Blood and Honor

by W. E. B Griffin

  ‘‘You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life,’’ Clete called after her.

  ‘‘After we have our baby, I will be fat and ugly and you won’t even want to look at me.’’

  ‘‘Jesus, Dorotéa!’’

  ‘‘I wish women could just lay eggs, like chickens,’’ Dorot éa called from the bathroom. ‘‘You know, just sit on a nest.’’

  ‘‘You’re a lunatic!’’ he called as she closed the bathroom door.

  He put his hands under his head and looked around the room.

  I probably should have some sort of guilty feeling, making love to her in my father’s bed on the day I buried him, but I don’t.

  ‘‘You want me to take you home?’’ he asked in nearly a shout.

  ‘‘God, no!’’ Dorotéa called back. ‘‘Put me in a taxi!’’

  He got out of bed, pulled on his clothes, and reached for his battered pair of cowboy boots.

  She came out of the bathroom—much sooner than he expected—as he was stomping his feet in the boots.

  ‘‘Those boots are a disgrace,’’ she said.

  ‘‘I like them.’’

  ‘‘What and when are you going to do about telling Daddy?’’

  ‘‘What, I don’t know. When, next week. I really have to go to the estancia.’’

  ‘‘Why don’t you talk to your uncle Humberto? Or Claudia? ’’

  ‘‘You want them to know?’’

  ‘‘Everybody is going to know, darling, sooner or later,’’ Dorotéa said with unanswerable logic.

  ‘‘OK. You’re right. Claudia, I think.’’

  ‘‘Call me when you have something to tell me,’’ she said. ‘‘And now, put me in a cab.’’

  ‘‘I love you, Princess,’’ Clete said.

  ‘‘I should hope so. I don’t do what we just did with just anybody.’’

  She kissed him, rather chastely, on the lips, and walked to the door and waited for him to open it.

  ‘‘Antonio will know what we’ve been up to,’’ he said mischievously.

  ‘‘Everybody will soon know what we’ve been up to,’’ she said. ‘‘But I would rather that Daddy learned it from you.’’

  Holding hands, they descended the stairway to the foyer.

  ‘‘There are cars here,’’ he said. ‘‘Hell, I can send you home in a Rolls-Royce.’’

  ‘‘A taxi will do nicely, thank you just the same,’’ she said.

  As they reached the door, Enrico, now in a suit, appeared from nowhere.

  ‘‘Señorita Mallín requires a taxi,’’ Clete said.

  ‘‘I will have the chaffeur take her. Of if you wish, Señor Clete, I will take her myself.’’

  ‘‘A taxi, please,’’ Dorotéa said.

  "Sí, Señorita,’’ Enrico said. He turned toward an umbrella stand, and when he turned back, Clete saw he was holding a double-barreled twelve-bore vertically beside his leg.

  ‘‘Is that necessary?’’ Clete asked.

  Enrico ignored the question.

  ‘‘I’ll find a taxi. You and the Señorita wait here.’’

  He crossed the narrow area between the house and the fence, went through the gate, stepped out onto Avenida Coronel Díaz, and flagged down a taxi, a Model A Ford with the upper body painted yellow.

  When the door was open, he motioned for Clete to bring Dorotéa.

  ‘‘Why did I have to fall in love with a man people are trying to kill?’’ Dorotéa asked. She did not seem at all frightened. ‘‘Darling, telephone me just as soon as you talk to Claudia.’’

  "OK."

  She kissed him quickly and chastely on the cheek, then ran to the taxi and stepped in.

  Clete watched the taxi drive off, then walked back into the foyer and went back upstairs.

  X

  [ONE] 1728 Avenida Coronel Díaz Palermo, Buenos Aires 2055 10 April 1943

  With his shotgun leaning on the paneled wall behind him, Enrico had been half dozing in an oversize dark-red leather armchair in the foyer. He almost jumped to his feet when Clete came off the elevator.

  ‘‘I suppose you’re going with me?’’ Clete asked.

  Clete was now wearing a glen plaid suit, a stiffly starched white shirt, a somewhat somber tie, and wing-tip shoes. Khakis, boots, and a sweater were not the proper uniform to meet the head of the FBI in Buenos Aires—if only to politely tell him to go fuck himself.

  ‘‘Where are we going?’’

  ‘‘To the Café Colón, near the opera.’’

