, almost shouted, from the door.


Se?ora Pellano was unrepentant.


"No, Se?ora Carzino-Cormano is right, and you are wrong, mi Coronel," she said. "It is wrong for you to let him think he was not in your mind and heart all these years."


It was a moment before the Colonel spoke. "If it meets with your approval, Cletus, we will dine in an hour," he said. Before Clete could reply, he turned and left the room, slamming the door behind him.


"I will leave you, Se?or Cletus," Se?ora Pellano said, and left the room.


What did she say? "Se?ora Carzino-Cormano is right"? Who's she?


Clete walked to the wall of pictures and examined all of them.


It's a scrapbook on the wall. I wonder what's in the scrap-books?


He went to them. They were full of photographs and newspaper clippings. In a town like Midland, with a thrice-weekly newspaper, one tends to find one's name in one's local newspaper far more frequently than, say, if one lives in New York City and subscribes to the Times.


Whoever did this clipping job worked hard at it. Every time Clete's name was mentioned in the Midland Advertiser —as a guest at some six-year-old's birthday party, for example—the item was clipped out and somehow sent down here.


He was deeply touched. His eyes teared, and his throat was tight.


Well, the Old Man is obviously wrong. My father did not simply put me out of his mind as if I never happened. A lot of effort went into collecting all this stuff. And he displays it, protects it, with. . . what? reverence? Maybe not reverence but something damned close.


Then why the hell did he never try to get in touch with me ? The Old Man could have stopped him from doing that when 1 was a kid— and he's certainly capable of that. But not when I went to AandM or Tulane. And my father damned sure knew that I was there, and when I was.


Fascinated with the idea that his father had actually gone to such trouble, as well as with the clippings themselves, Clete went through each of the seven albums he found, one page at a time.


Finally, desperately wishing he'd brought the triple scotch with him, he left the room.


And now where the hell is my bedroom?Se?ora Pellano was in the corridor outside. "Your father, Se?or Cletus, spent many hours in there."


"Thank you, Se?ora Pellano, for showing it to me."


"I felt I should," she said. "I will show you to your room."


The room turned out to be a three-room suite; and he was not surprised to find that his clothing had been unpacked and put away. On the desk in the sitting room sat a package decorated with a red ribbon and bow. Inside a small envelope was a card, embossed with what must have been the Frade coat of arms. The card read:


This belonged to your grandfather, el Coronel Guillermo Alejandro Frade, who carried it while commanding the Husares de Pueyrred?n. I thought it would be an appropriate gift from one soldier to another. Your father, Jorge Guillermo Frade.


Clete opened the package. In a felt-lined walnut box—with 20 rounds of ammunition and accessories, including a spare cylinder—was a Colt Army .44-40 revolver, the old Hog Leg. It was in good shape, but it was obviously a working gun. The blue was well worn, as were the grips, which were nonstandard—personalized. They were of some wood Clete did not recognize, inlaid with silver wire. On one side was again probably the Frade coat of arms; and on the other was probably the regimental crest of the Husares de Pueyrredon, whatever the hell that was.


He removed the cylinder and peered down the barrel. No rust, no pits, but evidence (the lands were worn smooth) that it had been fired a good deal. He replaced the cylinder and was returning the pistol to its box when he heard a knock at the door. "Dinner will be at your pleasure, Se?or," someone called. "Be right there," Clete called.




* * *




El Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade stood at one end of a table with enough side chairs to seat at least twenty people. It was set, at that end, for two. There was a large centerpiece, a sterling-silver sculpture of a horse at full gallop. There were two silver bowls filled with freshly cut flowers. There were four wineglasses for each of them, and a dazzling display of silverware. An enormous standing rib of beef rested on a large silver platter, and there were at least a dozen other serving dishes, each with a silver cover.


"You had time to freshen up?" Frade asked.


"Yes, Sir. Thank you for the pistol. I'm sorry, I didn't bring ..."


"I didn't expect you to."


He snapped his fingers. A man in a gray cotton jacket appeared immediately and poured a splash of wine in one of the four wineglasses in front of Clete's plate.


“This is a Pinot Noir, from a vineyard in which the family has an interest," he said. "I tend to feel it whets the appetite for beef. Is it all right?"


Clete sipped the wine.


"Very nice," he said, nodding at the man in the gray jacket, who then filled the glass before moving to the colonel's glass.


"That's a fascinating room," Clete said. "How did you get all those clippings down here?"


Frade did not reply. He stood up, and with an enormous knife cut the beef. He laid a two-inch-thick rib on a plate held by a maid, who carried it to Clete and then returned to Frade, who was now holding out a vegetable bowl to her.


Frade waved impatiently at her.


"I will ask her to serve the vegetables and the sauce and the pudding," Frade said. "It is less complicated."


“How did you get your hands on those clippings?”


Frade sat down, pursed his lips, and shrugged.


"Very well," he said. "When your mother came to me as my bride, her dowry was an interest—approximately one quarter ..."


It wasn't approximately a quarter, it was twenty-four-point-five percent, precisely. Christ knows, I've heard that figure often enough!


"... of the outstanding stock of Howell Petroleum. It wasn't then worth what it is now, but even then it was of considerable value. When God called your mother to her heavenly home ..."


Well, that's one way of putting it, I suppose."... it came to me. I considered it, of course, to be yours ..." Jesus Christ! That means that with the third of the twenty-four-point-five percent of Howell Stock Uncle Jim owned and left me, I will own thirty-two point something of Howell. And if the Old Man leaves me a third of his stock — a third of fifty-one percent is seventeen percent, seventeen and thirty-two-point-something is forty-nine-point-something— I will be majority stockholder in Howell Petroleum. And I think he'll leave me more than a third. Sarah's girls don't need the money, and the Old Man likes me best.


Jesus Christ, Cletus Frade, you are an avaricious sonofabitch, aren't you ?


"... to which end I engaged an American attorney, who established a trust fund for you managed by the First National Bank of Midland. I asked him to keep an eye out for anything ..."


"And he hired a clipping service."


"I presume."


"I've been told some unpleasant stories of my mother's death," Clete heard himself say.


"If you don't mind, I would prefer not to discuss the matter."


"I would prefer that you did."


"No one dares talk to me like that. Just who do you think you are?"


"I'm the only son you have."


"You are a guest in my house, and you are insufferably rude."


' 'I told you, the rules are different. I want your version of what happened. If you don't want to give it to me, I will have to presume that my grandfather's version is true.... It paints you as the unmitigated sonofabitch of the century. And if it is true, I don't think I want to be here."


"You dare to call your father a sonofabitch?"


"That's what it looks like from where I'm sitting."


Frade stared down at his plate, then suddenly, furiously, pushed it away from him. It slid a third of the way down the table and then crashed to the floor. The maid made a faint yelping noise and rushed to clean up the mess. "Get out! Get out!" Frade ordered. She scurried from the room.


"You take that from your mother," Frade said to his son. "I know when to stop. Your mother... your mother had a will of iron."


"Is there something wrong with that?"


"There is a time to bend. Nothing is black and white."


"For example?"


"It was necessary for your mother to join my church in order to marry me. For a long time she absolutely refused. I tried to explain to her that I personally didn't care if she lit candles to Satan himself, but that Argentina is by law a Catholic country. To be legally recognized, a marriage has to be performed in a Catholic church. Otherwise, there would be serious problems about our children. In the eyes of the law, they would be bastards, and there would be all sorts of difficulties about inheritance.”


“So she said she would talk with a priest in New Orleans. An ordinary priest was not good enough for your grandfather. If his daughter talked to someone, she would deal with someone important, in this case, his golf-playing friend, the Archbishop. I met that sonofabitch when I was there. I blame a good deal of what happened on him."


On the Archbishop? That's stretching things a little, isn't it?


Clete's father made sudden angry stabbing motions with his leg. For a moment, Clete thought there was a rat or a mouse under the table. But when the maid reappeared, he understood that the call button was mounted on the floor under the table.


"Bring whiskey," Frade ordered. "Scotch."


"And for the young Se?or?"


"Bring him whatever he wants, of course."


"Nothing for me, thank you."


"Then I received a letter from your mother. She wrote that she had been wrong, and that she now understood. She would now be confirmed in my Church and place her life in God's hands and mine. I didn't pay a lot of attention. I have never pretended to understand women and God. But the immediate problem, marriage in church, was over."


The whiskey was delivered. Frade watched impatiently for about thirty seconds as the maid fussed with a silver-handled shot glass, then he took the bottle from her and poured an inch and a half in his glass.


"And then get out," he concluded to her. He waited until the maid fled again before going on.


"So we were married. We went to Europe. It was a splendid time. And then she became pregnant with you. And fell ill. Her doctor informed me that further pregnancies were ill-advised. That was fine with me. We were to have a baby. Two or three babies might increase the chances of having a son, but if the choice was between a second baby and your mother ..."


He took a healthy swallow of his drink.


"I told her, before you were born, that there is some sort of an operation performed during—what is the word— deliverythat prevents future pregnancies. She flatly refused. She said her life was in God's hands; God would protect her. She had sworn a vow before God; she was honor bound.


"I thought I would talk her out of this nonsense at a later time. There are ... certain measures ... one can take to prevent pregnancy. After a while, after you were born, she told me she had discussed this question with her confessor, and the priest told her there was only one thing she could do to avoid children. You know what I mean."


No, I don't. Oh, yeah. Abstinence.


"What happened thereafter is clearly my responsibility," Frade said. “I knew the risk, and out of selfishness, I took it. And you know what happened. But I loved her so much, with such passion ..."


"Why did you leave me in the States?"


"Your grandfather hated me, with obvious good cause. Your uncle James hated me."


"You could have told them."


"They would not have believed it. And I could not, in any event, try to blame your mother's religious fanaticism for what happened. God didn't make her pregnant, I did."


He looked at Clete.


"I asked you, why did you leave me in the States?" Clete said.


"I hoped not to get into this, Cletus."


"Get into it."


"When I went to Midland and drove to the ranch, I was arrested—by two Texas Rangers, by the way—and charged with trespassing. I was sentenced to ninety days in the county prison. When I was finally able to get a lawyer—I was employed on the county roads, clearing drainage ditches—he told me that an appeal of my jail sentence, much less an application to the courts to have you returned to me, would be a waste of effort."


The Old Man is certainly capable of arranging that.


"The lawyer did tell me that he could have the sentence vacated on my promise to leave Texas and never return. So I accepted that offer and sought other legal counsel. When I arrived at the courthouse seeking an injunction to have you returned to me, I was rearrested by the Texas Rangers for parole violation, and returned to Midland to complete my sentence."


"I never heard any of this."


"I'm not surprised," Frade said simply. "When I was released from jail, officials of the Immigration Service were waiting outside. My visa had been revoked on allegations that my morals were not up to the standards required of visitors to the United States. I was taken to El Paso, Texas, and escorted across the Mexican border."


"Incredible!"


“In Mexico City, a firm of lawyers—I was assured they were the best around—informed me that my case was virtually hopeless. In order to petition a Federal Court for your return to me, I had to be physically in the United States. Otherwise—I remember the phrase well—I 'had no legal status' before the court. And I could not, of course, obtain another visa to enter the United States. Your grandfather hates with a great depth, Cletus. In a way, it's admirable."


"My mother was his only daughter," Clete said softly.


“Yes, of course. In Buenos Aires, I consulted with our Foreign Ministry, who took the case to the Argentine Ambassador in Washington." He shrugged, holding out his arms helplessly. "Little pressure could be brought to bear ... especially now that several United States senators had already brought the case to the attention of the State Department. The senators were furious that an American child might be expatriated into the care of a father whose morals were ..."


