W E B Griffin - Honor 2 - Blood and Honor

by Blood

  "Christ!"

  "Three," Peter went on, "they wanted to punish your father for changing sides, to make the point that traitors can expect to be punished. Four, they wanted to frighten the Grupo de Oficiales Unidos, make the point that they have the ability to assassinate anyone who gets in their way."

  "But Gr�ner gave the order, right?"

  "Gr�ner carried out the order."

  "What's the difference?"

  Peter shrugged.

  "I'm going to get that sonofabitch," Clete said evenly.

  "If you could get him, which might not be easy to do..."

  "I'm going to get that sonofabitch!"

  "... all that will happen is that they will send somebody else in, even be-fore they persona non grata you out of Argentina," Peter said. "As a matter of fact, there's already somebody here."

  "Excuse me?"

  "I spent most of the day with Standartenf�hrer Josef Goltz."

  "What's a Standartenf�hrer?"

  "Colonel, in the SS," Peter said. "We had a Lufthansa Condor flight to-day..."

  "I saw it. It was making its approach as we came in," Clete said. "Good-looking plane."

  "... and he was on it. I thought it was significant that he left Berlin right af-ter we cabled them about what had happened to your father."

  "You think he's the man who ordered-"

  "I don't know that," Peter said. "It's possible. He's some sort of a big shot, I know. Just before he came here he was at Wolfsschanze..."

  "Where?"

  "Hitler's headquarters-it means 'Wolf's Lair'-near Rastenburg, in East Prussia. That it even exists is supposed to be secret. And he's Sicherheitsdienst."

  "What does that mean?"

  "The Sicherheitsdienst-SD-is the secret police, the elite of the SS. Sicherheitsdienst plus Wolfsschanze adds up to two Very Important Nasty Peo-ple."

  "How do you know he was at... what did you call it?"

  "Wolfsschanze," Peter supplied. "Because he brought me a letter from my father. My father's stationed at Wolfsschanze. A letter and some major's in-signia.

  "What's he doing here?"

  "I don't know. I know he's meeting with the Ambassador, Gr�ner, and Gradny-Sawz tomorrow morning," Peter said. "And I know he wants to go to Uruguay-Montevideo-as soon as he can. He wants me to fly him there in our Storch, but he doesn't like the idea of going direct, over the Rio de la Plata."

  "I know the feeling," Clete said. "Every time I'm out of sight of land, I imagine my engine is making strange noises."

  "I didn't like crossing the English Channel," Peter said. "Anyway, I sus-pect, as anxious as this guy is to get there, he'll tell me to take the over-solid-earth route."

  "Why is he so anxious to get to Montevideo?"

  Peter shrugged.

  "He didn't say," he said, then changed the subject: "Clete, I have a real problem."

  "What's that?"

  "You remember that letter I got from my father? The one your father trans-lated for you?"

  "What about it?"

  "Don't bother to tell me I should have burned it," Peter said.

  "It's still around?" Peter nodded. "Why, for Christ's sake? If Gr�ner gets his hands on that..."

  "I won't blame it on your father," Peter said. "But he... I didn't want to burn it. Your father thought it would be a good thing to have after the war."

  "So you kept it."

  In your shoes, I would have done the same thing.

  "Your father was keeping it for me."

  "Where?"

  "I don't know for sure. In some safe place. Probably with the records of the investments. And I don't like to think what would happen to a lot of people- Ambassador von Lutzenberger and maybe even your uncle Humberto-if those records fell into the wrong hands."

  "Where do you think they are?"

  "Did your father have a safe at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo? Or some other place besides the obvious... bank safety-deposit boxes, for example?"

  "I don't know. Seems likely. But I don't know. I'll ask Claudia."

  "I don't think there's a hell of a lot of time."

  "I understand," Clete said. "Maybe Enrico knows. I'll ask him, too."

  "Be careful, diplomatic immunity or not," Peter said.

  "I don't have diplomatic immunity."

  "You don't?" Peter asked, visibly surprised. "Alicia told me you were go-ing to be the Assistant Naval Attach‚."

  "That changed. I came back here on my Argentine passport."

  "But you're still OSS?"

  "I'm still what?"

  "Sorry."

  Clete shrugged.

  "I was asking as a friend, concerned for your welfare. You understand that, I hope?"

  Clete nodded again.

  "You can count on them trying to kill you, you know that?" Peter said.

  "When I was in fighter school, the instructors kept harping, 'watch your back, watch your back, watch your back.' I didn't know what they were talking about then, but eventually I got pretty good at it."

  He looked at his watch. It was quarter to one.

  "I'll see Claudia in the morning," he said. "And Enrico. They should have an idea where my father would put something he didn't want anybody else to get at."

  "I better go home," Peter said.

  "I'll drop you."

  "You go, I'll finish my drink, then catch a cab."

  "OK."

