And Frade had a sudden insight: Welner wouldn’t have brought this up unless he knew it was the best solution possible. But he now has convinced Frogger, father and son, to think it’s their idea.
Goddamn, he’s clever!
“Then the problem becomes: How do we get her there?” Welner said.
Frade walked to the wall-mounted telephone intending to call Gonzalo Delgano, but then changed his mind.
He walked instead to the door.
“Enrico, I need a half-dozen reliable men to go to Mendoza with me right now. Don’t tell them where we are going, only that they’ll be there several weeks at least.”
“We are taking the German woman to Casa Montagna, Don Cletus?”
Enrico knows about Casa Montagna?
“That’s right.”
“You are going to fly?”
“Just as soon as I can get the Lodestar in the air.”
“And who will help you fly?”
“Doña Dorotea.”
“What will Delgano say?”
“I think he will be distressed that I allowed Doña Dorotea to fly the airplane from here to Jorge Frade, when it appears there first thing tomorrow morning. It’s about six hundred miles to Mendoza.”
“He will be even more distressed if you kill yourself and everybody else before tomorrow morning, Don Cletus. Call Major Delgano. Either have him come here or, if time is so important, go to Buenos Aires.”
“Then he would learn what I’m doing.”
“He would learn anyway, Don Cletus. Don Cletus, you would insult him if you did this without him. He is now one of us.”
Frade considered that a moment.
Damn it, he’s right.
If I were Delgano, after all he’s done already, and got the idea I was hiding something from him, I’d be insulted.
“What I think we should do, Don Cletus, is drive into Buenos Aires to his home. . . .”
“I don’t know where he lives.”
“I do. And you tell him what you need. The worst thing that can happen is that he will tell you he doesn’t want to do it. But he would not betray you. I told you. He is now one of us.”
“You’re right, Enrico. Thank you, my friend.”
“Or—I just thought of this—you could telephone him and tell him that there is something he needs to look at on your airplane. And then go to Buenos Aires in one of the Pipers and bring him here. If the clowns are listening, there is nothing suspicious about that.”
“You would let me fly into Buenos Aires all by myself?”
The gentle sarcasm was lost on Enrico.
“If you give me your word of honor you will not leave the airfield when you are there and are very careful while you are there.”
Frade, knowing he could not trust his voice, clapped the old soldier on both arms. He went back into the house, picked up the telephone, and, when the estancia operator came on the line, told her to get Chief Pilot Gonzalo Delgano in Buenos Aires for him.
IV
[ONE]
Approaching El Plumerillo Airfield
Mendoza, Mendoza Province, Argentina
1745 14 August 1943
“I have been in here before,” Gonzalo Delgano’s voice came over the earphones.
“Chief Pilot,” Frade ordered sternly, “take command of the aircraft.”
Frade took his hands off the yoke and raised them much higher than was necessary to signal he was no longer flying the Lodestar.
Delgano smiled at him.
“Sometimes there’s a little crosswind coming off the mountains,” Delgano said, nodding toward the Andes. “You can tell when the wind-sock pole is bent more than forty-five degrees.”
He demonstrated a bent wind-sock pole with his index finger.
Frade smiled at him.
Delgano shoved the yoke forward so that he could make a low-level pass over the field to have a look at the wind sock.
They were not in communication with the El Plumerillo tower. Delgano was not surprised; he told Clete that there was only one Aeropostal flight into Mendoza every day at about noon—and sometimes not that often—and as soon as it took off again, the tower closed down. There was some other use of the field by the military, and even some private aviation traffic, but not enough to justify a dawn-to-dusk tower. The runway was not lighted, which made a tower useless at night.
Delgano had told Frade just after they had taken off that at this time of year they should not be surprised if the field was closed due to weather or—flying dead-reckoning navigation due to no reliable radio navigation aids—they could not even find the field before dark. Winds aloft could knock them as much as fifty or a hundred miles off course.
They were in no danger. There was more than enough fuel to take them back to Buenos Aires, where runway and taxi lights had been installed at Aerodromo Jorge Frade in Morón while they had been in the United States. Nor would they have trouble finding Jorge Frade, as there was both a radio beacon and an around-the-clock tower operation using a Collins Model 7.2 transceiver, which was just about the latest thing in the States.
And the radio direction finder would be working, awaiting the six Lodestars en route from the United States. No one knew when they would leave or arrive, but Jorge Frade had to be ready to guide them in.
The primitive conditions at El Plumerillo would soon change. While they were in the United States, Guillermo de Filippi—“Señor Mañana,” SAA’s chief of maintenance—had finally managed to get contracts for the construction of a combined hangar/passenger terminal/tower, as well as landing lights.
Frade had quickly decided that simply installing the landing lights and having SAA give them to the airfield would be cheaper in the long run—and get them installed much quicker—than would entering into lengthy negotiations, with the inevitable greasing of the appropriate palms of the local authorities to have them do it.
The wind sock was full and parallel to the runway, indicating that the wind was blowing along the runway. But the pole was perfectly erect, so no crosswind.
