W E B Griffin - Honor 2 - Blood and Honor

by Blood

  "Or I will place an armed guard at your door."

  "OK," Clete said. "I won't try to leave, and I won't communicate with any-one without your permission."

  "On your word of honor as an officer and a gentleman?"

  "On my word of honor as an officer and a gentleman," Clete parroted.

  I wonder if I mean that? What is the really honorable thing to do? Pass up an opportunity to try to keep one of my men alive? Or live up to Martin's adult version of Boy Scout's Honor?

  "Suboficial Mayor Rodriguez," Mart¡n said, turning to Enrico, "are you armed?"

  Enrico looked at Clete for guidance.

  "Tell him, Enrico."

  "S¡, mi coronel," Enrico said, patting the small of his back to indicate that he had a pistol concealed there.

  Mart¡n picked his briefcase up from where he had set it on the floor, opened it, and produced a.45 automatic.

  "I really hope you won't have occasion to need this," he said, handing it to Clete.

  Then he nodded at Lauffer and left the room.

  [FIVE]

  The Embassy of the United States of America

  Montevideo, Uruguay

  2205 18 April 1943

  "I will take you there, Se¤or, of course," the taxi driver at the bus terminal said to the somewhat rumpled-looking middle-aged man, "but it is a long way, an expensive trip, and the norteamericano Embassy is not open at this hour."

  "You are very kind, Se¤or," Colonel A. F. Graham, USMCR-and have just earned yourself a very nice tip-"but please take me there anyway. Some-one is waiting for me."

  That's the absolute opposite of the truth. If I can find Stevenson, he will be the most surprised sonofabitch in Uruguay.

  The Embassy of the United States was in a stone villa, inside a tall stone-and-steel-spear fence. A brass sign was on the fence gate pillar, and a painted wooden sign announced the hours the Embassy was open for business. The gate was firmly closed with a heavy chain and a large padlock.

  There was also an intercom device with a button.

  Graham pushed the button. Thirty seconds later, a voice barely compre-hensible through static-but obviously American-announced "Cerrado"- Closed.

  Deciding that communication over that device would be impossible, Gra-ham put his finger back on the button and held it there.

  There were several more "closed" announcements over the next two min-utes, and then there was a flash of light as the door of the Embassy villa opened and an indignant young man in Marine khakis appeared and shouted, "Cerrado! Cerrado!"

  Graham kept his finger on the button until the Marine-a corporal-came down to the gate.

  "Cerrado, Se¤or," he said with finality.

  "Good evening, Corporal. My name is Graham. I would like to see Mr. Ralph Stevenson, who is the Cultural Attach‚."

  The Corporal was visibly surprised that the middle-aged man wearing rum-pled clothes and badly needing a shave spoke English so well.

  "Sorry. We're closed. You'll have to come back in the morning."

  "I would like to see either Mr. Stevenson, please, or the duty officer."

  "You American?"

  "Yes, as a matter of fact, I am."

  "Is this some sort of bona fide emergency?"

  "Yes, I would say so, Corporal."

  "What kind of an emergency?"

  "Corporal, listen to me carefully. I may not look like one, but I happen to be a colonel of the United States Marine Corps."

  It was clear that the corporal thought this highly unlikely.

  "Is that so? You got anything to prove it, Colonel!"

  Colonel Graham had with him his Marine Corps identification card, his JCS Letter Orders, and another plastic enclosed card identifying him as the Deputy Director For Western Hemisphere Operations of the Office of Strategic Services. But before leaving Porto Alegre, he had placed all of these documents into the false bottom of one of his suitcases.

  But, he realized, he was not without the means to convince the corporal that he was a fellow Marine.

  "Listen to me, son," he said. "Unless I am inside the Embassy talking to the Duty Officer within the next thirty seconds, you're going to be a buck private on your way to permanent duty cleaning mess-hall grease pits on Parris Island so fast it will take a week for your ass to catch up with you. Now open this god-damned gate!"

  "Aye, aye, Sir," the corporal said as he reached for the key to the padlock. As they reached the open door to the Embassy building, the corporal vol-unteered the information that Mr. Stevenson was in the building but had left or-ders that he was not to be disturbed by anybody but the Ambassador.

  "That was before I got here, son," Graham said. "Tell him I'm here."

  "Aye, aye, Sir," the corporal said. "I'll take you to his office."

  "Thank you."

  The office of the Cultural Attach‚ was in the basement of the villa. The corporal knocked on the door.

  It was opened by a nice-looking young man in his thirties whose face bore a look of resigned tolerance.

  "Corporal, I said I didn't want to be bothered," he said, and then saw Gra-ham. "Jesus Christ! Colonel Graham!"

  "Hello, Stevenson," Graham said.

  "You know the Colonel, Sir?" the corporal asked. "Yes, I do," Stevenson said.