"Jesus H. Christ."


“I considered having you taken—kidnapped. But I finally ... Your aunt Martha loved you. I knew that. She would be a mother to you. I was alone. It would be better for you to be raised by Martha than by my sister, who has never been entirely sound mentally. Or by servants. So I quit, Cletus. Gave up."


"All I can do is repeat that I knew nothing."


"I was right about one thing. Jim and Martha raised you well."


Very hesitantly, one of the maids entered.


"We do not wish to be disturbed," Frade said softly.


"The Se?ora is here, mi Coronel. She asks to be received."


"I will be a son of a bitch!" Frade exclaimed.


"The Se?ora?" Clete asked.


"She is the Carzino-Cormano widow," Frade explained. "She has an estancia nearby. Pushy woman. Comes here whenever she feels like it. Does not have the good manners to telephone to see if it would be convenient. I had hoped she would spare me today." He turned to the maid. "Tell the Se?ora that we will join her shortly."


The door opened again and a svelte woman in her fifties walked into the dining room. Her gray-flecked, luxuriant black hair was folded up under a hat with a veil; a double string of pearls hung from her neck; and a golden sunburst with diamond-chip decorations was pinned to the right breast of her black silk dress.


"1 was planning to bring him by to meet you tomorrow," Frade


said.


"So you said," she said. She looked around the room, and turned to the maid. "Clean up the mess on the floor, remove the whiskey, and bring champagne. I told Ramona to chill half a dozen bottles this morning."


The maid hurried to obey her orders.


"I have not finished my drink," Frade protested.


"Yes, you have," she said. She walked to Clete. He rose to his feet as she put out her hand. "You are Cletus. I am Claudia de Carzino-Cormano. You may call me Claudia."


"Yes, Ma'am."


She turned to Frade. “There is much of his mother in him, but also much of you. Which may not be entirely a good thing."


Three maids entered the room, one stooping to clean up the mess on the floor, the others carrying a silver wine cooler and a tray of glasses.


"Can you open that?” Claudia inquired. "How much have you had to drink?"


"I have had this one drink."


"And how many before? You were as nervous as a virgin on her bridal night when I talked to you this morning."


This woman is not simply a pushy widow woman from the next spread,Clete thought.


Claudia took the champagne bottle from the cooler, expertly uncorked it, and poured.


She handed Clete a glass, then handed one to his father, and finally picked hers up.


"Welcome to Argentina," she said, and raised her glass. Clete followed suit.


Claudia held up her hand to stop the toast.


"No," she said. "More importantly. Welcome home, Cletus. Your father has been waiting for you for a long time."


"Thank you," Clete said, and his voice broke.


Claudia walked quickly to him and laid a hand on his cheek. Then, with a little hug, she kissed him. He could smell expensive perfume.


"It is all right to cry," she said. "Your father cries often."


She was right. When Clete looked at his father, tears were running down his cheeks.




[SIX]


Bureau of Internal Security


Ministry of Defense


Edificio Libertador


Avenida Paseo Colon


Buenos Aires


2045 14 December 1942


El Teniente Coronel Bernardo Martin, in a foul mood, parked his car directly in front of the main entrance of the building and stormed inside.


It is almost nine o'clock, after all, and unless Paraguay or Chile has invaded Argentina as an evening surprise, there will be no one superior in rank to me in the building, and I can park wherever the hell I choose.


The ornately uniformed guards standing by the door moved from parade rest to rifle salute as he passed (the formal guards at the Edificio Libertador wear the dress uniforms of the Patricios Regiment, circa 1809). Martin, who was wearing civilian clothing, forgot that he wasn't in uniform and returned the salute.


The door to the building was locked, and he pressed the bell button impatiently. A sargento appeared, immediately followed by a teniente, to tell him the building was closed. These men were in the field uniform, with German-style helmets and accoutrements, of the army unit charged with actually protecting—as opposed to decorating—the building.


He finally produced his Internal Security credentials. He disliked using them—and did not, unless he had to—because there was a lamentable and uncontrollable tendency on the part of people like this to remember him and point him out to their girlfriends: See the funny man? He's Internal Security!


With profound apologies, the teniente finally opened the door.


He would now almost certainly remember him; he could tell all his friends that Internal Security, ever vigilant, worked all night. Martin walked across the lobby and took the elevator to his seventh-floor offices.


The sargento on duty and Comandante Carlos Habanzo were waiting for him there. They rose to their feet as Martin walked through the door.


"Buenas noches, mi Coronel."


"I was playing bridge with the father-in-law when you called, Habanzo. I hope your reasons are important," Martin said, and waved at Habanzo to follow him as he walked to the door of his office and opened it.


"I took the liberty of putting the agent's reports on your desk, mi Coronel," Habanzo said.


Martin sat down at his desk and read the reports. They told him nothing that Habanzo had not told him—or hinted at—on the telephone.


"Why did this idiot not follow young Frade and the other one to Uruguay?"


"Mi Coronel, as you yourself have often said: Without specific, previous authorization, an agent's authority stops at the water's edge."


If I say now what I would like to say, I will regret it.


"Habanzo," he said a full thirty seconds later—which of course seemed much longer to Comandante Habanzo—"I will explain our policy to you one more time. I would appreciate it if you would not only remember it, but pass it on to our agents: The authority of an agent does indeed end at the water's edge. But this agent's instructions were to surveille young Frade, not arrest him. No authority is needed to follow someone across a border. Do you see the difference?"


"S?, mi Coronel," Habanzo replied. "Mi Coronel, in this specific case, in addition to his misunderstanding of his authority, our agent did not have sufficient funds to take the boat to Montevideo for an unknown period of time. There would have been a hotel bill. Perhaps he would have been required to rent an automobile ..."


Martin held up his hand to stop him. "Be so good as to refresh my memory, Habanzo."


"I will try, mi Coronel."


“Do we have an officer on our staff who is charged with seeing that our agents are properly equipped to perform their duties?"


"S?, mi Coronel," Habanzo said, somewhat unhappily, now sensing what was coming.


"Charged, in other words, with providing them with automobiles, appropriate documents, weapons where necessary ... and of course sufficient funds to fulfill their duties?"


"S?, mi Coronel."


"And who, precisely, is that officer on our staff, Habanzo? What is his name?"


"It is I, mi Coronel. I have obviously failed to carry out my duty."


"Unfortunately, that is the conclusion I myself have reached."


He let him sweat for a full minute before he went on.


"The damage is done, Habanzo. We will speak no more of it."


"It will never happen again, mi Coronel. Gracias, mi Coronel."


"We know from this," Martin said, tapping a document on his desk, "that young Frade and the other one ..."


"Pelosi, mi Coronel. Anthony—it is the English for Antonio— Pelosi."


"... returned from Uruguay at approximately nine-thirty last night."


"Whereupon, mi Coronel, surveillance of the subjects was resumed by our agents, who were stationed at customs in the expectation that they would return."


"Did it occur to them to speak with the customs officer who inspected their luggage?"


"No, mi Coronel, it did not," Habanzo replied, and hastily added, as he saw the clouds form on Martin's face: "I personally went to the individual concerned and questioned him myself."


Proving, 1 suppose, that you are only half stupid.


"And?"


"There was nothing suspicious in their belongings, mi Coronel. They had boxes of straw ducks, chickens ... you know what I mean. And two beach radios that didn't work."


"One thing at a time. The straw ducks. Why would two bachelors have boxes full of children's toys?"


"I have no idea, mi Coronel," Habanzo confessed. "Perhaps for the children of their servants."


"And perhaps they contained enough explosives to blow up the Edificio Libertador! Did that occur to you?"


Habanzo considered the question seriously.


"I do not think it was possible that the boxes contained that quantity of explosives, mi Coronel."


"I was speaking figuratively, Habanzo."


"Yes, of course, mi Coronel."


"Tell me about the beach radios."


"You know the type, mi Coronel. They are powered by batteries, and you can take them with you. To the park, for example, or the beach. Theirs did not work."


"They had two portable radios? And they did not work?''


"S?, mi Coronel. They did not work. The customs man tried them, and all he heard was a hiss."


"You don't think it suspicious that each had a radio?"


Habanzo shrugged and held up his hands helplessly.


"Did he tell you what these portable radios looked like?"


"Like oversized telephones."


Habanzo, you are an idiot of unbelievable magnitude!


"Habanzo, two months ago, through the courtesy of el Coronel Gr?ner of the German Embassy, I was treated to a lecture of the latest German communications equipment. One of the items he was kind enough to show me was a portable communications radio. It had a range of several kilometers, weighed three kilograms, and looked like an oversized telephone, to which was attached an automobile antenna. Do you suppose that only Germans possess such electrical genius, or do you think it is possible that the norteamericanos might come up with something comparable?"


"You think they were communications radios, mi Coronel?"


"I think we must consider that possibility, don't you?"


They didn't go to Uruguay to pick up a couple of radios. Those would have been sent to them via the diplomatic pouches of the American Embassy. So what were they doing in Uruguay?


"I could send someone into the Frade guest house, mi Coronel, to examine the radios. If they are still there." "If they are still there?"


"On his way to the port to pick up his car, Frade stopped at Calle Monroe 214, in Belgrano, at the apartment of Se?or David Ettinger, an employee of the Banco de Boston. He carried a shopping bag containing a straw chicken. He did not have the straw chicken with him when he left."


"We must consider the possibility, mustn't we, that the straw chicken was a present from Se?or Frade to Se?or Ettinger?"


"The shopping bag was large enough, mi Coronel, to also contain the radios. Or something else."


"Permission denied," Martin said after a moment. "I don't want any intrusion into the living quarters of any of these three without my specific approval. Understood?"


"S?, mi Coronel."


"Who inspected young Frade's automobile at the port?" Martin asked, picking up a report from his desk.


"Two of our men, under my personal supervision, mi Coronel."


In that case, he could have smuggled in two elephants.


"And?"


"Absolutely nothing, mi Coronel."


Three elephants.


"And was the investigation conducted carefully? Will it go undetected?''


"Absolutely, mi Coronel. You have my personal assurance about that."


Which means he will know we searched his car.


"And where is he now?"


"We have just had word from our man at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo that he is with his father."


"I don't want him lost again, Habanzo."


"I understand, mi Coronel."


"Provide whatever personnel are required. See that they have adequate funds to cover any contingency."


"S?, mi Coronel."


"My function, Habanzo, is to know everything there is to know about el Coronel Frade and his associates. I think that his son could be considered an associate, don't you? His long-lost, recently returned son, who just happens to be—he says—a recently discharged American officer?"


"Yes, of course, mi Coronel."




Chapter Fourteen




[ONE]


Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo


1115 15 December 1942


Two gauchos, sprawled on the wide steps to the verandah, were waiting for them when they returned from their ride. As they approached, Clete's horse, a magnificent sorrel, shied at something and, with a shrill whinny, reared. Despite the strange saddle, Clete managed to keep his seat and to control the animal, and more than a little smugly noticed both surprise and approval on the faces of the gauchos.


The Norteamericano did not get his ass thrown. Sorry about that, guys!


The gauchos took the reins of the horses and led them away. And Clete followed his father and Claudia Carzino-Cormano onto the verandah. The more he saw this woman, the more he liked her. If she and Aunt Martha met, they would form an instant mutual admiration society. Like Martha, Claudia was a first-class horsewoman; and like Martha, she said what was in her mind, rather than what she thought a lady should say. And, like Martha, she ran a ranch. An estancia almost, but not quite, as large as San Pedro y San Pablo.


