Unfortunately, friendship was obviously impossible under the circumstances. Inevitably—and sooner rather than later—Frade was going to become embroiled with the Germans in something that might not be in Argentina’s best interests.
“May I speak freely, mi General?” Martín asked.
“I expect you to, Coronel.”
“There are two types of intelligence agents, Sir. The first kind is sent into a country by a foreign power. His activities are by definition espionage, and can be dealt with in that reference.
“The second is a citizen who is employed by a foreign power to conduct activities against his native country. That is considered treason and can be dealt with in that reference.
“Young Frade falls somewhere between the two. He is an Argentine citizen by birth. He is the great-grandson of General Pueyrredón. He is the son of a prominent Argentine who, had he not been assassinated, most likely would have become President of Argentina. And as you point out, he is the godson of el Coronel Perón, another prominent Argentine. And, finally, as you pointed out, Señor, he rendered considerable service to Argentina during the execution of Outline Blue.
“At the same time, he is a serving officer of the United States Corps of Marines. After distinguished service as a pilot in the Pacific, he was recruited by the OSS to come down here—I am sure because of his father.
“Under the Constitution, which the new government has promised to obey in every detail, a citizen may not be deported. That leaves the alternatives of arresting him and trying him for treason, or eliminating him. I respectfully suggest, Señor, that the government would need clear and convincing proof that Mayor Frade’s actions seriously damaged Argentina before they brought him to trial for treason, and I confess, Sir, that I have nothing—”
“No proof that he was responsible for the assassinations of the Germans, you mean?”
“I have no proof of that, Sir. But even if I did, I respectfully suggest that no jury, much less a military court-martial, would convict Frade for avenging the assassination of his father.”
“So how would you suggest we deal with the problem, Coronel?” Obregon asked.
“Señor, I have no suggestions to make. Frankly, I am glad that the responsibility for the decision is not mine.”
General Obregon looked at Martín for a long time before he spoke. “Tell me about elimination, Martín,” he said finally. “Presumably that’s a last resort?”
“If Señor Frade were to be killed in an automobile accident, Señor, there would be demands for a full and impartial investigation from many quarters. Including, Señor, I would suggest, the office of the President.”
“As well as from el Coronel Perón,” Obregon said. “So elimination is not really an option, is it?”
“I would recommend against it, Sir.”
“Presumably, you have him under surveillance?”
“Of course, Sir.”
“Have you met him?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“I saw him for no more than thirty seconds at Coronel Frade’s funeral. But Coronel Perón has arranged to have me invited to his wedding. Maybe there will be an opportunity then.”
“Yes, Sir.”
General Obregon put his hands behind his back and paced back and forth to the window twice. Then he smiled at Martín.
“Thank you so much, Coronel, for the briefing. I won’t officially be taking up the directorship for several days. But if anything happens, anything you feel should come to my attention, please get in touch immediately.”
“Sí, Señor.”
“And when I do come in, please have the files I asked for ready.”
“Sí, Señor.”
Obregon put out his hand. “I look forward to working with you, Coronel,” he said. Then he reclaimed his hand and came to attention.
Martín realized he was waiting to be saluted. He did so. Obregon returned it, gestured to Mayor Molina to open the door, and then marched out of the room.
[THREE]
Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo
Near Pila, Buenos Aires Province
1605 1 May 1943
The Lockheed Lodestar was a fourteen-passenger transport aircraft slightly smaller, but faster, than the twenty-one-passenger Douglas DC-3. It had a takeoff weight of 17,500 pounds and a 69-foot wingspan; and it was powered by two 1,200-horsepower Wright Cyclone engines, which gave it a top speed of 259 mph over a range of 1,800 miles.
Cletus Frade knelt by the left undercarriage of his Lockheed Lodestar (for it was his, having been his father’s) and studied the wheel, the tire, the brakes, the piston, and even the cavity in the wing into which the landing gear would retract, for signs of damage and hydraulic leaks, and other indications of potential malfunction.
The trouble, he thought, is that I don’t have a clue what I’m looking for. Or, for that matter, at. The only thing I know for sure is that this is a great big sonofabitch, and the people who designed it were perfectly justified in deciding that it takes two people to fly it.
On the other hand, you are a Marine aviator, complete with wings of gold, right? And you already have flown this big sonofabitch all by yourself three times—no, more than three times: From Pôrto Alegre to Santo Tomé. From Santo Tomé to the military field at Posadas. From Posadas here. From here to the field at Campo de Mayo. And from there back here. That’s five times, right?
That’s five successful takeoffs and five good landings—a good landing being defined as any landing you can walk away from—right? So there is no reason you can’t do it again, right?
Wrong.
What you know you should do, pal, is tell Ashton you’ve changed your mind, and what you’re going to do is fly him to Uruguay in one of the Piper Cubs and land him in some farmer’s pasture. That you know how to do.
He ducked under the fuselage and examined the right landing gear and its well.
He had his head in the wheel well when someone spoke to him.
“May I be of some help, Señor Frade?”
