Finally he turned.
“When the opportunity presents itself, I will have a word with el Coronel Frade. And, in the meantime, you will keep me informed?”
“Of course, mi Almirante.”
“For the present, do what you think should be done about those two,” el Almirante said, gesturing toward the closed door.
“Sí, mi Almirante,” Martín replied. “Con permiso, mi Almirante?”
With an impatient gesture of his hand, el Almirante de Montoya dismissed him.
[TWO]
1728 Avenida Coronel Díaz
Buenos Aires
1925 29 December 1942
Like Tony Pelosi, Clete Frade also decided to write farewell letters—to his grandfather and his aunt Martha, and to Señorita Dorotea Mallín.
He spent the better part of an hour at the desk in Granduncle Guillermo’s playroom working on them, with absolutely no success. With regard to his grandfather and aunt Martha, he finally concluded that letters would be counterproductive. They would arrive several weeks after the notification of his death, and would only tear away the scab from that emotional wound.
He was glad that he told Martha at Uncle Jim’s grave that he loved her. And he was sorry he had not put the same thought in words to the Old Man.
Who probably would have responded by announcing something like “people who can’t handle alcohol should leave it alone,” or “only fools and drunks wear their emotions on their sleeve.”
So far as the No-Longer-Virgin Princess was concerned, perhaps there would be time tonight at the en famille dinner to have a private word with her—a private one-way word; I certainly can’t let her know that I think I’m about to get my ass blown away—during which he could try again to point out that she was much too young to know what love was all about, and that she had an exciting period of her life before her, during which she would meet a number of young men.
The problem of farewell letters resolved, it occurred to him that he hadn’t had anything to eat lately. He could, of course, push the call button and have them rustle up something in the kitchen.
What I really want—God knows what the Old Man will serve tonight, but it certainly won’t be simple—is a hot dog with onions and a beer. And there’s a place a couple of blocks down Libertador where I can get one.
He was in his underwear, because of the heat. He went to the wardrobe, took out a red polo shirt, a pair of khaki pants, a cotton blazer, and Sullivan’s boots. When dressed, he examined himself in the mirror and was satisfied that he was wearing the right thing—that he actually looked rather spiffy—for an en famille dinner.
Then he went down and backed the Buick out of the basement, drove half a dozen blocks down Avenida Libertador until he found the small sidewalk restaurant he was looking for, and went in.
He had a private chat with the man tending the carbón parrilla (a wood-fired barbecue grill), finally convincing him that he really wanted the hot dogs grilled and not boiled, and served with chopped raw onions on French bread. Then he took a table, ordered cervezas, and watched the people walk by.
Three grilled hot dogs with raw onion and a pair of liter bottles of beer later, he glanced at his watch. It was nine o’clock. He would just have time to drive to the house on Avenida Coronel Díaz and arrive at the socially accepted time—fifteen minutes late.
[THREE]
1728 Avenida Coronel Díaz
Buenos Aires
2115 29 December 1942
A butler in a tailcoat opened the door to his knock.
“Buenas noches, Señor Frade,” he said, straight-faced. “El Coronel and his guests are in the first-floor reception room.”
The first floor, the way the Argentines count, is really the second floor, Clete was pleased to remember.
He went up the curving, wide staircase two steps at a time, in happy anticipation of seeing the No-Longer-Virgin Princess, only halfway up remembering that if the opportunity presented itself to kiss her, he would reek of beer and raw onions.
He entered the reception room. The first person he saw was Major Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein, resplendent in a white Luftwaffe summer uniform, with his Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross dangling over his chest. He was chatting with Señorita Alicia Carzino-Cormano, who was in a floor-length white dress cut so that not only a strand of pearls but a wide expanse of bosom—both magnificent—were on prominent display.
Also present in the room were Señorita Carzino-Cormano’s mother and sister, also wearing shades of white; Uncle Humberto and Aunt Beatrice, she in a floor-length black gown, he in a white dinner jacket; half a dozen other people, including an Argentine admiral and the fat colonel of the Husares de Pueyrredón in mess dress; and their ladies; Señor A. F. Graham, in a white dinner jacket; and of course the Mallín family, Mamá, Papá, the No-Longer-Virgin Princess, and even Little Enrico, all done up in a dinner jacket.
Plus, of course, the host, el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade, in a white dinner jacket.
The No-Longer-Virgin Princess, when she saw him in the red polo shirt and blue blazer, smiled warmly and then giggled. Though they didn’t giggle, Señor Graham’s and Major Freiherr von Wachtstein’s faces reflected a certain amusement at Clete’s discomfort, and then at the sight of his father stalking across the room to greet him.
“At least you managed to arrive,” Clete’s father said as he took his arm and led him out of the room, “at the dinner I gave at your request. I suppose that’s something.”
“What I had in mind was just the Mallíns,” Clete said. “Sorry.”
“You should be glad that didn’t happen.”
“Excuse me?”
“Mallín came early,” his father said as he led him down a wide corridor and then through a double door. “I have some clothing in here that should fit you.”
“I don’t think so,” Clete said. His father was forty pounds heavier than he was. “Mallín came early and…?”