He was touched and amused at his father's blustering attempts to paint her as just a platonic acquaintance who happened to drop by now and again. The servants obeyed her orders the way they'd obey the mistress of the place. And last night, when his father suggested, "Since it's late, Claudia, why don't you spend the night? I'll have one of the guest rooms set up for you," she winked at Clete and smiled.


"Thank you for your hospitality, Jorge," she said.


And when he got up the next morning and went looking for something to eat, Claudia was already up too, wearing a white blouse and baggy trousers, and soft, black, tight-over-the-calf leather boots, obviously a gentle lady's riding costume—which his father apparently expected him to believe just "happened" to be in the house.


"Your father is insufferable until he has had his second cup of coffee," she greeted him. "It is best to ignore him, or anything he says."


Clete had ridden hornless saddles before—at Texas AandM, the ROTC horses had Army-issue McClellan cavalry saddles—and after a few minutes, he became accustomed to the Argentine saddle. It was called a recado, Claudia told him. Although everyone else in the area had been using "English" saddles since the turn of the century, his father insisted on keeping them, because he was too cheap to throw anything away.


When Clete's father overheard her tell Clete that, he flared up at her: "I am not cheap, my dear. I am frugal, and I respect our traditions. Since they have been properly cared for, they have not worn out." She rode close to him then, murmured, "Precioso, I'm sorry," and leaned out of her recado to kiss him.


Acting as if the kiss—which calmed him down immediately— never happened, Clete's father then delivered a lecture on the history of their saddles. A brilliant saddler made them on the estancia during the tenure of Clete's great-grandfather. The shape of the seat, he went on to say, together with estribando largo — long stirrups—permit the rider to sit in an almost vertical position, the merits of which for herding cattle over long hours do not have to be explained. Except perhaps to a woman.


"S?, mi jefe," Claudia replied, laughing.


When they came onto the verandah, Se?ora Pellano was supervising the arrangement of a little "after the morning canter" refreshment. There were two bottles of champagne in coolers, and an array of sweets and cold cuts.


"I would suggest, Cletus," Frade said, "that you pass up the champagne."


"Why?" Claudia demanded.


"I am reliably informed that it is not wise to fly an aircraft under the influence of alcohol."


"Is he going flying?"


"I thought—it is a lovely day—that we would return you to your home in the Beechcraft. I will arrange for your car to be delivered there."


"And Cletus will fly the airplane?"


"Certainly. Why not? He is an experienced military pilot. He probably knows more about flying than el Capitan Delgano."


"Cletus?" Claudia asked, a hint of doubt in her voice.


"After flying the Wildcat fighter, Claudia," his father persisted, "as he did in Guadalcanal, flying the Beechcraft will be like riding a tame old mare."


"I'm sure I can fly it," Clete said. "But I'd like to solo it an hour or so before I carry passengers."


"Solo it?"


"Fly it alone for an hour."


"Not only experienced, but cautious," Frade said. "It is settled. We will have our sandwiches, and he will have coffee. And afterwards he will solo for an hour, and then we will fly you home. I'm sure your daughters will like to meet him. Perhaps he can take them for a ride. You might wish to call to make sure they are at home."


"Precioso," Claudia said, laughing, "if it is your intention to marry him off to one of the girls, as I suspect it is, you are going about it in exactly the wrong way. Young people never like the young people their parents consider suitable for them."


"I have no idea what you're talking about," el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade said.


"El Teniente Frade is a fine pilot, mi Coronel," el Capitan Gonzalo Delgano, Air Service, Argentine Army, Retired, reported. The two of them had just taken the stagger-wing Beechcraft on a thirty-minute orientation flight, with half a dozen touch-and-go landings. "As fine a pilot as I know."


Don't let it go to your head, Cletus, my boy. Unless you had dumped that airplane, it was the only thing he could say about the boss's son's piloting skills.


He also doesn't like it a bit that I'm flying what he thought of as his personal airplane. But there's nothing he can do about that, either, except smile.


"Then we can go?" el Coronel asked. "I will send for Se?ora Carzino-Cormano.''


"Not yet," Clete said. "I'd like to solo it first." His father looked disappointed and a little annoyed, but finally said, "Whatever you think is best, Cletus."


"I won't be long," Clete said, and walked back to the airplane. The pilot in him now took over. He had no doubt that he could fly the airplane, but that presumed nothing would go wrong. A lot of things could go wrong: The checkout had been really inadequate, and there was no civilian equivalent of a Navy BuAir Dash One, "Pilot's Instruction Manual," to study for the CAUTION notices, which warned pilots what they should not do.


But I have to fly it. And not just to take Se?ora Carzino-Cormano safely home.


While he was looking the plane over earlier, he noticed a low-level chart in a compartment on the door, an Argentine Army Air Service map of the area. He examined this with great interest. In addition to pointing out the few available navigation aids, a dozen or so civilian airstrips—one was at the Estancia Santa Catharina, Se?ora Carzino-Cormano's ranch—and a military air base ninety kilometers to the south, the chart showed the entire mouth of the Rio de la Plata, including all of Samboromb6n Bay and a couple of miles of the coastline of Uruguay.


Within a day or two,he thought with sudden excitement— presuming she's not already here — theReine de la Mer will be anchored out there, waiting to replenish German submarines. I'm supposed to find her and blow her up. I didn't come here with the idea of finding her myself, but I can't pass up the opportunity to see if I can.


He strapped himself in and looked out the window for el Capital Delgano. When they first fired up the stagger-wing, Clete stood by the fire extinguisher for Delgano. And he expected Delgano to do the same for him; but Delgano was nowhere in sight. Clete pushed himself out of the leather-upholstered pilot's seat, went back through the cabin, and opened the door.


"Something is wrong?" his father asked.


"I need the fire extinguisher, Dad," Clete said. "I'm about to start it up. What happened to el Capitan Delgano?"


"That is the first time you have ever called me that," his father said.


Christ, he looks as if he's going to cry again!


He was touched by his father's emotion, and felt tightness in his throat. And his own eyes grew moist. Jesus.


As if the display of emotion embarrassed him, Frade looked around for Delgano.


"He probably had to relieve himself," he announced, and then indignantly, "He should have waited for you."


"No problem, Dad. All you have to do is stand there while I start the engine, and give it a shot if it catches fire."


It was immediately evident that el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade had no idea where he was to stand, or for that matter, how to operate the extinguisher.


Clete conducted a quick course in fire-extinguisher operation during aircraft engine start, then climbed back into the Beechcraft, strapped himself in, and slid the pilot's window open. "Clear!" "Clear!" his father responded, with obviously no idea what he


was saying.


Clete turned on themain switch, then pushedengine prime, and finallyengine start.


The engine coughed to life on the first try, and he saw his father smile triumphantly at Claudia, who had come to the airstrip from the house to watch him. Clete looked at her and gave her a thumbs-up. She crossed herself but smiled, making it a joke.


As the needles came off the peg, he removed the brakes, checked the wind sock, and began to taxi to the gravel strip, then down it. By the time he had turned it around, everything was in the green.


"Engage brain before beginning takeoff roll," he said aloud, and shoved the throttle forward.


At just about the moment the airspeed indicator began operating, indicating forty, he felt life come into the wheel. The tail wheel lifted off. He held it on the ground, deciding it would take off at sixty or seventy. At sixty, it lifted into the air of its own accord. He eased back on the wheel and saw the ground drop


away.


Claudia was waving cheerfully at him.


He put it into a shallow climb to the north, in the direction of Estancia Santa Catharina and Samboromb?n Bay. When he reached 4,000 feet, he played with it a little—more than he felt he could do with Delgano sitting beside him—to see how it flew. It wasn't a Wildcat, but it was a damned nice little airplane.


He found Claudia's estancia and landing strip without trouble. Giving in to the impulse, he made a low-level pass over it, rocking the wings as he did so. So far as he could tell, this dazzling display of airmanship went wholly unnoticed.


He looked at the elapsed time function on his Hamilton, and saw that it had taken him fifteen minutes to reach the estancia.


If I'm gone more than an hour, they will start shitting bricks. So I have to be back in forty-five minutes. Half of forty-five is twenty-two thirty. I can fly over the Bay for twenty-two thirty. If I can't find theReine de la Mer in twenty-two thirty, I'll have to


quit.


Eighteen minutes later, ten minutes after crossing the coastline, all alone on a vast expanse of bay, he spotted a ship dead in the water. He put the Beechcraft in a shallow descent from 5,000 feet, taking it right down to the waves. He retarded the throttle— watch it, Clete, you don't want to stall it into the drink —and approached her from the stem. Her sternboard had a legend, which at first he couldn't see.


He flew closer.


Don't run into the sonofabitch!


A flag was on her stern pole. The wind was such that it was flapping, fully extended. Surprising him, he recognized it as Portuguese from one of the briefings Adams had given them in New Orleans.


And then the letters on her sternboard came into focus: Reine DE LA MER—LISBOA.


There you are, you sonofabitch!


He banked sharply to pass her on her port side, and waved cheerfully as he flew past.


Twenty crewmen waved cheerfully back, most of them standing beside canvas-draped objects that he strongly suspected were searchlights and machine-gun mounts.


He put the Beechcraft into a shallow turning climb until he was, on a heading for Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.


No wonder those other guys got themselves killed. There is no way to approach a ship like that, at anchor twenty miles offshore, without being detected. Certainly not in the daytime. And even at night if you rowed out there, so they wouldn't hear the sound of your engines, if that captain knows shit from shinola, he's going to use his searchlights every couple of minutes to see what else is floating around out there.


So how do we fix explosives to her hull?


It can't be done, not the way we've planned. I'll have to come up with something else.


What? Find some excuse to bring a boat alongside and have Tony fix his charges while I go on board and. . .


And what?


The last team was probably eliMi?ated trying something just like that.


By air?


Not with this airplane, certainly. Not even with a Wildcat. You can't take out something that large with .50-caliber machine guns. I know that for a fact. And that ship has more antiaircraft weaponry on it than any Jap freighter I ever strafed.


What the hell do I do now?




[TWO]


Estancia Santa Catharina


Buenos Aires Province


1425 15 December 1942


“Take a good look, my darlings,” Claudia said to the two very beautiful, black-haired, stylishly dressed young women who came out to the Beechcraft as Clete was tying it down, "this is Cletus. El Coronel has decided that Cletus will marry one of you. Which of you will have him?"


"I said nothing of the kind," el Coronel protested as the girls gave him their cheeks to be kissed.


The younger girl—she looked about twenty—blushed, giggled, and smiled. The other girl, who looked several years older, was obviously not amused.


"How do you do?" she said in English. "I have seen your pictures, of course. I am Isabela Carzino-Cormano. I am very pleased to make your acquaintance."


It sure doesn't sound like it.


"I am overwhelmed," Clete said. "How soon do you think we can schedule the wedding?"


"I see that you take after Uncle ... your father," Alicia, the younger one, said with a giggle.


Isabela treated both of them to an icy smile.


They started to walk toward the ranch house.


"Somehow, I don't think she intended that as a compliment," Claudia said. "You may have to settle for Alicia."


"Can't I have both?"


"That's an idea," el Coronel said. "That is an American custom. The Mormons in Utah can have as many wives as they wish."


"Really?" Alicia asked. "That's terrible!"


"A man must be prepared to make many sacrifices in life," el Coronel said. "Two wives, four, six ... whatever duty requires."


"Now, I am not amused," Claudia said. "Jorge, you always go too far!"


She said that because she's pissed that he hasn't proposed marriage to her. Why not? I have no idea.


The faces of Claudia's daughters showed that they had made the same interpretation.


"I saw you, Cletus," Alicia changed the subject quickly, "at the English Tennis Club, playing with Dorotea Mallin."


"If you two play hard to get," el Coronel said, "I am sure that Dorotea would be happy to have him."