There was a man standing by the engine. It took Clete a moment to remember his name: Benito Letieri. He was an aircraft mechanic, charged with maintaining the Cubs and, before Clete had put it into Samborombón Bay, the Beech Staggerwing.
Clete also had no doubt that even if Letieri wasn’t actually one of Coronel Martín’s BIS agents, he reported to the BIS whatever Clete did with the airplanes.
It was a moot point. There was no way he could fly to Uruguay without Martín hearing about it. It didn’t even matter if Martín learned after the fact that Ashton had been aboard the Lodestar when he took off. He didn’t think the Argentine Army Air Corps would try to shoot him down.
For that matter, it was damned unlikely that the obsolete fighters of the Argentine Army Air Corps—Seversky P-35s, with a top speed of 275 mph—could be scrambled in time to catch up with the Lodestar to shoot him down.
“Well, I want to run the engines up, Benito,” Clete said. “And I thought I’d give it a little test hop. Would you like to go along?”
“Sí, Señor. Thank you.”
“Get somebody to roll a fire extinguisher out here, and then come on board.”
“Sí, Señor.”
Clete looked around until he found Enrico Rodríguez.
“You want to go for a little ride, Enrico?”
“Sí, Señor Clete,” Enrico said with absolutely no enthusiasm.
The Dash One—Pilot’s Operating Manual for Lockheed Model L18-Series Aircraft—was where he had left it, on the shelf under the windshield in the cockpit.
He sat down in the pilot’s seat and read the STARTING PROCEDURE and TAKEOFF PROCEDURE and LANDING PROCEDURE sections very carefully.
Benito came into the cockpit. Clete looked out the side window and saw that a wheel-mounted f
ire extinguisher had been rolled into place, and two men were prepared to man it. He wondered if there was an auxiliary power unit around someplace to start the engines in case the batteries were dead, or whether they would have to recharge them.
He motioned to Benito to get into the copilot’s seat, then fastened his harness, signaled to Benito to do the same, and then showed him the levers that controlled the landing gear and the flaps.
“When I tell you ‘Gear up,’ you pull that up. And when the green light comes on, you tell me, ‘Gear up.’ If the red light comes on, you tell me that. Got it?”
“Sí, Señor.”
“And when I tell you, ‘Flaps up,’ you set that lever to zero. When the needles match—see?—you tell me that, too. Got it?”
“Sí, Señor.”
Clete reached up and threw the MASTER BUSS switch.
He looked out the window and signaled to the men with the extinguisher that he wanted the wheel chocks pulled, and when one of them went to remove them, signaled that he was about to wind it up.
He moved the carburetor control to FULL RICH, advanced the throttle of the right engine just a tad, and pressed the ENGINE ONE START switch.
For a moment, from the labored way it was grinding, it looked as if he was going to have to worry right now about how to get the batteries recharged, but then the engine spluttered, gave out a cloud of blue smoke, and caught. It quickly smoothed out, and he started the right engine.
As the needles began to move into the green, he released the brake and moved onto the runway. The windsock told him he was going to have to taxi all the way to the far end of the runway, but it was pointing parallel to the runway, which meant he wouldn’t have to worry about crosswinds.
At the end of the runway he turned the plane around, checked the magnetos, set twenty degrees of flap, saw all the needles were in the green, and reached up and advanced the throttles. The plane began to move, very slowly at first. Then it began to pick up speed.
As he approached takeoff velocity, he eased the nose downward to raise the tail wheel. As the airspeed indicator showed takeoff velocity, the Lodestar began to take off by itself. The rumbling of the undercarriage suddenly stopped.
He was flying.
“Gear up,” he ordered, and then, a moment later, “Zero flaps.”
“Green light, zero flaps,” Benito reported.
Clete smiled at him.
That wasn’t too bad, pal, he thought as he put the airplane into a shallow climb. And then he remembered what his uncle Jim, who had taught him to fly long before he went through Pensacola, had told him over and over: “Just when everything seems to be going fine, everything will go wrong.”
His later experiences as an aviator had given him many examples of how absolutely true that was.
He paid very close attention to what he was doing until he had reached 5,000 feet and trimmed it up and put it on autopilot, on a course that would take him over Estancia Santo Catalina. He wanted to see if the Feiseler Storch was still on the airstrip there.
It was, which meant that Peter was probably just visiting Alicia Carzino-Cormano for the weekend.
The Feiseler made Clete a little uncomfortable. It was a hell of an airplane just to direct artillery fire and cart people around. The Americans used Piper Cubs and other low-powered puddle jumpers for the same missions. The Storch obviously cost a lot more, in terms of money, time, and matériel, to build than it cost to build a Piper Cub.
It suggested to him that the Germans were a hell of lot better prepared to wage a war than the United States was. He had seen how ill-prepared the Americans had been on Guadalcanal, where the head stamps on some of the .30'.06 cartridges showed they had been manufactured for the First World War, as were many of the weapons they were fired from.
