Perón laughed, which earned him disapproving looks from everybody but Father Welner.
“ ‘Well deserved,’ Cletus?” the Jesuit asked.
“Delgano and I spent the day flying.”
“When I spoke with Dorotea, she said you were in Uruguay,” the priest said.
Frade nodded. “Back and forth thereto. Three times. Each.”
“In this weather? I could hardly see to drive in the fog.”
“Lesser men could not. Captain Delgano and myself can and did. Taking with us a total of eight SAA pilots who woke up this morning holding the erroneous belief that one cannot fly across the River Plate unless there are no clouds and the sun is shining. We converted them, though, didn’t we, Gonzo?”
“Yes,” Delgano replied with a grin, “we did.”
“And of course you and your superiors benefited,” Frade said seriously.
“And how is that, Cletus?” the Jesuit asked suspiciously.
“To a man, once we were out of sight of land, they put their hands together”—Frade placed his palms together in an attitude of prayer—“and solemnly vowed to God that if He would let them land safely, they would sin no more forever.”
The priest and Perón laughed out loud. Claudia and Humberto smiled.
“You’ve been flying back and forth to Uruguay, over the Río de la Plata, all day?” Dowling said.
Frade heard both surprise and disapproval in Dowling’s voice.
Fuck you, he thought, but said, “Yes, we have. Flying’s the only way to travel, Ernesto. You really should try it sometime.”
“You were almost certainly uninsured,” Dowling said. “I shudder to think what would have happened had you crashed, or gone lost.”
That sonofabitch is not talking about people getting killed.
What he’s shuddering about is money.
“Excuse me?” Frade said.
“Forgive me, Ernesto,” Duarte said politely. “But what I read in that was that SAA cannot fly passengers.”
“Perhaps I misread it,” Dowling said, and took a pink manila folder from his briefcase and began to paw through it.
“If SAA cannot start flying paying passengers,” Frade said, “and soon, we may have just a little trouble meeting the payroll.”
There were no smiles, much less laughter. And nobody replied.
Frade glanced around the room. “May I ask what the hell is going on here?”
“There has been a very disturbing development, Cletus,” Perón said. “Which I lay at the feet of the English.”
“The English ?”
“If this wasn’t such a serious problem, Cletus, I’d be amused,” Duarte said. “This will probably be a crushing blow to your ego, but Seguro Comercial, S.A., has notified us that you are not legally qualified to be flying passengers—that no South American Airways pilot is.”
Frade smiled, then said jokingly, “Tío Juan, tell the nice man that I have a commercial pilot’s certificate signed by the president of the Republic of Argentina himself.”
Perón, who did not look amused, did not reply.
Dowling began to read from a sheet of paper he had taken from the pink manila folder.
That looks like a Mackay Radiogram.
“ ‘Until you are able to provide us the appropriate documentation certifying that the pilots of South American Airways, S.A., have satisfactorily completed examinations leading to the ATR Rating in Lockheed Type 18 aircraft . . .’ ”
Dowling stopped and looked at Frade.
“ ‘Lockheed Type 18 aircraft’ would be the Lodestar,” Dowling said, almost seeming to enjoy himself. “Correct?”
“Correct,” Frade said.
Oh, shit!
Dowling’s eyes fell to the paper, and he went on: “ ‘. . . such examinations having been taken at either the manufacturer’s plant or at a facility approved by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, the undersigned must regretfully decline to insure any South American Airways flights of Lockheed Type 18 aircraft while such aircraft are carrying passengers.’ ” Dowling stopped again, then added, “It’s signed ‘Geoffrey Galworth-Moore for Lloyd’s of London.’ ”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, please, Ernesto,” Duarte said, “but what I heard just now is that we can’t get insurance to fly passengers.”
Dowling considered that for a long moment.
“Yes,” he said. “It does imply that they will be willing to insure us if we don’t carry passengers.”
“My God!” Claudia exploded. “Why should we have an airline that can’t fly passengers?”
“Well, I’ve heard air freight is the wave of the future,” Frade said flippantly. “We could move polo ponies around, I suppose. And certainly chickens.”
Dowling looked as if he couldn’t believe what he heard. Duarte shook his head. Perón frowned. Claudia glared at him.
“That’s the sort of really stupid remark your father would make when he thought he was being clever!” she said.
Now Perón smiled.
Dowling’s attitude and behavior had had Frade boiling under the skin, and now something in Claudia’s attitude made him really angry. It pushed him over the edge, although he didn’t realize this until he had finished replying.
With an edge to his tone, Frade blurted: “I find it just a little difficult to behave as the managing director of this airline should behave because I have no idea what’s going on. You’re right, Claudia. That was a flip remark, and thus stupid. It won’t happen again.” He looked at Humberto Duarte. “I presume the meeting has been called to order?”
Duarte raised an eyebrow. “Actually, no, Cletus. I didn’t think it was necessary.”
“Well, it is, and get your secretary in here to take the minutes.”
“Is that supposed to be clever, Cletus?” Claudia challenged sarcastically.
