"Se¤ora Pellano," Frade said as she poured him a scotch, "if Se¤or Cletus were to move in here, have I your promise you will care for him well?"
"With joy, mi Coronel."
"Then it's settled. Telephone to Se¤or Mallin's Alberto, por favor. Tell him to pack Se¤or Cletus's things, and that Enrico will be there immediately to pick them up. And then telephone Enrico at the Big House and tell him to go there and bring Se¤or Cletus's things here."
"S¡, mi Coronel," Se¤ora Pellano said, and smiled warmly at Clete.
"Sir," Clete began-and wondered again why he could not bring himself to say "Father"-"wouldn't it be better if I went over there and got my things, and said good-bye and thank you?''
"I do not think I quite understand..."
"Sir, this strikes me as perhaps a little rude, just sending some-one there to get my clothing."
"No, not at all. So far as good manners are concerned, I will have flowers sent in your name to Se¤ora de Mallin, and some small gifts to the children, and a case of whiskey to Mallin him-self. I will send him something else as well-perhaps a set of silver cups engraved with the crest of the regiment and my name. I think he would like that, as a token of my appreciation for his hospitality to you. That should take care of things."
"Well, if you say so."
"And then, of course, I suspect Mallin will be rather glad to have you out of his house."
"I beg your pardon?"
"You remember Teniente Coronel Martin-the fellow we "bumped into' in the hotel?... I still haven't worked that out; he's too important in the BIS to conduct surveillances himself.... Martin came to see me, asking about you and your friend. If he did that, it follows that he has also been to see Mallin, or else will shortly do so. I suspect Mallin will be pleased mat you will no longer be a guest in his house."
"You make the BIS sound like the Gestapo."
"I don't think they're quite that ruthless. But they are good. Don't worry about them. Since you're here simply to ensure that Venezuelan petroleum is not diverted to the Germans, once they convince themselves of that, they will have no further interest in you."
What's that? My invitation to tell you what I'm really doing here? No way, Daddy.
Clete forced himself to look at his father. His father was reach-ing over the side of his chair to pick up his drink. Clete walked to the window and looked out.
There was activity at the racetrack. Exercise boys were walking horses back to stables after a race. Clete watched as a rambunc-tious horse got away from its handler and trotted insolently down the track, obviously enjoying itself.
He turned to face his father, to play it by ear.
That's all I can do, play it by ear.
His father was slumped in the armchair, his hand holding the whiskey glass on the armrest. But his head was bent forward, his mouth was open, and his eyes were closed; he was asleep, and snoring.
I'll be damned, he's passed out, or the next thing to it. He really was putting all the booze away.
Clete felt nature's call and found the bathroom. In it he found proof that Granduncle Guillermo expected female guests in his room. The bathroom was equipped with a plumbing fixture Clete had first seen on the island of Espiritu Santo, in the house of a French plantation owner taken over as a transient quarters. Sul-livan had used it, with some success, to cool bottles of Australian beer.
Clete examined the fixture with interest, wondering exactly how it worked. When he completed his primary purpose in the bathroom, he bent over the fixture and tried the faucets, one at a time. The prize for his curiosity was a sudden burst of water at his face from what he thought was a drain.
He dried himself, torn between amusement and humiliation, and returned to the apartment.
Se¤ora Pellano was there, along with a burly man in a brown suit. They were both looking down at the soundly sleeping Co-ronel.
"Who are you?" Clete demanded.
"I am Enrico, mi Teniente," the man said. "I have come to take care of el Coronel."
"I see," Clete asked, and then blurted, "Does he do this sort of thing often?"
"No, mi Teniente," Enrico said, and then, "Permission to speak, mi Teniente?"
"Certainly."
This guy is-or was-a soldier. He looks like a Marine gunnery sergeant with six hash marks; that "permission to speak" busi-ness is the mark of an old-timer enlisted man.
"El Coronel would be very embarrassed to remember himself
as he is now, mi Teniente. It would be a kindness if he were not reminded of it."
"OK."
"Gracias, mi Teniente."
"What was the occasion today?"
"You were, mi Teniente," Enrico said. "Con permiso, mi Ten-iente?"
Clete nodded.
Enrico bent over the inert body of el Coronel, wrapped his arms around him, and with a heave and a grunt hoisted him to his feet. Then, with an ease that showed he had done this sort of thing before, he stooped and allowed Frade's body to fall over his shoulder. Then, grunting again, he stood erect. He was now car-rying Clete's father in the "Fireman's Carry."
He carried him to the elevator. Se¤ora Pellano entered with him, and the door slid closed.
Powerful man, Clete thought. My father is a large man, and he was really out. Took a lot of muscle to carry him that way.
And since he was really out, what does that mean?
