W E B Griffin - Honor 2 - Blood and Honor

by Blood

  "No. I mean, yes, I can fly the Lockheed alone. And I got Mart¡n to agree that I didn't need Delgano's help. It took some doing. He wanted Delgano to see what I planned to do with the Lockheed."

  Is that one more proof, Graham wondered, that Cavalry is el Coronel Martin?

  "So do I," Graham said. "Damn!"

  "I'm not following any of this," Dorotea announced.

  "What I wanted to do, Dorotea," Graham said, "was have Capitan Delgano aboard the Lockheed when we took the pictures of a boat leaving the Oceano Pacifico to smuggle something into Argentina. Of the boat leaving the Oceano Pacifico, of the boat landing on the shore of Samboromb¢n Bay, and returning to the Oceano Pacifico. Lieutenant Pelosi would take two photographs of every-thing, giving us a duplicate set of negatives. One set of negatives would be given to Capitan Delgano, together with the necessary special chemicals to de-velop them."

  "Yeah," Clete said appreciatively. "He goes to Mart¡n and says, 'I know these are legitimate. I was there when they were taken.'"

  "And the Americans have copies," Graham said. "So they couldn't simply ignore them-'What photographs?' Actually, it gives them a way out. Nobody has mentioned the other reason why the Comerciante del Oceano Pacifico is in Samboromb¢n Bay resupplying German submarines. The Argentines could then go to the Spanish ambassador and tell him they were ordering the Oceano Pacifico out of Argentine waters because it was caught in the act of smuggling, and here's the photographs to prove it."

  "Delgano's probably still at Campo de Mayo," Clete said. "For two rea-sons: to keep people from getting curious about the Lockheed being there in the first place, and because I told Mart¡n I would probably fly over there in one of the Cubs here to pick it up. I'm sure, to be a nice guy, he was planning on fly-ing the Cub back here to see if the Lockheed was here. And/or see what else he could find out."

  "And you could politely ask him to help you fly the Lockheed?" Graham asked.

  "Yeah."

  "You'll have to come here to load the camera platform on the Lockheed," Graham said. "Will you have any trouble persuading him to go with you from here?"

  "Oh, I don't think I'll have any trouble at all," Clete said.

  "And then you'll go out and photograph this ship, the same way you pho-tographed the first one, when you were shot down?" Dorotea asked.

  Uh-oh, Graham thought, this is where she's going to say, "Over my dead, pregnant body you will!"

  "If we're two miles away, honey," Clete said, "I don't think they'll start shooting at us."

  "And if they do?" Dorotea asked.

  "Then I leave," Clete said, as much to Graham as to Dorotea.

  "You promise?" she challenged.

  Clete hesitated before replying. "Honey, I promise you I won't do anything stupid out there."

  Please, God, Graham thought, let that be enough to satisfy her.

  "You understand, Colonel," Dorotea said, "that this is the last time Cletus is doing anything like this?"

  "If this works, Dorotea," Graham said, hoping he sounded far more sincere than he felt, "there won't be anything more like this for him to do."

  "You could be expected to say something like that," she said.

  "The truth, Dorotea, is that Clete is far more valuable to the United States government for his influence on General Rawson-on the new Argentine gov-ernment-than as an OSS agent. If something like this comes up again, we'll send other people in to do it."

  "You don't know my... Cletus very well, obviously, Colonel," she said. She almost said "my husband," Graham realized. "If 'something like this comes up again,' Cletus will play the damn fool again. I want you to under-stand, Colonel, that the next time, I'm fighting you tooth and nail."

  "Fair enough," Graham said.

  "And in Dorotea, mi Coronel," Clete said, smiling, obviously proud of her, "you can expect to meet your match."

  "I have already figured that out, Major Frade," Graham said. "OK, let me get into the rest of it. The materiel the Germans will unload from the Oceano Pacifico."

  "We're letting them unload the money?" Clete asked, surprised.

  Graham didn't reply directly.

  "Leibermann has the entire staff of the Office of the Legal Attach‚ of the Embassy-and some of their local hires-on the way out here. They'll follow the materiel from the beach to its ultimate destination."

  "You're letting those bastards bring that dirty money into Argentina?" Clete demanded incredulously. "You know what they're going to do with it!"

  "I decided there was a strong possibility that if we grabbed the money to-day, there would be several unfortunate consequences," Graham said. "And I don't mean only that the only escape route I've ever heard of from German ex-termination camps would probably be closed for good."

  Clete considered that a moment and grunted.

  "And, aside from that, I decided that it posed an unacceptable risk to Gala-had," Graham went on. "There would be questions asked, on their side, about how we knew precisely where and when the materiel-the money-was to be landed. Only a few people were privy to that information, among them, obvi-ously, Galahad. The Germans have the nasty habit of eliminating people they suspect are guilty. I don't want Galahad eliminated."

  "So you can use him again, right?" Clete said bitterly.

  "Right."

  Their eyes met for a moment, and then Graham went on: "When Lieutenant Sawyer was at Yale-"

  "Lieutenant Sawyer?" Dorotea interrupted. "Who's he?"

