“When your granduncle Guillermo—who never married, by the way—built the Avenida Libertador house, he put the master suite on the fourth floor. This was so that he could watch the races without having to mingle with the crowds, he said. My father, your grandfather, said it was because he could entertain ladies in his bedroom between races. Guillermo was my father’s older brother. They were very close.”
Now he’s giving me this rundown on the family—my granduncle who played the ponies and chased women—to make me feel close and part of things. If you can’t trust your own family, who can you trust?
“Shortly after the house was built, your granduncle Guillermo bet more money than he could afford on a horse he owned. It lost, and he found himself in trouble and had to turn to his father for help. He would be, of course, my grandfather and your great-grandfather. Your great-grandfather married María Elena, the second daughter of Edwardo Pueyrredón, which is where you and I, Cletus, get our Pueyrredón blood.”
That’s nice. What the hell is Pueyrredón blood?
“As my father related the story to me, Grandfather helped Uncle Guillermo out of his financial difficulties. Of course, Uncle Guillermo knew he would, for the honor of the family. He had done so before, and he would do so again. But this time Grandfather extracted a price. He bought Uncle Guillermo’s house. Uncle Guillermo used the money to pay his debt of honor. And then Grandfather told him he intended to put it on the market, since he didn’t need it, and Guillermo could not afford to buy it back. Thus, it would be necessary for Uncle Guillermo to move out, and to live and work at San Pedro y San Pablo until such time…”
“Saints Peter and Paul?” Clete asked, confused.
“Our estancia,” Frade explained. “Since you are going to be here for some time, you will of course visit there. It will, of course, be yours one day. Someday, I hope, in the far distant future.”
Did I hear that correctly? I have suddenly become heir apparent? Good thought, Pop. The heir apparent will certainly tell you anything about himself you care to know.
“Uncle Guillermo, of course, thought this would be a temporary arrangement, that he would spend a couple of months at San Pedro y San Pablo until things calmed down with Grandpapa. But Grandpapa was annoyed with him (though Grandpapa was not serious about putting the house on the market). When Daddy—your grandfather—married, his father—your great-grandfather—gave the house on Libertador to him as a wedding present. I was born there. When your grandfather died, he passed his home to my father. I live there now—a money sewer on Avenida Coronel Díaz in Palermo. My father did not wish to sell the Libertador house, for even then they were talking of building apartment buildings along Libertador, and the land value was rising, so he turned it into a guest house. I have always felt that Daddy would give the house to me on my marriage, but God called him home before that could happen.”
El Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade stopped, quickly pulled the crisp white handkerchief from his breast pocket, grimaced, and loudly blew his nose. “Disculpeme”—excuse me—he said.
My God, he’s crying! Am I supposed to believe that’s for real?
“Disculpame,” he repeated, dabbing at his eyes with the handkerchief. “Something was stuck in my throat. As I was saying, when your mother came here as my bride, we lived in the Libertador house when we were in the city. To her, living in the house on Avenida Coronel Díaz was like living in a museum. You were not born there, Cletus, but it was from the Libertador house, when your mother’s time came, that I took her to the hospital where you were born.”
He blew his nose loudly again, and picked up his wineglass and drained it.
He’s really shameless. And good. If I hadn’t figured the sonofabitch out, I’d really start to think he was shedding tears at the memory of my mother.
“After we have our lunch, if they ever get around to serving it,” he said, “we will drive over there and you will decide if you would be comfortable there.”
[FOUR]
Clete was to remember the drive from the Officers’ Club to the house on Libertador for a long time. His father drove. He left the Officers’ Club with a squeal of tires on the cobblestones, then raced through town practically flat out, blowing the very loud horn at whoever had the effrontery to place a car in his path, weaving in and out of the traffic—which was six lanes in each direction along Avenida Libertador. Just as Clete noticed the entrance to the racetrack, he made a sudden U-turn, tires squealing again, the huge Horche leaning dangerously, and pulled up before a stone building with an elaborate facade, where he slammed on the brakes.
His father stared at him triumphantly.
“It will be necessary to place the fate of the Horche in the merciful hands of God,” he announced. “It takes them forever to open the damned gates, and I have urgent need of the baño”—a toilet.
He left the car and walked quickly to the door of the house, where he lifted a huge brass knocker and banged it half a dozen times. The door was opened by an attractive young woman in a maid’s uniform. Frade walked past her, called over his shoulder, “You will please excuse me a moment,” and disappeared through a door.
The power of suggestion, Clete thought. My back teeth are now floating.
He was alone for perhaps two minutes, looking around the sparsely furnished room—heavy, wooden, leather-upholstered chairs and couches, and a round table with a silver bowl of flowers in the center—and then a short, plump, gray-haired woman in a gray dress appeared. She smiled.
“May I offer you something, Señor? A cup of coffee perhaps?”
