W E B Griffin - Honor 1 - Honor Bound

by Honor Bound(Lit)

  Reflected there, her mother beside her, sat the Virgin Princess, a black lace shawl modestly covering her head.

  Just before he came to understand that she was mouthing some-thing to him-meaning she could obviously see his reflection, too-he was enjoying an erotic fantasy in which the Virgin Princess was wearing her loosely woven shawl and nothing else.

  She is obviously paying no more attention to the Cardinal Archbishop than I am, and as obviously staring directly at me as I am staring directly at her. So what the hell is she saying with those exaggerated motions of those soft beautiful lips?

  "I love you "... ?

  Oh, shit, Cletus, you're letting your imagination run wild. She wouldn't do that. You have given her no reason to believe that you consider her anything but a child. It is absolutely absurd to imagine that when she-twice-rubbed her breasts against you, it was anything but innocent. So what else could her lips be saying:

  It sure looks like "I love you."

  And Jesus H. Christ, even if it is-and it goddamned sure looks like it-a relationship with that girl is idiotic.

  So what do I do?

  Obviously, I purposefully misunderstand what she's saying.

  Clete just finished giving the Virgin Princess a happy, platonic, absolutely innocent "And how are you, Little Girl?" smile and wave of the hand when everybody around him suddenly stood up.

  Preceded by the Cardinal Archbishop, the casket was carried from its place in front of the altar down the aisle and out of the church, trailed by the family members and the dignitaries of church and state.

  Then the people in the first chairs followed, which meant that Clete proceeded down the aisle before the Mallin family did. As he passed the Virgin Princess, she smiled at him with those god-damned fall-into-them eyes, then pursed her lips in a kiss.

  Oh, shit!

  Outside, the German Ambassador expressed the profound sym-pathy of the German Fhrer und Volk over the tragic price paid by this heroic son of Argentina in the noble war against godless communism.

  Behind him, Clete saw Peter, holding a pillow.

  What the hell is that? Oh, yeah. The posthumous decoration.

  A German colonel stepped to the casket, read the citation, then turned to Peter and took a decoration from the pillow and pinned it to the Argentinean flag that was draped cockeyed across the casket.

  He and Peter then rendered the Nazi salute.

  Fuck you, Peter.

  What the hell is that decoration they just gave Cousin Jorge for what amounts to gross stupidity?

  It looks just like the one Peter is wearing. And the one Peter is wearing is a no-bullshit medal-I pulled that out of him during the Christmas Eve armistice. It ranks right up there with the Navy Cross, maybe even the Medal of Honor.

  And Cousin Jorge gets it because he got killed flying an artil-lery spotter he wasn't supposed to be flying in the first place?

  Bullshit!

  Peter and the German colonel did an about-face and marched back behind the German Ambassador. Six large troopers of the Husares de Pueyrredon picked up the casket, and the procession started off again.

  Clete watched them go, exhaled audibly, and said softly, "A Dios, Cousin Jorge. Vaya con Dios." And then turned and walked in the opposite direction.

  I don't have to watch the end of this. And I certainly don't want to go back to the house and face Uncle Humberto 's sad eyes again. Or the Virgin Princess.... Did she really just tell me she loves me?

  I will find the Buick and drive back to the house.

  And write a message that will be the sort of thing the skipper of a U.S. Navy destroyer might accept as genuine and that will convince Colonel Graham that letting me have a TBF is the only way I can take out the Reine de la Mer.

  [FOUR]

  4730 Avenida Libertador

  Buenos Aires

  1420 19 December 1942

  Clete entered the house via the kitchen, after parking the car in the basement garage.

  He was a little surprised that Se¤ora Pellano did not show up in the basement to silently chide him for opening the garage door himself, until he remembered that she was at the Big House. He was surprised again that none of the maids appeared in the kitchen while he prepared a wine cooler with two trays of ice from the refrigerator, then stuffed it with bottles of beer.

  But one did appear as he was trying without much success to open the sliding elevator door with his elbow. His hands were occupied with the wine cooler and the necks of two additional bottles of beer he was taking upstairs now so he wouldn't have to come back for them later.

  She slid the door open for him.

  "Gracias," he said. "And could you please fix me a sandwich? Ham and cheese and tomato? Something like that?"

  "S¡, Se¤or Cletus," she said, wrestling the wine cooler away from him. "Se¤or, there are two norteamericanos waiting for you in the library."

  "Who are they? Did you get their names?"

  "No, Se¤or Cletus," she said, as if this caused her great sorrow.

  When he pushed open the door to the library, Second Lieutenant Anthony J. Pelosi and Staff Sergeant David G. Ettinger, both neatly dressed in seersucker suits, quickly rose to their feet.

  "Good afternoon, Sir," Tony said formally.

  "Tony. David. To what do I owe the honor? Can I offer you a beer?"

  "No, thank you, Sir," Tony said, and then, "Clete, I met Mr. Nestor."

  "How did that happen?"

  "Dave brought him to the apartment and introduced him."

