“Captain Ashton has been ordered to Río de Janeiro. Me taking him out of the country in the Lodestar seems to me to be the best way to do that. Once he’s in Uruguay, no problem. He has a Uruguayan passport. Getting him out of Argentina is the problem.”
“Am I allowed to ask why he’s going to Río?”
“I think when he gets there they’re going to hand him a diplomatic passport and put him on the next plane back to Buenos Aires.”
“So all you have to do is get him to Uruguay? You won’t have to bring him back?”
“When he comes back, he’ll be legal.”
“And you are just going to illegally—that is, without going through customs and immigration—just going to fly to Montevideo?”
“Another option would be to fly him across the Río Plate in one of the Cubs and put him out in some farmer’s field, but I think the Lodestar makes more sense. If I dumped the Cub landing it, that would be kind of hard to explain.”
“‘Dumped the Cub’?”
“Crashed it.”
“Yes, it would. You are planning to land at Carrasco?”
Clete nodded.
“And what about customs and immigration?”
“Don’t I have an estancia over there someplace?”
“You have a small estancia and a large one, and you have a summer house near Puente del Este.”
“And did my father ever fly the Beech to Uruguay?”
“The Staggerwing? Yes, he did. Often.”
“And did he always cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s for immigration and customs, or did he just go?”
Humberto’s shrug answered the question. “I see your thinking. You think that because your name…”
“…is Frade, I can get away with a lot in Argentina, and presumably in Uruguay, too.”
“And if that doesn’t work?”
“I am hoping that my uncle Humberto will have enough influence to get me out of a Uruguayan jail.”
Humberto smiled at him and shook his head. “There is another rule among bankers,” he said. “And that is never to dip into capital unless you absolutely have to.”
“Which means what?”
“When we get to the house, I will try to get through to Uruguay on the telephone,” he said. “I will have at least one of your estancia managers, and the Managing Director of the Bank of the Río Plate, waiting to greet us at Carrasco when we land.”
“When ‘we’ land?”
“When we land,” Humberto said.
“Humberto, I don’t want you involved in this.”
“It would be best if the officials at El Palomar didn’t know we were coming,” Humberto went on, ignoring him. “So just before we take off from here, the telephone line will go out, and stay out—how long will it take us to fly to El Palomar, go through customs and immigration, and take off again?”
“You’re not going anywhere with me,” Cletus said flatly. “This is none of your business.”
“We have had this discussion before, Cletus,” Humberto said. “God in his wisdom has taken your father and my son, and given us each other. In my eyes, you are my son, and whatever you do is my business.”
“Oh, Jesus, Humberto!”
“How long will it take us to fly to El Palomar?”
“Thirty minutes. Maybe a little less.”
“And we’d best plan another thirty minutes to clear customs and immigration—they won’t know we’re coming, of course, which may cause a slight delay. So the telephone line should go down for at least an hour.” Humberto looked at Enrico. “You can arrange for that, can’t you, Enrico?”
“Sí, Señor Humberto.”
“What time are we leaving?” Humberto asked.
“I invited Ashton for breakfast. Right after breakfast.”
“If we have an early breakfast—say, at nine-thirty—we could leave at eleven.”
Clete shrugged.
“Have the phone line go out the minute we leave the house, Enrico,” Humberto ordered. “And have it stay out for an hour and a half.”
“Sí, Señor Humberto.”
“And now, Cletus, I suggest we go to the house and rescue your aunt Martha from your aunt Beatrice.”
[FOUR]
Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo
Near Pila, Buenos Aires Province
2230 1 May 1943
Dinner, having been served early, was over. But, Clete thought unkindly, Señora Beatrice Frade de Duarte had a captive audience, and was obviously determined to make the most of that opportunity. The way she was going, they might still be here when the sun came up.
Only the Old Man had escaped, rescued by Father Welner, who announced as dessert was being served that he wanted to have a look at the Chapel of Our Lady of the Miracles, and perhaps Mr. Howell would like to accompany him?
The Old Man had jumped at the chance, and Clete was about to jump to his feet, too, when he saw the don’t you dare! look on Martha’s face.
Beatrice’s memory had not been at all impaired by her psychological problems. She was now describing in excruciating detail his cousin Jorge’s twelfth birthday party. She remembered who was there (children and parents), and the menu—including the brand of ice cream served, and that it had come from a sweets store that sadly was no longer in business, the wife of the proprietor having been called to heaven and the widower having turned to drink.
There was a sudden silence, and Clete looked around the dining room to see that Beatrice had interrupted herself to glower at Señora Lopez; the housekeeper had had the effrontery to enter the room while she was talking.
“Yes, Maria?” Beatrice asked.
“Excuse me, Señora, but there is a telephone call for Señor Duarte.”
Humberto rose from the table.
Here’s your chance, Martha. Yawn. Say you’ve had a long day and just can’t seem to stay awake. Get us out of here!
“Don’t be too long, dear,” Beatrice called after him. “You know how I dislike having business intrude on family.” She looked around the table. “Now, where was I?”
