The Honor of Spies

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Do you think it’s possible people would suspect us? And if that came to pass, do you think that Frade’s photographs, sure to be introduced at his trial, would serve to confirm that suspicion?

  “Our mission, Gradny-Sawz, is to ensure the Argentines think of Germany as an honorable ally in the battle against the godless Communists. Having it come out that we are even remotely connected with the assassination of el Coronel Frade, the two failed assassination attempts on his son, and the incident at Casa Chica would hardly serve to confirm the image we are trying to project, would it?”

  Von Gradny-Sawz looked very uncomfortable.

  “Well, I’ll tell you what, Gradny-Sawz,” Cranz went on. “You come up with a plan that absolutely precludes the possibility that photographs of Juan Domingo Perón with a group of SS personnel at a machine gun, the bodies of those SS personnel sometime later, riddled with bullets, and a map showing what looks like the Third Reich’s plans for South America appearing in La Nación or any other newspaper, and I will give you permission to eliminate Don Cletus Frade yourself.

  “And while you’re doing that, I will inform SS-Brigadeführer von Deitzberg that it is my professional judgment that this American OSS sonofabitch poses an immediate threat to Operation Phoenix and the other operation and has to be dealt with. I will seek SS-Brigadeführer von Deitzberg’s wise advice and direction on how to do that, as I can think of no way to do anything that would not cause an international incident that would pose serious problems to Operation Phoenix.

  “Except, of course, to send Boltitz home with von Wachtstein to charm the sonofabitch as best they can, and to learn as much as they can about what he’s up to. Understand, Gradny-Sawz? The Yankee OSS sonofabitch has got us cornered. And I’m not going to be the man responsible for the failure of Operation Phoenix.”

  He let that sink in a moment, then stood up.

  His right arm snapped out in front of him.

  “Heil Hitler!” he barked, then marched out of the room.

  [SEVEN]

  Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo

  Near Pila

  Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

  1230 13 August 1943

  Don Cletus Frade, wearing khaki trousers and a yellow polo shirt, came out onto the shaded verandah of the big house carrying a bottle of Bodega Don Guillermo Cabernet Sauvignon ’39, two long-stemmed wineglasses, a long black cigar, and a corkscrew bottle opener.

  Two people hurried after him. One was a plump female in her late forties wearing a severe black dress, Elisa Gómez. The other was Enrico Rodríguez, wearing a business suit and cradling his twelve-gauge Remington Model 11 riot gun in his arms. Around his neck was a leather bandolier of brass-cased double-aught buckshot shells.

  “All you had to do was ring, Don Cletus,” Elisa Gómez chided him as she took the bottle from him. Her tone suggested that the chief housekeeper of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo was not in awe of its patrón.

  “I humbly beg your pardon,” Frade said, deeply insincere.

  She shook her head, quickly uncorked the wine, poured a taste in one of his glasses, and waited for his reaction. He swirled the wine, sniffed at the glass, and finally took a sip. And grimaced.

  “I think I’ve been poisoned,” he announced.

  She shook her head, filled the glass, and marched into the house.

  “Enrico, why do I think she doesn’t like me?” Frade asked.

  “Don Cletus, she loves you,” Enrico said, and then added, “And you know it.”

  Frade lowered himself onto a leather-cushioned wicker armchair, crossed his battered Western boots on the matching footstool, bit the end from the cigar, and then lit it carefully with a wooden match. Then he picked up the wineglass and took a healthy sip.

  Five minutes later, a glistening black 1940 Packard 160 convertible coupe drove through the windbreak of trees that surrounded the heart of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo. Frade had been waiting for the Packard to appear. As soon as the car had left Estancia Santa Catalina on a road that led only to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, its presence had been reported to the big house by one of Frade’s peones.

  Clete thought the Packard was gorgeous. It had been the top of the Packard line, except for limousines, and only a few—no more than two hundred—had been manufactured. Beneath its massive hood was the largest Packard Straight-Eight engine, which provided enough power for it to cruise effortlessly and endlessly at well over eighty miles an hour. It was upholstered in red leather and had white sidewall tires.

