by Blood
"I think Beatrice and I should get our rest too," Humberto said.
"But I'm talking to Cletus about his wedding!" she protested.
"You can talk to him tomorrow, darling," he said, and stood behind her chair until finally she got up.
"Poor woman," Father Welner said after they were gone. And then he rose out of his chair. "I'll pass on the brandy, Cletus. I've had a busy day myself."
He touched Cletus's shoulder, nodded at Roberto Lauffer, and walked out of the dining room.
"It would appear, mi amigo," Clete said, "that we get all the cognac."
"I don't think, mi amigo, that we should drink all of it, but one... a stiff one..."
"Thank you for..."
"Poor woman," Roberto said, obviously quoting the priest.
He raised his glass to Clete, and Clete clinked glasses with him.
"Roberto, I would like to ask you a favor."
"Anything within my power."
"Could you forget hearing the name von Wachtstein here tonight?"
Lauffer's eyebrows rose.
"It's very important to me," Clete said.
"Whose name?" Lauffer said. "I have such a hard time remembering names...."
"Thank you."
"May I say that I admire your taste? Dorotea is quite beautiful."
"I noticed," Clete said.
Lauffer stood up.
"It should go without saying that I wish you every happiness," he said.
"Thank you," Clete said, and then chuckled. "That was the first word of congratulations I've received, incidentally."
"Then I'm glad it came from me," Lauffer said, and put out his hand. "We're all going to have a busy day tomorrow. Thank you for a... I was about to say 'memorable,' but that wouldn't be accurate. Thank you for your hospi-tality."
"Good night, Roberto."
Lauffer left Clete alone in the room.
Clete picked up his snifter and took a sip.
Jesus, he thought. I'm going to have to tell the Old Man and Martha, be-fore they hear about it someplace else.
He put the glass down and stood up.
"Will that be all, Se¤or?" Antonio asked.
"Yes, thank you, Antonio," Clete said. "Please thank the cook for a... wait a minute. Is there a typewriter around here someplace?"
"A typewriter, Se¤or?"
"A typewriter."
"The housekeeper has-"
"Will you bring it, and some paper and envelopes, and a pot of coffee, to my room, please?"
"Of course."
Writing the Old Man was even more difficult than Clete imagined, and not only because the venerable Underwood had a Spanish keyboard with the keys in the wrong places.
He had just ripped from the typewriter his sixth failed attempt to write the Old Man a letter when there was a knock at the door.
Now what?
"Come!"
The door opened. One of the maids was standing there. Behind her, in his gaucho costume, stood Chief Schultz.
"The Se¤or, Se¤or insisted on..."
"We got a reply to your radio, Major," Chief Schultz said. "I thought I'd better bring it over."
"Come on in, let's have it. You want a cup of coffee? Something stronger?"
"I never turn down a little taste," Schultz said.
"Scotch?"
"You wouldn't have a little cognac around here someplace, would you?"
"Bring cognac, please," Clete said. "There's a bottle on the table in the din-ing." He turned to Schultz.
"How'd we get this reply so quick?" he asked. "I thought you said you had an oh one thirty net call?"
"Oh one thirty, oh nine thirty, and seventeen thirty, three times a day," Schultz explained. "But we monitor the frequency all the time when someone's there. We just don't acknowledge, unless they ask for it special. Once a day, at oh nine thirty, if they've sent something, we acknowledge. Or, if we have some-thing for them-like your 0001-we acknowledge everything we got, starting with their oh one thirty. The idea is for us to go on the air as little as possible. You understand?"
"They monitor us all the time?"
"Sure. And when we send something off the schedule, I add a service mes-sage to any Navy station asking them to copy and relay. I did that with your 0001."
Clete opened the envelope Schultz had handed him and read the message.
TOP SECRET
LINDBERGH
URGENT
DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN
PROM ORACLE WASHDC
MSG NO 2545 DDWHO 0030 GREENWICH 12 APRIL 1943
TO STACHIEF AGGIE
REFERENCE YOUR NO. 0001
PROCEED WITH LINDBERGH INVESTIGATION AS HIGHEST PRIORITY.
LIAISON WITH VACUUM IN ANY ASPECT OF LINDBERGH IS FORBIDDEN REPEAT FORBIDDEN.
INTELLIGENCE DEVELOPED IS TO BE CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET LINDBERGH EYES ONLY DDWHO AND TRANSMITTED BY RADIO ONLY. FACILITIES OF USEMBASSY ARE NOT REPEAT NOT TO BE UTILIZED.
IDENTIFY SOURCE CAVALRY, INCLUDING MOTIVATION FOR HIS COOPERATION.
PERSONAL TO SARNOFF FROM ORACLE QUOTE GOOD JOB UNQUOTE.
ACKNOWLEDGE DELIVERY THIS MESSAGE TO STACHIEF BY TRANSMISSION OF PHRASE GOT IT. REPEAT GOT IT.
