“A convoy with a Storch, a Piper Cub, a bulldozer, a tanker truck with twelve thousand liters of Avgas, and some soldiers to protect it left here about thirty minutes ago. It’ll take them three or four days to get there. It’ll take another day to put the wings back on the airplanes, and for the dozer to hack out an airstrip.”
“Where does the Flying Brothel fit into all this?” Armstrong asked.
“I’m an optimist,” Frade said. “Thirty minutes into his first flight, Willi Grüner—he went to flight school with von Wachtstein, and they flew Luftwaffe fighters together—is going to look out the window of the Storch and see an arrow and a sign in the snow that says Uranium Oxide Buried Here.”
Both Ford and Armstrong chuckled.
“And, so now that I have it, what do I do with the uranium oxide?” Frade asked, and immediately answered his own question. “I send it to the States. . . .”
“In the Brothel,” Ford interjected.
Frade nodded.
“Radioactivity?” Ford asked. “We arrive in the States—plane and crew—glowing brightly?”
“I don’t know, but it seems to me the Germans would have to have figured out how to deal with it. It took that submarine at least a month to get here from Norway.”
“Where can the Brothel land down there in all that ice and snow?” Armstrong asked.
“I doubt it can. But I’ve got a Lodestar that I can probably put on the ground and get in the air again. And then fly to Mendoza and rendezvous with the Brothel, which has been waiting patiently in Santiago, Chile, for the message to go to Mendoza.”
“I hate to piss on your parade, Colonel,” Armstrong said.
“Please do. I tend to get carried away with boyish enthusiasm.”
“Let’s say your man in the Storch finds the uranium oxide. Frankly, that seems unlikely, but let’s say he does. How are you going to get word to Santiago?”
“Are you familiar with the Collins Radio Corporation’s Model 7.2 transceiver?”
“Yeah.”
“Two of them are in the convoy I mentioned. They call that ‘redundancy.’ That means in case one breaks, you’ve got another.”
“But that’s fixed station equipment.”
“Not our 7.2s,” Frade said, just a little smugly.
“Yours are portable?”
“Not only portable but they work in airplanes. I’ve got one in my Lodestar, and if you can put the Brothel on the ground in Mendoza without breaking it, my whiz-bang commo man, Sergeant Siggie Stein, will put one in the Brothel. So you can get the message, o ye of little faith, that I have the uranium oxide and it’s time for you to leave scenic Santiago and pick it up in Mendoza. Or maybe even at the mouth of the Magellan Strait.”
Commander Armstrong shook his head in disbelief.
“And, forgive me for being of so little faith, but what are you going to do if your guy can’t find it in Antarctica?”
“I thought you might ask about Plan B,” Frade said. “Did you happen to notice as you passed through downstairs a nice-looking young man with two suitcases? He was probably looking lustfully at my baby sister.”
Both nodded.
“Well, I can understand why,” Ford said.
Frade gave him a withering look and went on: “He’s Second Lieutenant James D. Cronley Junior, Cavalry, USA, detailed to what used to be OSS in Europe. Those suitcases—brought from Germany yesterday—are full of, among other things, dossiers of high-level Nazis we’re looking for. Karl Boltitz—he’s the tall blond one downstairs looking lustfully at my older baby sister—used to be the naval attaché at the German embassy. He just brought from Germany the manifest of U-234, including the names of the Nazis aboard we didn’t have until just now.
“General Martín, who heads BIS, is going to Mendoza with us. He is bringing along his two experts in charge of ‘where are the Nazis hiding?’ Between them and the Gehlen officers who specialized in keeping an eye on the SS, we’re going to see if we can find these guys and, when we do, ask them, more or less politely, ‘Hey, Asshole, where’s the uranium oxide?’”
“I’m just a simple sailor . . .” Armstrong said.
Clete snorted.
“. . . but I don’t understand the urgency in getting the uranium oxide. It’s not an atom bomb, just the stuff from which they make the stuff that goes into atomic bombs. Right?”