  "Yes, Sir. Then I'll just log him in."

  "No, Corporal, don't do that," Graham said. "Actually, since you didn't see me, there's no reason to log me in." The corporal looked at Stevenson.

  "You didn't see Colonel Graham, Corporal," Stevenson said. "I'll explain this to the Security Officer."

  "Yes, Sir."

  "Come in, Colonel," Stevenson said. There was a man sitting on a battered leather couch in Stevenson's small office.

  "Don't tell me this is the legendary Colonel A. F. Graham in the flesh," the man said.

  "Who are you?"

  "My name is Leibermann, and before you jump all over Stevenson's ass for talking to me, I came to see him."

  "Is that so? Why?"

  "Has my fame preceded me?" Leibermann asked. "Can I infer from the ut-ter lack of surprise on your face that you know who I am?"

  "I know who you are, Mr. Leibermann. What I'm curious about is what you're doing here."

  "Tex Frade asked me to see what I could do to keep your man Ettinger alive. I'm sorry to tell you I failed."

  "What are you saying? Ettinger's dead?"

  "Dead, and they mutilated the corpse to send a message."

  "What kind of a message? To whom?"

  "That's what Stevenson and I were talking about," Leibermann said. "But since Stevenson won't tell me what Ettinger was doing over here, we aren't do-ing very well with our little game of Twenty Questions."

  "I told you, Milton, I don't know what Ettinger was doing there," Steven-son protested. "I never heard his name before you walked in here tonight!"

  You call him by his first name, do you, Stevenson? That means that (a) you are probably seeing more of him than Wild Bill Donovan would like you to, (b) that you like him, and (c) Leibermann likes you, or else he wouldn't have made a point of telling me he came to see you to keep him out of trouble with me.

  "What does this mean, Colonel?" Leibermann asked sarcastically. "That the OSS not only doesn't talk to FBI, they don't talk to each other, either?"

  "I think the word is 'compartmentalization,'" Graham said. "Nobody knows anything more than they have to."

  "Of course, all I am is a simple accountant, not a secret agent, like you two, so I may be missing the big picture on this, but my word for that is 'stu-pid.'"

  "When did this happen?" Graham asked.

  "According the local cops, he'd been dead about thirty hours when they found him."

  "Where did they find him?"

  "There's a sort of a seaside resort here called Carrasco. They found him in the sand dunes about a mile north of the hotel-actually it's a gambling casino and hotel-where he was staying. His car is in the casino garage. No signs of a struggle in his room."
>
  "How did they kill him? How was he mutilated?"

  "Ice pick in the ear," Leibermann said. "And, postmortem, they severed his penis and placed it in his mouth. That's what we were talking about when you showed up."

  "Why would they do that?" Graham asked.

  "Are we talking to each other to the point where we agree that probable bad guys are the Germans?" Leibermann asked. "OK, why would the Germans do that?"

  "I don't think the Germans would," Leibermann said. "They might do something imaginative, like hang a gasoline-filled tire around him and set it on fire, but I don't think they'd cut off a Yiddisher's schwantz. and stick it in his mouth. They'd have to touch it."

  He mimed lifting the penile member erect and then sawing on it with a knife.

  "Isn't that sort of thing, the penis in the mouth, associated with gangs in the United States?" Graham asked.

  "The true indication of somebody else's intelligence is how much he agrees with you," Leibermann said. "My own theory of what happened is that the lo-cal branch of Murder Incorporated was hired by parties unknown but who prob-ably have offices in the German Embassy. The reason for the contract was that Ettinger knew too much and talked. The local cops tell me that's what happens down here, too, to people who talk too much."

  "You say Frade asked for your help?" Graham asked.

  Leibermann nodded.

  "When was that?"

  "A little after noon today."

  "Do you know where he is now?"

  "Hey, I'm the FBI. I'm supposed to ask the questions. You guys are sup-posed to blow things up."

  "Very funny, Milton," Graham said. "You don't mind if I call you Milton, do you?"

  "Not if I can call you Alejandro," Leibermann said.

  Christ. He even knows my first name.

  "I would be honored if you called me Alejandro, Milton," Graham said. "And very grateful if you would tell me where Frade is."

  "He told me he was invited to a party and couldn't turn down the invitation. Clever fellow that I am, I think he was telling me the coup d'‚tat has started."

  "Did he happen to mention anything about an airplane?"

  "What did you do, get him one to replace the one he put on the bottom of Samboromb¢n Bay?"

  Graham happened to glance at Stevenson. From his face, it was obvious that he was hearing a number of things for the first time.

  "If I answer that so subtly phrased question, will you answer a question for me?'

  "That depends on how subtle your answer is," Leibermann said, smiling at him.