Delgano moved the throttles forward and picked up the nose. He would gain a little altitude, then make a 180-degree turn for a straight-in approach.
“Try very hard not to bend it, Gonzo,” Frade said.
Delgano took a hand from the yoke long enough to give Frade the finger.
The passenger compartment was crowded, just about full. The first three rows of seats were occupied by six peones, all of them former members of the Húsares de Pueyrredón, five of whom were having their first experience with aerial flight. In the aisle between their seats were bags holding rifles, pistols, and submachine guns that had been stored in the basement of el Coronel’s garage since the time he had been planning to stage a coup d’état against the then-president of Argentina.
Sergeant Sigfried Stein—who had come to Argentina as Team Turtle’s explosives expert and been converted to a reasonably well-qualified radio technician and, more recently, to “Major” Stein to deal with the Froggers—had been brought along not only to continue dealing with the Froggers but also to set up a Collins Model 7.2 transceiver and the SIGABA encryption device. Not at the airport, though; a Collins for that purpose would be flown in when the tower was finished.
The transceiver and encryption equipment on the Lodestar would be installed in Casa Montagna for use by Captain Madison R. Sawyer III. Sawyer, who was no longer needed to blow up German replenishment ships in the River Plate, now was to be in command of what Frade privately thought of as “the insane asylum.” Using the very latest cryptographic technology, Sawyer would be able to communicate with Frade in Buenos Aires and with Second Lieutenant Len Fischer at the Army Security Agency facility at Vint Hill Farms Station, Virginia, and through Vint Hill with Colonel Graham in Washington, D.C.
In the row behind the peones sat Enrico Rodríguez. Doña Dorotea’s in-flight luggage filled the seat across the aisle from him.
In the next row, Sawyer was sitting across the aisle from Ste
in.
Behind him sat Oberstleutnant Frogger, across from his father.
Behind them, Father Welner and Doña Dorotea sat where they could keep a close eye on Frau Frogger, who lay on a mattress in the aisle. An hour before, Welner had woken her long enough to give her a drink laced with sedative.
So far, Cletus Frade thought as the Lodestar slowed on its landing roll, everything has gone off without a hitch—
Gonzo had been waiting for him at Jorge Frade. When Frade had explained what he wanted to do—more accurately, more importantly, what he was asking Delgano to do—Delgano had considered it for no more than two seconds, then said, “Let me get my bag. I told my wife I’d probably be gone for a couple of days.”
When they landed on the Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo strip, just about everything had been loaded aboard the Lodestar but Frau Frogger, and she appeared minutes later, on a mattress on top of a makeshift stretcher. They were airborne in the Lodestar thirty minutes after Frade landed the Piper.
It had been a little rougher at 5,000 feet than it would have been at a greater altitude, but when flying dead reckoning, it is useful to be able to see things on the ground. The weather had been clear and they had had no trouble finding their way to Mendoza, where Gonzo had set the Lodestar down very smoothly.
They were five minutes ahead of their ETA guesstimate.
—and therefore the other shoe is certainly about to drop.
They were not expected. It was a given that the telephone lines to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo were being listened to by the Bureau of Internal Security, so telephoning ahead to the airport, or to Estancia Don Guillermo and especially to the Convent of the Little Sisters of Santa María del Pilar, had not been an option if they didn’t want el Coronel Martín to know they were going to Mendoza long before they got there.
The result of that would have been representatives of the local BIS office waiting for them to see who got off the airplane and where they went. And the local BIS would have descriptions of the Froggers.
The airplane itself was going to cause a stir, because as far as either Delgano or Frade knew, this was going to be the first time that a Lodestar—and a brilliantly red one, at that—had landed at El Plumerillo airfield.
Their only option seemed to be brazening it out, and that’s what they did.
When the on-duty official of El Plumerillo came out to greet the airplane before the engines had died, Enrico and Delgano got off the airplane and professed surprise and anger that there was no one there to meet them, and implied the official greeting them was probably the miscreant responsible. Don Cletus Frade was going to be very angry that his guests were going to be inconvenienced.
The official quickly took them to a telephone, where Enrico called Casa Montagna and ordered that whatever cars were there, plus a closed truck, be sent immediately to the airport for Don and Doña Frade and their guests.
A 1938 Ford two-and-a-half-ton stake body, a 1939 Ford Fordor, a 1936 La Salle five-passenger sedan, and a strange-looking 1941 Lincoln Continental—a four-door sedan—arrived forty-five minutes later. Clete had never seen a Lincoln Continental four-door sedan; he didn’t even know they made one.
With Father Welner directing, the peones gently installed Frau Frogger in the backseat of the La Salle with her son and husband on either side of her. Her condition was explained as airsickness, and Father Welner assured the airfield official there was nothing to worry about. Enrico got in the front seat and the La Salle started off for the estancia.
Sergeant Stein supervised the loading of the Collins transceiver and SIGABA into the truck, then the bagged weapons, which he identified as Don Cletus Frade’s golf clubs. He then got into the 1939 Fordor, into which also squeezed as many of the peones—four—as would fit. The other two rode in the back of the truck with the luggage.