Was it possible the Germans could win the war? That didn’t seem likely, but it was damned sure it was going to last a long time.
On the other hand, it seemed pretty clear that American industry was shifting into second gear as far as war production was concerned. The Lodestar seemed to be proof of that. The books showed that it was brand new when they shipped it to Brazil.
Does that mean we’re making enough airplanes that the President can pass them out as presents to people he’s trying to impress? Or was sending the Lodestar down here one more stupid thing the OSS set up, and did, even though it meant taking this airplane away from somebody who could really use it?
He changed course for the radar installation by using the autopilot, rather than by taking over manual control of the Lodestar. For one thing, it was self-educational, and for another he wanted to see how—or if—he could do so.
The Lodestar’s autopilot system dutifully took him precisely where he wanted to go, to the high ground overlooking Samborombón Bay where he knew the radar installation was.
He could not, however, see it.
Polo obviously isn’t the complete Yankee Yalie asshole he at first seemed. He’s done a damned good job camouflaging the position, using fishing nets and grass from the pampas.
Clete noticed that Benito not only seemed to know where the radar station was but seemed fascinated with what could be seen (or not seen) when they got close.
That wasn’t important. Colonel Martín certainly knew where it was, and with that in mind, there were thermite grenades and cans of gasoline in place, ready to be set off the moment it was clear that the Argentines were coming to have a look at it.
If Martín decides to do something about the radar station, am I going to have time to burn the place down and get the team out of the country? Or are they going to find themselves in the military prison at Campo de Mayo charged with espionage? Or am I going to be in the pokey with them?
He flew out over the Bay for five minutes, and then, again using the autopilot, headed the Lodestar back to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.
When he got there, he devoted his full attention to getting what he now thought of, almost fondly, as “the great big sonofabitch” back on the ground in one piece. It was less trouble than he expected.
As he approached the hangar, he saw that Uncle Humberto was waiting for him.
Does that mean he’s got a message from Peter?
He waved at him from the cockpit window, then went through the SHUT DOWN procedure, checking what he had done afterward with the Dash One.
“Benito,” he asked, turning to look at him. “You know how to top off the tanks and check the oil, right?”
“Sí, Señor. You’re going to use the airplane again soon?”
Yeah, I’m going to exfiltrate an OSS agent into Uruguay right after breakfast in the morning. Make sure you tell el Coronel Martín.
“I was taught that if you keep the tanks topped off, it reduces the chances of condensation in the gasoline,” Clete said.
“Yes, of course, Señor,” Benito said. “I’ll see to it right away.”
Clete unstrapped himself and made his way through the passenger compartment. Enrico was still firmly strapped to his seat.
“You can unstrap yourself now, Enrico. This Marine has safely landed and the situation is well in hand.”
Enrico looked at him without comprehension but began to unbuckle his belt.
Clete went to the door at the rear of the cabin, opened it, and climbed out of the Lodestar.
He offered his hand to Humberto, who ignored it, grasped his arms, and kissed Clete’s cheek.
Did they get that from the French? Their men are always kissing each other. Christ, French generals kiss French PFCs when they hand out the “No Venereal Disease in Six Months” medals.
Or is that a standard European custom?
“I didn’t expect you until a little later, Humberto,” Clete said, claiming and firmly shaking his uncle’s hand. “Did you see Peter?”
; “He said to give you his regards,” Humberto said. “He went riding with Alicia, Isabela, and Isabela’s friend.”
“Really?”
“His name is Antonio—they call him ‘Tony’—Pellechea. Your aunt Beatrice invited him and his parents to your wedding,” Humberto announced.
Clete’s face showed his reaction.
“Beatrice and Tony’s mother were at St. Teresa’s together,” Humberto said. “And Beatrice is, of course…”
As nutty as a fruitcake, you poor bastard.
“…Beatrice.”
“No problem,” Clete said. “The more the merrier. But what happened to that ‘small family and closest friends only’ wedding I heard about? God, even Coronel Perón is coming.”
“Claudia told me about that. He’s your godfather; he thinks of himself as family. Be grateful for that.”
Clete decided not to debate the point.
“What were you doing with the airplane?” Humberto asked as they started to walk toward the house.
“I wanted to make sure it worked,” Clete said. “And I wanted to stay what we call ‘current.’”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m drawing flight pay. Or at least I think I am; I haven’t been paid in months….”
“I don’t think I understand.”
“The Marine Corps pays pilots extra for flying. To qualify for it, you have to fly at least four hours a month.”
“You don’t need money,” Humberto said.
“Uncle Humberto, I’m surprised at you. You, of all people, a banker, must certainly know there is no such thing as too much money!”
Uncle Humberto laughed dutifully. Then he put his hand on Cletus’s arm and, when Cletus looked at him in surprise, met his eyes. “What were you really doing with the airplane, Cletus?” he asked. “Or what are you planning to do with it?”
“You don’t really want to know, in case someone asks you about it.”
“What, Cletus?”
“I’m going to fly to Montevideo in the morning.”
“Why?”
Secret Honor Page 18