  "Yes. We got him another airplane. He picked it up in Brazil, and had aboard another OSS team. It was supposed to be a small twin, but it turned out to be a Lockheed airliner, a Lodestar. Since that was the first time Frade has flown a Lodestar, so far as I know, I have been naturally wondering if he and the people with him made it all right."

  "That wasn't evasive at all, Colonel," Leibermann said. "So I will reply in kind. Frade landed at his estancia with the Lockheed. They unloaded five peo-ple-almost certainly your OSS team-and some crates, and then took off again. I don't know where to."

  "How reliable is that information?" Graham asked.

  "The man I have on Frade's estancia is pretty reliable."

  "A minute ago, Milton, when I asked about an airplane, you weren't ex-actly truthful, were you?" Graham said.

  "I was obfuscatory," Leibermann said. "The first time you asked me about an airplane was before I knew you had really stopped playing games. So I was obfuscatory."

  "Do the names 'Galahad' and 'Cavalry' mean anything to you, Milton?"

  "These sources? Code names for sources?" Leibermann asked, as if he didn't expect a reply. "You got them from Frade?" Now he waited for Graham to nod. "I haven't a clue about who Galahad might be," he went on. "But Cav-alry might be Martin. You know who I mean, the BIS guy?"

  Graham nodded again.

  "I'll ask around, if it's important to you," Leibermann said. "Is it impor-tant?"

  "Important enough for me to come down here," Graham said. "Which is the next thing on my agenda. I need to get to Buenos Aires. How's the best way?"

  "The best way is to catch the eight-o'clock boat ferry in the morning. That'll put you into Buenos Aires a little before two."

  "That's not quick enough," Graham said.

  "You're out of luck," Leibermann said. "There's no other way tonight. You missed the boat, to coin a phrase."

  "What about driving?"

  "There's a ferry across the border into Entre Rios Province," Stevenson said. "But it stops running at ten. I'm afraid Mr. Leibermann is right, Colonel. You're stuck here for the night."

  Graham shrugged.

  "Colonel, what about Ettinger's body?" Stevenson asked.

  "What about it?"

  "What do we do with it when the police release it?"

  God forgive me, that subject never entered my mind.

  "Ettinger was here as a private citizen. What happens when a private citi-zen dies down here?"

  "I really don't know," Stevenson said. "I'll have to ask one of the diplo-mats, the Consul General."

  "No. You go to the Ambassador. You tell them Ettinger died in the service of his country. I want him put in a casket with a flag on it, and I want him taken to Porto Alegre, Brazil, escorted by the Military Attach‚ and a couple of Marines from the Embassy Guard. They can fly him home from there. You tell the Ambassador I said that's what going to happen, and all you want from him is to tell his people to do it."

  "Yes, Sir."

  "Do it now, tonight," Graham said. "And send off a message to Oracle- right now-so somebody can let his mother know what happened."

  "Yes, Sir."

  "Where can I stay tonight?"

  "There's room in my apartment, Sir," Stevenson said.

  "Where are you staying, Milton?"

  "I've got a room in the Casino Hotel I told you about."

  "Could I get a room there?"

  "Probably. But there's two beds in my room, if there's a problem."

  "That might be best of all," Graham said. "Once I have a shower and a shave, and change into clean clothes, I think that you and I ought to have a long talk, Milton."

  "I was hoping that's what you had in mind, Alejandro," Leibermann said.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  [ONE]

  Visiting Officers' Quarters

  First Cavalry Regiment

  Campo de Mayo

  Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

  0125 19 April 1943

  The lights in the room went on. Clete, startled, sat up in the bed.

  Capitan Roberto Lauffer was standing just inside the door, by the light switch. He was fully dressed, and wore a blue-and-white-striped band of cloth around his right arm. The door was open, and through it Clete could see two soldiers armed with Thompson submachine guns. They both looked maybe seventeen years old-and terrified. They also had the blue-and-white-the Ar-gentine colors-armbands.

  "Sorry to wake you, Cletus," Lauffer said politely. "But something has come up. The order to execute immediately has been given."

  Nice choice of words, Roberto! It's really great to have someone waking you up in the middle of the night saying things like "the order to execute imme-diately has been given."

  The door to the other bedroom opened, and Enrico, in baggy cotton under-shirt and drawers, came in. He had his right hand behind his back.

  I don't think Enrico's scratching his ass; he's got his.45 back there.

  "Buenos dias, mi Capitan."

  "The order for immediate execution of Outline Blue has been issued, Suboficial Mayor," Lauffer said formally.

  "I will get dressed, Se¤or," Enrico said.

  Clete swung his feet out of bed.

  "What are you talking about?" Clete asked. "What's this 'execute immedi-ately' order all about?"

  "Castillo knows that Blue Sky was ordered-the command to execute Out-line Blue," Lauffer explained. "He sent messages to every command,
stating that General Ramirez has resigned as Minister of War, that any orders Ramirez might issue are to be ignored, and that General Savaronna has taken his place."