“Auf Wiedersehen, Herr Major von Wachtstein. Have a nice flight,” the tower replied in German. In good German.
He picked up the microphone again. “Dankeschön.”
Another ethnic German, obviously, is working in the control tower. The German was perfect. A little soft, so probably a Bavarian, or maybe a Swabian. And another Argentino-German who thinks Hitler is a splendid all-around fellow. An anti-Nazi Argentino-German would not have offered the cordial farewell to a Luftwaffe officer.
He felt life come into the controls, raised the tail wheel, and then let the plane take itself off. He flew to the Río Plate, then headed south.
Thirty minutes later, he was over Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo. He dropped to 500 meters, cranked in some flaps, and dropped to 250.
On his first pass over the radio station, he thought he saw someone in the open; but he wasn’t sure, and he wanted to be sure. He stood the Storch on its left wing, turned, and made another pass. This time two men were in the open, looking up at him.
He flew level for a moment, while he pushed the upper half of the left-side window upward until it engaged the catches on the lower side of the wing. The slipstream caught the roll of tape in his lap and started to suck it out the window, but the seat belt held the purse in place.
He stood the airplane on its wing again and flew back toward the radio station. He pulled the throttle back so he was just above stall speed, and when he came very close to the men on the ground, he freed the purse from the seat belt and threw it out the window.
He applied throttle, dumped the flaps, and turned a final time to fly over the radio station to make sure they had the purse. One of the men on the ground was waving at him to show that they did.
He turned toward Estancia Santo Catalina. “Now comes the tough part,” he said aloud.
He remembered reading in a book about the American Civil War what the Southern general Lee had said before going out to surrender to the United States general, the one who later became president, Grant: “I would rather die a thousand deaths…”
“I know just how you felt, General Lee,” he said aloud.
Alicia Carzino-Cormano was waiting for him—out of breath, as if she had run to the airstrip when she heard the sound of his engine.
Even before he climbed out of the airplane, she knew there was bad news; and by the time he shut it down, she had decided what it was. “When do they want you to go to Germany?” she asked.
“Very soon. In three or four days.”
“If you loved me, you would go to Brazil.”
“If I went to Brazil, my father would be shot.”
“And they’re not going to shoot you?”
He managed a smile and a light tone in his voice. “I don’t think anytime soon,” he said. “I should be back in a month or six weeks. Maybe even sooner.”
She looked into his eyes. “You believe that?”
I wish I did. He nodded his head.
“If you believe that, I will believe that,” she said. She threw herself into his arms.
“We’ll be OK, my precious,” he said.
“Can you spend the night?” she asked against his chest.
“I have to leave right now for Montevideo.”
“And when will you be back from Montevideo?”
“Tomorrow.”
“I’ll go to Buenos Aires tonight, or in the morning,” she said.
“Your mother may—”
She shrugged her shoulders impatiently, almost violently, indicating that he should know that what her mother thought or wanted was not important. “When you get back, call me at the house.”
He nodded, and stroked her hair.
He very much wanted to cry.
And until I met her, I didn’t think there was such a thing as love.
[THREE]
Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo
Near Pila, Buenos Aires Province
1220 3 May 1943
Cletus Frade, deep in thought, sat at the crest of a gentle rise astride Julius Caesar, a very large, magnificently formed black stallion. His mind jumped from one thought to another.
Next week this time, I’ll be a married man.
Why did I give in to Claudia and that damned Jesuit and agree to have that goddamned Juan Domingo Perón at my wedding? A dirty old man who fucks little girls doesn’t belong at a goddamn wedding.
By now Ashton’s in Rio de Janeiro. I really hope I was right, and that he’ll be on the next Panagra flight down clutching a diplomatic passport in his hand. I need him.
Jesus, this place isn’t only enormous, they haven’t touched the potential. All they do with it is raise enough food to feed themselves and let the cattle graze until they’re ready to be slaughtered. That takes two years, maybe longer. This is farmland, not grazing land. What I should do is put in some feed crops. I can probably produce marketable beef in fourteen months.
God, I wish Uncle Jim was here. He’d really know what to do with this place.
There’s an airport at Bariloche, and what’s supposed to be the best resort hotel in Argentina. There’s no reason I can’t take Dorotéa there in the Lodestar.
It’s too far to drive. It would take two days. It’s twenty hours or something on the train. I can fly the Lodestar out there in four hours.
And if I go there in the Lodestar and something happens here, I can get back in a hurry.
Tragedy in Argentina. On the day after his marriage, Marine Aviator with Wings of Gold C. Frade flies himself and bride into a rock-filled cloud…
Enrico Rodríguez, astride a sorrel with brilliant eyes, his Browning shotgun cradled in his arm, was also deep in thought.
Julius Caesar, now docilely munching grass, had been el Coronel’s favorite, and vice versa. Whenever anyone else tried to mount him, he was unruly, often successfully throwing the stranger. He had even tried to throw Señor Cletus the first time he mounted him.