You were telling us about the ice-cream guy who hit the bottle when his wife died.
Beatrice remembered, and picked up where she had been when Humberto’s business had had the effrontery to intrude on family.
Humberto was gone no longer than three minutes. “Carissima,” he said. “Something has come up in Uruguay. I have to go there tomorrow.”
“Can’t you send someone else?”
“No, I have to deal with this myself, Carissima. Cletus, I wondered is there any way you could fly me to Montevideo?”
“Absolutely,” Clete said. “When would you like to go?”
“As soon as I can. Perhaps right after breakfast?”
“Sure.”
“We may have to spend the night,” Humberto added.
From the look on Martha’s face, she smelled a rat, but Beatrice didn’t. “Well, you’d only be in the way here,” she announced. “Weddings are women’s business, wouldn’t you agree, dear Martha?”
“Absolutely,” Martha said.
“What we’ll do, as soon as the men leave, is drive over to Estancia Santo Catalina and discuss the whole thing with Claudia,” Beatrice announced.
Martha smiled somewhat reluctantly.
Clete said, “Excuse me, please,” stood up, and walked out of the dining room.
Martha gave him a look that was only partially questioning and mostly of disapproval, and she followed him with her eyes.
When he was in the corridor, out of sight of Beatrice, he turned and made a signal to Martha to come into the corridor. She shook her head, and he signaled again, this time with both hands.
Martha shrugged, excused herself, and came
into the corridor. “What?”
“Martha, you don’t have to put up with her lunacy. Have a headache. Or just don’t go.”
She looked at him. “I don’t know whether you get it from the Old Man or your father,” she said. “But there’s a cruel streak in you, Clete, and I don’t like it.”
“What?”
“You planned this unexpected business trip, and don’t tell me you didn’t. You took that airplane up this afternoon, to make sure it would be ready, and you were oh-so-willing to fly Humberto to Uruguay when he asked.”
“OK. You’re right. But what’s this ‘cruel’ business?”
“That poor woman loves you. She sees her son in you. I could damned well be in her shoes. I almost was when your uncle Jim died. And if you hadn’t come back from the Pacific…”
“I’m not going to Uruguay to get away from her, if that’s what you’re driving at. This is business.”
Her eyes lit up. “What kind of business?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Yes, I do. And Humberto is involved in that, too?”
“In the morning, I’m going to take one of the men with me—he’s a Cuban named Max Ashton.”
“That’s a strange name for a Cuban.”
“His father was American. You’ll see him at breakfast. I have to get him out of the country without passing through immigration.”
“You mean he’s in Argentina illegally.”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re involving Humberto in that?”
“He insists. And it’s not really dangerous. Ashton has a Uruguayan passport. Humberto just wants to be very careful. He figures if he’s with me, fewer questions—actually no questions—will be asked. There’s two estancias over there that now belong to me, and he’s going to have their managers meet us at the airport. And there will be somebody from a bank. All we have to do is land and put Max in a taxi.”
“Your conscience is clear involving Humberto?”
“Yeah, it’s clear. I’m an OSS agent, remember? And Humberto invited himself in, over my objections.”
“Oh, Clete, I hate all of this OSS business!”
“It would be easier on me if you didn’t know about it, but you asked.”
“Thank you ever so much, you bah-stud,” a British-accented voice called, “for calling me to tell me the good news.”
Martha and Clete looked down the corridor.
Señorita Dorotéa Mallín was walking down the corridor toward them.
She was a tall, lithe young woman with shoulder-length blond hair. Cletus Frade was not the only one who thought she was very beautiful.
Martha smiled, and shook her head. “You didn’t call her?”
He shook his head, “no.”
“You’re about as romantic as your uncle Jim.”
“You I kiss,” Dorotéa announced, kissing Martha. “Him, I may never kiss again.”
“I’m on your side, Dorotéa, honey,” Martha said. “I’d make him pay.”
“Oh, he will,” Dorotéa said. “Tomorrow, my beloved, no matter what you had planned to do, you will participate in the arrangements for the wedding. Mother’s at Estancia Santo Catalina, and Claudia has asked everybody for lunch to discuss the details. You will sit, smiling bravely, through every bloody boring minute of it.”
“Tomorrow morning, Humberto and I are going to Uruguay,” Clete said.
“Were going to Uruguay,” Dorotéa said.
“Are going to Uruguay,” Clete said.
Dorotéa met his eyes. “You sound as if it’s important,” she said.
“It is.”
“Then I’m going with you,” she said. “I really didn’t want to be at that luncheon anyway.”
“You’re not going with us.”
“Hah!”
“Let’s go into the dining room,” Martha said. “You’ve had dinner, Dorotéa?”
“Yes, but I’ll have some dessert. I’m getting fat anyway.”
Without really being conscious of it, Clete looked at Dorotéa’s stomach. God, my baby is in there! He saw on Martha’s face that she had seen him looking.