  Each front fender carried a spare tire and wheel, and sitting on the front edge of the fenders was the latest thing in driving convenience: turn signals. With the flipping of a little lever on the steering wheel, one of the front lights flashed simultaneously with one on the rear, telling others you wished to change direction, and in which direction.

  The Reverend Kurt Welner, S.J., stepped out of the Packard, put on his suit jacket—shooting his cuffs, which revealed gold cuff links adorned with some sort of gemstone—then walked up the shallow flight of stairs to the verandah.

  Enrico, who was sitting in a folding wooden chair, got respectfully to his feet. Frade didn’t move.

  “Welcome home,” Welner said.

  “Thank you,” Clete said. “But you could have told me that at Claudia’s ‘Welcome Home, Cletus’ party tonight. What are you up to?”

  “I wanted to talk to you.”

  “You could have done that tonight, too, or on the phone.”

  “In person.”

  “About what? Be warned: If I don’t like the answer, no wine flows into your glass.”

  “Is this one of those days when you’re determined to be difficult?”

  “Probably.”

  “Well, one of the things on my mind is that you have to go to the Recoleta cemetery within the next couple of days.”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  “Because the brothers want to see if you approve of their cleaning of the Frade tomb.”

  “Since I don’t think you’re trying to be funny, you can have a little wine.”

  “You are so kind,” Welner said as he sat down in the other wicker chair.

  Frade poured wine into the priest’s glass.

  “Being kind gets me in all kinds of trouble,” Frade said. “By ‘the brothers,’ you mean the monks who run the cemetery?”

  “No. I meant the brothers. Are you interested in the difference between monks and brothers?”

  “Spare me. Why did they clean the tomb?”

  “Because the marble was dirty, and I understand there was a little corrosion here and there.”

  “I think I’m beginning to understand. In addition to my saying ‘thank you,’ they would not be offended if I slipped them an envelope stuffed with money?”

  “That would be very nice of you, if you should feel so inclined.”

  “Am I supposed to believe that you drove all the way over here from Claudia’s just to tell me that?”

  “I had a few other things on my mind.”

  “For example?”

  “How did you find the United States?”

  “Well, I set the compass on north-northwest, and eventually, there it was, right out in front of the airplane.”

  The priest shook his head tolerantly.

  “Things went well?”

  “All the pilots of South American Airways now have their air transport rating, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “The problem of insurance has been resolved?”

  “It’s a done deal,” Frade said.

  “That’s good to hear.”

  “Why do I have this feeling that, having beat around the bush long enough, you are about to get to your real reason for coming over here?”

  “I happened to be driving past your house on Avenida Libertador—”

  “Ah-ha! And was that before or after your spies on the premises—”

  “Getting right to the point, Cletus: Why did Juan Doming
o Perón suddenly stop accepting your kind hospitality?”

  “Now that you mention it, it probably had something to do with what I said to him.”

  “And what was that?”

  “If I remember correctly, and I usually do, what I said was, ‘One more thing, Tío Juan, you degenerate sonofabitch. You’re going to have to find someplace else for your little girls. I want you out of here by tomorrow.’ Or words to that effect.”

  “You didn’t!” Welner blurted.

  “Tell him, Enrico.”

  The priest looked at Enrico, who nodded.

  “Are you out of your mind, Cletus?” Welner asked.

  “Not so far as I know. I confess to being a little annoyed with my godfather at the time.”

  “About what?”

  “Well, just before I said that, he pointed a pistol at me. I get very annoyed when people point pistols at me. And so does Enrico. For a couple of seconds there, I thought Enrico’s shotgun might go off and cause a tragic accident.”

  Welner again looked at Enrico, who again nodded.

  “What set this off?” Welner asked.

  “Well—are you sure you want to know?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “Saved by the belle,” Frade then said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Belle with an ‘e’ at the end. As in: ‘Belle on horseback.’ Drink your wine, Father, before the posse gets here and the sheriff tries to shut us off before dinner.”