“Did I mention that the Russians are sending—maybe that should be ‘have sent’—a guy down here by the name of Pavel Egorov? He was the NKVD’s man in Mexico City.”
“No, actually you didn’t,” Armstrong said. “But I can understand why an unimportant detail like that might easily slip through the cracks.”
Clete gave him the finger.
“So when do we go to work?” Armstrong asked.
“As soon as we leave here,” Clete said. “Would it hurt your Navy ego if I flew in the right seat of the Brothel in case you have trouble finding Mendoza?”
“Not if you promise not to touch any of the switches, levers, or the yoke.”
“You have my Naval Aviator’s word of honor, Commander, and we both know how much that’s worth.”
“Well, then, I guess we can get started. After you answer two questions.”
“Shoot.”
“Who is the gentleman sitting by the door with the riot gun?”
“He is my friend Enrico Rodríguez. You may call him suboficial mayor—that means sergeant major.”
“And what does he do with the riot gun?”
“When someone says something unkind or disrespectful to me, he puts a round in the chamber. That is a warning not to do it again. I give a pass the first time. The second time, however, Bang!”
“Fascinating. Second question: You don’t happen to have a third baby sister, do you? She doesn’t have to be anything special since Ford is still a bachelor at twenty-nine and can’t afford to be choosy.”
Very softly, Clete ordered, “Ponga un cartucho en la recámara, Enrico.”
It was Spanish for “Put a round in the chamber, Enrico.”
Enrico did so.
The chambering of a round in a Remington Model 10 shotgun was accomplished by pushing a metal button that was on the side of the receiver. This caused the spring-loaded bolt to slam forward, pushing the shotgun shell into the chamber. This caused a distinct—some would say menacing—metallic Clunk!
“Nice try, jarhead, but no brass ring,” Commander Armstrong said, then switched to perfect Spanish: “You wouldn’t shoot a nice old sailor like me, would you, Suboficial Mayor?”
Enrico smiled and shook his head.
“I only shoot people who don’t like Don Cletus, señor. I can tell you like him and he likes you.”
Frade grunted—but he was smiling.
“Shall we get our little show on the road, Colonel Don Cletus?” Armstrong asked.
[THREE]
When they came down the stairway from the second floor of the passenger terminal, Cletus Marcus Howell was waiting for them outside the VIP Lounge.
“I’d like a word with you, Captain Armstrong, and you, too, Captain Ford, if you’d be so kind,” the old man said, waving them into the VIP Lounge.
The two captains and Clete marched into the room. The old man followed, then closed the door.
“Captain Ford, I think you’d better show him the letter—” Clete began.
“My God, Cletus, I haven’t even opened my mouth and you’re interrupting me.”
“Sorry, Grandfather.”
“Believe it or not, gentlemen,” the old man said, “my son raised Cletus to show more respect to his elders than he’s showing now.”
“Yes, sir,” Armstrong said.
“By now I presume that he’s told you we’re going to need the Flying Brothel for purposes we cannot share with you, that your services will not be required for that, and that we’re going to fly you to Rio de Janeiro on the first leg of your trip to New Orleans.”
No one said a word.
“Well, has he
?” the old man demanded.
“Yes, sir,” Ford and Armstrong said, in chorus.
“I want to assure you this is in no way a suggestion that you are inadequate in any way,” the old man went on. “When I get to the States, I am going to get on the phone to Howard Hughes, tell him how pleased I have been with your services, and ask him how angry he’s going to be when I offer all of you employment at one hundred twenty-five percent of whatever he’s paying you.”
“You’d better show him the letter—” Clete repeated.
“Shut up, Cletus!” the old man snapped. “I’m not through!”
“Yes, sir.”
“In the meantime, vis-à-vis Rio, I am going to send the manager of the Hotel Astoria Palace a telegram telling him to put you up in the best accommodations he has until it’s time for you to board one of that goddamn Juan Trippe’s flying boats to take you to Miami.
“I think you’ll like the Astoria Palace. It’s on the Copacabana Beach. The best rooms provide clear views of the beach, on which some of the most beautiful women in the world go swimming in bathing suits no larger than postage stamps. Spectacular!”