  "You're talking about Mr. Nestor of the Bank of Boston?"

  "I know he's the OSS Station Chief," Tony said.

  "He told you that?" Clete asked, looking at Ettinger for con-firmation. Ettinger nodded, just perceptibly.

  "And he also gave a line of bullshit that you have proved yourself... What did he say, Dave?"

  "Unsuitable," Ettinger furnished.

  "Unsuitable for the mission, and that he is now relying on me to carry it out. Real bullshit speech. Like in the movie where Pat O'Brien played Knute Rockne, and whatsisname, Ronald Reagan, played the football player." He stopped, then looked at Clete. "What's going on, Lieutenant?" Tony asked.

  "I found the Reine de la Mer," Clete said. "That's the German replenishment ship."

  "So did Ettinger," Tony said. "He told me on the way over here."

  Clete looked at Ettinger.

  "I finally found one of the Jewish refugees with some balls," Ettinger explained. "He told me that an agent of the Hamburg-Amerika Line contacted his firm-he works for a ship chandler- and asked them to furnish an extraordinary quantity of meat, fresh and frozen, plus other foodstuffs and supplies, for delivery by lighter to the Reine de la Mer in Samborombon Bay, where she is at anchor with 'mechanical difficulties.' The name matched the list. I figured this had to be the ship."

  "It is," Clete said. "She's anchored twenty miles offshore in Samboromb¢n Bay."

  "How did you find her?" Tony asked.

  "I went looking for her in my father's airplane."

  "So what's this all about?" Tony asked. "If we know where it is, why don't we just go sink the sonofabitch?"

  "This isn't the movies, Tony, and I'm not John Wayne, and neither are you two," Clete said.

  "Well," Tony said. "Maybe Dave isn't John Wayne, but I always thought that I..."

  "Tony," Clete said, smiling, "I got a good look at the ship. Not only is she twenty miles or so offshore, but she's equipped with searchlights and machine guns, and probably with twenty-millimeter Bofors autoloading cannon. There is no way to get near her. Or none that I can think of."

  "A small boat, at night?" Ettinger suggested.

  "You can hear the sound of a small boat's engine a long way off from a ship at anchor, Dave," Clete said. "And they're cer-tainly taking at least routine precautions; I'm sure that they sweep the area with floodlights at night, post lookouts, that sort of thing."

  Ettinger shrugged, accepting Clete's arguments.

  "I
went to see Nestor as soon as I could when I came back," Clete continued.

  "You didn't say anything to us," Tony interrupted, and looked at Ettinger for confirmation.

  "I didn't have anything to tell you, except that I'd found her. And that could wait until I talked to Nestor, and listened to what he had to say when I told him there was no way we could damage the ship where she lies-not with just twenty-odd pounds of ex-plosive."

  "I can do a lot with twenty pounds of explosive," Tony said.

  "Presuming you can lay your charges, right? I'm telling you, there is no way to get close enough to that ship to do that."

  "What about the airplane you found her with?" Ettinger asked. "Lieutenant, I don't want to sound like I'm questioning your judgment, but I really would like to put that ship out of action."

  "The airplane I found her with is my father's Beechcraft stag-ger-wing. It's a small civilian airplane. I couldn't carry in it more than three or four hundred-pound bombs-if I had three or four hundred-pound bombs-and I don't think I could hit..."

  "Then what was Nestor talking about? He said you had some wild idea about torpedoing the Reine de la Mer."

  "What I told Nestor was that if he could get me a TBF from Brazil..."

  "A what?" Tony asked.

  You don't know what a TBF is either?

  "A torpedo bomber. A single-engine Navy airplane with a bomb bay that can handle a torpedo."

  "They have them in Brazil?"

  "We're equipping the Brazilian Navy. It seems logical to me that we'd give them TBFs."

  "You could sink the ship if you had one?"

  Clete nodded. "Yeah. I think the reason they haven't thought of putting out the Reine de la Mer with one is that they don't have the range to reach here from Brazil."

  "You're thinking of refueling it where we were in Uruguay?" Tony asked.

  Clete nodded and waited for his reaction.

  "Where are we going to get the aviation gas for that?"

  Damn, I didn't think of that!

  "I don't know. But there is aviation gas in Uruguay, and so are the people who loaned us the walkie-talkies we lost. They can get avgas for me."

  Tony nodded.

  "Nestor didn't say anything about a torpedo bomber," Ettinger said. "Why is that a wild idea?"

  "I don't know," Clete said. "He said something like that had already been considered and rejected by the OSS. I told him I wanted to appeal the order up the chain of command to Colonel Graham. I think I can convince Graham that getting me into a TBF would be the best way-hell, the only way that I can see- to put the Reine de la Mer out of action."

  "And?" Tony asked.

  "He said that was out of the question. I had my orders and I would carry them out. And then I lost my temper, told him I had no intention of committing suicide, and then, I'm sorry to say, I threw him out of the car."