  "This might be a good place to meet, if we have to."

  "Sure. What'll we call it, in case anybody is listening, as they probably will be."

  "It's The Horse. Let's call it The Fish."

  They looked at each other. Clete stood up and put out his hand.

  "It's good to see you, amigo," he said. "But do me a favor, will you?"

  "Certainly."

  "Try to walk like a man when you leave. The waiter is three-quarters con-vinced that we're a pair of fairies."

  "What the hell, we've been up here by ourselves, holding a whispered con-versation, doing everything but holding hands, what do you expect him to think?"

  [FOUR]

  Recoleta Plaza

  Buenos Aires, Argentina

  0145 10 April 1943

  There was no answer when Clete rang the bell of Tony Pelosi's apartment in a run-down building in the heavily Italian La Boca* district.

  He's probably out with Maria-Teresa, damn him!

  Though Clete thought it was a dump, Tony had selected his apartment pri-marily because it was close to the Ristorante Napoli. Its proprietor, Se¤or Alberghoni, had a daughter named Maria-Teresa. Tony was in love... not a very smart thing for someone in Tony's line of work to be, Clete thought.

  He drove back through downtown on Avenida del Libertador, then headed for Belgrano, where Ettinger had an apartment on Calle Monroe (Monroe Street). Just before he reached the Avenida 9 de Julio, there was a traffic holdup of some sort. He crept along for a block or two, and the jam cleared. As he passed Avenida 9 de Julio, he looked up and saw the source of the trouble.

  *"The Mouth." so called because it is the mouth of the Riachuelo Industrial Canal opening on the river Plate. Shipping tycoon-and second husband of Jacqueline Kennedy-Aristotle Onassis got his start operating a small ferry across the Riachuelo Canal.

  What looked like half a squadron of cavalry, each splendidly mounted trooper holding a lance, was moving at a walk. He couldn't see an artillery cais-son, but he thought there was only one reason cavalry would be moving through downtown Buenos Aires at this hour. He checked the Hamilton chronograph. It was twenty minutes to two. The schedule of events called for the casket to be moved, starting at one.

  He accelerated, drove three blocks farther, and turned left, reaching Avenida Alvear as the lead troopers of the cavalry came into sight. He drove ahead of them to the park that fronts the Recoleta Cemetery and the Basilica of Our Lady of Pilar, stopped, and got out.

  He stood in the shadow of the Recoleta Cemetery wall and watched the procession arrive. The maneuver had
obviously been planned carefully and re-hearsed, for it went off like clockwork.

  The procession stopped by the front of the church. A half-dozen troopers in the lead of the procession dismounted, and the reins to their mounts were given to the troopers beside them. The dismounted troopers then marched to the head of the procession and held the bits of the horses of the commanding officer and the detachment of eight officers riding immediately behind him. They dis-mounted and marched to the caisson, where they unstrapped the casket, shoul-dered it, and marched into the church with it.

  Two minutes later, they came back out, remounted, waited for the horse-holders to regain their mounts, and then did a column left at the walk back to-ward Avenida Alvear.

  Clete waited until the last of them had left, then got back in the Ford and re-turned to Avenida del Libertador.

  He wondered if Enrico had been able to get out of the hospital to go to the Edificio Libertador.

  He hoped so, but it was too late to do anything about it if there was a hitch in that plan.

  I'll make damned sure he's at the funeral tomorrow, if I have to go to the hospital and get him myself.

  [FIVE]

  As he drove back past The Horse-which he now thought of as The Fish-on Avenida del Libertador, he had a sudden thought:

  There's a secret compartment in Uncle Willy's desk. Did my father know about it? Would he hide Peter's father's letters and the records Peter was talk-ing about in there?

  It was an uncomfortable thought. He had discovered the secret compart-ment by accident when he lived in Uncle Willy's house. It held some of Uncle Willy's secrets: a large collection of glass slides showing a number of Frenchmen and Frenchwomen-the ladies were a bit overplump, and the gentlemen were wearing nothing but mustaches and black socks-performing various ob-scene sexual acts on one another.

  On the one hand, the chances that his father even knew about the secret compartment were remote. And even if he did, would he use the secret com-partment to conceal important documents? But on the other hand, it might be just the place his father would choose to use, because it was so unlikely. And the secret compartment was certainly large enough.

  What the hell, I'm practically right in front of the place. It will only take me a minute to look. And Peter is obviously scared shitless, with reason, that some-body will find his father's letter.

  Directly across Libertador from the racetrack, he stopped before the cast-iron gates of a large, turn-of-the-century masonry house. The gates carried both the house number-4730-and the crest of the Frade family. He blew the horn, and thirty seconds after that there was a glow of light as the basement garage door opened. A moment later, without question, a stocky, middle-aged man started to pull the gates inward.