He paused, grinning broadly.
“Well, how does that sound, gentlemen?”
“They’re not going to Rio,” Clete said.
“What did you say?”
“Show him the letter,” Clete said.
Armstrong handed the old man the President’s letter.
The old man read it.
“This proves my point that you can never trust a goddamn Democrat!” the old man exploded. “That sonofabitch never told me about this!”
“But the President of the United States and commander in chief of its armed forces did tell Commander Armstrong that I had his permission, at my discretion, to tell you about it, which I just did,” Clete said.
The old man glared at him for a moment.
“I was carried away by surprise,” he said finally. “You’ll please forgive that outburst. The President of the United States and commander in chief of its armed forces is, like myself, a Thirty-third Degree Mason. We Master Masons never lie to each other. I’m sure ol’ Harry had good reasons to keep it quiet that the crew was OSS.”
“There is no OSS, Grandfather,” Clete said. “Ol’ Harry put it out of business some time ago.”
“Then who the hell do you work for?”
“I guess you could say ol’ Harry,” Clete said. “I thought he told you.”
“I think it could be fairly said that we are ol’ Harry’s secret weapon,” Armstrong said.
The old man snorted, then asked, “So, what are you two wiseasses going to do now, as President Truman’s secret weapon?”
“Well,” Clete said, “first we’re going to load all the civilians on the Flying Brothel—civilians being defined as the women and children and you, Grandfather—and ol’ Tony and ol’ Dick here and I are going to fly it to Mendoza.”
“What’s in Mendoza?”
Frade ignored the question.
“The men who aren’t civilians will fly to Mendoza in my red Lodestar and one Lodestar chartered from SAA by the Bureau of Internal Security. These men will include some of General Martín’s specialists in tracking Nazis who have sneaked into the country.” He looked between the captains, and added, “This was the plan before my horny little brother broke the Kriegsmarine code and found the U-234’s landfall.”
“‘Horny little brother’?” Ford parroted.
“He wasn’t off the plane from Germany four hours before he started hitting on my little sister.”
“Did I hear that right?” Armstrong asked. “Your little brother hit on your little sister?”
“You’re goddamned right he did,” Clete said indignantly.
“Jimmy Cronley,” the old man clarified, “is not really his little brother, and his little sister Marjie is not really his sister.”
“Well, I must say I’m relieved to hear that,” Armstrong said.
“Marjie is my cousin. We were raised together. I think of her as my baby sister,” Clete said.
“May I ask where this Cronley fellow fits into this fascinating genealogy?” Ford asked.
“He lived next door to me in Midland, Texas.”
“And what’s he doing here? You said he broke the Kriegsmarine code? What code is that?” Armstrong asked.
“The Kriegsmarine furnished U-boat commanders with a list of one hundred rendezvous points. Coded, of course. One of them was the intended landfall of U-234. Just take my word for it, the horny little bastard broke it.”
“He’s a crypto expert?” Ford asked.
“He’s a goddamn second lieutenant. I don’t think he can spell ‘cryptographic,’ much less knows what it means. He was in the CIC solely because he speaks German. Then he found von Wachtstein’s sister-in-law in a line of refugees in Germany. Then the OSS, scraping the bottom of the barrel, got him out of the CIC and into the OSS just before they put us out of business. They made him OIC of the detachment guarding General Gehlen. His qualifications for that job were that he was an officer and they didn’t have any other officers.
“Then the CIC stumbled onto the Gehlen camp, and Jimmy wouldn’t let them in. As a matter of fact, he blew a hole in the engine block of the colonel-who-was-trying-to-get-in’s staff car with a .50 caliber machine gun. That kept the colonel out for the moment, but with a burning desire to come back and get in.
“The guy in charge, a really smart bird colonel, realizing the CIC colonel was going to come back, wisely got my horny little brother and any paperwork that could compromise Operation Ost out of Dodge by loading him on the next SAA Connie leaving Frankfurt. The one that arrived this morning.”