GRAHAM END
"I wonder why we're not supposed to use the Embassy's radio?" Clete asked. "Or the diplomatic pouch?"
"I guess Graham figures the FBI gets its nose in just about everything around the Embassy," Schultz said. "Tony... Mr. Pelosi... got to the Army crypto guy, I guess he told you. That place is a fucking sieve, security-wise."
Clete grunted.
"Do you write home, Chief?"
Schultz looked at him strangely for a moment.
"I got a sister in Milwaukee," he said. "Once a month, like, I drop her a note. Send her a couple of bucks. She's married to a bum."
"How?"
"Through the Embassy. They put a pouch-you know this-on all the Pan American flights. You just write your name and serial number and 'free' where the stamp is supposed to go on the envelope, and that's it."
"I'm no longer in the service...."
"Yeah, so you keep saying."
"Would you put your name and serial number on a couple of letters and get them in the mail for me?"
"Sure. You got 'em?"
"I'm going to have to write them. Is Tony still out there?"
"He said he would stick around in case you wanted to say something about it when you got this."
"Then he's going back to Buenos Aires?"
"Right."
"Make sure Ettinger does not go to Buenos Aires, Chief. If you have to chain him to a tree. He's a good man, but he hasn't quite grasped the idea that an order is an order. He ignores those he doesn't like."
"Well, Mr. Frade-" the Chief interrupted himself. "I was about to say he's got a personal interest in this war we don't have. But now you've got one too, don't you?"
"Ettinger told you about his family?"
"His family, and a lot more. I hate to admit it, but before I got to know Dave, I thought all this business about the shit the Nazis are doing was propa-ganda bullshit-the concentration camps, putting people in rooms and gassing them, just because they're Jews. You know, like in World War One, they said the Germans were bayoneting babies in Belgium."
"It's not bullshit. What they do is so bad your mind doesn't want to accept it. And when it hits you personally... I understand Dave, Chief. But I can't permit him to wage a private war. For one thing, we can't afford to lose him. You keep him out here until you personally get the word otherwise from me."
"Aye, aye, Sir."
"Have another little taste, Chief. This won't take long. And tell Mr. Pelosi to make sure they go out with tomorrow's pouch."
He sat down at the venerable Underwood with the Spanish keyboard, rolled a piece of paper into it, and started to type.
Clete walked Chief Schultz through the house and out to where he had parked his Model A on the drive.
"I thought maybe you would have learned t
o ride while I was gone," Clete said.
"Don't hold your fucking breath, Mr. Frade," Chief Schultz said. "Horses is dangerous."
He put the car in gear and drove off.
Clete walked back to his apartment. There was an untouched cognac snifter on the desk in the sitting.
Well, it's done now. In three, four days the Old Man'll have that letter, and what will happen will happen.
He picked up the snifter and drained it, then pushed open the door to his bedroom.
Just enough light was coming through the open window to make out the bed, so he didn't turn on the light.
He sat down at the bed and grunted as he pulled off the boots.
/ wonder what happened? The goddamned things weren't so tight when I first put them on. But then I couldn't walk. Did I have that much to drink? Or was it the charming company?
"I wondered if you were ever coming to bed," a voice behind him said. "What in the world were you doing out there anyway with that bloody type-writer? And who was that with you?"
He turned. His eyes had now adjusted to the light.
"Hello, Princess," he said.
She was sitting up in the bed, wearing a white nightgown.
"Hello, yourself, and don't call me that, please."
She sat up suddenly, then started to bounce on the mattress.
"I think I'm going to like sleeping here," she said. "This mattress is won-derful!"
"What did you do, climb in through the window?"
"I could hardly walk down the corridor, could I?" she asked reasonably. "What would people think?"
Then she held her arms open for him.
[THREE]
La Capilla Nuestra Se¤ora de las Milagros
Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo
Near Pila, Buenos Aires Province
0940 12 April 1943
A large, badly hand-tinted photograph of el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade in a gilded wooden frame sat on an easel in the center aisle of the chapel.
It was probably taken, Clete decided, shortly before his father retired from command of the Husares de Pueyrred¢n. His father-wearing a ribbon-bedecked green tunic and a brimmed cap with an enormous crown-was pho-tographed standing beside a horse, holding its reins. The saddle blanket carried the Husares de Pueyrred¢n regimental crest and the insignia of a colonel.
Without conscious disrespect, he wondered where his father had gotten all the medals, and remembered Tony's crack that the Argentine Army passed out medals for three months' perfect attendance at mass.
There was plenty of time to examine the photograph, for two reasons. For one thing, the requiem mass had begun at eight. That was because work on Es-tancia San Pedro y San Pablo had to go on, and no one was going to work until the mass and the reception following it were over.