“I bought much of this when I was your age,” his father said, throwing open a closet that looked like a rack in a formal clothing store. “There’s a dinner jacket in here from Close and Marsh in London that should do.”
He found what he was looking for and thrust it at Clete.
“I don’t know about a shirt,” he said. “But there’s a drawer of them over there, and you’ll find studs and so on on my dresser. And now, the entertainment of the evening finished, I will return to your guests.”
Clete put his hand on his father’s arm and stopped him.
“Answer the question. Mallín was here, and…?”
“He wished to talk to me privately, man-to-man, as one father to another,” Frade said. “About your relationship with his daughter. While he assured me that he felt you were a fine young man of sterling character, who would never take advantage of an innocent young girl, as men of the world, we both knew that when two young people fancy themselves in love…et cetera, et cetera…and that he hoped I would be good enough to have a word with you. I told him that you are a man, and that I have no control over your romantic life.”
“That’s it?”
“I also told him that I rather understood your interest in his innocent young daughter. I suggested that you perhaps acquired your interest in young girls in the bar at the Plaza Hotel, watching middle-aged men fawning over Minas young enough to be their daughters.”
“You didn’t!”
Frade nodded. “And I also told him that he should be glad that you are both my son and an officer and a gentleman, who therefore can be expected to do the right thing by his innocent daughter, rather than one of the middle-aged men in the Plaza bar who behave despicably toward their young women.”
“He took this?”
“He seemed rather discomfited,” Frade said, obviously pleased with himself. Then his tone changed. “Cletus, I looked at Dorotea tonight for the first time as a young woman, not as a girl.”
“I’m in love with her, Dad.”
“To l
ook at your faces when you greeted one another, I would never have guessed,” Frade said. “But the way you said that makes the other things I intended to say to you unnecessary.” He paused. “You will be taking Dorotea into dinner—sitting with her. I had the butler rearrange the seating arrangements.”
Frade looked at his watch.
“Dress quickly; your odd Norteamericano notion of appropriate dinner dress is delaying the serving of dinner.”
“Sorry about that.”
“You should be,” Clete’s father said, and walked out of the room.
Clete was at the bathroom mirror tying his bow tie, when he heard the door to his father’s apartment creak open. He’d had his choice among dress shirts—too large or too small. He opted for a loose collar. After he adjusted the tie as best he could, he returned to the bedroom, expecting to see his father, or maybe the butler, sent to help him dress.
He found instead Major Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein, leaning on the closed door, holding a bottle of champagne in one hand and two glasses in the other. Peter held out the glasses to him.
“Hold these,” he ordered, “while I open the bottle.”
“I’m grateful, mi Comandante, especially since this act of Christian charity obviously tore you away from the magnificent Alicia…and her magnificent…” He made a curving motion above his chest to indicate what he meant.
Peter popped the cork.
“If you were a real officer and gentleman, which fortunately you are not,” Peter said as he poured the champagne, “I would be forced to challenge you to a duel for insulting the lady with whom I intend to share my life.”
“I’ll be goddamned, you sound serious.”
“The duel, no. The lady, possibly. She has, certainly, a splendid body. But she also has qualities I’ve never encountered before.”
“I’ll be damned,” Clete said.
Peter raised his glass.
“Fighter pilots,” he said.
“Fighter pilots,” Clete replied, tapping Peter’s glass with his. “And their ladies.”
“Since I am an officer and a gentleman, I will refrain from commenting that yours has a rather attractive mammary development herself, even if she is so recently out of the cradle.”
“Go fuck yourself, Peter.”
“I had an ulterior motive in bringing the wine to you,” Peter said. “Actually, several of them.”
Now he wants the favor.
“I’m not surprised.”
“Oberst Grüner called me into his office this afternoon.”
“The military attaché?”
Peter nodded. “He wanted to make sure that everyone here tonight sees that we have become friends…”
“And the champagne is intended to do that?”
“…because he has good reason to believe you will not be among us much longer.”
“Really?”
What the hell is this all about?
“He has learned from a reliable source in Internal Security that you are about to engage in a very foolish, amateurish operation…and that it is doomed to failure.”
“I can’t imagine what he’s talking about.”
“If his information is correct, you are about to use your father’s airplane to make a bombing run on a neutral ship in the Bay of Samborombón, with the hope of igniting her fuel tanks with homemade incendiary bombs.”
Shit, if Oberst Whatsisname knows, they’ll be waiting for us.
That miserable sonofabitch Delgano!
What is this “homemade incendiary bomb” bullshit?
Christ, they mean the flares. Which means they haven’t thought of a submarine!
“I think your Oberst Whatsisname has been at the schnapps,” Clete said.
“Oberst Grüner went on to say that the ship, the Reine de la Mer, is armed with two dual forty-millimeter Bofors and some heavy machine guns. It will have no trouble at all shooting you down.”
Clete met Peter’s eyes but said nothing.
“Now I personally felt that the Oberst’s information was wrong,” Peter went on. “For one thing, a pilot with your experience would know that if the pilot on such a mission were actually lucky enough to hit the ship with an incendiary bomb, the only thing the bomb would do is lie around on thick steel plates and burn itself out.”