Enrico said, and I don't think he was lying, that he doesn't often pass out drunk.
So what does that do to your theory that he was pretending to drink so that you would get drunk and start running off at the mouth?
Christ, I don't know what to think!
X
[ONE]
Calle Agero
Barrio Norte
Buenos Aires, Argentina
1515 28 November 1942
David G. Ettinger was sure he had the right number, but he checked again, taking from the breast pocket of his seersucker suit the slip of paper with "Ernst Klausner, calle Agero 1585" written on it. He crossed the cobblestones of calle Agero and stopped before Number 1585. The house number looked Euro-pean-blue numbers on a white background, a porcelain medal-lion mounted to a brass plate.
The houses along both sides of the street were built up to the wide concrete sidewalks. Every twenty yards or so the thick trunks of elm trees pierced the sidewalk, their branches almost touching, shading the street and the sidewalks. The exterior walls of Number 1585 were of exposed aggregate concrete, and the windows had roll-down shutters in place, possibly because of the afternoon sun, or maybe because no one was at home.
The whole neighborhood looks European. Buenos Aires looks European. This could be a street in Madrid; for that matter in Berlin-say Tegel, or Wilhelmsdorf. In Berlin, the walls would be of concrete, carefully smoothed and marked to suggest stone blocks, but that's the only real difference.
Except in Germany, a Jew would live in a Jewish neighbor-hood.
This neighborhood had no national flavor. He'd ridden several times on his bus rides through a section of town that could have been a suburb of London, and was in fact where many British lived. Pelosi had told him he had found an Italian section. Pre-sumably there would be other neighborhoods with some kind of national identity, but this wasn't one of them. This section of town looked-Argentinean.
First without realizing he was doing so, and then quite inten-tionally, he had looked for some outward sign-a kosher butcher shop, something like that-which would announce, "Here Live the Jews." He'd seen signs for kosher meats two or three times, but not today, and not in this neighborhood.
And realized, The six pointed Jewish stars on the butcher shops here, as in the United States, are printed in gold, to attract the business of those who keep a kosher kitchen. This isn't like Ger-many, where they are painted crudely in white on the plate glass, in compliance with provisions of the Racial Purity Act of 1933, to warn innocent Aryans they are about to risk contaMi¤ation by entering the business premises of a Gottverdam
mte Jude.
Ettinger realized that he was feeling very powerful emotions now. There were probably several thousand people named Ernst Klausner in Germany... or there once were. But he had a strange feeling that this was the Ernst Klausner he knew. Ernst Klausner, of Heinrich Klausner und Sohn, G.m.b.H. The firm had been wholesale paper merchants, with their headquarters in Berlin, and branches all over Germany. They had lived in a villa in Berlin-Lichterfelde.
Ettinger walked up three shallow steps to the door of Agero 1585, found the doorbell, and pressed it. He could not hear a sound from inside, and had just about decided that no one was home, when the door opened. A girl of about twelve or thirteen, her blond hair-Inge Klausner had been blond!-done up in rolled braids. She smiled a bit nervously and asked, "¨Se¤or?"
"Guten Tag, Fraulein," Ettinger began, and saw relief in the girl's eyes that she did not have to cope with Spanish. "My name is Ettinger. Is your, mother or father at home?"
"No, I'm afraid not."
"I'm looking for Heir Ernst Klausner, formerly of Berlin. Have I the right home?"
Concern came back in her eyes.
"My father will be here at six," the girl said. "Perhaps it would be better, mein Herr, if you came back then."
"The Frau Klausner I am looking for is named Inge," Ettinger said.
From her eyes, Ettinger could see that he had hit home, but the concern in her eyes did not go away, and she didn't respond directly.
"It would be better, mein Heir, if you came back when my father is here. At six, or a little after."
"And if this is the home of Ernst and Inge Klausner, then you would be Sarah," Ettinger said. "Who I last saw as a small child."
She looked intently into his eyes. They were frightened, and he was sorry he had said what he had.
"Please," the girl said. "Come in. I will telephone to my fa-ther."
"Ernst?"
"Who is this?"
"An old friend from Berlin, Ernst. David Ettinger."
"Ach du lieber Gott!"
"Wie geht's, Ernst?"
"You got out!"
"Obviously."
"And your father and mother?"
"Mother is in New York. The others..."
There was a long silence.
"How did you find me?"
"Your daughter was kind enough to call you for me."
"You are at my home?"
"Yes."
There was another perceptible pause.
He doesn't like me being here.
"I can't leave here now, David. Could you come back to the house tonight? After six?"
"I have nothing else to do. I could wait for you."
"Of course," Ernst said. "Have you money, David? There is some in the house. I will tell Sarah to get you something to eat..."
"I have money, thank you. And I had an enormous Argenti-nean lunch before I came here."