And finally, Doña Dorotea and Don Cletus descended regally from the Lodestar and allowed themselves to be installed in the backseat of the Lincoln Continental sedan beside Father Welner.
“Take us to the convent of the Little Sisters of Santa María del Pilar, please,” the priest ordered the driver of the car, who was the resident manager of Estancia Don Guillermo.
“Sí, Padre,” the driver said, then added: “Don Cletus, if I had only known you were coming, we would have been waiting for you.”
“Not to worry,” Frade said grandly. “That sort of thing happens.”
On the way to the convent, Welner explained the Lincoln. It was Beatriz Frade de Duarte’s car and had been sent to Mendoza when it was thought she would be going there.
“I didn’t know they made a four-door sedan,” Frade said.
“They don’t. When it came down here, it was a drop-top coupe, and Beatriz said that mussed her hair, so she had it rebodied in Rosario.”
Cletus had, and was immediately ashamed of, the unkind thought that his Aunt Beatriz had apparently always been some kind of a nut.
[TWO]
The Convent of Santa María del Pilar
Mendoza, Mendoza Province, Argentina
1820 14 August 1943
The Mother Superior of the Mendoza chapter of the Order of the Little Sisters of Santa María del Pilar, who received them in a dark office crowded with books, was a leathery-skinned, tiny woman of indeterminate age.
“Thank you for receiving us, Reverend Mother, on such short notice,” Welner greeted her.
There’s just a touch of sarcasm in that, Clete thought.
The nun who’d answered the convent door had told them the Mother Superior’s schedule was full for the day and they would have to make an appointment to see her when she was free, possibly tomorrow. After Welner told her his business with the Mother Superior was quite important, the nun had reluctantly disappeared through a door and left them standing for fifteen minutes in the cold and chairless foyer before finally returning to announce, “Follow me, please.”
“You’re always welcome in this house of God, Father,” Mother Superior said.
And there was sarcasm in that, too. What the hell is going on here?
“This is Don Cletus Frade, Reverend Mother,” Welner said. “And la Señora Dorotea Mallín de Frade.”
That got Mother Superior’s attention. She stared intently at Clete for thirty seconds, then said, “Yes.”
“How do you do?” Clete said politely.
“So this is how you turned out,” Mother Superior said. “Your mother would be pleased.”
“Excuse me?”
“I can see your father in you,” she said. “But there is fortunately much more of your mother.”
This seemed to please her.
“Are you a Christian?” she asked.
“You knew my mother?”
“We were dear friends,” she said. “I asked if you were a Christian.”
“I didn’t know you knew Cletus’s mother,” Welner said.
“Respectfully, Father, there’s probably a good deal you don’t know,” Mother Superior said. “Well, did whoever raised you bring you to our Lord and Savior?”
“How did you know my mother?”
“I asked whether you are Christian or not.”
“If you’re asking if I’m Roman Catholic, no.”
“I was afraid that would happen. I have never been able, and I have prayed, to forgive your father for abandoning you.”
“My father did not abandon me,” Clete said softly.
Dorotea’s eyes showed alarm. She knew that when her husband was really angry, he spoke so softly it was hard sometimes to hear what he said.
“What would you call it?” Mother Superior asked. “When your mother died, he returned from the United States without you. He never came here again. When I finally saw him in Buenos Aires and asked about you, he said you were none of my business. Actually, his words were ‘It’s none of your goddamn business.’ Then he walked out of the room. I never saw him or heard from him again.”
“Why did you think he might feel that way?” Cle
te asked very softly.
“I told you, your mother and I were dear friends.”
“How did that happen?”
“When your father and mother were first married, they spent a good deal of their time here. Your mother loved Casa Montagna. She came to a retreat here at the convent, and we met. She knew that she was ill, so we prayed together for the safe delivery of her first child—you—and rejoiced together when that happened.”
Clete looked at Welner.
“Obviously, you didn’t know about this?”
The priest shook his head.
“Let me tell you about my father,” Clete said, still speaking very softly. “He didn’t abandon me. There were two factors involved. One was my grandfather, my mother’s father. He could not find it in his heart—and still doesn’t—to forgive the Catholic Church for convincing my mother that contraception was a sin, even when another pregnancy would probably kill her. As it did.
“When my mother died, and my father tried to bring me to Argentina, my grandfather stopped him and had him deported. When my father reentered the United States from Mexico with the intent to take me, my grandfather had him arrested, and my father spent ninety days in chains on a Texas road gang for illegal entry. My grandfather had my father’s visa revoked so that he could never again legally enter the United States. It was implied that my mother’s father would have my father killed if he again returned and tried to take me.
“My father could have, of course, made an effort to kidnap me, and he told me that he had considered this seriously. But finally he realized that he couldn’t, even shouldn’t, try to raise an infant by himself. There were two female relatives who could. One was my Aunt Martha, my mother’s brother’s wife, a good solid woman, and the other was his sister, and my father knew Beatriz was a fruitcake.”
“Cletus!” Dorotea exclaimed.
The Honor of Spies Page 12