  "Lieutenant Madison R. Sawyer the Third," Clete furnished, his tone mocking Sawyer's Oh, So Social-sounding name. "He's on Ashton's team. Ashton calls him 'the gorilla.'"

  "When Lieutenant Sawyer was at Yale, he was a photographer for the Yale Daily News," Graham went on. "He tells Ashton, and we have no choice but to take him at his word, that he will have no problem photographing, on the ground, the landing of the materiel from the Oceano Pacifico. With a little bit of luck, we will furnish your friend Mart¡n not only photographs of the materiel actually being unloaded on the beach, but of our friend Standartenf�hrer Goltz and/or Colonel Gr�ner supervising the unloading. That will give the Argentine government sufficient cause to persona non grata either of them, hopefully both."

  "What does that mean?" Dorotea asked.

  The idea of having Gr�ner booted out of the country didn't seem to bother Clete at all, Graham thought, thereby eliminating Gr�ner as Galahad, and con-firming, if it needed confirming, that Galahad is von Wachtstein.

  "When someone on a diplomatic passport does something wrong," Graham said, "such as smuggling, the host government declares him persona non grata-a person not welcome-and asks him to leave the country."

  "It will also tip the Germans that we know about the money," Clete chal-lenged.

  "Why? So far as they're concerned, the money will have safely arrived, still in its crates, wherever they take it."

  "They will wonder how someone just happened to be taking pictures where they were landing the money," Clete argued.

  "Look," Graham said, "an amateur photographer is walking along the beach and happens to see the strange activity of people unloading crates from a boat and takes pictures of it with his Brownie. If Lieutenant Sawyer's pho-tographs don't naturally look like the work of an amateur photographer, they can be made to look that way." He paused, then went on. "Actually, Leibermann has a local cop on his payroll who can turn them in. That's just between us."

  "Why don't we just tell Leibermann's cop what's about to happen? Let them grab the money?"

  "I thought about that. I decided that one cop stumbling across the unload-ing would not arouse undue suspicion; a dozen cops waiting for the boat would."

  Clete shrugged. He could not fault Graham's logic.

  "There are several problems involved with getting Lieutenant Sawyer to the proper place at the properly appointed time in the properly appointed uni-form-civilian clothing-to take his pictures," Graham said. "For one thing, he's in Argentina illegally. For another, despite his pr
otestations to the contrary, the Germans are liable to see him. He would not be able to defend himself, be-cause I don't want him carrying a weapon."

  "I could send Enrico with him," Clete thought aloud. "Enrico and Rudolpho."

  "Se¤or Clete?" Enrico asked, having heard his name.

  Clete switched to Spanish.

  "This morning, Enrico, you and Rudolpho are going to go riding along the beach."

  "Where will you be, Se¤or Clete?"

  "I'll be flying the airplane," Clete said. "And you can't go with me." He waited to deal with the expected objections to that; and when-surprising him-there were none, went on. "You will take el Teniente Gorilla with you. He will be taking photographs of the Germans unloading crates from a boat."

  "And what do we do about the Germans?"

  "Nothing, absolutely nothing. We don't even want them to see you. If they do see you, you're to leave immediately. But I don't want them to see you. This is very important. What I want you to do is put el Teniente Gorilla in a position to take his photographs, and when he's finished, bring him back here. Only if necessary, and I mean absolutely necessary, are you to use your guns to protect el Teniente Gorilla. No dead Germans, you understand, Enrico?"

  "S¡, Se¤or Clete," Enrico agreed with obvious reluctance.

  "If you do what Se¤or Clete asks you to do, Suboficial Mayor," Graham said, "it will result in the deaths of far more Germans than the ones you will see on the beach."

  Enrico considered that idea and seemed to like it.

  "S¡, mi Coronel," he said.

  "Unless anyone has anything else?" Graham asked, looking around the room, and then finished, "I think we should, quickly, take advantage of Dorotea's buffet breakfast."

  [TWO]

  Aboard Motor Vessel Comerciante del Oceano Pacifico

  Samboromb¢n Bay

  River Plate Estuary, Argentina

  0810 19 April 1943

  Capitan Jose Francisco de Banderano, master of the Oceano Pacifico, was, of course being generously compensated for his services-as was his crew. There had been a generous sign-on bonus, and a promise of an equal amount at the conclusion of the voyage, even if the ship was lost. In addition, each month an amount equal to, and in addition to, his monthly pay would be delivered to his wife, in cash-and thus tax-free. If things should go really wrong, his wife would receive a generous death benefit, plus a pension for the rest of her life. The German Naval Attach‚ in Madrid had made similar provisions for every member of his crew.

  But the generous pay was not the reason he had accepted the commission. He believed in the German cause.

  Like his father and grandfather before him, Capitan de Banderano was a graduate of the Spanish Royal Navy Academy. He graduated at eighteen, was appointed a midshipman, and then, on attaining his twenty-first birthday, was commissioned a Lieutenant in the Royal Spanish Navy.