“I really hope so, señora. But not clever in the sense that you have been using the term.” He turned back to Duarte. “You going to get her in here or not, Humberto?”
Duarte picked up a telephone and politely asked his secretary to come right in and bring her notebook with her.
As she came through the door, Frade stood.
“Please sit here, señora,” he said. “You’ll be able to hear better.”
She sat down.
“I’d like to sit there, Humberto,” Frade said, pointing at the chair at the head of the table—which happened to be where Duarte was seated. “All right?”
Duarte’s face showed he didn’t at all think that it was all right, but he gave up the chair.
“Why don’t you sit by Claudia?” Frade said, then sat down at the head of the table.
“Are you ready, señora?” Frade asked Duarte’s secretary.
She nodded, her pencil poised over her stenographer’s notebook.
There was a large glass water pitcher sitting upside down on the table. Clete pulled from his right boot a hunting knife with a five-inch blade and gave the thick glass pitcher a healthy whack.
The sound was startling.
Frade then formally announced: “This special meeting of the board of directors and of the stockholders of South American Airways, S.A., is hereby convened in the Banco de Inglaterra y Argentina building, Bartolomé Mitre 300, Buenos Aires, Argentina, at seventeen hundred hours and eight minutes on 30 July 1943 by Cletus Howell Frade, managing director.”
He looked around the room.
“Also present are board members Señora de Carzino-Cormano, Señor Humberto Duarte, and Coronel J. D. Perón. Also present are Father Welner, SAA Chief Pilot Captain Gonzalo Delgano, and Señor Ernesto Dowling. There being a quorum present, I move the waiving of the minutes of the last meeting.”
They were all looking at him in bewilderment that bordered on shock.
“Am I going to hear a second of the motion on the floor, or will it be necessary for me to put the question to the stockholders?”
Duarte raised his hand and softly said, “Second.”
Dowling looked as if he was going to stand but then changed his mind.
“May I ask a question, Don Cletus?” Dowling said.
Frade didn’t say anything but gestured somewhat impatiently for Dowling to ask what he wanted to ask.
“What did you mean a moment ago when you asked if it was going to be necessary for you to put the question of your motion to the stockholders?”
“Frankly, Señor Dowling, the question surprises me a little. As an attorney, as SAA’s corporate attorney, I would have thought you would understand, even if some of the others present might be a little fuzzy on the precise details, how things are supposed to be run around here.”
Frade kept eye contact with him as he let that sink in a moment, then went on: “So, for your edification, as well as theirs, the way things work around here is pretty much the way they work in the United States. I took the time to read the Argentine law on the subject.”
He glanced around the table and saw that he now had everyone’s rapt attention.
“The board of directors of a company like ours, as well as the managing director, are elected by the stockholders. The directors make recommendations to the managing director, and, presuming he agrees with them, he carries out what the board wants done.
“If the managing director doesn’t like the recommendations of the board and doesn’t think they should be carried out, he can appeal to the stockholders at the present or a future meeting of the stockholders. The stockholders can then by a simple majority of votes cast—one vote for each share of stock the stockholder owns—sustain either the managing director or the board of directors.
“I think everyone heard me convene both this meeting of the board and this meeting of the stockholders.
“Now, when I didn’t immediately hear a second to my motion—the chair’s motion—to waive the reading of the minutes of the previous meeting, I had two choices: either sit here and waste time while the secretary found the minutes and then read them, or take my motion to the stockholders.
“It didn’t get to that. There was a second to my motion, and the board in its wisdom voted to waive reading of the minutes. If there had been no second, or after there was a second the board had voted down the motion, then the managing director would have appealed to the stockholders.
“And I’m sure the stockholders would have voted to support the managing director for the simple reason that stockholder Cletus Howell Frade holds sixty percent of the stock of this corporation.”
Frade paused as he stared at Ernesto Dowling.
“Does that answer your question, Señor Dowling? And if there are no questions regarding my explanation of how things work around here, I’ll presume that now everyone understands where I fit in.”
There was a long silence before Perón broke it.
“You seem to be suggesting, Cletus,” he said just a little uneasily, “that you can do just about anything you want to do with the company, whether or not the rest of us agree.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, meeting El Coronel Juan Domingo Perón’s eyes. “That’s pretty much the way it is.”
Frade recalled a leather-skinned and leather-lunged Old Breed gunnery sergeant from shortly after he’d joined the Corps. The gunny had told Frade and the thirty other young men about to become Marine officers: “When you gotta tell somebody something they won’t like, look ’em in the goddamn eye! They damn sure won’t like you or what you’re going to make them do any better, but they’ll know you’re not afraid to fuck with ’em!”
Frade had found it sage advice in his service as a Marine Corps officer and in the OSS, and had put it into practice now.
Perón shifted his gaze to Humberto Duarte, who looked both surprised and uneasy.
“Is Cletus correct, Humberto?”
“I’m afraid he is, Juan Domingo,” Duarte said.