"She's only a kid, Dad," Clete blurted.


"She's what, eighteen, nineteen years old," his father said. "That's old enough."


"And she looked at him as if he gives milk," Alicia said. "Everybody at the English was talking."


"That is quite enough!" Claudia Carzino-Cormano flared. "You're embarrassing Cletus. That includes you, Jorge!"


El Coronel did not seem at all repentant, but he moved to another subject.


“We have decided, your mother and I, about the travel arrangements for tomorrow," he announced to the girls, then stopped. "Why don't we go into the house? I don't suppose that you have any champagne chilled, Claudia?"


"You can have coffee. You have had quite enough champagne."


"A few glasses..."


"Most of two bottles. You convinced yourself that Cletus wrecked the airplane, and that it was your fault. Coffee!"


"As you wish," Frade said, and marched across the verandah as if he owned it, to sit in a leather armchair. To judge by the cigar humidor and ashtray on a table beside it, he had used the chair before. He opened the humidor, extended it to Clete, who took one of the large black cigars inside.


"I was not at all concerned with Cletus's ability to fly the airplane. I thought perhaps he had mechanical difficulties, or ran out of fuel."


“Or became lost, or the wings or the engine fell off. You have an active imagination, precioso, and it was running at full speed."


"I was speaking of the travel arrangements for tomorrow," el Coronel said, changing the subject. Again he addressed Isabela and Alicia. "This afternoon, Enrico will come here in the station wagon for the luggage. He and Se?ora Pellano will carry it to my house, where she will arrange things for your stay. In the morning, your mother and I will drive to Buenos Aires in my Horche, and you will go with Cletus in his Buick. You will have to direct him to my house, as he does not know the way."


"Is he going to the funeral?" Isabela asked, surprised. Unpleasantly surprised, it was immediately clear.


"Of course he is," Claudia Carzino-Cormano said quickly, and a little sharply. "Jorge was his cousin."


“If I have a choice in the matter, I would prefer to drive into Buenos Aires this afternoon with Enrico in the station wagon," Isabela said.


What did I ever do to you, honey? As far as I'm concerned, I don't want to go to the goddamned funeral in the first place, and so far as I'm concerned, you can walk to Buenos Aires.


"You will not go with Enrico and Se?ora Pellano in the station wagon," her mother said flatly. "It would be unseemly for Cletus and Alicia to travel alone."


"And it won't be unseemly for him to be at the funeral?"


"You are excused, Isabela," Claudia Carzino-Cormano said furiously.


Claudia waited until the sound of Isabela's high heels on the tile floor of the house had died.


"I'm am so sorry, Cletus," she said. "I apologize."


"Did I somehow give offense?"


"She was close to Jorge," Claudia said.


"Not really," Alicia added. "But now that he's dead, she's convinced herself she was in love with him."


Her mother looked angrily at her.


"That's a terrible thing to say!"


"It's true. She'd wear widow's black if she thought she could get away with it. It draws attention to her."


Claudia glowered at her, then shrugged her shoulders and let the remark go unchallenged.


"I always thought that Isabela and Jorge ..." el Coronel said, leaving the rest unsaid. "But that certainly doesn't give her the right to treat Cletus as if... as if he's an enemy officer."


"Jorge, she wasn't doing that at all!" Claudia said.


“Why else would she feel it was unseemly for Cletus to be at Jorge's funeral?"


"Because she is a fool, Uncle Jorge," Alicia said.


"Alicia, that's the last word I want to hear from you," Claudia said angrily, and turned to el Coronel. "Honey," she said almost plaintively, "I'll speak to her. I'll make sure she understands that it was the anti-Christ communists who killed Jorge, not the Americans."


While he was flying an airplane for the Germans, who are murdering hundreds of thousands of women and children.


"Please do," Frade said, not pleasantly. "I think an apology to Cletus is in order."


That was not a suggestion from a visitor. Obviously, my father has the same kind of authority in this house as Claudia does in his. I wonder why he never married her. He said she was a widow.


"No apology is necessary," Clete said. "Except from me. I'm sorry to be a source of unpleasantness, Claudia."


"Oh, honey, you're not," Claudia said, and kissed him. "You're a source of joy."


"Speak to her," el Coronel Frade said.


"You mean right now?" Claudia asked.


"Yes, I mean right now," el Coronel said. There was a tone of command in his voice, and Claudia reacted to it.


"Excuse me, please, Cletus," she said, and went in the house.


"Alicia," el Coronel Frade ordered, "would you have someone bring us some champagne?"


"Do I get any of it?"


"If you can drink it before your mother comes back," Frade said with a smile.


"Sounds fair enough," Alicia said, and went quickly into the house.


Now that was a father talking to his daughter, and vice versa. What the hell is their relationship?


"I'm sorry about this, Cletus," el Coronel said.


"No problem, Dad. I was raised with Uncle Jim's girls. They drove both of us crazy, too."




[THREE]


The Plaza Hotel Bar


Buenos Aires


1710 15 December 1942


Se?or Enrico Mallin, with Se?orita Maria-Teresa Alberghoni on his arm, entered the bar via the street entrance rather than through the lobby. They had just come from her apartment.


In her apartment earlier, watching her postcoital ablutions through the glass wall of her shower, and then watching her dress, he told himself she was not only an exquisitely lovely young woman, but a sweet and gentle one as well, worth every peso she cost him.


It was not impossible, he also told himself, that she was beginning to love him for himself—she certainly acted like it in bed. Perhaps she was not submitting to his attentions solely because of the allowance he gave her, and the apartment, and his guarantee of her father's loan at the Anglo-Argentinean Bank. He was flattered by such thoughts, of course, but he was at the same time aware that they were not without a certain risk ... if she let her emotions get out of control, for example.


An arrangement was an arrangement. And its obligations and limitations had to be mutually understood between the parties. She would never become more than his Mi?a, and he would never be more than her good friend, her protector. She was expected to be absolutely faithful to her good friend—the very idea of another man touching Maria-Teresa, those exquisite breasts, those soft, splendid thighs, was distasteful. And he was expected to be faithful to her. Excepting of course, vis-a-vis his wife.


The relationship was an old—he hesitated to use the word "sacred"—Buenos Aires custom. His father had a Mi?a; his grandfather had a Mi?a; and most of the gentlemen of his professional and social acquaintance had Mi?as. When he was a young man, his father explained to him the roots of the custom: It first developed in the olden days, when marriages were arranged with land and property, not love, as the deciding factor, and a man could not be expected to find sexual satisfaction with a woman who might have brought 50,000 hectares as her dowry but was as ugly as a horse.


In the olden days, a gentleman was expected to provide for the fruit of any such arrangement. And he was ostracized from polite society if he failed to do so. Some of the affluent Buenos Aires families (those who were perhaps a little vague about their lineage) could often trace their good fortune back to a great-grandmother or a great-great-grandmother who had an arrangement with a gentleman of wealth and position.


Just before the turn of the century, when Queen Victoria was on the British throne, the custom was buttressed by Queen Victoria's notion—shamelessly aped by Argentine society, as were other things British in those days—that ladies could have no interest in the sexual act save reproduction. A man, a real man, needed more than a woman who offered him her body only infrequently and with absurd limitations on what he might do "with it.


In exchange for certain considerations, a Mi?a well understood her sexual role.


In more recent times, the necessity for permanence in the relationship between a Mi?a and her good friend died out. This was because the efficacy of modern birth-control methods obviated the problem of children. On more than one occasion, however, Enrico Mallin considered giving Maria-Teresa a child. He loved his own children, of course, but they had inherited their mother's English paleness. He thought it might be nice to have a child or two with Maria-Teresa—a child who would have his olive skin and dark eyes, his Spanish blood.


Of course, on reflection, he realized the foolishness of this notion, and ascribed it to his fascination with her olive skin and dark eyes.


Because a Mi?a was not a whore or a prostitute, it would be ungentlemanly to conclude an arrangement with her in such fashion that she was forced into one of those professions afterward. Hence the allowance, at least a part of which the girl was expected to save for a dowry—which she could use after the arrangement came to an end. And hence the note at the Anglo-Argentinean Bank which Enrico had guaranteed for her father's business. When a Mi?a had enough money to wish to begin her married future, it was usually time for her good friend to wonder whether the grass might be greener elsewhere.


Maria-Teresa Alberghoni was Enrico Mallin's third Mi?a, and she had been with him for four years. While he couldn't imagine replacing her, in the back of his mind it seemed to him that their arrangement would doubtless come to an end in another two or three years ... though in truth, he didn't really want to do without Maria-Teresa. The grass is rarely greener than where you are standing.


Although one of the best in Buenos Aires, the Plaza Hotel is, after all, nothing more than a hotel. A hotel accommodates travelers ... or sometimes a man and a woman not married to each other who require a bed behind a locked door.


Appearances are important. Unless it is for some specific function—such as a ball, or a wedding reception that their husbands are unable to attend—ladies should not risk gossip by being seen in a hotel without their husbands. Specifically, a lady would not think of entering the bar at the Plaza Hotel without her husband; and gentlemen of Enrico Mallin's social and professional circle had an unspoken agreement never to take their wives to the bar at the Plaza under any circumstances.


This left the gentlemen free to take their Mi?as there in the almost certain knowledge that they were safe from their wives.


The girls liked the system too. They could move from table to table chatting happily with their friends, while the gentlemen were afforded the opportunity to show off their Mi?as to their peers, and to have private conversations about business, or whatever else needed to be discussed in confidence, in a place where the walls do not have ears.


As a matter of fact, in Enrico Mallin's judgment, the showing-off aspects of the custom had recently started to get a little out of hand. For one thing, certain gentlemen were beginning to bedeck their Mi?as in jewelry and furs. There was nothing wrong, certainly, with giving your Mi?a a couple of small gold trinkets, or even a silver-fox cape, especially if she had done something to make you extraordinarily happy, or as a farewell gift, if the relationship was drawing to an end.


But these weren't trinkets, these were diamonds and other precious jewels, and heavy gold bracelets, and quite expensive fur coats. Once one or two gentlemen started this practice, all the Mi?as would begin to expect it.


And worse than that, certain gentlemen started to appear in the Plaza bar with a Mi?a on each arm. And there was one old fool, Hector Forestiero—he was as bald as a cucumber and must be in his seventies—who was showing up with three. Enrico had no idea what exactly he thought he was proving by this—to suggest that he had enough money for three Mi?as, or that he was still virile enough to handle a menage a quatre in bed.


The Plaza bar was L-shaped. The bar itself, with its comfortable stools, occupied a corner of the room. On either side, there were leather-upholstered chairs and tables under large mirrors and mahogany paneling.


The place was full, but that was not unusual. When the maitre d'hotel saw Mallin and Maria-Teresa, he came quickly to them and led them to a table at one end of the L. He snatched a brass "Reservado" sign from it and held Maria-Teresa's chair as she sat down.


Enrico looked around the room and nodded to several gentlemen of his acquaintance. A waiter appeared a few minutes later, automatically delivering a plate of hors d'oeuvres; a Johnnie Walker Black with two ice cubes and a little water for Mallin; and a gin fizz for Maria-Teresa.


The waiter barely had time to prepare Mallin's drink when Alejandro Kertiz appeared. Kertiz was a lawyer with a pencil-line mustache and a taste for flashy clothing. His Mi?a was cut from the same bolt of cloth. Her clothing was too tight, too revealing, and she apparently applied her lipstick with a shovel.


Enrico Mallin did not like Alejandro Kertiz. His grandmother— perhaps even his mother—was probably a Mi?a. You don't need a good family to be a successful lawyer, just a devious mind and a complete lack of morals. Mallin avoided Kertiz whenever possible. He certainly did not want to give the impression that he and Kertiz were anything more than casual acquaintances.