“Yo soy Cletus Frade,” Clete said. “I am waiting for my father.”
“Pardon?”
“I am Cletus Frade, el Coronel Frade’s son. I am waiting for him.”
The woman clapped her hands in front of her, fingers extended. She did it again and again.
“Madre de Dios,” she said; tears ran down her face and she began to sob.
“It would be a kindness, Cletus,” his father’s voice came softly, from behind him, “if you permitted Señora Pellano to embrace you. She cared for you as an infant.”
Cletus looked back at the woman and then, somewhat embarrassed, held his arms open. She wrapped her arms around him, put her face on his chest, and sobbed unashamedly.
“A bit overemotional, perhaps,” Frade said. “But she means well.”
Clete, very uncomfortable, nevertheless gave the woman all the time she wanted, until she finally pushed herself away.
“Pardon, Señor,” she said.
“I am very pleased to meet you, Señora,” Clete said. It was the only thing he could think of to say.
“You can see his mother in his eyes, God grant that she rests with the angels and in peace,” Señora Pellano said.
“Yes, I saw that,” el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade said with emotion, and then found it necessary to blow his nose again. Then he cleared his throat. “Señora Pellano, I am going to show Cletus the house. If he finds it to his liking, he will be staying here. Perhaps you would be good enough to bring some coffee to the master suite?”
“Sí, mi Coronel,” Señora Pellano said.
I’m surprised he didn’t order more booze. Why? Probably because he figures now that I’ve been convinced that we’re all one big loving family, he wants to make sure I’m not too drunk to answer his questions when the questioning session begins.
The tour ended when Frade ushered his son up a narrow flight of steps in the back of the house into a large suite on the top floor.
“There’s an elevator,” el Coronel said, pointing. Clete turned and saw a sliding door. “The stairs are for the servants, or, it was said, for ladies whom Uncle Guillermo brought in by the rear door.
“You normally keep shutters closed against the afternoon sun in the summer,” Frade went on as he walked to the front of the room from the elevator, “but I will raise them to show you the vista.”
He pulled hard, grunting, on a strip of canvas next to one o
f the windows, and a vertical shutter covering a French door leading to a balcony creaked upward.
“There, of course, is the Hipódromo,” he said, pointing. “And the English Tennis Club. Beyond it is the River Plate. One day there will be an aeropuerto between here and the river; and there is talk of building a course for el Golf over there to the left. Do you play golf, Cletus?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Of course, and tennis, too. I will arrange for guest memberships at the English Tennis Club and at my golf club.”
How the hell did he know I play tennis?
“In the afternoon, and at night, when the sun is down, you catch the wind from the river,” Frade said.
Clete heard the elevator and turned in time to see the door slide open. Señora Pellano and the young maid who had opened the door were inside a beautifully paneled small elevator. Señora Pellano was carrying a coffee service, and the maid was carrying a tray with whiskey.
“So what do you think, Cletus? Would you be comfortable here?” Frade asked as he collapsed into a leather armchair.
“The house is beautiful,” Clete said.
It was not as large as it looked. Most of the rooms were small. In square feet, it was probably not as big as the house on St. Charles Avenue. And for that matter, there were probably more square feet in the houses in Midland and on the ranch. But it was inarguably more elegant than any of them, with crystal chandeliers in most of the rooms and corridors, and ornate bronze banisters on the stairway. And the luxuriously furnished suite which occupied all of the top floor certainly proved that Granduncle Guillermo knew how to take care of himself.
“Señora Pellano,” Frade said as she poured him a scotch, “if Señor 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 Señor Mallín’s Alberto, por favor. Tell him to pack Señor 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 Señor Cletus’s things here.”
“Sí, mi Coronel,” Señora 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 someone 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 Señora de Mallín, and some small gifts to the children, and a case of whiskey to Mallín himself. 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 Mallín will be rather glad to have you out of his house.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You remember Teniente Coronel Martín—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…. Martín came to see me, asking about you and your friend. If he did that, it follows that he has also been to see Mallín, or else will shortly do so. I suspect Mallín will be pleased that 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 reaching 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 rambunctious 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 Espíritu Santo, in the house of a French plantation owner taken over as a transient quarters. Sullivan 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.
Señora Pellano was there, along with a burly man in a brown suit. They were both looking down at the soundly sleeping Coronel.
“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” business 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 Teniente?”
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 carrying Clete’s father in the “Fireman’s Carry.”
He carried him to the elevator. Señora 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 Agüero
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 Agüero 1585” written on it. He crossed the cobblestones of calle Agüero and stopped before Number 1585. The house number looked European—blue numbers on a white background, a porcelain medallion mounted to a brass plate.
T
he 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 neighborhood.
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. Presumably 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 intentionally, 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 Germany, 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 contamination by entering the business premises of a Gottverdammte 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.
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