“I never gave the subject much thought,” Clete said. “But now that you mention it, I think you’re right.”
“I did not offer my opinion on the subject to Oberst Grüner,” Peter said. “I suppose that I should have. And I daresay in some quarters that my failure to do so would constitute treason.”
“Why are you telling me all this, Peter?” Clete asked.
“Treason is a subject I’ve given a good deal of thought to, lately,” Peter said.
“Where are we going with this conversation?” Clete asked.
“That remains to be seen,” Peter said. “Did you mean what you said?”
“Said about what?”
“You said, if memory serves, that I have ‘a blank check’ with you.”
“As long as it has nothing to do with the…idiotic notion your Oberst Whatsisname has, you do.”
“I need your help.”
“Anything I can do, you’ve got it.”
“When I give you this, I’m putting my father’s and several other people’s lives in your hands,” Peter said. He took his father’s letter from his pocket and handed it to him.
Clete glanced at it.
“I don’t speak German, Peter. You’re going to have to translate this.”
“Yes, of course, I didn’t think about that,” Peter said, and took the letter back and read it aloud, translating it with some effort into Spanish.
Toward the end, through eyes themselves bleared with tears, Clete saw that Peter’s eyes, too, were teary. And his voice was breaking.
“I think I need a little more champagne,” Clete said, picking up the bottle and filling their glasses.
“Can you help me?” Peter asked.
“I can’t help you,” Clete said. “I’ll have to go to my father. He’ll have to hear what this letter says.”
Peter nodded.
Clete went to the bedside and pushed the servant call button.
“You’re doing what?” Peter asked.
“I’m sending for my father.”
“I didn’t mean tonight.”
“That’s all the time we have.”
“Grüner was right?”
There was a knock at the door, so quickly that Clete was surprised. It was a maid.
“Señor Cletus?”
“How did you get here so quickly?”
“El Coronel told me to wait in the upstairs pantry in case you needed something, Señor Cletus.”
“Please tell el Coronel that I need him here immediately; that it is something you can’t do for me.”
“Sí, Señor,” the maid said, and quickly left the room.
“Grüner was right?” Peter repeated. “Clete, you don’t stand a chance.”
“I am not going to bomb anything with incendiary bombs, OK? Now leave that alone, Peter, for Christ’s sake!”
Peter met Clete’s eyes again.
“As you wish, my friend,” he said.
“What now?” el Coronel demanded as he came in the room. “Your guests will start eating the furniture.”
He saw the look on Clete’s face and stopped.
“What is it?”
“You know I owe Peter my life,” Clete said. “It’s payback time. Or partial payback time.”
“A debt of honor?” Frade asked. “What is it?”
“Peter has a letter from his father. It’s in German. He’ll have to translate it for you.”
“Let’s have the letter. I speak German. Among other things you don’t know about me, I’m a graduate of the Kriegsschule.”
Peter handed Clete’s father the letter.
When he finished reading the letter, it took el Coronel Frade a long moment
before he trusted his voice enough to speak.
“I can only hope, my friend,” he said finally, “that one day my son will have reason to be half as proud of me as you must be of your father.”
“Danke schön, Herr Oberst.”
“Perhaps you will be able to find time in your busy schedule to spend a few days at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo in the very near future. I will ask my brother-in-law, who is Managing Director of the Anglo-Argentine Bank, to join us for a private conversation.”
“That’s very kind of you, Herr Oberst.”
“That business concluded, can we finally join Cletus’s guests?”
The No-Longer-Virgin Princess’ knee found Clete’s knee within thirty seconds of their taking their seats at the dinner table. Her hand followed a moment later.
Anticipating this move, Clete caught it with his own hand and held it.
She turned to him in surprise.
“You look very nice in your dinner jacket,” she said innocently.
“And you are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life,” Clete said.
[FOUR]
Radio Room
USS Alfred Thomas, DD-107
100 Nautical Miles Due East of Punta del Este,
Uruguay
0615 30 December 1942
Ensign Richard C. Lacey, USNR, the Communications Officer of the Thomas, a short, somewhat pudgy twenty-two-year-old, had spent most of the night trying to familiarize himself with the intricacies of the ship’s cryptographic machine. Though all of his effort had resulted in virtually no success, he was hoping he’d be able to muddle through when he had to.
When Chief Schultz was still aboard, he politely suggested more than once that while only the supervision of shipboard cryptographic activity was among the communication officer’s duties, not the actual operation of the equipment, it might be a good idea for him to show Mr. Lacey how the equipment actually worked.
Lacey declined the Chief’s offer, thinking that as long as the Chief was aboard, the Chief could handle the decryption operations. And he would of course supervise them.
Captain Jernigan himself made it crystal clear that Chief Schultz would remain aboard. “When you get a good chief, Mr. Lacey,” Captain Jernigan said, “any good chief, but in particular a good Chief Radioman, you do what you can to keep him. Chief Schultz will leave the Thomas only over my dead body.”
Honor Bound Page 62