  What Clete thought of as "Uncle Willy's house" had been built by his granduncle Guillermo, a bachelor and near-legendary ladies' man. Uncle Willy's apartment on the top floor was actually one very large room stretching the full width and length of the building.

  It was designed with two objects in mind: Wide windows opening on Avenida del Libertador provided Granduncle Guillermo with what amounted to a comfortable private box for watching the horse racing at the Hipodromo across the street. And when the curtains were drawn, he had comfortable quar-ters for entertaining lady guests. According to Clete's father, there were an awe-some number of these.

  Clete's connection with the building went back to his birth. According to his father, his mother flatly refused to live in "The Museum," the Frade mansion on Avenida Coronel Diaz, and moved into Uncle Willy's house. When her time came, she left Uncle Willy's house for the hospital, where she was delivered of a male infant named Cletus Howell-after her father-Frade.

  He drove the Ford down a steep ramp into the basement garage, thinking, Just as soon as I can, I'm getting out of the Museum and coming back here.

  A second stocky man walked up to the car. Clete almost didn't see him, his attention having been caught by two cars already in the garage. One of them- a 1941 Buick convertible coupe-was his. It was as glistening as it had been in the showroom of Davis Chevrolet-Buick in Midland, Texas, the day Uncle Jim had made it plain to him that only fools drove convertibles, and the best he could expect for a graduation present was something sensible, like a Chevy business coupe.

  The second car was his father's Horche convertible touring sedan, the joy of his life. El Coronel's extraordinary attachment to his Horche was well-known, and a source of amusement to his friends.

  Enrico had told Clete that from the moment el Coronel-"as nervous as a first-time father"-watched the massive automobile being lowered to the dock from the Dresden of the Hamburg-Amerika Line, only three people were ever behind its wheel, el Coronel himself, Suboficial Mayor Enrico Rodriguez, and Cletus Howell Frade.

  Clete thereafter made a point of asking to drive the car whenever they rode in it, and then of driving it in a manner to cause his father to hang on with white knuckles.

  I really should have buried him in that, Clete thought. He really loved that car, and he died in it.

  Even in the dim light, Clete could see the shattered windshield, and the bul-let holes in the massive hood and doors.

  "Enrico, mi Teniente," the stocky man said, "will be here shortly. He rode with el Coronel to Our Lady of Pilar."

  "He rode?"

  "S¡, mi Teniente."

  Jesus Christ, his wounds are still bleeding!

  "I just came from there. El Coronel is safely inside the church."

  The man nodded.

  "I wish to see Enrico when he comes," Clete said.

  And then I will take the stupid sonofabitch back to the hospital, where, with a little luck, they'll be able to fix the damage he did to himself by getting on a horse in his condition. Jesus, I hope I can get him out again for the funeral!

  As he walked to the interior stairs that led to the kitchen, he saw where the stocky men had been sitting, in armchairs obviously moved to the garage from somewhere upstairs, and that beside the armchairs were two double-barreled shotguns.

  Three women were in the kitchen when he pushed open the door. One of them was middle-aged, and the other two were younger. The two younger ones were in maid's uniforms.

  Christ, with nobody living here, why do we need two maids and a house-keeper?

  Oh, yeah, El Coronel told me he used this place as a guest house before I showed up. It's probably full of people here for the funeral.

  The kitchen was clean and cheerful, and the tiles on the floor were spotless.

  Clete had a sudden, sickeningly clear mental image of the tiles by the kitchen table, thick and slippery with the blood of Enrico's sister, Se¤ora Marianna Maria Dolores Rodriguez de Pellano, who had been the housekeeper.

  "Her murder was unnecessary," el Teniente Coronel Alejandro Bernardo Mart¡n explained at the time. (He'd come to the murder scene to see how it af-fected Argentine security, not to investigate the crime.)

  "'But on the other hand," Mart¡n added, "from the viewpoint of the would-be assassins, it was the correct thing to do. The dead make terrible witnesses, and the government can only execute murderers once."

  A voice interrupted these thoughts.

  "I am Se¤ora Lopez, Se¤or Frade. The housekeeper. Can I get you anything?"

  "No, thank you. I'm going to go upstairs for a minute, and then I'm going to wait for Enrico in the sitting."

  "I have laid out some things in the sitting for our guest, Se¤or Frade. If there is something else you would like, just ring. And there is whiskey and ice and soda."

  "Thank you," Clete said, and smiled at her.

  Did she say "our guest," singular? That's surprising. I would have thought this place would be full of people for the funeral.

  He rode the elevator to Uncle Willy's apartment on the top floor. There was evidence that somebody was staying in the room, and it made him a little un-comfortable to be an intruder.

  Screw it. All I'm going to do is check the secret compartment in the desk.
>
  He walked across the room to the massive desk, and opened the secret com-partment without difficulty. There was nothing in it at all.

  Not even Uncle Willy's naughty pictures.