"My dear Enrico," Kertiz began. "Would there be room for us with you? The place is jammed."


"I would be honored," Mallin said.


The two sat down after Kertiz's Mi?a leaned across the table to kiss Maria-Teresa's cheek.


"I was hoping to run into you," Kertiz said, and started looking around for a waiter.


Even the waiters recognize you for what you are and try to ignore you.


By snapping his fingers so loudly and so often that everyone in the room was looking their way, Kertiz finally attracted the attention of a waiter, and grandly ordered "whatever Se?or Mallin and the Se?orita are having, plus a Dewar's White Label, doble, with soda, for the Se?orita and myself."


Good manners require that I protest and tell the waiter to put that on my bill. To hell with him. Let him buy his own whiskey. On the other hand, if I permit him to buy me a whiskey, I am indebted to him.


"Put that on my bill, por favor," Mallin ordered.


Kertiz waited until the waiter delivered the drinks, then said, "Corazonita,"—Little Heart—"why don't you go powder your nose and take Se?or Mallin's little friend with you? I wish to discuss something in confidence with him."


The young women left the table.


"She's so very attractive," Kertiz said, obviously referring to Maria-Teresa, and then added, "Pity."


"Yes, I think she is," Mallin said. "What do you mean, 'pity'?"


"None of them—sadly—seem able to deny themselves the attentions of a young man," Kertiz said. He reached into his pocket, produced a brownish envelope, and handed it to Mallin.


There was a photo inside. It showed Maria-Teresa standing by the railing of the canal across from the English Yacht Club at El Tigre. She was holding the hand of a dark-skinned young man.


His back was toward the camera; his face could not be seen, but Mallin could see his dark skin, and that he was touching Maria-Teresa's face with his hand.


Another goddamned Italian!Mallin thought furiously. A stevedore from La Boca, or a vegetable salesman, all dressed up in his one suit of "good" clothes.


"I took my family out to El Tigre yesterday," Kertiz said. "To the Yacht Club. You know that my wife's grandfather was one of the founding members?"


"I had heard something like that," Mallin said.


While your grandmother was a Mi?a.


"And I had the camera with me, a Leica I-C, with a shutter speed of one one-thousandth of a second. With the new American film and the Leica, one can take photographs with practically no light."


"Fascinating!"


How dare the ungrateful little bitch do this to me!


"I wasn't sure at first that it was actually your little friend, but I took the shot anyway, and I developed the film.... I have my own laboratory, I think you know, complete in every detail."


"How nice for you."


"And I examined the negatives, and then made an enlargement, so I could tell for sure."


"It is her cousin Angelo," Mallin said. "I know the boy well. He works in her father's restaurant."


"Oh, I am so happy to hear that," Kertiz said, making it quite clear that he thought that possibility was remote indeed. "I would hate to think that she does not find satisfaction with you, my friend."


"May I have this?" Mallin asked.


"Of course. I made it for you."


"Muchas gracias."


"De nada."


Soon after the girls returned to the table, without the manners to excuse himself, Kertiz jumped up and walked across the room to invite himself to sit with another gentleman and his Mi?a. A minute or so after that, he rather imperiously waved for his Corazonita to join him.


Of course, you sonofabitch. You accomplished at my table what you set out to do. Rub this disloyal bitch's philandering in my face.


"I didn't think to ask, Teresa," Mallin said when they were alone. "Did you have a pleasant Sunday?"


"Yes, thank you."


"And what did you do?"


"Well, I went to an early mass at San Juan Evangelista, then we had a family dinner, and then visited with relatives."


You are a bad liar.


Did you really go to mass? Or were you in bed all morning with your vegetable salesman? Perhaps in bed with your young man in the apartment I provide for you? After you told your father you were going to mass, did you then take your vegetable salesman into our bed?


"I was thinking that perhaps one day we should drive out to El Tigre," Mallin said.


Well, that caused a reaction, didn't it? Your eyes are frightened.


"El Tigre?"


"I thought we might go out there for lunch," he said. "Get out of the heat of the city."


"That would be very nice," Teresa said.


"It's been some time since I have been there," he said. "When was the last time you were there?"


Teresa shrugged.


"A long time ago. I don't remember."


Mallin stood up, so suddenly it frightened her.


"I am leaving you now, Maria-Teresa," he said.


"Excuse me?"


He threw Kertiz's photograph on the table.


"If you want to go out to El Tigre, have your vegetable sales-boy take you there."


"Enrico!"


"Get your things out of the apartment today," he went on. "And please tell your father that I am no longer able to guarantee his loan at the bank."


"Enrico, amado"—beloved.


"Don't 'amado' me, you treacherous little bitch!" Mallin said, louder than he intended. He glanced around the bar. People were looking at him. Kertiz had a smug look on his face.


He marched out of the bar with as much dignity as he could muster.


There wasn't a taxi in sight. There was never a taxi when you needed one.


He felt like crying.


Finally, a taxi appeared and he flagged it down and told the driver to take him to the Edificio Kavanagh. He would get the Rolls and drive around until he had his emotions under control, and then he would go home, where he would have several stiff drinks.


Pamela would be pleased to see him. She didn't expect him for several hours. Perhaps he would surprise everyone, Pamela, Dorotea, and Little Enrico, and take everybody out for dinner.




[FOUR]


4730 Avenida Libertador


Buenos Aires


1730 16 December 1942


Clete put the top up on the Buick convertible, marveling again that the General Motors automotive engineers had the ingenuity to come up with a device that would raise and lower the top at the push of a button (unlike the do-it-yourself bullshit he and Tony had had with the '37 Ford in Punta del Este). Then he carefully locked the car and walked into Uncle Guillermo's house.


A man was loitering at the corner of Calle Jorge Newberry, and Clete wondered whether the man was there to watch him.


He was in an unpleasant mood. Who the hell was Jorge Newberry, anyway? he thought as the man on the corner glanced his way, then averted his gaze.


The plan was to leave Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo for Estancia Santa Catharina sometime in the morning. To Clete's way of thinking, that meant sometime before ten-thirty. But it was twelve-thirty before the two-car, Horche-Buick convoy finally set out down the gravel road to Estancia Santa Catharina. During the forty-mile trip, he had to swallow the dust from his father's Horche.


And, of course, Claudia's daughters were not prepared to leave when they arrived. Argentina, while very unlike Mexico, had ma?ana in common with the republic immediately south of the Rio Grande.


"Since you have nothing to do in Buenos Aires," his father said cheerfully, "I'm sure you won't mind waiting for the girls to finish their packing while Claudia and I drive ahead. The girls will show you the way."


"Fine," Clete said.


The trouble was that he had something to do in Buenos Aires. He had to get in touch with Nestor and tell him he had found the Reine de la Mer and that he could forget taking her out by planting a charge against her hull. It couldn't be done that way. And since he could think of no way to do it himself, that would be up to Nestor to figure out.


On the flight back to the ranch, inspired by an Errol Flynn Battling the Dirty Nazis movie he vaguely remembered, he considered sneaking aboard the ship, overpowering the crew, placing scuttling charges, and then slipping away.


It worked for Errol Flynn. But, he finally remembered—shooting down the only idea he had been able to come up with—that ship in the movie was tied up at a wharf, not anchored twenty-odd miles offshore.


But of course he could not tell his father that, so he smiled and waited patiently for the girls to put their goddamned gear together. He occupied himself by putting the convertible top down, because he would no longer be swallowing his father's dust.


When she finally came out to the car, Isabela Carzino-Cormano insisted on riding in the backseat. Fine gentleman that he was, knowing that riding in the backseat of a convertible going as fast as he intended to drive was no fun, he put the roof up.


That situation lasted perhaps two miles, until Isabela tapped him imperiously on the shoulder and asked him if he would be good enough to please raise the windows. The wind was mussing her hair and she was getting dusty.


That was the last word Isabela spoke before they reached Buenos Aires. It was hotter than hell in the Buick with the roof up.


Alicia Carzino-Cormano tried to make conversation. "Now tell the truth, Cletus," she asked him, "aren't you really just a poco interested in Dorotea Mallin?" Watching them play tennis, she saw him looking at her in a certain way.


Actually, Alicia, you saw me looking down her dress and at her crotch, because 1 am a perverted dirty young man.


"Alicia, don't let your imagination run away with you. And since you're so curious, there is a young woman in America I'm involved with."


He was glad to get rid of both of them at his father's house on Avenida Coronel Diaz and drive quickly to the Guest House.


One of the maids greeted him at the door, then asked him if he would like her to park the Buick.


Thank you, no. Sweetheart. You are probably a worse driver than my father.


"No, gracias. I'm going to leave it right where it is."


His answer brought him a lecture about petty crime on the streets of Buenos Aires. She assured him that if he left the car outside overnight, in the morning there would be nothing left but the windshield, and perhaps not even that.


Getting the car into the garage also posed a problem. They couldn't find the keys. Se?ora Pellano would of course know where the keys were, the maid told him, but Se?ora Pellano was unfortunately at the house on Avenida Coronel Diaz. They wound up telephoning Se?ora Pellano and asking where the keys were.


Finally, stopping off at the kitchen to load a silver champagne cooler with ice and two bottles of cerveza, Clete was able to take the elevator to Uncle Guillermo's playroom and get on the horn to Nestor. Predictably, Nestor was not thrilled to hear from him.


"I saw that boat you were talking about, the one you're thinking of buying? Reine de la Mer,'' Clete said.


"I'd really rather hear it from you in person, Clete. Why don't you come here?"


"Certainly."


"You have your car?"


"Yeah."


"We can take a ride."


"I'm on my way," Clete said.




[FIVE]


Jasper C. Nestor came out of his house and got in the Buick. As soon as he was seated, Clete said, "There's a Fiat parked down the street that was parked across the street from the Guest House when I drove out of the garage."


"Well, they can't hear us as long as we're driving. You implied that you know where the Reine de la Mer is?"


"She's at anchor twenty miles or so offshore in the Bay of Samboromb?n."


"How do you know that?"


"I saw her there. I was flying my father's airplane."


"You're sure it's the Reine de la Mer? How can you be sure?"


"Because I flew close enough to read her sternboard. And as a bonus, I got a good look at all the nice searchlights and machine-gun mounts on her superstructure."


"You ... flew close enough to read her sternboard?"


"I buzzed her, all right? That was the only way I could get close enough to read the sternboard."


"I'm not sure that was wise."


"Why?" Clete asked incredulously.


"We would have found her."


"You didn't, did you?"


"And now they know you've found her."


"Mr. Nestor, I don't think there's any way to get close enough to her to blow her up. At least, I can't think of one."


"Point one, Frade, is that you're not to blow her up, you are to disable her. And as quickly as possible, certainly within the next week or ten days. If she replenishes one German submarine, that's one too many. Point two is that you seem to have forgotten that it is not your function to question your orders, but to obey them."


"Did you hear what I said? There is no way to get close to her where she lies. And even if we could, I don't believe that the explosives we have would do much damage."


"There's enough explosives—you have more than twenty pounds. If judiciously placed, that's more than enough to disable her. That's what we're after."


"If we could get to her steering ... or to her engines, and had an hour or so to do it, possibly. Pelosi is very good at what he does, but..."


"But what?"


"There's no way to get close to that ship, much less get aboard her."


"You have to try."


"I'll have a shot at anything that looks like it has a chance of succeeding, but I'm not going to commit suicide."


"What did you say?"


"I said I'm not going to commit suicide. I respectfully suggest you send a message to Colonel Graham ..."