  When Frade had awakened that morning, he’d been alone in bed. It was long after first light, and Dorotea was nowhere around. He found a note stuck with a blob of Vaseline onto the bathroom mirror:

  Darling, I didn’t have the heart to wake you. Madison and I have taken Mr. Fischer to see his family. Be back for lunch or earlier. Dorotea.

  Frade now pointed at the break in the trees, and Welner looked where he pointed.

  A line of people on horseback, led by Doña Dorotea and trailed by Wilhelm Fischer, Captain Madison R. Sawyer III, and half a dozen peones, was coming toward them at a walk.

  This was lost on Father Welner, but there was more than a passing similarity to a scene in a Western movie where the posse returns from cutting off the bandits at the pass. Everyone but Fischer was holding a long arm either cradled in the arm or upright, with the butt resting on the saddle. Dorotea had a double-barreled shotgun, and Sawyer a Thompson submachine gun with a fifty-round drum magazine. Everything else was there except dead bandits tied across saddles.

  Dorotea, Sawyer, and Fischer walked their horses to the verandah, dismounted, tied the horses to a hitching rail, and went onto the verandah.

  “Howdy,” Frade said. “How about a little something to cut the dust of the trail?”

  Dorotea looked at her husband and shook her head. Then she kissed her husband affectionately and the priest formally.

  “Father, this is Mr. Wilhelm Fischer,” Dorotea said. “He’s come all the way from South Africa to see how we grow grapes and make wine. Willi, this is Father Welner, an old and dear friend.”

  Frade saw the look on Welner’s face.

  “Hey, Padre,” Frade said as Welner and Fischer shook hands, “you ever hear that curiosity killed the cat?”

  The priest did not reply directly.

  “Welcome to Argentina, Mr. Fischer,” he said.

  III

  [ONE]

  Estancia Santa Catalina

  Near Pila

  Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

  2115 13 August 1943

  Cletus Frade was well turned out in a tweed suit from London’s Savile Row for the “supper” la Señora Claudia de Carzino-Cormano was giving to mark the return of Frade from the United States. “Supper” was a code word. “Dinner” would have meant black-tie. Frade had one of those, too, also from Savile Row. He also had a silk dressing gown and two dozen shirts from Sulka’s in Paris.

  All of the clothing had been his father’s. He was comfortable wearing it, because when he had found it in one of the two wardrobes in the master suite of the big house, it all had been in unopened boxes.

  A tailor from Buenos Aires had been summoned to adjust the unused clothing to fit Clete—not much had been required—and to adjust the clothing that his father actually had worn to fit Enrico. His father had been, to use a term from Midland, Texas, where Clete had been raised, something of a clotheshorse.

  Frade had observed at the time that he now had all the clothing he would need for his lifetime.

  He would not have been mistaken for a Londoner, however, or even for an Argentine who patronized the tailors of Savile Row or the linen shops on the Rue de Castiglione in Paris. Because when he climbed down from the driver’s seat of the Horch before the verandah of the big house of Estancia Santa Catalina, not only was he wearing a gray Stetson “Cattleman” hat, but when his trouser legs were pulled up, they revealed not silken hose but the dully gleaming leather calf of Western boots, finely tooled, and bearing his initials in contrasting red leather.

  There were a dozen large automobiles already parked at Claudia’s big house, including two Rolls-Royces, two Cadillacs, half a dozen Mercedeses, and a pair of Packards, one of them Father Welner’s. He didn’t see the olive-drab Mercedes that was provided to el Coronel Juan D. Perón as the Argentine secretary of state for labor and welfare.

  The Rolls-Royce Wraith Saloon Touring limousine belonged to his uncle, Humberto Valdez Duarte, who was the managing director of the Anglo-Argentine Bank. In Argentina, managing director translated to chairman of the board. Duarte, a tall, slender man of forty-six, was married to Beatriz Frade de Duarte, Clete’s father’s sister.