  ‘‘I will drive you.’’

  ‘‘I’ll drive myself, thank you,’’ Clete said. ‘‘I am a big boy. I can even tie my own shoes.’’

  The brilliant wit sailed over Enrico’s head.

  ‘‘I will go with you, of course,’’ he said.

  They went to the basement garage through the kitchen. The keys to the Buick were in the ignition, and it started immediately. But as Clete was about to put it in gear, Enrico touched his arm and opened the glove compartment and pointed.

  The garage was dimly lit, and it took Clete a moment to recognize that Enrico was pointing at a .45 pistol.

  It’s an Argentine copy, not a Colt 1911A1, he thought. But essentially the same gun.

  ‘‘OK, Enrico,’’ he said. ‘‘Gracias.’’

  Enrico closed the glove compartment, and Clete put the car in gear and drove out of the garage and headed downtown.

  Avenida 9 de Julio, which dead-ends at Avenida del Libertador at the tracks leading to the main railroad station, is one of the widest streets in the world. Like Libertador, it commemorates Argentine Independence. While he was in Washington Clete couldn’t help comparing that city to Buenos Aires. Libertador was something like Constitution Avenue, he concluded. But Washington didn’t have a main avenue called The Fourth of July. He wondered why not.

  There was another difference, too. Washington was ‘‘browned out.’’ This meant that signs were not illuminated, that the lights which in peacetime shone on government buildings were no longer turned on at dusk, and that by law the top half of automobile headlights were painted over.

  Theoretically, this was to deny German submarines re flected light that would allow them to more easily torpedo ships in the Atlantic. There was even a hint that it was a protective measure against German bombers attacking the nation’s capital.

  These measures might have made some sense in New York City, or Miami, but Washington was too far from the ocean for its night lighting to be seen there. In other words, he concluded, it was a propaganda action, to remind the American people they were at war. This also explained the Air Raid Wardens and the patriotic citizens who spent their nights on building roofs prepared to call the alarm when the first German bomber was sighted.

  The lights were on on Avenida 9 de Julio, and the huge advertising signs mounted on the buildings lining both sides of the street were brilliantly illuminated.

  So far as he could tell, they had not been followed from the house.

  He found both the Teatro Colón and a place to park the Buick without trouble, but they had to circle the theater— which occupies most of a city block—before he found the Café Colón, a not very impressive establishment literally in the shadow of the opera building.

  Tony had said Leibermann would be in the basement, so he looked for and finally found a narrow curving stairway leading downward. There were perhaps twenty tables in the dimly lit room, half of them occupied.

  He looked around the room. At a table halfway across it, a plump, rather dowdy-looking bespectacled man made an ‘‘over here’’ gesture with his hand, and Clete walked to the table. Clete signaled for Enrico to sit at another empty table. Without rising, the man put out his hand and said, in perfect Spanish, ‘‘Dr. Livingston, I presume?’’

  ‘‘And you must be Señor Stanley,’’ Clete said. ‘‘How nice to see you here in the heart of darkest Argentina.’’

  Leibermann laughed. ‘‘Thank you for coming. I wasn’t su
re you would. I was sorry to hear about your father.’’

  ‘‘Thank you,’’ Clete said, somewhat abruptly. ‘‘I’m not sure I should have come. What’s on your mind?’’

  A waiter appeared. Clete ordered a beer, and Leibermann pointed at his wineglass to order another.

  Leibermann handed him a small black-and-white photograph. It showed a young, small but well-muscled man in a skivvy shirt and cutoff utilities. He was posing ferociously with a Thompson submachine gun in one hand and a K-bar knife in the other.

  ‘‘My son,’’ Leibermann said. ‘‘Sidney. Corporal, First Raider Battalion, U.S. Marine Corps.’’

  ‘‘Nice-looking young man,’’ Clete said.

  ‘‘I had a very nice letter from a lieutenant colonel named Merritt Edson,’’ Leibermann said evenly. ‘‘He said that he felt privileged to have commanded such a fine young man; that he had been proud to recommend him for a Silver Star; and that his grave site has been very carefully marked, so that when the battle for Guadalcanal is over, they can recover his remains.’’

  ‘‘I’m sorry,’’ Clete said.

  ‘‘I have the letter with me. Would you care to see it?’’

  God, no, I don’t want to see it!

