“Sure, come on out.”
“Sir, perhaps there’s someplace we could meet in Buenos Aires?”
Whatever this is all about, he’s serious.
“The weather’s closing in—I can’t fly. It’ll take me two hours, a little longer, to drive in. How about lunch?”
“Yes, Sir. That would be fine. Where, Sir?”
“You know where the guest house is, on Libertador?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“No. That’s out. I just remembered somebody’s staying there. It’ll have to be the museum. Noon OK?”
“The museum, Sir?”
“Seventeen twenty-eight Avenida Coronel Díaz, in Palermo,” Clete said. “I’ll call ahead and tell them you’re coming, in case you get there before I do.”
“Seventeen twenty-eight Avenida Coronel Díaz at twelve hundred,” Ashton said. “Yes, Sir. We’ll be there, Sir.”
The line went dead.
“We’ll be there”? He said “we” twice. Who’s “we”? What’s this all about?
He put the telephone in its cradle and turned and was not at all surprised to find Enrico standing in the door. “Get the Horch, Enrico, we’re going into Buenos Aires.”
“Señor Cletus, they are working on the polish of the Horch.”
“OK, then get the Buick.”
“We will be coming back today?”
“I think so.”
[FOUR]
1728 Avenida Coronel Díaz
Palermo, Buenos Aires
1150 6 May 1943
Unnecessarily, for Clete had already noticed it, Enrico touched his arm and then jerked his thumb toward a gray 1939 Dodge sedan parked across the street from the massive mansion. Two men were sitting in it.
“The clowns are here,” Enrico said. He held the agents of both the Bureau of Internal Security and of the Policía Federal in equal contempt; he called both “the clowns.”
“They’re probably following Ashton,” Clete said. “He’s here.” He pointed to a 1941 Chevrolet sedan with Corps Diplomatique license tags parked directly in front of the mansion.
Hell, that’s almost certainly Milton Leibermann’s car. As the “legal attaché,” he gets CD plates. That’s what this is all about. Leibermann wants to see me. He’s the “we” Ashton meant.
As he drove the Buick across the sidewalk to the left of the mansion’s two twelve-foot-high wrought-iron gates, one of the double doors to the mansion opened and a short, squat maid—who obviously had been watching from behind the curtains for Señor Frade to arrive—trotted to the gates and pulled them open. Clete pulled into the curved cobblestone drive, stopped in front of the mansion, and got out and started up the stairs.
A dignified, silver-haired man in his sixties, dressed in a gray frock coat, opened the door as Clete reached it. Antonio had been the butler in the Frade family’s Coronel Díaz mansion for longer than Clete’s lifetime. “Señor Frade,” Antonio said. “Your guests are here. I put them in the downstairs sitting.”
The downstairs sitting in this place is about as warm and comfortable as the room in a funeral home where they put the casket on display. Maybe less warm and comfortable.
“Thank you, Antonio,” Clete said. “How are you?”
“Very well, thank you, Sir.”
“Can we feed these people?”
“If I had had more time, Señor…”
“But we can feed them, right?”
“Of course, Señor.”
As Clete walked across the marble-floored foyer past the curving double stairways leading to the second floor (the steps were marble; the railings were cast bronze), he remembered his father telling him that his mother had refused to live there (she was the one who’d given it its name, “The Museum”). His father himself had described it as “my money sewer on Avenida Coronel Díaz.”
It was like a museum, both in its dimensions and in the plethora of artwork, huge oil paintings and statuary that covered the walls and open spaces. He always had the somewhat irreverent thought that two subjects seemed to fascinate Argentine artists and sculptors: La Pampa, at dusk, during a rainstorm; and buxom women dressed in what looked like wet sheets that generally left exposed at least one large and well-formed breast.
He was far more comfortable in the guest house on Libertador; but, as he had told Max on the phone, there was a guest there. He had an unkind thought as he pushed open the door to the downstairs sitting: If I hadn’t let that damned Jesuit con artist sweet-talk me into having Perón at my wedding, Perón would have been insulted. Maybe then the sonofabitch would move out of my guest house. I am really pissed at the thought of that bastard doing whatever the hell he does with young girls in my house.
The first person he saw was Milton Leibermann, sitting on one of the half-dozen unbelievably uncomfortable straight-backed, brocade-upholstered, two-seater couches. They were set so close to the floor that Leibermann’s knees were higher than his waist.
Milton looks ridiculous.
There was a tiny porcelain coffee set on a silver tray on a small table in front of the couch, and an identical set on a small table before the matching chair where Captain Maxwell Ashton sat. He had two more unkind thoughts: Max is so short, he fits in that chair. And where did he get that awful suit? He looks like a Mexican sharpie in Matamores. “You want pesos, señor? I give you best deal. Or how about a sixteen-year-old virgin?”
And then he saw a third man in the room.
Well, that explains the “we arrived last night” remark, doesn’t it?
Colonel A. J. Graham, USMCR, was standing by the heavily draped windows overlooking Avenida Coronel Díaz. He was in uniform, complete to ribbons and a thick gold cord hanging from his epaulet that Clete recognized, from his aborted assignment as Naval Attaché, as the insignia of an attaché.