Frade slowly looked around the table. Father Welner appeared both curious and amused. Claudia Carzino-Cormano could have been angry or sad, or both. When he looked at Captain Delgano, Delgano was shaking his head in either surprise—even shock—or amusement. Ernesto Dowling looked quietly furious. And when he returned his gaze to Perón, he saw that Perón was looking at him very thoughtfully.
“As a practical matter, of course,” Frade went on, “I am delighted to defer to the greater expertise of every member of the board. But I thought it important that all of you understand where I stand.”
There was no response.
“Cletus, I’m impressed,” Father Welner said. “Where did you get that mastery of procedure?”
Frade saw that Perón was waiting with interest for his answer.
“From my grandfather. I watched him conduct meetings of Howell Petroleum. He’s the majority stockholder.” He paused. Then, without thinking first, added: “He once told his board that they should keep in mind they were window dressing, nothing more.”
Humberto Duarte and Ernesto Dowling looked almost as shocked as Claudia Carzino-Cormano.
Father Welner smiled. “He actually said that to his board, Cletus?”
“I believe it, Father,” Perón said. “I know Señor Howell. He is a . . . formidable . . . man.”
“So Jorge led me to believe,” the priest said dryly.
Frade looked at him and thought, You’re a slippery sonofabitch, Welner.
From that answer neither Dowling nor Delgano would suspect that my father and my grandfather loathed and detested each other.
And that you damn well know it.
“But I was just thinking,” Perón went on, “that there’s blood in here, too.”
Now what the hell are you talking about?
“Excuse me?” Claudia said.
“Not only of his grandfather,” Perón explained, “but of his father. Look at him standing there, Claudia, his eyes blazing, his chin thrust forward, his hands on his hips, just daring someone—anyone—to challenge his authority. That doesn’t remind you of Jorge?”
She looked and, after a moment, she nodded.
“Yes, it does,” she said. “I often told Jorge he was the most arrogant man I’d ever known.”
“It is arrogance, my dear Claudia, born of confidence,” Perón said. “And I, for one, applaud it.”
Claudia glared at him, whereupon Perón put action to his words: He began to applaud. Duarte and Dowling looked at him incredulously.
Then Father Welner, smiling, clapped his hands, and, a moment later, Delgano followed. Then without much enthusiasm Duarte and Dowling joined in, and finally Claudia, with no enthusiasm at all.
I will be goddamned! Frade thought, then cut short the applause by gesturing toward Dowling and announcing, “To the business at hand. If you please, señor?”
“Well, you heard me read the radiogram we got—actually Seguro Comercial got—last night from Lloyd’s of London—”
“It should be read into the minutes,” Frade interrupted, “but before you do that, tell me this: Did Seguro Comercial send a letter when they sent you that cable? If so, that should be read into the record, too.”
“What actually happened, Señor Frade, is that the radiogram was delivered to me when it arrived at Seguro Comercial last night.”
“That sounds a little odd,” Frade said. “Why would they do that?”
“I also represent Seguro Comercial, Señor Frade. I thought you knew that.”
“No, I didn’t,” Frade snapped. “How can you represent the both of us? It seems to me you have to be either our lawyer or theirs.”
“Is there some reason I cannot be b
oth?”
“Yeah, there is. Whose side are you going to be on if we take them to court?”
“ ‘Take them to court’?”
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Frade said, “but we went to them for insurance. And they sold us insurance. We wrote them a very large check. Deal done. Right?”
“That was before they heard from Lloyd’s of London, of course,” Dowling said. “That obviously changes things.”
“Not for me. Not for SAA. Seguro Comercial sold us insurance; therefore, we’re insured. If Seguro Comercial can’t reinsure, that’s their problem, not ours. If they try to get out of our deal, so far as I’m concerned, it’s breach of contract, and we’ll take them to court.”
“Let me try to explain this to you, Señor Frade,” Dowling said, tight-lipped. “We purchased ninety days’ coverage, with the understanding that the price would be renegotiated before the ninety days were up and the contract extended—”
“I wondered about that,” Frade interrupted.
“Excuse me?”
“I saw the contract. It was for fourteen aircraft. We have four, and when the ninety-day period is up, we may have eight or ten. But not fourteen. So why are we paying to insure either four or six airplanes we don’t have? I sent Señor Duarte a note asking that question.”
Dowling did not reply.
Frade turned to Duarte. “Humberto, did you raise the question with Señor Dowling?”
Duarte nodded, and looked at Dowling. “I sent you a memorandum asking about that, Ernesto.”
Frade said, “So what did Seguro Comercial say when you asked them, Señor Dowling?”
“I was planning to bring up the matter at renegotiation time,” Dowling said, more than a little lamely.
“Señor Dowling,” Frade went on, “did you not recognize that there was a flaw in the contract you negotiated between your two employers?”
“I take offense at that, Señor Frade.”
“About ninety seconds ago, Señor Dowling, I was going to offer you the choice between working for SAA or Seguro Comercial. But not now.”
“Cletus!” Claudia said warningly.
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