Empire and Honor

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Empire and Honor Page 29

by W. E. B Griffin


  Clete got in the bed. Ninety seconds later, blood began to flow from his vein into his godfather’s.

  Frade saw Ashton standing in the doorway, and motioned for him to come to the bed.

  “Yes, sir?” Ashton said.

  Mother Superior snorted.

  “Get on the Collins to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo,” Clete ordered. “Tell el Jefe—”

  “Colonel, it’s quarter to two in the morning. No one will be standing by the radio.”

  “Then get on the telephone and call them and tell them—without mentioning my name—to get on it. When that happens—make sure this is encrypted—tell el Jefe to get out to the Jorge Frade airport and find out what happened there after we left. Specifically, what happened to General Martín. And also what happened to the nine-o’clock flight to Europe. Did it get off on time? Get off at all? If not, what happened? Don’t tell him Enrico and I are here, or that Colonel Perón is with us.”

  “Colonel,” Ashton said hesitatingly, “if I call them on the Collins, el Jefe will know where you are.”

  Frade considered that for a moment.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I guess I’m not thinking very clearly.”

  “I wonder why not?” Mother Superior said, as she took his pulse. “When was the last time you had something to eat?”

  “Lunch,” he said.

  Mother Superior looked at Ashton.

  “When el Coronel Frade is finished giving his orders, wake up a cook and have him ready to prepare a couple steaks for these two when they wake up.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ashton said.

  “Wake up?” Clete challenged. “What makes you think I’m going to sleep? I can’t afford to go to sleep.”

  She snorted.

  “And have el Jefe find Dorotea,” Frade went on, “and tell her we’re all right. Personally. Not over the telephone.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Is that all?” Mother Superior asked. “If so, just lie there quietly and let the transfusion work.”

  “I’ll take care of everything, Colonel,” Ashton said.

  Clete lowered his head to the pillow, and then had one more thought and raised his head.

  “Make sure no one gets off the hill and starts talking,” he said. “‘You’ll never believe who’s in the infirmary.’”

  “No one will,” Ashton said.

  Then Clete had one more thought.

  “Do something about Colonel Perón’s uniform. Get it cleaned somehow.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I said lie there quietly!” Mother Superior ordered, then waved everyone out of the room.

  Clete lowered his head again and looked at the ceiling.

  The ceiling lights went out, leaving only a small table light to illuminate the room.

  He looked at Perón and found Perón’s eyes on him.

  “Now that they’ve gone, I’ve got something to say,” Perón said.

  Now what?

  “We both know there has been bad blood between us, Cletus. But the blood flowing from your veins into mine has wiped that slate clean. God has changed all that. I have realized the godfather-godson relationship works both ways: God sent you to help me, to help Argentina just when we needed help most!”

  Jesus Christ, does he believe that?

  Even more incredibly, does he expect me to believe it?

  “Greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for another,” Perón went on. “You did that for me. General Martín did that for me. Even Suboficial Mayor Rodríguez did that for me. For Argentina!”

  He’s delirious! Out of his gourd!

  Clete closed his eyes.

  If I’m not looking at him, maybe he will shut the hell up.

  VIII

  [ONE]

  The Infirmary

  Casa Montagna

  Estancia Don Guillermo

  Kilometer 40.4, Provincial Route 60

  Mendoza Province, Argentina

  0815 18 October 1945

  When Clete opened his eyes, he saw that sunlight filled the room. He also saw Major Maxwell Ashton III standing at the foot of his bed.

  I guess I passed out listening to Tío Juan’s babbling.

  He looked at the adjacent bed. It was empty.

  “Where’s Perón?”

  “Mother Superior is sewing him up. She said she waited until he had a little rest. She just started. She said I should wake you up.”

  Clete grunted.

  “So good morning,” Ashton said. “How do you feel?”

  “Peachy keen. What do we hear from el Jefe?”

  “I couldn’t get him on the Collins until the regular schedule at oh-six-hundred. By now, he should be getting close to the airport.”

  “Which means we won’t hear from him for another two hours and something. Not before eleven hundred, probably.”

  “Later even, depending on what he finds at Jorge Frade. You hungry?”

  “Starved.”

  “Mother Superior put Enrico to work on breakfast. You’re to get steak and eggs, orange juice, bread and butter, and not more than two glasses of wine.”

  “She’s letting me have wine?”

  “She’s insisting on it. Says you need it after the transfusion.”

  “And where is this feast to take place?”

  “In the dining room of your apartment. You need some help?”

  “Do I look that bad?”

  “Since you ask, Colonel, right now you look like death warmed over. And that’s a hell of an improvement over how you looked at oh-one-thirty. You must have had a hell of a day yesterday.”

  “And the fun may just be beginning,” Clete said, as he sat up and swung his legs out of bed.

  He felt a little dizzy, but managed to get on his feet and stay there.

  —

  The dining room of Clete’s apartment was the master suite of the big house. He didn’t make it that far. The aroma of searing meat caught his attention as he walked down the corridor and he followed his nose into the kitchen.

  Enrico, wrapped in a white apron, was standing at a parrilla and holding a large knife against a large, three-inch-thick bife de chorizo.

