W E B Griffin - Honor 2 - Blood and Honor

by Blood

"I was thinking exactly the same thing," Clete said. "Christ, he must have the patience of a saint."

  "He loves her very much," Lauffer said. He put out his hand. "You must be exhausted."

  "Yeah."

  "I will be here at eight-thirty to take you to the Basilica," he said. "Would that be all right?"

  "Fine."

  "Or I could be fifteen, twenty minutes late. Delayed in traffic."

  Clete smiled at him. "I really appreciate that," he said. "But I think I'd bet-ter be there at nine."

  "Eight-thirty, then," Lauffer said, and reached across Clete to open the door. "Sleep well."

  The moment he stepped out of the car the door to the mansion opened. He saw Antonio, the butler.

  The perfectly trained servant, Clete thought. He didn't open the door until he was sure I wanted it open.

  "Good evening, Se¤or Cletus."

  "Good evening, Antonio."

  "Is there anything I can get for you, Se¤or?"

  "No, I don't... Yes. I'm not sure I have an un-messed-up shirt for tomor-row. Is there someone... ?"

  "Your linen has been gone over, Se¤or."

  "In that case, you can't do anything for me except say 'good night.'"

  "Would you like me to have your suit refreshed?"

  Clete looked down at the creases in his trousers.

  "It looks fine to me."

  "I'll have the laundress touch it up," Antonio said. "Your father took great pains with his appearance."

  Was that a shot at me, el slobbo? Or was "touching up " the son's suit a last service to el Coronel?

  "Thank you," Clete said.

  "You have had several telephone calls, Se¤or. All from, I believe, the same lady. She did not choose to leave her name."

  Well, I know who that is, don't I?

  "If she calls back, put her through. Even if I'm asleep."

  "Very well, Se¤or."

  "Good night, Antonio."

  "Good night, Se¤or."

  Clete started up the wide stairway.

  He found the bed had been turned down. A pair of pajamas were laid out on it.

  What do I do, put them on and toss and turn all night? Or sleep in my skivvy shirt, which will make me appear both ungrateful to the staff and boorish, as well?

  He stripped to his underwear, then carried the suit to the sitting and left it on a chair so the laundress could find it. That done, he returned to the bedroom, closing the door after him.

  He was brushing his teeth when the telephone rang.

  Tinkled, he thought. The telephones here don't ring, they tinkle, as if the bell is powered by a run-down battery.

  There was an ornate, French-style telephone on the huge marble sink.

  "Hola?"

  "Clete?" Dorotea's voice made his heart jump.

  "Hi, Princess."

  "I've been trying for hours to get you."

  "How did you know I was here?"

  "Your grandfather called Daddy. Daddy told me."

  "How are you?"

  "I'm all right," Dorotea said. "Clete, I can't tell you how devastated I am by what happened to your father, how sorry I am for you."

  "Thank you."

  She seems hesitant about something. Distant.

  "I have something to tell you, Clete."

  "Tell me."

  "Not over the telephone. I want to be looking at you when I tell you."

  "Tell me now, and look at me later."

  "Damn you! This is very important."

  "So what do you want me to do? I don't suppose you can come here. Do you want me to come there?"

  "God no! Daddy would have kittens."

  "OK. Then what?"

  "Where are you going to be first thing in the morning?"

  "At nine o'clock, I'll be at the church."

  "Our Lady of Pilar?"

  "Right."

  "Will you be alone?"

  "I don't think so, but we can find someplace to talk, if that's what you're asking."

  "All right, I'll see you there."

  "Fine."

  "Cletus, I am so sorry for you."

  "I'll be all right."

  "I'll see you at nine, or a little after," Dorotea said, and the line went dead.

  He put the ornate receiver back in its cradle.

  "Clete, my boy," he said aloud, "I think you have just received Part One of a 'Dear John' communication, with Part Two to be delivered in person at zero nine hundred hours. Shit!"

  Well, what the hell did I expect? She just turned nineteen years old, for Christ's sake. Before me, she was really the Virgin Princess. I was the first, quote, real man, unquote, in her life. Nineteen-year-old girls routinely fall in love with, quote, older men, unquote, and if the older man is a sonofabitch, as I certainly was, sometimes even let them into their pants.

  "Cletus," she will say, "I will always love you. But I have met someone else. He is my age. I didn't want to fall in love with him. It just happened. I can only hope that you can understand. I never wanted to hurt you."

  Whereupon, as a gentleman should in such circumstances, I will touch her shoulder in a brotherly way, sincerely announce that of course I understand, wish her and the boyfriend all possible happiness, and tell her I will never for-get her either.

  Which is true. I'm in love with her-or think I am. I never felt this way about anybody else before-but that does not add up to us living happily ever after in a vine-covered cottage by the side of the road. What I should be is grate-ful that Juan or Pancho or whatever the fuck the sonofabitch's name is has come into her life, getting me out of it without causing her any pain. Or getting her killed, which would have been a genuine possibility. And if these bastards do succeed in killing me, which is also a genuine possibility, it will be easier on the Princess. I will have been just one in a long line of her ex-boyfriends, not her lover or, Jesus Christ, even worse, her fianc‚.