"Colonel Graham is the Deputy Director of the OSS. I have no intention of bothering him with something like this. What he expects from me, and what I expect from you, is that we carry out the mission assigned by the OSS."


"I respectfully request, Sir, that you send a message to Colonel Graham and tell him that I said there's no way to take the Reine de la Mer out with the men and materiel I have."


"It doesn't work that way, Frade," Nestor said. "We receive our orders and we carry them out to the best of our ability."


What is this "we" crap? You'll be in your office in the Bank of Boston.


"Why didn't we, or the English, sink the Reine de la Mer off Lisbon, once she was identified? Or here, as she came into the Rio de la Plata estuary? The Navy is operating in the South Atlantic. And there's even a destroyer, the Alfred Thomas, making a port call here the day before Christmas."


"Where did you hear about the Alfred Thomas?" Nestor interrupted.


"Apparently it's common knowledge."


"I asked you how you heard about it. Did Ettinger tell you?"


You don't like it that Ettinger told me about the destroyer and didn't tell you. And that I didn't tell you either. But screw that. I'm not going to let you get on Ettinger's back for that.


"No, I heard it from Enrico Mallin. Why can't this destroyer sink the Reine de la Mer?"


"It's not your business to question decisions like that, if I have to point that out to you. But the reasons seem self-evident. The Reine de la Mer is a Portuguese ship. Portugal is neutral. The United States does not torpedo neutral ships."


"But it's all right for the three of us to sink it? What's the difference? Aside from the fact that a destroyer has the capability to take it out, and we don't?" Clete asked, and then went on without waiting for a reply: "I'd like to plead my case up the chain of command."


"It doesn't work that way. You're in the OSS now. You take your orders from me, and you don't have the privilege of questioning them. What's the matter with you, Frade?"


Clete felt frustration and anger sweep through him. "I know what orders are, Mr. Nestor, and I'll" try to obey mine," he said. "All I'm asking you to do is pass the word up the chain of command. Tell them that I told you that I'll need more to take out the Reine de la Mer than good intentions and twenty pounds of explosives. A very fast powerboat, maybe. Certainly another two hundred pounds of high explosive. Or a TBF from Brazil. Something."


"A what from Brazil?"


"A TBF," Clete repeated. And then, when he realized that Nestor had no idea what a TBF was, he added, "A torpedo bomber."


"A torpedo bomber?" Nestor asked sarcastically.


"I'm a fighter pilot, but I can fly TBFs. I could go to Brazil, pick up the plane, fly it to that dirt strip we used for the airdrop in Uruguay, where Pelosi would be waiting with enough avgas to get me to the Reine de la Mer ..."


Nestor looked at him with incredulous contempt.


"... and put a torpedo in her."


Nestor shook his head sadly, as if he had failed to make a point to a backward child.


"Frade, that would be just as much an act of war as the Alfred Thomas attacking the Reine de la Mer.''


"I could then fly over my father's estancia, put the plane on a course that would carry it out over the Atlantic, and bail out," Clete said.


"And that's what you want me to suggest to my superiors?"


"Yes, Sir."


"You simply refuse to understand the situation. Sinking the Reine de la Mer with a torpedo bomber was, I am quite sure, one of the options considered. It was obviously discarded. It's out of the question. Quite impossible."


"So is doing the Reine de la Mer any harm with twenty pounds of explosive. And I will not order my men to do something that has no chance of success, and that will get them killed," Clete said. "I respectfully request that you pass that up the chain of command."


"I don't think there is any point in continuing this conversation, Lieutenant Frade," Nestor said. "You leave me no choice but to report your insubordination—if that's all it is—up, as you put it, 'the chain of command.' "


"What do you mean, 'if that's all it is'?" Clete demanded, coldly angry.


"What would you call it when an officer refuses to obey an order because there is an element of personal risk involved?"


Clete pulled to the curb and slammed on the brakes.


"Get out," he ordered. "Before I punch you into next week."


Nestor looked at him in surprise, then opened the door and stepped out.




[SIX]


Avenida Alvear


Buenos Aires


1815 17 December 1942


"And here we are at the Alvear Palace Hotel," Oberst Karl-Heinz Gr?ner, military attach? of the Embassy of the German Reich to the Republic of Argentina, said quite unnecessarily to Hauptmann Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein, who was residing there. "Just a few minutes' walk from the Duarte mansion."


They were both in civilian clothing, and had just come from Peter's formal introduction to Ambassador von Lutzenberger at the embassy.


"I estimate a three-minute walk, Herr Oberst," Peter said


straight-faced.


"No more, I am sure."


The military mind at work. Or an Oberst-and-higher's mind at work. My father can't park a car without a detailed operational plan. Why should this man be any different?


"It was the original intention of the Argentines to line with cavalry from the Husares de Pueyrredon both sides of Avenida Alvear from the Frade mansion to the Basilica of Saint Pilar, which is approximately a kilometer in that direction,” he pointed. "I talked them out of that."


"Yes, Sir?"


“The avenue will be lined from a point approximately twenty-five meters from the Duarte mansion with troops of a regular regiment—the Second Regiment of Infantry. There will be a representative honor guard of the Husares de Pueyrredon at the mansion itself. On my side, I thought it would be best, for public relations purposes, to have regular troops in field gear—they wear our helmets, you know, and are armed with Mausers, and look very much like German troops. And on their side, I suspect they were pleased at the suggestion. With that many men in those heavy winter-dress uniforms, in this heat, it was statistically certain that a number of Husares would faint and fall off their mounts."


He looked at Peter with what could have been the suggestion of a smile.


"It is always embarrassing, Herr Oberst, when men faint while on parade."


"Precisely," Gr?ner said. "I had a tactical officer at the infantry school who used to quite unnecessarily threaten us that anyone who fainted on parade would regret it."


Peter now felt quite safe in smiling at Gr?ner, and did so. Gr?ner smiled back.


"The Husares de Pueyrredon, the mounted troopers," he went on, "will line the path of the procession from the point where Avenida Alvear ends at the Recoleta Park, at the foot of this small hill." He pointed again, and resumed walking.


When they reached the foot of the small incline, he stopped and pointed again.


"There is the Basilica of St. Pilar," he said. "Did you have the opportunity to visit churches when you were in Spain?"


"On one or two occasions, Herr Oberst. I am Evangelisch" — Protestant.


"Yes, I know. So am I," Gr?ner said. "And there are not very many of us in Bavaria. The Recoleta Cemetery, where Hauptmann Duarte's remains will be interred, is immediately behind the Basilica. What I started to say was that if you visited a Catholic church in Spain, you will feel quite at home in this one. It is jammed with larger-than-life-sized statues of various saints—I have often wondered if the admonition against making even graven images is in the Catholic version of the Ten Commandments . .."


Peter chuckled, and Gr?ner smiled.


"... including one of St. Pilar," Gr?ner continued, "the source of whose prestige in the Catholic faith remains a mystery to me, plus the to-be-expected Spanish Baroque ornamentation covering every inch of the place."


Peter chuckled again as Gr?ner started across the street, and they started walking up a fairly steep hill toward the Basilica.


"How the Husares will keep their mounts' footing on this incline," Gr?ner observed, "is fortunately not my problem."


They reached the church and stopped in a small exterior courtyard.


Gr?ner pointed again.


"Following the high requiem mass, the casket will be brought to this point. By that time, the dignitaries—including you and me, of course—will be standing there, against that wall. The Ambassador will step forward, and you and I will also step forward, stopping one pace behind him. The Ambassador will then briefly express the condolences of the F?hrer and the German people to the Duarte family and the government of Argentina. He will then take one step backward, and I will take one step forward." "Yes, Sir."


"You will be holding a small pillow on which will rest the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross." "Yes, Sir."


"I will then read the order of the Oberkommando of the Wehrtnacht posthumously awarding, in the name of the F?hrer, the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross to Hauptmann Duarte. I will then take three steps forward to the casket. You will follow me, do a left face to me, and extend the pillow to me. I will take the decoration from the pillow and pin it to the Argentine colors that will be covering the casket."


"Yes, Sir."


"How do you feel about that, Herr Hauptmann?"


"Sir?"


"I personally felt the Knight's Cross was a bit much," Gr?ner said. "It is a decoration that should be won because of outstanding valor. A simple Iron Cross would be sufficient, I think."


"Herr Oberst, it is not my place to question the award of a decoration by the Oberkommando of the Wehrmacht.”


"Nor mine," Gr?ner said. "But between soldiers ..."


Peter did not reply.


"We will then, at my command, do the appropriate facing movement, so that we are facing the casket. On my command, we will take two steps backward and then render the German salute. The Navy somehow gets away with the hand-to-the-temple salute, but those of us in the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe must obey the F?hrer's order to render the German salute. Don't forget!"


"No, Sir."


"On my command again, we will conclude the salute, do an about-face, and march back to our positions behind Ambassador von Lutzenberger."


"Yes, Sir."


“The casket will then be carried out of this courtyard, to the right and through the main entrance to the cemetery. You will remain behind, and when the last of the dignitaries has left the courtyard, you will enter the cemetery through that gate."


He pointed, then walked to a small iron gate in the wall, which turned out to be locked.


"I will see that it is unlocked," Gr?ner said. "For now, we will enter the cemetery by the main gate."


"Yes, Sir."


“You will pass through that gate and—you will probably have to move quickly—proceed to the Duarte tomb, where you will remain until the casket has been placed inside. After the family has departed, you will remove the Knight's Cross from the casket, return it to its box, and proceed to the Duarte mansion, where, exercising great tact, you will present the decoration to Se?or Duarte."


"Yes, Sir."


"I say 'exercising great tact' because of the mother. She is, poor lady, not in the best of health, mentally speaking."


Oberst Karl-Heinz Gr?ner made a circling motion with his index finger at his temple.


"I understand, Herr Oberst."


"We will now locate the Duarte tomb for you, and the path from the small gate in the courtyard."


"Yes, Sir."


That took about five minutes. Peter found the cemetery fascinating. It was almost literally a city of the dead, with every inch except the walkways covered with elaborate tombs, some small and some as large as small houses. In fact, they all looked like houses. Almost all of them had a glass-covered wrought-iron door, through which small altars could be seen. The altars were usually complete to either a large brass cross or a statue of Christ on His cross, or both. And in each tomb/chapel a casket could be seen, either on the altar itself or in front of it. Several of the caskets were small and white, children's caskets, which made Peter uncomfortable.


When Oberst Gr?ner saw him looking into the tombs, he explained:


"The most recently deceased has his casket left on or in front of the altar until the next death in the family, whereupon it is placed in what for a better word I think of as the basement of the tomb. There are three, four, as many as six subterranean levels, I'm told."


"Fascinating."


"Bizarre, is more like it. Catholic bizarre, plus Spanish bizarre. Incredible!"


Something else raised Peter's curiosity as they walked through the cemetery, a tomb with no Catholic symbols or pious words— the burial place of an atheist and his family? He asked Gr?ner about it: "I thought only Catholics could be buried in a Catholic cemetery."


"So did I, until I came here." He paused and shook his head at the failure of Argentines to be logical. "Consecrated ground, they call it. No heathens or Evangelische need apply. The last time I was here—it's over there someplace—I even came across a tomb reserved for Freemasons. I thought the Catholics hated Freemasons about as much as the F?hrer." He smiled. "There is no explanation, except that this is Argentina, and Argentina is like nowhere else in the world."


Finally, they were through, just outside the cemetery's main gate. Gr?ner made Peter recite, in detail, his role in the funeral of Hauptmann Duarte.


I expected this. Sound military practice. You tell someone what you 're going to teach him. You teach him what you want him to know. And then you make him tell you what he has just been taught.