  “When you finish making that inedible,” Frade said as he slipped into a chair at a large kitchen table, “I’ll eat it here.”

  “I cooked at this parrilla for your father before you were born, Don Cletus. I know what I’m doing.”

  “You want the wine?” Ashton asked.

  “I never challenge Mother Superior’s medical opinions.”

  Ashton opened a bottle of Don Guillermo Cabernet Sauvignon 1940 and poured all of it into three glasses, handing one to Enrico and one to Frade and raising the third.

  “What do we drink to?”

  “Perón is still alive,” Frade said seriously. “And maybe we can avoid a civil war.”

  “That really worries you, doesn’t it?” Ashton asked. “A civil war?”

  “Not only would that really fuck up Operation Ost for us, but I’ve heard a lot more than I wanted to about the one they had in Spain.”

  “From who?”

  “From Hansel as we were flying back and forth across the drink. Spain’s was apparently really bad, and I don’t want that to happen here. And not only because of what it would mean for this operation.”

  “Well, we should be hearing from el Jefe pretty soon about what happened at the airport.” Ashton raised his glass. “Long life to your Tío Juan!”

  As if the toast had been his cue, el Coronel Juan Domingo Perón came into the kitchen.

  He was in a sort of ratty cotton bathrobe, thin, washed out, and not quite large enough for him. He had a bandage covering most of his cheek. He looked pale but somewhat better.

  “Very kind of you, señor,” Perón said. “But I don’t believe I have the privilege of your acquaintance.”

  Clete took a healthy sip of his Cabernet Sauvignon and was surprised at how quickly—immediately—he felt the effect of the alcoho
l.

  I guess that’s because I’ve been bled.

  “Colonel Perón,” Clete said, “may I present my deputy, Major Maxwell Ashton the Third? Max, this is my Tío Juan.”

  The two shook hands.

  “Aside from my godson, Major, you’re the first member of the OSS I’ve ever actually met.”

  “Of the what, Colonel?” Ashton asked.

  Clete thought: Why do I think this is going to be a disaster?

  “Enrico,” Frade ordered, “get el Coronel a glass of wine, and then go in the wardrobe and get him a decent bathrobe. I think there’s a couple still in boxes. And where’s my breakfast?”

  “Right away, Don Cletus,” Enrico said, gesturing for the plump, pleasant-looking middle-aged woman who was “el patrón’s cook” to take over the parrilla.

  She dropped what looked like a half pound of butter into a fire-blackened flying pan on the parrilla and then—seemingly without looking—began to break eggs into a bowl with one hand.

  My God, my mouth is actually watering!

  Enrico returned carrying a gray box printed with the legend Sulka et Cie, Rue de Castiglione, Paris.

  “Oh, my God!” Perón said. “If that’s what I think it is!”

  “What would that be?” Frade asked.

  He took another swallow of the wine.

  I’m about to get fed, why not?

  “You were with us, Suboficial Mayor,” Perón said. “Remember?”

  “I remember, mi Coronel,” the old soldier said.

  “We had time off—I forget why—from the Kriegsschule and your father took me and Eduardo Ramos to Paris,” Perón recalled emotionally. “We stayed at the Hotel Continental. We had lunch, with a good deal of wine. No. Now that I think of it, your father was drinking cognac and water—the French call it ‘fin de l’eau,’ which means ‘the end of water.’ And after lunch we went across the street to Sulka, where your father bought shirts . . .”

  “There’s still boxes of them in the wardrobe,” Enrico furnished.

  “. . . and then he saw the robe,” Perón finished.

  Enrico opened the box. He held up what Clete realized was a “dressing robe” rather than a bathrobe. It was of padded blue silk with a white collar and lapels.

  “That’s it,” Perón said. “And your father said, ‘I’ll take all you have. Send them over to the hotel.’ Your father was like that, Cletus. Generous to a fault. I always thought he was going to give one to Eduardo and me, but that didn’t happen. . . .

  “But now he has! He’s given me not only the robe, but his son, as well!”

  Oh, shit! Frade thought, looking over the rim of his wineglass as he sipped.

  Enrico held out the robe for Perón to put it on.

  “There’s a mirror in there,” Perón said, pointing, and then marched out of the kitchen toward the apartment.

  Enrico asked permission with his eyes, and when Clete nodded, Enrico followed Perón.

  The cook put a plate before Clete. It held the large bife de chorizo, now covered with four sunny-side-up eggs, and a pile of what he thought of as “home-fried” potatoes.

  Clete looked up from his breakfast as Tío Juan came back in the kitchen wearing the robe.

  Even with that bandage on his face, he is a good-looking sonofabitch.

  He looks like someone in charge, someone who can be trusted.

  Unless you know him well, in which case you know not to trust him half as far as you can throw him.

  “Sit down and have some breakfast,” Clete said, as he dipped a piece of potato in an egg yolk.

  “That was my intention, Cletus,” Perón said, his tone making it clear he didn’t like being told what to do. “And I believe I will have a taste of the wine.”

  —

  As the wine had had a near-immediate effect on Clete, so did the steak and eggs.