  Shit!

  He walked out the bath into his bedroom and looked at the bed.

  I don't want to get in there. That's not my bed, it's my father's bed, and I don't care if they have gone to great pains to remove everything that was his from his apartment, it's still his apartment and his bed.

  And for some reason, I'm not at all sleepy. Probably all the alcohol I didn't have, and all the coffee-strong enough to melt the teeth of a mule-I did.

  Tony! I have to see him, and I have to see Ettinger. And Peter. I really want to see Peter. He knows who ordered the assassination of my father, and I think he 'II tell me.

  He went to the dressing room and quickly pulled on khaki trousers, a polo shirt, and a tweed jacket. He hadn't gotten as far as taking off his boots, and get-ting dressed took less than a minute.

  When he went through the sitting, his suit was already gone. He went down the wide stairs, then to a corridor under them. Just off that was the stairwell to the basement garage.

  Half a dozen cars were in the garage, but none was in the place reserved for his father's beloved Horche.

  I wonder where that is? Do the cops have it?

  He went to a 1940 Ford station wagon, parked between an ancient, immac-ulately maintained Rolls Royce sedan and a small Mercedes sedan. The Ford was locked.

  "Damn!"

  "Se¤or?"

  He turned to find a middle-aged man in his shirtsleeves.

  "May I help you, Se¤or?"

  "Can you get me the keys to this?" he said, pointing to the Ford. "I would be pleased to conduct the Se¤or anywhere he wishes to go," the man said, pointing at the Rolls Royce.

  "Just get me the keys to this, please," Clete said.

  [THREE]

  Avenida Pueyrred¢n 1706

  Capital Federal, Buenos Aires, Argentina

  0005 10 April 1943

  When Clete drove past Peter's apartment building looking for a place to park, he saw the doorman sitting behind his tiny desk in the lobby, his hands folded on his stomach, sound asleep.

  He thought it very likely that the doorman got a wee
kly envelope from Teniente Coronel Mart¡n of the Bureau of Internal Security in exchange for a re-port on who rode up to Piso 10 and when and how long they stayed.

  Or perhaps two envelopes, the second from the Polic¡a Federal. Or maybe even three. Peter told me that there are two obscure flunkies at the Embassy who really work for the Military Attach‚, who is really, in addition to his other du-ties, the counterintelligence officer. They're probably keeping an eye on Peter, too.

  If I go up to see Peter-or just ask the doorman if he's at home-that means Martin-and probably the Polic¡a Federal and Colonel Whatsisname... Gr�ner... will hear about it. I can't risk that, so what the hell do I do?

  Don't try to see Peter tonight, obviously.

  Shit.

  But then the doorbells caught his eye. The doorbell system was mounted on a marble pillar outside the lobby-Clete had never seen anything like it any-where but in Buenos Aires. There were buttons for each apartment, and an in-tercom. You pushed the proper apartment number, identified yourself, and if the person called wanted to let you in, he pushed a button operating the solenoid-controlled lock on the plate-glass door leading into the lobby.

  The question is, Clete decided, can Sleepy in the lobby see who's pushing the bells if he wakes up? He looked. He can, if he wakes up. But even if he does, he won't know what button I've pushed. I can at least talk to Peter, if not go up to his apartment. Tell him to call me, or something.

  He parked the Ford around the corner and walked back to the apartment building. The doorman was still asleep.

  It took three long pushes at button number 10 before there was an annoyed, even angry, "Hola?"

  "Clete."

  There was just a moment's hesitation.

  "Go around the corner, to your right," Peter's metallic-sounding voice said.

  Clete turned from the doorbell system on the marble pillar and walked away. The doorman was still asleep. To the right was in the opposite direction from where he had parked the Ford.

  He turned on his heel, went to the Ford, and started driving around the block. No pedestrians were on the sidewalk, and so far as he could tell, no one was sitting in any of the automobiles parked along the curb on Avenida Pueyrred¢n. On his second pass past the apartment building, he saw Peter walk-ing quickly toward the corner.

  He drove by him, flicked his headlights, and pulled to the curb. Peter jumped in the front seat, and Clete drove off.

  "See if anyone's following," Peter ordered.

  There were no headlights in the rearview mirror.

  "Nobody," Clete said. "Where should we go?"

  "There's a bar on Libertador that's usually crowded this time of night," Pe-ter said. "Just past the American Ambassador's residence, by the railroad bridge. It's called 'The Horse.'"

  "How are you, my friend?" Major Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein of the Luftwaffe said to Major Cletus Howell Frade of the U.S. Marine Corps.

  "How do you think?" Clete replied, raising his glass of Johnny Walker to touch Peter's.