“And since he’s been here,” Ford said, “he broke the Kriegsmarine code and made a pass at your baby sister? I can’t wait to meet this guy. He sounds like Errol Flynn.”
“He’ll be, not counting us, the only non-civilian on the Flying Brothel to Mendoza. I’ll see that he sits as far away from my baby sister as possible. Which brings us back to Mendoza. Karl Boltitz brought us the names of the senior Nazi officers aboard the U-234. General Martín’s experts are going to see if they can find out where they are. If they do, we’ll ask them about U-234.
“An Argentine regiment, the Tenth Mountain, was until recently commanded by an Argentine colonel named Schmidt, who was more of a Nazi than Adolf Hitler.”
“‘Was’ commanded?” Ford asked.
“He met an untimely death,” Frade said. “But while he was alive, the Tenth Mountain helped unload German subs coming here secretly. We’re pretty sure if the U-234 did land here, the Tenth was involved. The officers still with the regiment probably—almost certainly—won’t want to talk about submarines. But Enrico here and the Tenth’s sergeant major are old buddies, and we can probably learn something from him. First thing tomorrow morning, we’ll fly Enrico down to the Tenth’s regimental barracks in San Martín de los Andes in a Húsares de Pueyrredón Piper Cub.”
Ford’s eyebrows went up. “What the hell are the Húsares . . . What did you say?”
“The Húsares de Pueyrredón. My father’s—and Enrico’s—old regiment. We have sort of a special arrangement with them.”
“And what makes you think, Colonel, that the regimental commander . . .”
“El Coronel Hans Klausberger,” Frade furnished.
“. . . who took over when the old one, Schmidt, met his untimely death—and how did that happen, by the way?”
Frade did not answer.
“Don Cletus shot him,” Enrico furnished matter-of-factly.
Ford’s eyebrows rose again. He didn’t respond to that, but went on, paraphrasing his original question, “. . . The new regimental commander’s going to let Enrico snoop around his regiment? That seems unlikely.”
“We’ll get General Martín to send a BIS agent with him,” Frade said. “BIS officers can ask anybody they want anything.”
“Okay.”
Clete n
odded. “Now, while everybody is boarding the Flying Brothel, why don’t we go check the weather?”
[FOUR]
Second Lieutenant James D. Cronley Jr. stood, alone, at the foot of the narrow ladder leading upward toward the Lockheed Constellation with Howell Petroleum Corporation lettered on its fuselage. He had with him not only the two large canvas suitcases he’d brought from Kloster Grünau, but a third one, an enormous saddle leather object once the property of el Coronel Frade. This held all the clothing he’d been told to take from the wardrobe, plus the last-minute addition of some really heavy cold-weather gear.
Enrico—who had brought the third case to him—told him that after el Coronel had read about the American admiral Richard Byrd successfully exploring Antarctica, he had ordered from the United States cold-weather gear identical to that Byrd had worn, with an eye to equipping the Húsares de Pueyrredón with it. He thought that the Húsares might have to fight the Chileans, either in the Andes or at the southern tip of South America.
Enrico also had told him that Don Cletus had said, in effect, “You’d might as well put a set of that stuff for me in the bag Cronley will take. That way I won’t have to worry about it.”
Jimmy looked up at the airplane.
If I try to carry just one of these up that goddamn steep and narrow stairway, I’m going to bust my ass.
Trying to carry all three would be tantamount to suicide.
He was just about to put his fingers in his mouth and see if a shrill whistle would summon assistance from within the aircraft or, for that matter, from anywhere in Argentina, when Marjorie Howell walked up to him.
“What are you doing?” she said. “Waiting for a bus?”
“Very funny.”
“Can I help with the bags?”
“I don’t think so. They’re heavy as hell.”
“And I’m a big strong girl.”
She then tried to pick up one of the bags and failed.
“But not that strong,” she said. “What’s in there, bricks?”
Before he could respond, she asked another question: “Jimmy, where do you think Clete picked up the nutty notion that we could possibly be interested . . . that way . . . in each other?”
He was about to reply when he realized she was standing so close to him that he felt and smelled her breath as she spoke.
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