He thinks I am a refugee. I am, but not the way he thinks.
"I can't leave here now. I will come, we will come, as soon as we can. Would you put Sarah on the telephone?"
Inge sobbed and dabbed at her eyes when she embraced him, but quickly recovered and announced, "We will have a coffee, David. Like old times."
She motioned with her head for Sarah to come with her, and went into the kitchen, leaving Klausner and Ettinger alone.
"So, David," Klausner said. "You are really all right? You need nothing?"
"Nothing, but I thank you for the thought."
Klausner smiled. "You look prosperous. Can I ask? Did you bring anything out?"
"My Spanish cousins have been more than generous; and so far, I understand, they have kept the business from being sold to some deserving National Socialist." He paused, then decided he could, should, tell Klausner everything. "I sold my interest in the German businesses to them. Technically, they are now owned by Spaniards. Germany has yet to expropriate Spanish-held prop-erty."
"And you're now living in Spain?"
"No. In the United States. Ernst, not for Inge's ears, I am in the American Army." He paused and chuckled. "I am a staff sergeant in the United States Army."
Ettinger expected surprise at that announcement, but not the look of total bafflement that came to Klausner's face.
"I was working in New York City," Ettinger went on. "When I went to America, I took the exaMi¤ation for radio engineer, and I was working for RCA, the Radio Corporation of America... you know the name Sarnoff, Ernst, David Sarnoff? A Russian, a Jew, one of the great geniuses of radio... ?"
"Why did you leave Spain?" Klausner interrupted.
The question surprised Ettinger.
"I didn't, I don't, trust Franco," he said. "It is only a matter of time before he joins the-Axis. I'm surprised it hasn't happened already. What happened in Germany will happen in Spain."
Klausner closed his eyes and shook his head, as if shocked and saddened by Ettinger's stupidity.
"Franco is not as bad as you think, David," he said.
What the hell is that all about? Franco is El Caudillo only because of the Germans, their Condor Legion, and all their other military support. He is as much a fascist as Mussolini and Hitler. But this is not the time to debate that.
"I was working for RCA, and I registered for the draft..."
"The what?"
"Military service, conscription," Ettinger explained. "And Mr. Sarnoff-Ernst, you must know who he is. He worked with Mar-coni..."
Klausner was obviously wholly uninterested in a Russian Jew named Sarnoff, radio pioneer and genius or not. And Ettinger realized his attitude annoyed him.
"Mr. Sarnoff called me to his office. He said my work was essential to the war effort, and I did not have to go into the Army; all I had to say was that I did not wish to go, and he would arrange it"
"So why are you in the American Army?" Klausner asked.
"I told Mr. Sarnoff that I wished to be an American citizen, and that I felt it my duty to serve."
There he goes, shaking his head again. Or has his head ever stopped shaking, as if he is dealing with a pitiful idiot?
"And Mr. Sarnoff said to me, I know how you feel. I myself am going in the Army. And he told me when the war is over, I will not only have my job back, but that while I am in the Army, RCA will pay the difference between my Army pay and what I was making at RCA."
"If the Americans win the war," Klausner said.
"There is no 'if,' Ernst," Ettinger said. "The Americans will win."
Klausner shrugged.
Why am I growing so angry?
"When I was in an Army school in Baltimore," Ettinger said, "I was taken, Ernst, to a shipyard in Kearny, New Jersey, which is right across the river from New York City. They are building one ship a day in that shipyard, Ernst. It takes them three weeks to build a ship. Every day, seven days a week, they launch a ship. And they told us they were not up to speed."
"What?"
"Up to speed. It means that soon they will be making two ships a day, or three, or even four. And that is not their only shipyard. They have-I don't know, ten, twenty shipyards, maybe more. Germany cannot make enough torpedoes to sink that many ships."
Klausner shrugged again.
"On the way to Kearny, we passed the airport in Newark. It is bigger-three or four times the size of Tempelhof-and as far as I could see, enormous bombers were about to be flown to England. Not shipped, Ernst, flown."
Klausner held up his hand to silence him. Ettinger followed his eyes. Inge was coming into the room with a tray.
"They are worse than the Viennese here," she said, putting the tray down in front of him. It held an assortment of pastries. "They take a Viennese recipe. If it says 'six eggs,' they use
twelve. If it says 'one cup of sugar,' they use two. And the meat!"
"The meat is incredible," Klausner agreed. "Cheap. Marvel-ous."
Sarah put a coffee service on a low table. Inge poured coffee, handed cups to Ettinger and her husband, then started to pour a cup for herself.
It was said softly, but it was an order. She put the pot down and smiled.
"We will talk later, David," she said. "You'll stay for supper, of course."
W E B Griffin - Honor 1 - Honor Bound Page 29