"So, this is done," Gr?ner said. "And what do you suppose we should do now?"


"I have no idea, Herr Oberst," Peter replied.


"What do all soldiers, from private soldiers to Feldmarschalls, do when they have finished their assigned duties and there is no superior officer around?"


"Look for a woman?" Peter blurted.


Gr?ner chuckled. "Close, but I was thinking of finding a beer," he said. “Fortunately, we are close to a place where we can do just that. And who knows, there just might be someone there who catches your eye."






Chapter Fifteen




[ONE]


Restaurant Bavaria


Recoleta Plaza


Buenos Aires


1905 17 December 1942


With Peter moving in step beside him, Oberst Karl-Heinz Gr?ner marched across Recoleta Plaza to a restaurant. A brass sign mounted on the wall identified it as Restaurant Bavaria. Peter stepped ahead of Gr?ner and opened the plate-glass door.


A heavyset, barrel-bellied man in his fifties approached them the moment they were inside. He was wearing a stiffly starched shirt and a suit that looked too tight, and he was immaculately shaved, except for a Hitler-style mustache on his lip.


"Guten Tag, Herr Oberst," he said, with a snap-of-his-neck bow. "What a great pleasure it is to see you."


Gr?ner nodded somewhat imperiously.


"Herr Krantz," he said, "I have told this young gentleman that the imitation schnapps in this pathetic copy of a gasthaus is sometimes drinkable."


"I like to think it is decent."


"This young gentleman is my new assistant, Hauptmann Freiherr von Wachtstein, of the Luftwaffe,” Gr?ner said, waited until Krantz had made his little bow, and then added, "holder of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross."


Krantz snapped his head again.


"A great honor, Sir," he said.


It is apparently true,Peter thought. The Knight's Cross and a Reichsmark will sometimes get you a glass of schnapps.


"Herr Krantz," he said.


Peter looked around the restaurant. It not only had solid, Germanic-appearing furniture, but the walls were decorated with the crests of the German states and some of the larger cities, and with horned rehbock skulls and mounted boar heads. It looked truly German; it could have been in Munich or Frankfurt am Main or Berlin.


"Would the Herr Oberst and the Herr Freiherr prefer a table by the window, or ..."


"One of the rooms upstairs, Krantz, overlooking the Recoleta, would be preferable," Gr?ner said. "1 have told the Freiherr that some of the prettiest women in Buenos Aires march past your windows at this hour. And we are going to have a little private chat."


Krantz led them to the rear of the restaurant and up a flight of stairs, then down a corridor and into a small room with windows overlooking the Recoleta.


"Would this be satisfactory to the Herr Oberst?"


"Thank you, Krantz," Gr?ner said. "This will do."


“Perhaps I might interest the Herr Oberst in something besides a schnapps?"


"With the outrageous prices you charge, schnapps—imitation schnapps is all..."


"The Herr Oberst forgets that I have told him time and time again that his money is not acceptable here," Krantz said.


"How kind of you, Krantz," Gr?ner said, and added to Peter: "Herr Krantz is a good German, Herr Hauptmann. A leader of the German colony here."


Krantz beamed.


"Permit me, Herr Oberst, to send you something of my choice."


"How kind of you, Krantz," Gr?ner said.


Gr?ner disappeared.


"He has been very valuable, helping us get officers from the Graf Spee (The German pocket battleship Graf Spee, under the command of Captain Hans Langsdorff, was engaged in destroying British shipping in the South Atlantic when located and damaged by three British cruisers. She sought refuge in the neutral port of Montevideo, Uruguay. Two British cruisers followed her, and patrolled outside the harbor. A British aircraft carrier and a British battleship were en route to Montevideo when, on 17 December 1940, under British diplomatic pressure, the Uruguayan government insisted on compliance with International Law and that she leave Uruguayan waters after seventy-two hours or be interned. Langsdorff then took her to sea, but rather than risk her capture by the British, blew her up just outside Montevideo. A flotilla of tugs and other small craft hastily organized by the German colony in Buenos Aires carried Captain Langsdorff and his thousand-plus-man crew to Buenos Aires. There, after learning his crew would be interned and that he could do nothing else for them, and to prove that it was fear of British capture of his warship, and not fear of death at the hands of the enemy, that made him scuttle his command, Langsdorff arranged himself so his body would fall on the Graf Spee's battle ensign and shot himself in the temple.) out of the country," Gr?ner said. "You'll become involved in that, of course."


"How many of the Graf Spee's men are here?" Peter asked. He remembered the loss of the Graf Spee and the suicide of her captain, but it never entered his mind to wonder what happened to her crew.


"Eight hundred and something other ranks, and about forty-nine officers," Gr?ner said. "Getting the officers out is a high priority for me, largely because Admiral Canaris has an understandable personal interest."


Admiral Wilhelm Canaris was Chief of German Intelligence (Abwehr).


"Excuse me?"


"Canaris was himself interned here during the First World War, and escaped."


"I didn't know that," Peter confessed.


Strange that I didn't. Admiral Canaris and my father are close. I wonder if Gr?ner knows that. I wonder how much he knows about my father, or for that matter about me. Did they send a copy of my service records over here? Or my Abwehr dossier? More than likely.


Krantz came back, bearing a bottle in his right hand and holding the stems of three glasses between the fingers of his left.


"I know the Herr Oberst likes a little Slivovitz to whet his appetite, and I thought the Herr Freiherr might like a taste."


"Good of you, Krantz," Gr?ner said as Krantz poured the liquor.


"I am chilling some champagne, Argentinean. The German is gone, and I didn't think French appropriate to properly welcome the Herr Freiherr to Argentina. And then with the Herr Oberst's approval, I thought perhaps a nice Schnitzel, mit Kartoffeln und Apfelbrei —breaded veal cutlet, potatoes, and applesauce.


"We place ourselves in your capable hands, Krantz," Gr?ner said.


Krantz picked up his glass and raised it.


"Herr Oberst," he said, "Herr Freiherr, unser F?hrer!"


Gr?ner and Peter stood and made the toast.


"To victory!" Gr?ner said.


"Death to our enemies!" Krantz said passionately.


Cletus Frade is by definition my enemy. But I don't wish to see him dead. I just don't want him to kill me. Why do people who have never worn a uniform— who have never had to kill anyone— seem to be in love with death and killing ?


The Slivovitz burned his throat. But he remembered that his mother liked it. There was a dinner at the Drei Husaren Restaurant in Vienna, near St. Stephen's Cathedral...


"How long have you been in Argentina, Herr Krantz?" he asked.


"I was born here," Krantz replied. "My father was brought here as a small child."


That explains your bellicosity, doesn't it? You've never heard a bomb fall, or the screams of the dying, or seen the body of the enemy burned to a crisp.


"But you have visited Germany?"


"Only once, as a child. I intend to go after the war."


This man is an amiable idiot. Still, Gr?ner says he's useful. What's the matter with you, anyway? All this man is doing is being polite and patriotic. No. Polite andtreasonous. If he was born here, doesn't that make him an Argentinean, not a German? He owes his allegiance to Argentina, not Der F?hrer.


"One more," Krantz said, refilling his and their glasses. "What is it they say? A bird who flies with only wing does so badly?''


Gr?ner and Krantz drank theirs at a gulp. Peter returned his glass to the table barely touched. He didn't like Slivovitz, and he was concerned about alcohol loosening his tongue—Krantz was sending champagne, and there would probably be more than one bottle. It was entirely likely that the purpose of Gr?ner's friendliness was to feel him out. Ambassador von Lutzenberger warned him to be careful around him.


Krantz finally left.


"No more of this for you?" Gr?ner asked as he picked up the Slivovitz bottle.


"Thank you, no, Herr Oberst."


"You don't like it, or you're a little afraid of drinking with your new commanding officer?"


"A little of both, Herr Oberst."


"Good for you. In my line of work, alcohol is a dangerous thing. And I suppose the same is true with flying."


"We have a saying in the Luftwaffe, Herr Oberst, that there are old cautious pilots, somewhat fewer old bold pilots, and no old drunken pilots at all."


Gr?ner smiled his appreciation of that.


"In my line of work—it will now to some degree be your line of work as well—a tongue loosened by alcohol is a dangerous thing. One is often possessed of knowledge that should not be shared with others."


"I'm sure that's true, Herr Oberst."


"I have, for example, two pieces of information about you that I elected not to share with Ambassador von Lutzenberger."


"Whatever the accusations, Herr Oberst, I plead guilty and throw myself on the mercy of the court."


Gr?ner laughed.


"The first makes Krantz's free champagne especially appropriate," Gr?ner said. "The Ambassador will soon be notified, and he will in his own diplomat's good time notify me, that you have been promoted major."


"Really? You're sure, Herr Oberst?"


"The reason I am sure is that my source is impeccable," Gr?ner said, obviously pleased with himself. "A source about whose credibility I have absolutely no doubt."


"The F?hrer told you I was being promoted?"


"No." Gr?ner chuckled, then reached into his pocket and tossed a photograph on the table.


Peter picked it up. It showed two pilots standing under the engine nacelle of a Messerschmitt ME-109, holding between them the bull's-eye fuselage insignia torn from a shot-down Spitfire. Both wore black leather flying jackets, each of which was adorned with brand-new second lieutenant's insignia and brand-new Iron Crosses. One was Second Lieutenant Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein and the other was Second Lieutenant Wilhelm Johannes Gr?ner.


Did I shoot that Spit down? Or Willi? Or was that piece of fuselage fabric just one of the half-dozen around the officers' mess, and we picked it up to have the photo taken?


"Willi," Peter said. "France. Calais, I think. Or maybe Cherbourg. 1940."


Why the hell didn't I make the connection ? I knew Willi's father was an officer, an Oberstleutnant. Because I don't like to think of Willi Gr?ner? Because the last time I saw Willi was outside London. His aircraft was in flames, and he was on his way down by parachute.


"Willi," Gr?ner repeated.


"Have you heard from him?" Peter asked, remembering only now that there had been word from the International Red Cross.


Willi was a POW, alive but injured.


"You weren't paying attention," Gr?ner said. "I learned about your promotion from Willi."


"I don't understand."


“He had himself named escort officer for a group of seriously wounded prisoners exchanged via Sweden. He's now in Berlin. Hauptmann Willi."


"I was with him the day he was shot down," Peter said.


"Yes, he told me. He also told me that you followed him to the ground to make sure the English didn't use him for target practice."


“He would have done the same for me,” Peter said. "In any event, Willi was in Berlin, and looking for you. At the Oberkommando of the Luftwaffe, he found that you've been sent here, but promoted major as well."


"I'm surprised the word got here so quickly," Peter thought aloud. "It almost got here before I did."


"Well, there is Condor service, of course. Willi's letter was on last week's flight." German four-engine transports, called "Condors," were engaged in transatlantic service via Spain and Africa. "It used to be twice a week, but it's down to once a week, sometimes once every other week. The aircraft have been temporarily diverted to supply von Paulus at Stalingrad."


Well, scratch the Condors from the property books. Stalingrad is lost, and so will be the aircraft trying to supply von Paulus.


"If you have his address, I'd like to write him," Peter said.


"Of course. I'll see that it goes in the diplomatic pouch."


Krantz returned, leading a two-waiter procession bearing champagne bottles in coolers.


"I think you will find this satisfactory, Herr Freiherr," Krantz said as he popped the cork and began to pour. "It is not quite as good as German, of course, but it is drinkable."


Peter took a sip and pronounced it very nice.


The bottle was empty by the time they finished their meal, and then Krantz produced a bottle of French cognac.


During the meal, Peter couldn't fail to notice that there were indeed an extraordinary number of good-looking, long-legged, nicely bosomed young females parading down the sidewalk outside.