He had not. Señor Cletus was almost as fine a horseman as his father. And Julius Caesar now seemed to understand he had a new master. At the stables, Enrico had stood stock-still while Señor Clete threw the sheepskin saddle and the hornless Recado saddle on the horse, and even when Señor Cletus had tugged hard at the tack, shortening the stirrups to the length norteamericanos preferred (for reasons Enrico did not understand), Julius Caesar had allowed it.
It usually took two men to get a saddle on Julius Caesar.
Enrico was not surprised that Señor Cletus had come out here to think. El Coronel also often rode slowly out onto the pampas under God’s wide blue sky and stopped somewhere just to think. The longer he was around Señor Cletus, the more he saw how much he was like el Coronel.
In the important things.
There was not much of a physical resemblance. In these Señor Clete favored his mother.
Enrico took pleasure in the thought that el Coronel and Señor Clete’s mother were together again in heaven with the blessed angels, and with Mariana Maria Dolores taking care of them there, as he was now taking care of Señor Clete in this life.
He believed that God always had a purpose, although that purpose had not been clear to him when God let those filthy bastards cut Mariana Maria Dolores’s throat in Señor Guillermo’s house by the Hipódrome.
And God’s purpose had not been clear, either, when He let those filthy bastards kill el Coronel in the car. And he had had real trouble trying to understand why God had not let him die with el Coronel. Or even instead of him.
Now he knew. God in his infinite wisdom had put a baby in the belly of Señor Clete’s blond woman. She wasn’t a real Argentine, but she was half Argentine. As Señor Clete was half Argentine. Their baby would be entirely Argentine.
And that meant that Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo would go on as before, becaus
e it was now Señor Clete’s home, where he would be married, where his baby would be born; and he would not return to the United States of America, and Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo would not be sold to strangers. Señor Clete would stay here and be el Patrón, as his father and grandfather and great-grandfather before him had been el Patrón, taking loving care of the people of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.
And God had sent Enrico a message. The all-knowing God knew that Enrico was shamed that he had failed to save the life of el Coronel, and that with Mariana Maria Dolores taken to heaven, too, he was all alone.
God had permitted him to take the vengeance that was His alone. He brought the German Nazi bastards who had ordered the murder of el Coronel and Mariana Maria Dolores to Samborombón Bay and put them in the glass sight on el Coronel’s Mauser (which they had bought together in Berlin), so that he could kill them.
The message was I know that you are unhappy and lonely, my son, and this is both to show you I understand and that you are part of my plan. Killing the German Nazi bastards is your reward on earth, and if you do your duty, when the time comes, there will be greater rewards in heaven.
And Enrico understood what his duty was. He was to protect Señor Clete and the blond woman and the baby in her belly, and thus Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo and the good life it gave all the simple people who depended on it.
And he knew his reward when God finally took him to heaven. He would be with Mariana Maria Dolores and el Coronel again and could tell them that the Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo would go on as always.
That had been God’s plan all along. He wondered why it had taken him so long to understand.
Enrico was brought back from his thoughts when he detected unusual movement on the pampas. “Señor Cletus,” he said softly, and when he had Clete’s attention, raised his arm and hand, the index finger extended, and pointed.
One of the Ford Model A pickups was bouncing across the pampas, headed for them.
“Who is that? Rodolfo?”
“I think so, Señor Cletus.”
Sargento Rudolpho Gomez, Argentine Cavalry, Retired, pulled up to them three minutes later, got out of the Ford, and approached Clete, taking off his hat as a gesture of respect (all the while carefully staying away from Julius Caesar).
“Patrón, el Jefe asked me to find you,” he said.
El Jefe was Chief Radioman Oscar J. Schultz, USN.
Most of the gauchos thought Schultz was very strange, even ludicrous—a man who wore the clothing of a gaucho but never mounted a horse and was visibly afraid of both horses and cattle. Enrico and Rudolpho, however, liked him and would not tolerate disrespect toward him—probably, Clete thought, because they recognized in him a fellow career serviceman.
Once he’d seen Rudolpho pointing a Cavalry sergeant’s finger in the face of a gaucho and telling him the next time he laughed at el Jefe he would cut his balls off and feed them to the pigs.
“Did he say what he wanted?” Clete asked.
“No, Patrón. He is at the place.”
“Señor Clete, we can take the Ford,” Enrico said. “And Rudolpho can take the horses back.”
“How far are we from the station? On horseback?”
“Twenty minutes, Señor Clete. And about as long by Ford,” Enrico said, then added, “It has been some time since Julius Caesar has had a hard run. Then it would be a little less.”
“Where is it from here?” Clete asked. Enrico pointed.
“Let’s go for a run, Julius,” Clete said, and touched the animal with his heels.
Enrico waited until Clete was out of earshot. “He is very much like el Coronel, may he rest in peace, is he not?”
“Sí,” Rudolpho said thoughtfully.
“God has given us the duty of protecting him.”
“Sí,” Rudolpho repeated.
Enrico made a thumbs-up gesture to Rudolpho and then put his heels to the sorrel and raced after el Patrón.
Julius Caesar was breathing heavily and was spotted white with sweat when Clete rode up to the radio station.
“Beautiful animal, Sir,” Lieutenant Madison R. Sawyer III said.
“Yes, he is. What’s up, Sawyer? Is the chief here?”