  The 1939 Rolls-Royce Phantom III James Young-bodied “Drop Head” (convertible) belonged to Clete’s father-in-law, Enrico Mallín, managing director of the Sociedad Mercantil de Importación de Productos Petrolíferos (SMIPP). Mallín—a forty-two-year-old Argentine who stood six-foot-two, weighed one hundred ninety-five pounds, and had a full head of dark-brown hair and a massive, immaculately trimmed mustache—didn’t like his son-in-law at all. And the feeling was mutual.

  As Clete walked onto the verandah with Dorotea, he could see the other guests having a cocktail in the sitting room, the other side of a reception line headed by Doña Claudia de Carzino-Cormano with her daughters, Alicia, Baroness von Wachtstein, and Isabela, a quite beautiful, black-haired, stylishly dressed female whom Clete thought of, and often referred to, as “El Bitcho.”

  Dorotea led the way down the reception line.

  She and Claudia exchanged compliments.

  Fischer followed her.

  “Claudia, this is Wilhelm Fischer. He’s from South Africa, and he’s come here to show us how to grow grapes. Willi, this is our hostess, la Señora Carzino-Cormano, known as the Lioness of the Pampas.”

  “How do you do?” Claudia replied as she flashed Clete an icy look. “Welcome to Estancia Santa Catalina.”

  “You are very kind to have me, madam,” Fischer replied, and—certainly without thinking about it—clicked his heels as he bent over her hand.

  “I thought only Germans did that,” Cletus said.

  “Cletus, my God!” Claudia exclaimed.

  “Did I say something wrong again?”

  She did not respond directly.

  “This is your party, Cletus,” Claudia said. “You’re supposed to be standing here greeting people. And then you’re the last to show up.”

  Then she kissed his cheek—a real kiss, as opposed to pro forma.

  “I don’t do standing in line very well,” he said.

  She shook her head, then said, “Juan Domingo called. He can’t be here.”

  “Oh, God, what a shame!” Frade replied with great insincerity, then moved to Alicia.

  “Alicia, this is . . .”

  “I heard,” she said. “Welcome to our home, Mr. Fischer. I’m Alicia von Wachtstein.”

  “The baroness von Wachtstein,” Clete furnished. “You are required to back out of her presence
.”

  “Oh, God, Clete, don’t you ever stop?” she said, giggling.

  “You are very kind,” Fischer said, and bent over her hand, this time not clicking his heels.

  “And this, Willi, is la Señorita Isabela Carzino-Cormano.”

  Isabela neither smiled nor offered Fischer her hand.

  “How do you do?” she said rather icily to Fischer.

  “Any friend of mine, right, Izzy baby?” Frade said.

  Isabela glowered at Frade, then put out her hand to Fischer, who bent over it and remembered again not to click his heels.

  Dorotea and Alicia, now arm in arm, walked into the house.

  “Now that the ladies have gone to powder their noses, or whatever, Willi, why don’t we go to Switzerland?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Over there,” Clete said, nodding at a corner of the room where Father Welner, Karl Boltitz, Peter von Wachtstein, and Humberto Duarte stood talking.

  He took Fischer’s arm and propelled him across the room. It was an opportunity he didn’t think he would have.

  The men, all holding drinks, stopped talking when Frade and Fischer walked up.

  “I was just telling Willi, here,” Frade said, “that this is Switzerland, a neutral corner of the property where, under the benevolent eye of Father Welner, we’re all noncombatants. Willi, you know Father Welner, of course, and my Uncle Humberto.”

  Humberto Duarte smiled and said, “Of course,” although he had never seen Fischer before.

  “These gentlemen, Willi, are Major Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein, whose wife you just met, and Kapitän zur See Karl Boltitz, of the German Embassy. Gentlemen, this is Wilhelm Fischer, whom Humberto prevailed upon to come all the way here from South Africa to teach me how to grow better grapes.”

  In turn, von Wachtstein and Boltitz clicked their heels as they offered Fischer their hands. And again Fischer remembered not to click his.

  A maid walked up with drinks on a tray, interrupting the conversation. When Frade had taken a bourbon and water and Fischer a glass of red wine, and she left, Boltitz asked: “If I may ask, Mr. Fischer, is Afrikaans anything like German?”