  By the time the Communists started the revolution, he had risen to Lieu-tenant Commander and was in command of the frigate Almirante de Posco. Be-fore the revolution, he hoped to rise in rank to Capitan-as his father had-or possibly even to Almirante-as his grandfather had.

  The revolution changed all that. He was early on detached from the Almi-rante de Posco to serve on the staff of General Francisco Franco, El Caudillo, when that great man saw it as his Christian duty to expel the godless Commu-nists from Spain and restore Spain to her former greatness.

  As the Civil War dragged on and on, his duties had less and less to do with the Navy, but they took him to all fronts and gave him the opportunity to see what the Communists had in mind for Spain. And they were godless, the Antichrist. He saw the murdered priests and the raped nuns.

  Hitler, "Der F�hrer," and Benito Mussolini, "El Duce," were deeply aware of the nature of the Communists, and of the threat communism posed to the very survival of Christian civilization; and they sent help. Der F�hrer more than El Duce, to be sure, but both came to the aid of a Christianity that once again had infidel hordes raging at her gates.

  Without the help German weapons provided to General Franco's army, without the aerial support of the German Condor Legion, it was entirely possi-ble that the war could have been lost.

  The English and the Americans remained "neutral," but that in practice meant they were helping the loyalists. The Americans even sent soldiers, formed into the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, to aid the Communists.

  Capitan de Banderano was frankly baffled by the behavior of the English and the Americans. The usual answer to this conundrum was that they were not Roman Catholic, and their "churches" had been infiltrated and corrupted by Communists; but he thought that was too simple an answer. A large number of the Germans who came to help Spain were Protestant. He also thought the other answer was too simple: that the Jews controlled both England and America.

  Too many good Spanish Jews had fought as valiantly as anyone on the side of El Caudillo to believe that all Jews were allied with the Antichrist.

  But whatever their reasons for opposing Hitler, for refusing to accept that the war Hitler was waging against the Communists was their own war, the fact was that England and America were fighting Germany, and that was sufficient cause for him to do whatever he could to oppose them.

  The notion of violating the Rules of Warfare by violating Argentine neu-trality would have deeply offended him before the Civil War. Now it seemed only right. The actions of the English during the Civil War were blatantly an-tagonistic to neutrality. And later, the actions of the Americans after the begin-ning of the current war, but before they themselves joined the hostilities, were equally contrary to neutrality.

  There was no command for Capitan de Banderano in the post-Civil War Royal Spanish Navy. Spain was destitute-and not only because the Commu-nists stole literally tons of gold, almost the entire gold stocks of the kingdom, and took it to Russia. There was hardly enough money to operate-much less construct-men-of-war. The once proud Spanish navy was on its knees, again, thanks to the Communists.

  Thus, his service during the Civil War was rewarded with a command in the Spanish merchant navy. He saw with his own eyes and heard with his own ears American Navy ships roaming the North Atlantic searching for German sub-marines-which had every right under international law to sink vessels laden with war materiel and bound for England. When the American ships found one, they reported their positions by radio, in the clear. "In the clear" meant that ra-dios aboard English men-of-war were given the positions of their enemy by "neutral" American men-of-war.

  In Capitan de Banderano's opinion, the English and the Americans were absolutely hypocritical in their denunciation of anyone else who violated neu-trality.

  And it was the further judgment of Capitan de Banderano that the captain of the American destroyer Alfred Thomas deserved to be brought before an in-ternational tribunal for reckless endangerment on the high seas and put in prison.

  He almost wished the American destroyer put a shot across his bows then, or took some other action. He thought there was a good chance he could have blown her out of the water with naval cannon carried aboard the Oceano Paci-fico in false superstructure.

  He had always been skilled with naval artillery. He suspected-but did not know-that someone who knew him in the Admiralty had recommended him to the Germans for command of the Comerciante del Oceano Pacifico because of this skill.

  In any event, he was approached about taking command of the Oceano Pacifico on a "special mission"-and of course he suspected that mission was to replace the Reine de la Mer that the Americans had sunk. When the com-mand was offered, he made up his mind to accept the commission even before the generous emoluments were mentioned.

  Even if there was, so to speak, no command of the Royal Navy available to him, even if he was technically a civilian, he knew in his heart that he would be fighting the Antichrist, the godless Communists.

  Capitan de Banderano was in his cabin shaving when the Second Officer knocked and announced that a small boat was approaching the Oceano Pacif
ico from the port.

  "How far?"

  "A mile or so, Sir. I would say she will come close in five minutes."

  "Thank you, I will be there directly."

  Capitan de Banderano finished shaving, put on his tunic, and went to the bridge. He picked his binoculars from its rack and walked out on the flying bridge, where he found the binoculars unnecessary. He could quite clearly read the gold-lettered name of the vessel on its bow with his naked eye-Coronel Gasparo.

  His first thought was that a boat of that type had no business so far out in the bay. She was a river craft, lean, narrow, and long. In a moment he recog-nized her for what she was: one of the river craft that plied the maze of waters of El Tigre, north of Buenos Aires.