  Leibermann handed him the letter. Clete read it and handed it back.

  ‘‘The point I’m trying to make, Major Frade, is that you and I—if not everybody in the OSS and the FBI—are on the same side in this war.’’

  ‘‘It’s not Major anymore. I’ve been discharged from the Marine Corps,’’ Clete said, and waited for Leibermann to go on.

  ‘‘I heard about that,’’ Leibermann said, making it clear he didn’t believe it. ‘‘But what is it they say, ‘Once a Marine, always a Marine’? I didn’t hear that you’re out of the OSS, and this conversation will go easier if we don’t waste time bullshitting each other.’’

  Clete nodded.

  There’s something about this guy that I like. And I don’t think that it’s because his son got blown away on Guadalcanal.

  ‘‘My orders—nothing written, of course,’’ Leibermann said, ‘‘but I know an order when I get one—are that I am to have as little contact with the OSS as possible. That goes for the people who work for me, as well.’’

  ‘‘I’ve got the same kind of orders,’’ Clete said.

  ‘‘Let me give you a little background on me—unless you already have it?’’

  ‘‘I never heard your name until a couple of hours ago,’’ Clete said.

  ‘‘I’m from New York. I have a BS in accounting from the City College of New York. When I graduated, took the exam, got certified, there was not much of a demand for CPAs, especially Jewish ones. But the FBI was accepting applications for CPAs—in those days, you had to be either a lawyer or a CPA to get in the FBI—and there wasn’t much they could do to keep me out. I was Phi Beta Kappa at CCNY.’’

  ‘‘What do you mean, ‘keep you out’?’’

  ‘‘There’s a couple of jokes about Jews in the FBI. One: There are so few of us that we can hold our convention in a phone booth. And the second: The last time we had a convention, we voted to petition J. Edgar Hoover to treat us the way Hitler treats the Jews in Germany, as it would be an improvement.’’

  The waiter delivered the wine and beer. Leibermann raised his glass to Clete and took a very small sip.

  ‘‘OK. So I got in, surprised everybody by making it through agent’s school, and got myself assigned to the Manhattan Field Office. I went to work as an accountant. I was happy—I never saw myself as a Jewish Eliot Ness— and the FBI was happy, because I am a good accountant. When I caught people manipulating their books, they usually went to jail. Twice a year I shot my pistol, and then put it away in a drawer. You getting the picture?’’

  ‘‘I suppose,’’ Clete said.

  ‘‘After 1940, the FBI became really involved in South America. I hear they’re recruiting Latins now, but in the old days there were about as many Spanish-speaking FBI agents as there were Jews. Anyway, they ran everybody’s records and came up with the fact that Leibermann, Milton, spoke a little Spanish—’’

  ‘‘Your Spanish is pretty good,’’ Clete interrupted.

  ‘‘I took it for three years at CCNY, but most of what I have I picked up in Spanish Harlem. My father had a dry-cleaning store on 119th Street. Your Spanish is pretty good, too.’’

  ‘‘I got mine from a Mexican lady who kept house for us in Midland, Texas,’’ Clete said.

  ‘‘Surprising. You could pass for an Argentine,’’ Leibermann said. ‘‘Anyway, I got a form letter telling me I was being considered for a foreign assignment. I figured that would happen the next time it snowed in Miami on the Fourth of July, and didn’t pay any attention to it.’’

  ‘‘I don’t understand,’’ Clete confessed.

  ‘‘Quote, legal attaché, unquote, jobs in places like Buenos Aires usually went—still do—to nice young WASPs from Princeton, nice Mormon boys from Brigham Young, and once in a while, maybe even an Irisher from Notre Dame, but almost never to Jewish accountants from CCNY.’’

  ‘‘You’re here,’’ Clete argued.

  ‘‘The SAC here . . . You know what I mean?’’

  Clete shook his head, ‘‘no.’’

  ‘‘The Special Agent in Charge. The Argentines caught him doing something he shouldn’t have been doing and persona non grata-ed him. Their BIS . . . You know what that means, of course?’’

  Clete nodded.

  ‘‘. . . is pretty good,’’ Leibermann went on. ‘‘OK, so they made the ASAC, which means Assistant Special Agent in Charge, the SAC. He fired off a cable saying he absolutely had to have a Spanish-speaking ASAC as of yesterday. Scraping the bottom of the barrel, guess who they send down here as ASAC?’’