  He really thought he could feel strength come back into his body.

  Christ, how much of my blood did Mother Superior pump out of me and into my Tío Juan?

  Or is it just the wine making me feel better?

  That seems logical.

  —

  “Well, where do we stand in dealing with our problem?” Perón asked as he sipped his wine and awaited his plate.

  “Our problem”?

  It’s you they’re trying to kill, not me!

  “We’re waiting to hear from Buenos Aires, to learn what happened at the airport,” Clete said. “For example, is General Martín still alive?”

  “And if someone calls here to provide that information, Cletus, they will know that you’re here and that I am almost certainly with you.”

  “We have a way around that.”

  “When do you expect to hear from Buenos Aires?” Perón demanded.

  “Before noon.”

  “Then we have time for you to tell me exactly what’s going on around here,” Perón said.

  Oh, shit. This is what I’ve been afraid of.

  And I can’t say it’s none of his goddamn business, either.

  I guess I could, now that I think about it, but that would (a) sure piss him off and (b) make him determined to find out.

  Unless of course he does get himself killed.

  “Okay. I’ll tell you what I can.”

  “You’ll tell me everything. And I think we had better have this conversation in private. Major Ashton, will you excuse us?”

  “Stay right where you are, Max,” Clete snapped. He turned to Perón. “Let’s clear the air. You don’t issue any orders here. Your status is that of an officer under arrest by order of President Farrell. My status is that I am acting at the orders of the president. Until the president releases you from arrest—or General Martín, the only other person who can issue an order to me right now, does, and we don’t know what happened to him—that makes you my prisoner.”

  “I can’t believe what I just heard!” Perón said. “How dare you talk to me that way!”

  “You better believe it, and tell me you do or I’ll have Major Ashton lock you in a room and keep you there until this mess is resolved.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!”

  “Major Ashton, get a couple of the Húsares,” Frade ordered, “and take Colonel Perón to the detention facility.”

  Ashton popped to his feet.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The Húsares? There are Húsares here?” Perón asked, visibly shocked.

  I meant to say “ex-Húsares.”

  But if he wants to think that . . .

  “And they call me ‘Coronel,’” Clete said. “Now, shall I have Major Ashton get a couple of them? Or are you going to behave?”

  Perón considered that option for a full thirty seconds.

  “The worst thing that could happen under these circumstances is that there be more bad blood between us,” he said finally. “Will you accept my parole?”

  “Accepted. Sit down, Major Ashton.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ashton said, and did so.

  Okay, now what?

  I guess I’d better tell him everything. I don’t see any other option.

  “As to what we are doing here,” Clete began, “shortly before the German surrender, when General Reinhard Gehlen, who ran Abwehr Ost, realized that defeat was inevitable . . .”

  —

  Telling that story took just over half an hour, during which Perón asked a number of pertinent questions. They reminded Clete that while Juan Domingo Perón was a three-star asshole, he didn’t get to be a colonel, much less simultaneously vice president, secretary of War, and secretary of Labor and Welfare of the Argentine Republic, by being stupid.

  “I have always regarded the Bolsheviks as a monstrous danger to Christian society,” Perón announced. “It was for that reason that I supported National Socialism, even after I learned of the horrible things the Nazis were doing.”

  Well, here comes the bullshit.

  What did I expect?

  “And I’m proud, deeply proud, that my god
son, the son of the best friend I have ever had, is fighting this menace. What I can’t understand—what hurts me deeply—is why I have been kept in the dark about this.”

  “You think you can handle the answer, Tío Juan, if I tell you why?”

  “I would be grateful if you would.”

  “No one trusts you. Not only is there good reason for people—your brother officers—to believe that you are getting rich getting Nazis out of Germany to escape getting hung, but your personal life—specifically your sex life—including your refusal to get rid of that pervert Nulder—does not tend to make people think well of you.”

  Clete expected an explosion—What the hell, get it over with—but it didn’t come.

  “As far as profiting,” Perón replied calmly, “if you wish to call it that, from the current problems senior members of the former German Reich are experiencing is concerned—guilty as charged. But there are two reasons, one of which I’m more than a little ashamed of. That is, my personal finances. I have been a poor man all of my life.”

  He patted the quilted robe.

  “I’ve never been able to say, ‘I’ll take all you have.’ I’ve never been able to take a two-minute look at an automobile on the Kurfürstendamm and then tell them to ship it to Argentina, the way your father did with his beloved Horch.

  “But getting personally rich from the Nazis, as you put it, was not my motive when I decided to part them from their money. That came later. When this started, and it started in 1942, not six months ago, my intention was to accumulate the funds to enter politics. You cannot seek public office without access to vast sums of money. Which I did not have. When I realized it was my fate to lead Argentina, indeed, South America, in the postwar years . . .”

  Does he expect me to believe this horseshit?

  Does he believe it himself?

  I’ll be goddamned if I know.

  “. . . I knew I would need a fortune and I went after getting one in the only way I knew how. And is it so terrible to turn dirty money toward a good purpose?

  “I confess—and it is shaming—that I have diverted some of these funds, a very small percentage of the total, to my own use. I am not a perfect man.

 

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