He really looks like a Marine colonel. Starchy, and mean as a junkyard dog.
“Well, look who’s here!” Clete said. “How long are you going to be here? Can you stay for the wedding?”
Graham was not smiling, and he did not reply for a long moment. “Tell me, Frade,” he said finally, “you do understand, don’t you, that you are a serving officer of the United States Marine Corps?”
“Well, this is hardly Quantico, is it?” Clete replied without thinking. “But sure.”
“Come to attention, Major, and stay at attention until I give you further orders,” Graham said coldly.
Clete looked at him for a minute before he saw that he was absolutely serious. There was proof of that in the embarrassed looks on the faces of Milton Leibermann and Maxwell Ashton III. He felt his face flush, as, feeling foolish, he came to attention.
In my own house? What the hell is going on?
“One of the first things I learned as a young lieutenant, Major, was that in ordinary circumstances, when one is reprimanding a subordinate, one does so in private, so the officer being reprimanded won’t be embarrassed or humiliated,” Graham said matter-of-factly, almost conversationally.
“These are not ordinary circumstances,” he went on. “I asked Mr. Leibermann—and ordered Captain Ashton—to be here because I wanted witnesses. If the by-product is that you are embarrassed and humiliated, that’s unfortunate.”
“Sir, may I ask what’s going on?”
“You do not have permission to speak, Major,” Graham said. “Don’t open your mouth again until I give you permission to do so, not even to say ‘Yes, Sir.’”
Clete managed, at the last split second, to overcome his Pavlovian urge to say “Yes, Sir.”
“The reason I wanted witnesses is that, given your demonstrated willingness to disobey orders, I was forced to consider the real possibility that you are entirely capable of deciding—perhaps have already decided—that you no longer have to obey orders.
<
br /> “So I will begin by explaining to you what will happen the very next time you elect to either disobey orders or take any action on your own which in my judgment violates the spirit of the orders I have given you.
“You will be ordered to return to the United States. You will become a patient at St. Elizabeth’s Mental Hospital in Washington, and you will stay there, your records marked ‘National Security Patient,’ until this war is over. If you behave while in St. Elizabeth’s, you may be allowed, once the war is over, to resign your commission for the good of the service. The other option is a court-martial, on a wide variety of charges, not all of them, frankly, justified.
“Your wife will not be granted a visa to enter the United States, which is probably a moot question, because you will not be allowed visitors while you are in St. Elizabeth’s. Any children born of your marriage will not be considered to have been born to an officer serving outside the United States, and will not, therefore, be American citizens.
“As you have already almost certainly begun to think, ‘Fuck Graham, I’ll just stay here,’ let me touch on that. If you choose to ignore an order to return to the United States, charges will be brought against you for desertion in time of war. Steps will be taken to have you expelled from Argentina. I think they will probably be successful, despite your connections here, because we will give the Argentine government reason to believe you are acting against the best interests of this country.
“Even if that fails, you will remain on the rolls as a deserter-at-large. If you should ever return to the United States, you will be arrested at the port of entry. Law-enforcement officials in Texas and Louisiana will be regularly contacted by the FBI to make sure that you haven’t managed to enter the country without being arrested. I will personally make sure that your photograph—Deserter Wanted By FBI—hangs on the bulletin board of every post office and police station in Texas and Louisiana.”
He paused and looked at Clete with loathing. “Are you getting the picture, Major Frade? You may speak.”
“What orders am I accused of disobeying, Colonel?”
“Oddly enough, I can remember them almost word for word. My last orders to you, Major, when I agreed to keep von Wachtstein’s identity secret, were ‘If something happens to you, Clete, the deal is off. So don’t do anything dangerous—like falling out of your wedding bed—or anything else risky down here. Go on the canapé and small-talk circuit. Keep your ears open. Say a kind word for our side when you get the chance.’ That may not be verbatim, but it’s pretty damned close.”
Graham looked at Leibermann. “You were there, Milton. Did I leave anything out?” Leibermann shook his head “no,” but didn’t speak. “For the record, I just repeated those orders to you, Major Frade. You are advised they are direct orders.”
“Yes, Sir,” Clete said.
“What the hell were you thinking when you flew Ashton to Uruguay in the Lockheed? Who do you think you are, goddamn it, Jack Armstrong, All-American Boy? Commander Don Winslow of the goddamned U.S. Navy?”
“In my judgment, Sir, it was the best way to exfiltrate Ashton,” Clete said.
“Then your judgment is fatally flawed! Goddamn you! Didn’t you consider the risk you were taking?”
Clete didn’t reply.
“Let me explain, since your stupidity is of such monumental proportions that you may not even know: First of all, you arrogant pup, you’re not qualified to fly that airplane. You’re a fighter pilot, not a multiengine transport aircraft pilot.”