Sawyer pointed to the Chief’s Ford and waited for Clete to dismount.
Enrico rode up and slipped gracefully off the sorrel.
“Will you walk him for me, Enrico?” Clete asked.
“Sí, Señor.”
“Galahad dropped a message to us about an hour ago,” Sawyer said.
Chief Schultz appeared in the door of the house. “That’s that vicious sonofabitch who tried to kick me, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Nothing personal, Chief, he just doesn’t like sailors.”
“Thanks a lot. Just keep him away from me, thank you.”
“What’s the message?”
“He’s been ordered to Germany.”
“Oh, shit,” Clete said. He walked to the building, and Sawyer followed him.
The chief handed him von Wachtstein’s message. “Tough luck, huh?” he said when Clete had finished reading it.
“Yeah, that’s what it is.”
“You think he’ll be coming back, skipper?”
“He seems to think there’s some chance,” Clete said. “We’ll need to get this off right away.”
The chief looked at his watch. “Skipper,” he said, “if you can write it and I can encrypt it in nineteen minutes, we can get it off on the regular schedule.”
“I won’t be long,” Clete said, and sat down at the table in front of the battered Underwood typewriter (“borrowed” by the chief from the radio room of the destroyer). He laid von Wachtstein’s note down, then rolled a sheet of paper into the typewriter and started to type. After a few seconds he stopped and turned his head toward Sawyer, who was looking over his shoulder. “You’re a man of imagination and culture, Madison,” he said. “I need some names for the high-level Krauts who will be coming here.”
“Sure.”
“One is a deputy foreign minister,” Clete said.
Sawyer grunted. “Metternich,” he said immediately. “For the diplomat.”
Clete chuckled and then typed quickly.
“Who else?” Sawyer asked.
“The SS Brigadier wearing a Wehrmacht uniform,” Clete said.
“What’s that all about, do you think, skipper?” the chief asked. “He’d rather not have people know he’s SS?”
“I suppose,” Clete replied.
“Did the wolf in sheep’s clothes have a name?” Sawyer asked thoughtfully.
“If he did, I don’t have a clue,” Clete said. The chief shrugged.
“OK,” Sawyer went on. “We have a máscarador—a guy in a mask—South America—What’s that name? Got it. Zorro.”
“As in ‘the mark of’?” Clete replied. “I thought he was a good guy.”
“I’m open to suggestion, Sir.”
“Zorro it is,” Clete said. “Now that I think about it, it has a nice ring to it.”
He typed quickly.
“And for Zorro’s aide? What was the name of Zorro’s sidekick?”
That drew a blank.
“Little Zorro?” Chief Schultz suggested.
“How about Big Z and Little Z,” Sawyer suggested.
“Better yet,” Clete said, and typed again.
“That leaves the sailor,” the chief said.
Clete and Sawyer spoke at the same time. “Popeye,” they both said.
Clete typed for a few more seconds, then tore the paper from the typewriter and handed it to the chief.
* * *
URGENT
TOP SECRET LINDBERGH
DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN
&n
bsp; FROM TEX
MSG NO #### TIME TIME GREENWICH 2 MAY 1943
TO ORACLE EYES ONLY AGGIE
1 GALAHAD REPORTS HE, SAUSAGE AND BAGMAN ORDERED BERLIN PRESUMABLY REGARDING INQUIRY INTO MARITIME PROBLEMS. SUSPECT NEXT LUFTHANSA FLIGHT DUE HERE WITHIN 72 HOURS WITH DEPARTURE 24 HOURS LATER.
2 FLIGHT FROM BERLIN WILL CARRY GENERALMAJOR MANFRED VON DEITZBERG, HEREAFTER BIGZ, STANDARTENFÜHRER ERICH RASCHNER, HEREAFTER LITTLEZ, AND DEPUTY FOREIGN MINISTER GEORG FRIEDRICH VON LÖWZER, HEREAFTER METTERNICH. KORVETTENKAPITÄN KARL BOLTITZ, HEREAFTER POPEYE, WILL FOLLOW ETA UNKNOWN
3 BIGZ IS ACTUALLY OBERFÜHRER-SS AND HAS BEEN HIMMLER’S ADJUTANT. LITTLEZ IS HIS DEPUTY. POPEYE WORKS FOR CANARIS.
TEX
* * *
The chief read it.
“No problem, skipper,” he said. “Give me the code book, and let me have the chair. You want to wait until it’s acknowledged? There may be something coming in.”
“Yeah,” Clete said. “I don’t suppose you’d have a cold beer?”
“Dorotéa!” the chief called loudly. “Cerveza, por favor.”
A moment later, Dorotéa, the chief’s “housekeeper,” a widow of the estancia, came into the room with two bottles of beer in each hand.
Dorotéa doesn’t know about Dorotéa, Clete thought. I wonder how she’s going to react when she finds out.
He took two beers from her and went outside to give Enrico one.
There was no traffic from the States for them.
He got another couple of beers from Dorotéa, mounted Julius Caesar, and started in a walk back toward the Big House.
[FOUR]
1500 Meters Above the River Plate
Near Montevideo, Uruguay
1540 2 May 1943
Secret Honor Page 24