  They were sitting at a small table on a balcony overlooking the ground-floor bar and restaurant of The Horse. When they started up the balcony stairs, they got an odd look from the waiter, who could not understand why two young men would go to the nearly deserted balcony when at least a half-dozen attrac-tive, and unattached, women were sitting at the bar.

  The two had met the previous December. When Clete first came to Argentina, his father turned the Guest House over to him-"Uncle Willy's House" across from the racetrack on Avenida del Libertador. After a trip to Uruguay, where he had acquired explosives to blow up the Reine de la Mer-never used, as it turned out-Clete returned to the house to find Peter sitting in the sitting room, sipping his fourth glass of cognac as he listened to Beethoven's Third Sym-phony on the phonograph.

  Either because she didn't know that Clete was staying in the house, or be-cause she was so detached from reality that she did not consider that a Luft-waffe officer and a U.S. Marine Corps officer were officially enemies, Beatrice Frade de Duarte had ordered von Wachtstein to be put up in the guest house.

  It was then well after midnight, and there was nothing the two young offi-cers could do but declare that a temporary truce existed between them. They sealed the truce with a glass of cognac, and then another. And several more.

  And then it became apparent that they really had a great deal in common. Both were fighter pilots, which provided an immediate bond between them. Pe-ter had heard of the exploits of the greatly outnumbered Marine fighter pilots on Guadalcanal, and had an understandable fellow fighter pilot's professional ad-miration for someone who had been one of them. And Clete had heard of the fe-rocious valor of German fighter pilots defending Berlin from waves of B-17 bombers and had a fellow fighter pilot's professional admiration for someone who had been one of them.

  By the time they staggered off to bed, they were friends.

  But this truce ended very early the next morning when an Argentine officer, learning that the two enemies were under the same roof on Libertador, appeared to remove von Wachtstein from the difficult situation before one tried to kill the other.

  Later, when von Wachtstein learned that it was Oberst Gainer's intention to "eliminate" Cletus Howell Frade-by then identified as an OSS agent-von Wachtstein, after a painful moral battle with himself, decided he could not stand silently by and watch it happen. He warned Clete that an attempt would be made on his life.

  Clete, forewarned, was able to deal with the assassins when they came to the Libertador house. The equation, so far as Clete was concerned, was simple. He owed von Wachtstein his life, and told him so.

  Shortly afterward, Peter received from his father the letter in which he told him that he was required by honor to join the small group of German officers who saw it as their duty to kill Adolf Hitler, and that he had done so. From the tone of the letter, it was clear that Generalleutnant von Wachtstein fully ex-pected to lose his life and was prepared for that.

  Peter was not surprised. He had by then already smuggled into Argentina the equivalent of half a million dollars in Swiss francs, English pounds, United States dollars, and Swedish kroner. His father had given him this money to safeguard in Argentina until the war was over. When his father did this, he ex-plained that "a friend" in Argentina would not only help him invest the money, but would also receive more money from other sources to be safeguarded.

  The friend turned out to be Ambassador Manfred Alois Graf von Lutzenberger. Soon after he was so identified, the Ambassador informed Peter that get-ting money to Argentina was only the beginning of the problems they faced. Protecting the money and investing it was very risky. All over Argentina there were Nazi sympathizers who would quickly report anything suspicious to Gr�ner and his operatives. In Nazi Germany, illegal foreign financial transactions were considered treason. The penalty for treason was the execution of the traitor, all members of his immediate family, and the confiscation of all lands and property of whatever kind.

  Reluctantly, but with no other choice that he could see, Peter went to Clete for assistance. And Clete in turn went to his father, carrying with him Generalleutnant von Wachtstein's letter to Peter. The letter so moved el Coronel Frade that he wept. And he immediately enlisted his brother-in-law, Humberto Valdez Duarte, Managing Director of the Anglo-Argentine Bank, to deal with the secret investment and safekeeping of the money.

  "Saying I'm sorry about your father seems pretty damned inadequate, Cletus."

  Clete shrugged his understanding.

  "Tell me what you know about what happened," he said.

  "I didn't know about the details," Peter said. "But I was aware that some-thing like that was going to be attempted. I tried to tell your father that.... I'm terribly sorry, Clete."

  "Why?"

  "I suppose I don't enjoy the complete confidence of Oberst Gr�ner," Peter said. "Oh, you mean why did they... ?"

  "Kill my father?"

  "The order came from Berlin. Both Gr�ner and the Am
bassador tried to stop it. Gr�ner for professional reasons-he knew how angry your father's friends would be. Von Lutzenberger? I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he happily went along with Gr�ner's objection that it would cause trouble. What I think-and this is only a guess-is that there were several reasons for the assassination. One, they didn't want your father to become President of Ar-gentina. Two, they couldn't let the destruction of the Reine de la Mer go un-avenged. You were in America... your father was here. What do they call that, 'two birds with one stone'?"