"The French," Herr Krantz proclaimed as he poured the cognac, "may well be a decadent people, but they do know how to make brandy." Krantz's face was flushed, doubtless from sampling the brandy himself.


And he took a long time to leave.


"He attaches himself like a leech," Oberst Gr?ner observed. "But his food is not only first-class, but free. And you can bet he will invite you to return as often as your duties permit."


"That would be very nice."


"Tell me, Peter," Gr?ner said, for the first time addressing Peter by his Christian name, "how much of Frade's son did you see when you were in Oberst Frade's guest house?"


Now it comes. Even though Willi and I are close. He is after all, as von Lutzenberger put it, the "embodiment" of the Sicherheitsdienst and the Abwehr in the embassy.


"Not much. I was there when he walked in. He said hello, had a glass of cognac with me, and went to bed."


"He is a serving officer of the American Marine Corps. Did you know that?"


"No, Sir. Really?"


You have just violated the Officer's Code of Honor, Hauptmann von Wachtstein. An officer has asked you a question in the execution of his office, and you consciously and deliberately lied to him. That von Lutzenberger told you to is not justification, and you know it. So why did you do it? Who are you to criticize Herr Krantz for not knowing his allegiance?


"You're familiar with the American Marine Corps, of course?"


"No, Sir."


"An elite force, like the Waffen-SS," Gr?ner said.


"Really?"


Cletus was furious when 1 made that comparison.


"Like yourself, he is an aviator. His father introduced him at the Centro Naval—that's the downtown officers' club, used by both services, I will get you a guest membership—as a veteran of the Pacific, specifically Guadalcanal."


"Interesting. What is he doing in Argentina, if I may ask? For that matter, how did he wind up in the American Army—"


"Marine Corps," Gr?ner corrected him. "It is part of the U.S. Navy."


"—excuse me, in the Marine Corps —if he's an Argentinean?"


"His mother was an American. He was raised there. He has dual citizenship. I have an agent in Internal Security, a Comandante—Major—Habanzo. He showed me his dossier."


"Fascinating. What did you say he's doing here?"


“No one seems to know. He came ostensibly to make sure that American petroleum is not being diverted from here to Germany."


"And obviously the Americans don't like that."


"No, of course they don't. We managed to acquire some petroleum products here at the start of the war—at a great cost, I might add. But the Americans solved that problem early on by controlling the amount of petroleum they are willing to sell Argentina, and by applying diplomatic pressure. Meanwhile, the Argentines have a growing need for oil, so there is less and less available to us, no matter what we're willing to pay for it.


"So, while it is possible that young Frade is here to make sure Germany is not buying American oil, I doubt it. That leaves several more likely possibilities. The most logical is that he is here to influence his father."


Gr?ner stopped, and looked at Peter.


"The only way I can explain that is to deliver a lecture on Argentinean politics. I'd planned to do so in a day or two anyway. But why not now?"


"Please do, Herr Oberst."


"Their politics are Byzantine. Or perhaps Machiavellian, or Spanish, or perhaps simply Argentinean. But certainly not democratic, as Northern Europeans understand the term. They have elections every once in a while—between takeovers of the government by military juntas. The election of the current president of Argentina was, by local standards, remarkably honest. The man's name is Castillo—and he is quite sympathetic to Germany. But he has lost favor with the people, not in small part because of British influence here. The British built the Argentine rail system and the telephone network, and they trained their Navy. The Navy is therefore sympathetic to the British. German engineers built their dams and power stations, and we trained their Army: The Army is therefore pro-German—generally speaking, with certain specific exceptions."


"I understand. I hope I understand."


"It takes some getting used to. And the British do better with propaganda, frankly, than we do. That recent declaration, for example."


"Sir?"


"Where they accused us of murdering hundreds of thousands of Jewish women and children."


"I'm afraid I don't understand, Herr Oberst."


"They put out a proclamation, in the name of the King, Stalin, the President of the United States, and even that ludicrous Frenchman, de Gaulle, charging Germany with murdering hundreds of thousands of Jews. An absolutely fantastic accusation, but one which got wide play in the local press, including, so help me, Die Freie Presse." (The Freie Presse, a German-language newspaper, was then published daily in Buenos Aires.)


"I haven't heard anything ..."


"You were on the ship. I have a copy in the office, and I'll let you read it. It's absolutely outrageous. I can't believe they actually thought anyone would believe a word of it, but unfortunately, many people seem to take the document seriously.


"Anyway, whether because of British propaganda or not, Castill? has lost much of his support. Thus, if the elections were held today, he would almost certainly lose. So he has naturally decided to ignore the results of the next election."


"Can he get away with that?"


"If it weren't for the G.O.U.—the Grupo de Oficiales Unidos—he probably could. But if El Presidente does not voluntarily relinquish power when he loses the election—or even if he wins it—the G.O.U. will almost certainly stage a coup d'?tat. And to anticipate your question, Peter, can they get away with that? Yes, I think they can. And so does the Bureau of Internal Security, I'm reasonably certain."


"And that junta would not be pro-German, but pro-Allies?"


"Not necessarily. There are both pro-German and pro-Allied factions within the G.O.U. The power within the G.O.U., however, the money and the brains, belongs to el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade. On the one hand, Frade is the uncle of the heroic Hauptmann Duarte, who died fighting godless communism with von Paulus at Stalingrad. And on the other, he is the father of Lieutenant Frade of the United States Marine Corps."


"I see."


"Which very possibly explains the presence of 'ex'-Lieutenant Frade, in civilian clothing, in Argentina. He has been sent here to tell his father that the Americans will help him in any way they can. And, very probably, to establish a line of communication with him."


"Yes," Peter said thoughtfully.


"Now, with Oberst Frade, there is another factor involved,"


Gr?ner said. "You met, I believe, Oberst Juan Domingo Per?n in Germany?"


"Yes, Sir. He came as far as the Franco-Spanish border with me."


"And your relationship with Oberst Per?n?"


"Actually, Sir, we got along rather well. He told me I would enjoy my time in Argentina and was quite gracious to me."


"That cordiality almost certainly will be valuable later on," Gr?ner said. "The point is that, despite their different backgrounds—Frade is one of the most wealthy men in Argentina, and Per?n 's background is simple—Per?n and Frade are quite close. They became friends in the army when they were both lieutenants."


"I see what you mean, Sir, by Byzantine."


"Per?n is very sympathetic to Germany, in particular with Germany's socialist political philosophy, and with Germany's demonstrated concern for the welfare of the working man. (It is perhaps germane to note here that "NAZI" was the shortened form of NSDAP, Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers Party), and that the root of Hitler's power when he was first elected Chancellor, quite legally, was from Germany's socialists.)


It is to study our system that he is in Germany. And the reason he wishes to become expert, so to speak, in German socialist social policy is that, when the G.O.U. stages its coup d'?tat and takes over the government, Oberst Per?n will become what we would call the Minister for Public Welfare."


"A military man as Minister of Social Welfare?" Peter asked, surprised.


"The military runs Argentina, Peter. You must keep that in mind. Which means that our mission is to ensure that our colonels, and not the British colonels, are in charge."


"I understand," Peter said.


"The third possibility is that 'ex'-Lieutenant Frade is a member of the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, and that he is here to damage or sink a U-boat replenishment vessel we have in the River Plate."


"Really? How?"


"Good question. He probably knows no more about sinking a ship than you do.


"Now all this leads to a distasteful aspect of our duty here, one that frankly troubles me personally, but which I have come reluctantly to decide is essential. There is no civilized way to wage war, and we are fooling ourselves when we think there is."


"Yes, Sir. I agree."


"It is not in Germany's interests to permit a cozy relationship between Lieutenant Frade—that is to say, the American government—and Oberst Frade, who will almost certainly be a major influence on Argentine policy."


"Obviously."


"Considering the stakes—Germany needs and buys enormous quantities of Argentine wool, Argentine leather, Argentine foodstuffs—we cannot afford to have someone in a position of influence who will lead Argentina into the war on the side of the Allies ... or stand by while our supply line is cut. Since removing Oberst Frade is obviously out of the question, that leaves 'ex'-Lieutenant Frade. The question then becomes how."


What does he mean by remove? Certainly not "assassinate"?


"Excuse me, Herr Oberst. 'Remove'?"


"There is no civilized way to wage war, and we are fooling ourselves when we think there is," Gr?ner quoted himself, met Peter's eyes for a moment, and then went on. "To that end, in my conversations with Major Habanzo of BIS, I have been advancing the theory that Lieutenant Frade is an OSS agent sent here to violate international law vis-a-vis the actions permitted of belligerent powers resident in a neutral country. I have suggested specifically that young Frade is here in order to cause harm to neutral vessels suspected of supplying German submarines. The BIS knows there was a team of OSS agents here with that mission."


"Was,Herr Oberst?"


"They disappeared. No one seems to know what happened to them. They were not successful."


"And you think that the BIS will arrange for Lieutenant Frade to similarly disappear?"


"That would be the ideal solution," Gr?ner said. "But in my business—in our business, Peter—one seldom finds an ideal solution. No, I don't think that the BIS will cause Lieutenant Frade to disappear. What I am hoping is that Oberst Frade will soon learn from his friends within the BIS that the BIS believes his son is an OSS agent sent here to cause damage to our replenishment vessel."


"I don't think I understand, Herr Oberst."


Gr?ner didn't respond to the question.


"The new replenishment vessel is here," he went on. "At anchor in the Bay of Samboromb?n, within Argentina's territorial waters. It arrived several days ago."


"Herr Oberst, you're moving too fast for me."


"Bear with me. It would be ideal for us if Lieutenant Frade is in fact an OSS agent. As I said, I doubt that is the case. But if he were, he would get on with his mission of trying to cause damage to our U-boat replenishment vessel. That attempt would be doomed to failure. The ship is thirty-odd kilometers offshore; and it is moved five or ten kilometers every day or so. It is armed. It is highly unlikely that Lieutenant Frade could even find it, and no way that he and his men could come close to it."


Peter was now wholly confused.


"Unfortunately, I'm afraid, the impossibility of harming our ship will be evident to him. They already lost one team trying to damage the last one. So he won't try it. And that leaves him in place to do what I believe he is really here for, to influence his father."


"May I ask a question?"


"Certainly."


"Why don't the Americans simply sink our boat with their Navy?"


"Our ship," Gr?ner corrected him. "For propaganda purposes. When the British damaged the Graf Spee, they were very careful not to violate Uruguayan and Argentinean territorial waters or Uruguayan and Argentinean neutrality. This paid off in enormous goodwill for them. We Germans were regarded as the aggressors, the violators of neutrality. The Americans follow the English lead in most things diplomatic; they are not going to ignore that lesson of history."


"I understand," Peter said. "I understand that, Sir. But..."


"How do we remove Lieutenant Frade?"


"Yes, Sir."


"Speaking hypothetically, Peter. Perhaps a tragic auto accident ... Or burglars might kill him in his home ..."


Good God, heis talking about having Clete assassinated!


"Could that be accomplished without causing suspicion?"


"I'm sure it could be," Gr?ner said matter-of-factly. "Argentina has a criminal element who could teach our criminals a lesson or two. And they relish violence. But hypothetically speaking, of course, a lack of public interest in Lieutenant Frade's removal might not be as much in Germany's interest as widespread public attention."


Gr?ner looked at Peter for his reaction, was apparently satisfied with what he saw, and went on: “For example, if on the day after tomorrow—the day after the funeral of his heroic cousin, Hauptmann Duarte—Lieutenant Frade were found in his bed, with his throat cut, with 'death to godless communists and their allies' written in soap on his dresser mirror ..."

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