  "Lieutenant," Ettinger said carefully, "I can't think of a del-icate way to put this.... Did Nestor suggest you were overly concerned with your own skin? Is that why you lost your tem-per?"

  Clete met Ettinger's eyes, then nodded.

  "What?" Tony exploded incredulously. "That sonofabitch! You've been in combat. You're an Ace, for Christ's sake, a fuck-ing hero, and he knows that."

  "Cowardice is apparently in the eyes of the beholder," Clete said.

  Ettinger, recognizing the wordplay, smiled. Tony looked con-fused.

  "Well, fuck him, and his orders," Tony fumed on.

  "So what happens now, Lieutenant?" Ettinger asked.

  "The only thing I can think of is to keep trying to reach Colo-nel Graham," Clete said.

  "How are you going to do that?" Ettinger asked.

  "David, would the Alfred Thomas have a radio capable of com-municating with-hell, I don't know-some Navy radio station in Washington? Or with a station that could relay a message to Washington?"

  Ettinger shrugged doubtfully, but then nodded and smiled.

  "It's possible, Lieutenant," he said. "When Admiral Byrd was down in Antarctica, which isn't far from here relatively speaking, he was unable to communicate with the Navy. But there was a radio ham, an amateur in Cedar Rapids, who could talk to him- I think on the twenty-meter band. The Navy was very embar-rassed-I got this story from Mr. Sarnoff at RCA-but they had to swallow their pride and go to this fellow Collins and ask him how he did it. He started a company to build his equipment for the Navy, and it seems logical to assume that the Navy would at least try to equip their vessels in the South Atlantic with such equipment. But I don't understand..."

  "When the destroyer arrives, I'm going aboard. I'll identify myself as a Marine officer and ask her captain to send a message to Colonel Graham."

  "And if he doesn't have the right kind of radios, or let you send Colonel Graham a message, then what?" Tony asked.

  Clete shrugged. "If you can think of anything else, Tony, I'm wide open to suggestions," Clete said, then turned to Ettinger. "Unless you could set up a radio here?"

  Ettinger shook his head no. And then explained: "I don't have the equipment. And I don't think I could find it here. I asked around. Most of their equipment is pretty primitive. And from what I remember about what this fellow Collins used, it required a hell of an antenna. Nothing we could hide; it would attract a good deal of attention. Sorry, Lieutenant."

  "It never hurts to ask," Clete said.

  "So what do we do now?" Tony asked. "While we're waiting for the destroyer to show up?''

  "Try to think of some way to take out an armed merchantman besides using a TBF... or three lonely guys with twenty-odd pounds of explosive," Clete said.

  "One thing we absolutely must not do," Ettinger said thought-fully, "is tell Nestor about this little chat."

  "He's the OSS Station Chief," Clete said. "I don't want to put you in the middle of the fight between the two of us."

  "I told you before, Clete, that a man can't serve two masters," Ettinger said. "And the oath I swore when I came into the Army was 'to obey the orders of the officers appointed over me.' I don't think Nestor qualifies as an officer, Lieutenant. You do. That's the philosophic argument. What Tony would call the gut reaction is: 'If Lieutenant Frade doesn't trust this man, why should we?' "

  "No matter how this turns out, Clete," Tony said, "we're with you. OK? We decided that on the way over here."

  Christ, I'm no better than my father. I want to cry.

  "Which brings us back to Tony's question," Ettinger said. "What should we do now, Tony and I?"

  "Nothing. Unless someone comes to you and tries to order you to commit suicide by trying to take out the Reine de la Mer. This is a direct order, Lieutenant Pelosi: I forbid you to attempt any action against the Reine de la Mer without my specific approval. Clear?"

  "Yes, Sir," Tony said.

  "If you want to get in touch with me, have David call and say he's from American Express and I have mail there. I'll then meet you at five o'clock the same afternoon. Where?"

  "One of the hotel bars," Ettinger said. "That would look co-incidental."

  "The bar in the Plaza," Tony decided.

  "The bar in the Plaza," Clete parroted. "And now get out of here."

  Pelosi and Ettinger both offered their hands.

  Clete watched them as they walked to the library door.

  Pelosi turned at Ettinger's arm, surprising Clete, and then sur-prised him even more:

  "Detail, Ten-hut!" Pelosi barked.

  Ettinger came to attention.

  Pelosi raised his hand in a crisp salute and held it.

  "Permission to return to post, Sir?"

  Clete returned the salute.

  "Post, Lieutenant Pelosi."

  Pelosi brought his saluting hand crisply to his side, then barked, "Haa-bout, Face!" and "Faw-wud, Harch!" and marched out of the library.

  Just in time. Otherwise they would have seen the tears running down my cheeks.

  [FIVE]

  Recoleta Cemetery

  Buenos Aires, Argentina

>   1435 19 December 1942

  As he observed the casket of el Capitan Jorge Alejandro Duarte being placed before the altar inside the Duartes' enormous marble tomb, Hauptmann Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein decided that he was honor bound to inform Lieutenant Cletus Howell Frade that an attempt would be made to murder him.