Dorotéa turned and walked into the dining room. She kissed Beatrice first, then Beth and Marjorie, who seemed really glad to see her, said a polite hello to Dr. Sporazzo, Beatrice’s psychiatrist, then went to Humberto and kissed him.
“What a pleasant surprise!” Humberto said.
“I’m going to Uruguay with you tomorrow,” Dorotéa announced.
“No, you’re not,” Clete said.
“What a wonderful idea!” Beatrice proclaimed. “Beth and Marjorie have never been to Montevideo, and Dorotéa can show it to them while Humberto and Cletus are doing their business.”
Clete looked at Humberto, who with a little luck would have some clever idea to stop Dorotéa’s—and now Beatrice’s—impossible idea right here and now.
“Why not, Cletus?” Humberto asked. “There’s plenty of room in the airplane.”
“Is it safe, Humberto?” Martha asked without thinking.
“Clete, please?” Beth asked. “I’d love to see Montevideo.”
“It’s settled,” Dorotéa announced. “You’re outvoted, darling.”
“I think it’s a very good idea,” Humberto said.
Humberto’s not a lunatic, Clete decided. If he thought there was any chance of trouble, he would have squashed the idea right away. What he’s probably thinking is that having three young women on the airplane will make us look even more innocent.
Only an idiot would involve his sisters and his fiancée in exfiltrating an OSS agent, right?
Doesn’t that make me an idiot?
Clete looked at Martha, who shrugged.
“OK, I give up,” he said.
“You’d better get used to that, darling,” Dorotéa said. “Your days of freedom are numbered.”
He smiled at her.
Thirty minutes later, after Dorotéa had eaten a flan covered with dulce de leche, a sweet, chocolatelike substance made by boiling milk for hours, she kissed Clete chastely on the cheek, and marched off with Beth and Marjorie down a corridor in the right wing of the sprawling house to her guest room.
Twenty minutes after that, she came through the French doors of the master bedroom, wearing a dressing gown.
“I’m surprised you didn’t go to sleep,” she greeted him, “since I now know how little you care about me.”
“Father Welner told me he’d told your father; I figured your father would tell you.”
“You should have told me, in a voice bright with joy, excitement, and enthusiasm.”
“I’m sorry.”
She walked to the side of the bed. “As a good Christian girl, it is my duty to forgive,” she said. “I forgive you!”
“Oh, thank you, thank you!”
She unfastened the dressing gown and let it slip off her shoulders onto the floor, revealing that the dressing gown had been all she had on.
“Jesus Christ, you’re beautiful!” Clete said.
She smiled, and put her fingers onto her stomach. “I think it’s getting bigger,” she said. “What do you think?”
“I think you have a very attractive belly.”
“Wait until later, when I’m swollen like a watermelon. You won’t want to look at me.”
“Yes, I will.”
“You’re saying that now,” she said.
“I just wish this goddamn wedding was over,” he said.
“Me, too.”
“Are you going to get in bed, or just stand there in your birthday suit?”
“If I lie down, you know what’s going to happen.”
“I was hoping that’s why you sneaked ov
er here.”
“I want to talk first.”
“About what?”
“For example, are you going to tell me why you didn’t want me to go to Uruguay?”
“Honey, I don’t want you involved in this sort of thing.”
“That’s what I want to talk about.”
“Huh?”
“I’m cold,” she said, and got in bed with him. “Don’t touch, me, Cletus. I’m not through.”
“How long is this going to take?”
“Until you understand how I feel,” she said. “And, of course, agree that I’m right.”
“How you feel and are right about what?”
“For better or worse, in sickness and in health, until death do us part,” she said. “This bloody war is worse, obviously. And we’re going to have serious trouble unless you understand we have to share the worse, too.”
“We’re not married yet.”
“Except for the little detail of the ceremony itself, we are,” she paused, and then looked at him. “Damn you, don’t you feel that way?”
“I really love you, Dorotéa. That’s why I don’t want you involved in…”
“You being an OSS agent?
“Yeah.”
“But I want to be. I insist that I be.”
“For Christ’s sake, why?”
“For someone as smart as you are, you are sometimes really stupid,” she said.
“Is that so?”
“I want to share your life, Cletus. That means what you do, what you’re going to do. I want to help.”
“How the hell could you help? For Christ’s sake, you’re carrying our baby! I don’t want you in a cell someplace. Or worse.”
“And I don’t want to stand around not knowing what’s going on, wondering what in the bloody hell you’re up to, wondering if I couldn’t help if only you’d let me. In that way, I realized, I’m lucky.”
What the hell does she mean by that?
“I don’t understand that.”
“I know a dozen girls, women, here, whose husbands, whose boyfriends, got on ships and went wherever the Royal Navy or the RAF or whatever sent them. All they get is the odd letter saying ‘sorry, I can’t tell you where I am, or what I’m doing, but keep a stiff upper lip, old girl, and someday I’ll be back.’ At least you’ll be fighting your war here, and—I admit I haven’t a clue how, but I know that somehow I’ll be able to—I can help, and at least we’ll be together.”
Secret Honor Page 19