  ‘‘Leibermann, Milton,’’ Clete said, chuckling.

  ‘‘Right. I was here two weeks when guess who else got himself persona non grata-ed?’’

  ‘‘The SAC?’’ Clete said, chuckling again.

  ‘‘And to make it three in a row, can you guess who they made, temporarily, the new SAC?’’

  ‘‘His last name begins with L?"

  ‘‘Right. I figured that would last for as long as it would take to get a real SAC on the Panagra flight out of Miami, but that didn’t happen. I don’t know why. Nobody ever came down to replace me, and about six months ago, about the time you came down here the first time, they made the appointment official.’’

  ‘‘Maybe somebody decided you’re doing a good job,’’ Clete said.

  ‘‘I try. I figure that the FBI is supposed to be down here developing information, not, for example, blowing up boats and things like that.’’

  ‘‘People blow up ships down here, do they?’’

  ‘‘So the story goes. A lot of people—Colonel Martín of the BIS, for example—think that the OSS is down here to do things like that . . . things that violate Argentine neutrality. ’’

  ‘‘I’ve met el Teniente Coronel Martín,’’ Clete said. ‘‘He has a suspicious nature.’’

  ‘‘He’s a nice fellow,’’ Leibermann said. ‘‘We have an understanding. I make sure the FBI doesn’t go around trying to blow ships up, and we tell each other things. Like, he called me the night you shot the, quote, burglars, unquote, in your house on Libertador.’’

  ‘‘That was nice of him.’’

  ‘‘And when somebody blew up that Portuguese ship— what was it called?’’

  ‘‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’’ Clete said.

  ‘‘The Reine de la Mer,’’ Leibermann said. ‘‘It was called the Reine de la Mer. I called him and gave him my word I had no idea that was going to happen.’’

  ‘‘Why should you?’’

  ‘‘Right. I shouldn’t. I didn’t. And if anything like that happens again, I don’t want to know about that either.’’

  ‘‘That shouldn’t be any problem for either of us,’’ Clete said.

  ‘‘It
’s turned into a pretty good relationship, Martín and me. We tell each other interesting things all the time.’’

  ‘‘For example?’’

  ‘‘For example, just today he told me that there was a very interesting passenger on the Lufthansa flight. A man named Goltz. He’s a Standartenführer—that’s like a colonel —in the German SS.’’

  ‘‘How interesting.’’

  ‘‘It was to me. What’s an SS colonel doing in Argentina? ’’

  ‘‘I have no idea.’’

  ‘‘If you hear, would you let me know?’’ Leibermann asked. ‘‘What I’m suggesting is that we, you and me, have the same sort of arrangement I have with Teniente Coronel Martín. I hear something interesting, I’ll pass it on to you, unofficially, of course. And vice versa—you hear something interesting, you pass it to me unofficially.’’

  ‘‘If I ever hear something interesting, you’ll be the first to know,’’ Clete said. ‘‘Unofficially, of course.’’

  ‘‘Like, for example, what goes on at the G.O.U. convention this weekend.’’

  ‘‘The G.O.U. convention? I have no idea what you’re talking about,’’ Clete said.

  ‘‘At Estancia Santa Catalina," Leibermann said. "They’re going to sit around, drink a little vino, cook some steaks, sing, maybe do a little dance around a sombrero’’—he snapped his fingers—‘‘and when they can find a couple of minutes, decide who’s going to be the next President of Argentina, now that your father’s no longer available, and maybe even decide when to give Castillo the boot. You can understand why I’d like to hear anything you happen to pick up.’’

  ‘‘I didn’t hear about any convention,’’ Clete said. ‘‘And, if there is going to be one, I didn’t get invited.’’

  ‘‘Just so you don’t think I’m as dumb as I look,’’ Leibermann said, ‘‘one of the colonels who’ll be there is a tall drink of water named Juan Domingo Perón. He was a real close pal of your father’s. He came back from Germany yesterday on the same plane with the SS colonel. There are a lot of people, including me, who think the sonofabitch is a real Nazi. And I would like to know—the U.S. government would like to know—the role the Nazi sonofabitch is playing in the coup d’état, and the role he will play in the new government if your father’s cronies get away with it. Any information you could pass on to me would be greatly appreciated.’’