“Sir, I flew the Lodestar from Braz—”
“Close your mouth!” Graham interrupted furiously. He paused a moment, as if considering what he wanted to say. “OK. My fault. I should have pulled you up short when that happened. That was a stupid thing for you to do. Really stupid. A combination, I suppose, of Marine Corps fighter pilot arrogance and this Jack Armstrong complex you have. What you should have done was get word to me you had never been inside a Lodestar. I could have had a qualified pilot there in forty-eight hours. Or you could have asked the Marine Corps pilot you got to give you—what, four hours instruction?—to fly it. But you got away with it, you got Ashton and the radar into Argentina, and because I didn’t think you would be so stupid as to go on flying the Lockheed without getting fully checked out in it, and certainly not by yourself, without a copilot, I said nothing. Major error in my judgment.”
He stopped, and collected his thoughts again.
“Did it even occur to you what would happen if you crashed that airplane? And I’m not speaking of killing Ashton, your fiancée, your uncle, and your sisters—”
“Colonel, if I had thought there was any danger—”
“Goddamn you, shut your mouth until I give you permission to open it!”
He paused, visibly getting his temper under control, before going on.
“For one thing, that would have given the Bureau of Security all they needed to come on your estancia and grab the radar and Ashton’s team. Two weeks after that, another German freighter would be anchored in Samborombón Bay refueling German submarines.
“For another, it would have meant that I would have had to tell Colonel Donovan who Galahad is. And von Wachtstein is the only window we have on this obscene concentration camp inmate ransoming business. There are thousands of lives at stake there, for God’s sake.
“And von Wachtstein—and you’re right: If Donovan gets his name, it will be only a matter of time before we do something stupid, and the Germans will learn we’ve turned him—is the only window we have on Operation Phoenix.” He paused and took a breath. “And you were willing to risk all this so that you could play Jack Fucking Armstrong. Now do you know why I’m furious?”
“Sir, I didn’t think—”
“You bet your stupid ass you didn’t think!”
“I’ll find somebody to fly the Lockheed,” Clete said.
“And here’s another instance of where I find it difficult to believe that you’re so incredibly stupid: Ashton tells me that you crossed Juan Domingo Perón’s name off the guest list for your wedding. Is that true?”
“He will be at the wedding,” Clete said.
“Don’t tell me you actually reconsidered one of your stupid acts?”
“Somebody told me I couldn’t afford to insult him,” Clete said.
“Who somebody?”
“A Jesuit priest. Named Welner. He and my father were friends.”
“I’ll tell you what you’re going to do with Perón. You’re going to get so close to him you’ll think you’re a fucking Band-Aid. You’re going to be the son that sonofabitch never had.” He paused and looked at Clete. “I sent you down here in the first place because I thought you could get close to the powers that be. When the Germans killed your father, you should have known, for Christ’s sake, that the next-best thing to your father is your goddamned godfather. I think that sonofabitch is going to end up running this country. You want to tell me why you didn’t want him at your wedding?”
“He’s a pervert, for one thing,” Clete said, and the moment he heard the words come out of his mouth, he realized how inane his answer sounded.
“Pervert?” Graham asked with obvious interest. “Perón’s queer?”
“He likes little girls. Fourteen-year-olds.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“He brought one to the house on Libertador. I saw him with her.”
“It could have been a niece or something.”
“I asked Enrico about it, and he told me.”
“I’ll be damned,” Graham said. “That’s interesting. And that’s what I meant when I ordered you to keep your eyes and ears open. You didn’t think we would be interested in hearing about that?”
“It never occurred to me, Sir,” Clete said.
“Start thinking, for God’s sake!” Gra
ham snapped. He turned to Leibermann. “You hear anything about Perón, Milton?”
Leibermann shook his head. “You’re sure about that, Tex?” he asked.
“I told you what I know,” Clete said.
“I agree, that’s interesting,” Leibermann said.
“You said, ‘for one thing,’” Graham said.
“Sir?”
“You said you didn’t want him at your wedding for one thing because he’s a pervert. What else?”
“Well, in the face of the facts, he refuses to admit the Germans killed my father.”
“Milton, are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Graham said.
“Clete, it could be because the Germans know about his sexual appetites,” Leibermann said. “In a society like this, Perón would do or say whatever they want him to to keep that from coming out.”
“That may be very useful information, for use somewhere down the pike,” Graham said.
“I would hold that card a long time before playing it,” Leibermann said.
“Of course,” Graham said. “As far as you’re concerned, Frade, aside from keeping your eyes and ears open to confirm this little-girl business, you say and do nothing. You got that?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“I think that concludes our conversation,” Graham said. “We understand each other, right, Frade?”
“Yes, Sir. Sir, I’m sorry—”
“Save your breath. In our business, sorry doesn’t count.”
Leibermann grunted as he raised himself out of the too-low couch.
“One more thing,” Graham said. “Mr. Leibermann and I accept your kind invitation to your wedding.”
“Yes, Sir,” Clete said, and then thought of something else, decided to hell with it, it was his business, but in the end decided it probably was Graham’s business—or Graham would think it was. “Sir, I plan to get married in my uniform,” he blurted.
Graham looked at him and took fifteen seconds to think it over. “Fine,” he said finally, then started to walk out of the room.
XI
Secret Honor Page 32