The second reason was that Clete had only limited success keeping his eyes off Dorotea. The best he could do was focus his attention on either his father's photograph or the ceremony itself. Dorotea was sitting beside him, her legs modestly crossed, on a slightly smaller version of his own thronelike, high-backed, elaborately carved chair.
She was wearing a black suit with a white lacy blouse, the lace covering most of her neck. She wore a black hat with a veil, and her black-gloved hands held a missal in her lap. In other words, she was the picture of respectable, de-mure, virginal young Christian womanhood.
Whenever he glanced at her, and she smiled demurely at him, his mind's eye flooded with images of Dorotea wearing absolutely nothing at all, cavorting with enthusiastic carnal abandon in his father's bed.
While it was probable that they at least dozed off momentarily sometime between the moment she held her arms open to him and the time she crawled out the bedroom window as the first light of day began to illuminate the bed (which would be rightfully theirs in the sight of God once the goddamned wed-ding was over and done with), he could not remember it.
These kinds of thoughts-not to mention the physiological reaction they caused in the area of his groin-did not seem appropriate within the Chapel of Our Lady of the Miracles during a service honoring his father's life, so he tried to hard to devote his attention to his father's portrait and the ceremony.
Behind what he thought of as his and Dorotea's thrones, Humberto and Beatrice Duarte and the honored guests were seated in red-velvet-upholstered pews. The honored guests were Se¤ora Claudia Carzino-Cormano and her two daughters; Suboficial Mayor (Retired) Enrico Rodriguez; Antonio LaValle, el Coronel Frade's lifelong butler; Major Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein, a houseguest of Se¤ora Carzino-Cormano; and el Capitan Roberto Lauffer, aide-de-camp to General Arturo Rawson, who had been assisting the late el Coronel Frade's son during the final services honoring his father.
Finally, the Bishop-who spoke after Fathers Denilo, Pordido, and Welner-concluded his "talk." Clete was not sure if it was a homily, a eulogy, or a thinly veiled plea for the new Patron of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo to con-tinue the generous support of the diocese and its clergy that had been a long-standing tradition of previous God-fearing and commendably devout Patrons of the estancia.
The Bishop climbed down from the pulpit and took his place to lead the re-cessional parade. Father Welner, taking his place behind Fathers Denilo and Pordido, discreetly signaled Clete that it was time for him and Dorotea to stand up and be prepared to join the recessional, immediately behind the crucifer.
The crucifer was the nice-looking blond kid who had taken Julius Caesar and Rudolpho's roan back to the stables the day before. Clete was reminded of his own service as a crucifer at Trinity Episcopal in Midland, Texas. He had been "promoted" to crucifer following an unfortunate incident in which he, functioning as one of two acolytes, had lost the taper from the candle-lighting device and set the altar cloth gloriously aflame.
The procession moved through the church, out, and then down the paths of the English garden until it reached the house. There the Bishop, the priests, and the deacon lined themselves up on the lower step of the verandah. The crucifer and the other acolytes marched off down the drive.
Clete and Dorotea, and then Beatrice and Humberto, joined the clergy on the wide verandah step. Father Welner shifted position so that he was standing next to Clete.
Not on the ground, Clete thought, but on the step. Was that on purpose? I've had about all of this I can take.
First the Mallin family shook everybody's hand in the reception line.
That handshake and smile, Henry, are even more magnificently insincere than yesterday. Have you been practicing, or are you just hungover?
Henry Mallin next kissed his daughter, then subjected himself to the effu-sive greeting of Beatrice Frade de Duarte, who was obviously enjoying the re-ception line.
Pamela Mallin kissed him.
It's nice when Pamela kisses me that way, sort of motherly.
El Kid Brother is a little sheepish. He knows I'm pissed. Good. I am. No-body likes a squealer.
"A beautiful service, I thought," Claudia Carzino-Cormano said, both shak-ing his hand and kissing him. "And the two of you were handsome."
You've lost just as much as I did, Claudia. Maybe more. You spent most of your life with him, and he never married you. Because of me. And then he got killed, also because of me. If I were you, I don't think I'd like me. You should have been sitting where Dorotea sat, and we both know it.
"I'd like to talk you, if we can find time, Claudia."
"We'll make time."
Isabela Carzino-Cormano kissed his cheek with about as much enthusiasm as Henry Mallin shook his hand.
The feeling is mutual, Se¤orita. Go fuck yourself.
"I felt a little better when I saw Dorotea sitting there with you," Se¤orita Alicia Carzino-Cormano said.
"You're very sweet. Did I ever tell you that?"
"Again, my condolences, Se¤or Frade," Major Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein said, clicking his heels and bowing as he shook Clete's hand.
"I found that letter we were looking for," Cl
ete said softly. "Don't leave be-fore we have a chance to talk."
Peter nodded and moved on. El Capitan Roberto Lauffer was next in line.