"Yes, thank you."
"And what did you do?"
"Well, I went to an early mass at San Juan Evangelista, then we had a family dinner, and then visited with relatives."
You are a bad liar.
Did you really go to mass? Or were you in bed all morning with your vegetable salesman? Perhaps in bed with your young man in the apartment I provide for you? After you told your father you were going to mass, did you then take your vegetable sales-man into our bed?
"I was thinking that perhaps one day we should drive out to El Tigre," Mallin said.
Well, that caused a reaction, didn't it? Your eyes are fright-ened.
"El Tigre?"
"I thought we might go out there for lunch," he said. "Get out of the heat of the city."
"That would be very nice," Teresa said.
"It's been some time since I have been there," he said. "When was the last time you were there?"
Teresa shrugged.
"A long time ago. I don't remember."
Mallin stood up, so suddenly it frightened her.
"I am leaving you now, Maria-Teresa," he said.
"Excuse me?"
He threw Kertiz's photograph on the table.
"If you want to go out to El Tigre, have your vegetable sales-boy take you there."
"Enrico!"
"Get your things out of the apartment today," he went on. "And please tell your father that I am no longer able to guarantee his loan at the bank."
"Enrico, amado"-beloved.
"Don't 'amado' me, you treacherous little bitch!" Mallin said, louder than he intended. He glanced around the bar. People were looking at him. Kertiz had a smug look on his face.
He marched out of the bar with as much dignity as he could muster.
There wasn't a taxi in sight. There was never a taxi when you needed one.
He felt like crying.
Finally, a taxi appeared and he flagged it down and told the driver to take him to the Edificio Kavanagh. He would get the Rolls and drive around until he had his emotions under control, and then he would go home, where he would have several stiff drinks.
Pamela would be pleased to see him. She didn't expect him for several hours. Perhaps he would surprise everyone, Pamela, Dorotea, and Little Enrico, and take everybody out for dinner.
[FOUR]
4730 Avenida Libertador
Buenos Aires
1730 16 December 1942
Clete put the top up on the Buick convertible, marveling again that the General Motors automotive engineers had the ingenuity to come up with a device that would raise and lower the top at the push of a button (unlike the do-it-yourself bullshit he and Tony had had with the '37 Ford in Punta del Este). Then he carefully locked the car and walked into Uncle Guillermo's house.
A man was loitering at the corner of Calle Jorge Newberry, and Clete wondered whether the man was there to watch him.
He was in an unpleasant mood. Who the hell was Jorge Newberry, anyway? he thought as the man on the corner glanced his way, then averted his gaze.
The plan was to leave Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo for Estancia Santa Catharina sometime in the morning. To Clete's way of thinking, that meant sometime before ten-thirty. But it was twelve-thirty before the two-car, Horche-Buick convoy fi-nally set out down the gravel road to Estancia Santa Catharina. During the forty-mile trip, he had to swallow the dust from his father's Horche.
And, of course, Claudia's daughters were not prepared to leave when they arrived. Argentina, while very unlike Mexico, had ma¤ana in common with the republic immediately south of the Rio Grande.
"Since you have nothing to do in Buenos Aires," his father said cheerfully, "I'm sure you won't mind waiting for the girls to finish their packing while Claudia and I drive ahead. The girls will show you the way."
"Fine," Clete said.
The trouble was that he had something to do in Buenos Aires. He had to get in touch with Nestor and tell him he had found the Reine de la Mer and that he could forget taking her out by plant-ing a charge against her hull. It couldn't be done that way. And since he could think of no way to do it himself, that would be up to Nestor to figure out.
On the flight back to the ranch, inspired by an Errol Flynn Battling the Dirty Nazis movie he vaguely remembered, he con-sidered sneaking aboard the ship, overpowering the crew, placing scuttling charges, and then slipping away.
It worked for Errol Flynn. But, he finally remembered-shoot-ing down the only idea he had been able to come up with-that ship in the movie was tied up at a wharf, not anchored twenty-odd miles offshore.
But of course he could not tell his father that, so he smiled and waited patiently for the girls to put their goddamned gear together. He occupied himself by putting the convertible top down, because he would no longer be swallowing his father's dust.
When she finally came out to the car, Isabela Carzino-Cormano insisted on riding in the backseat. Fine gentleman that he was, knowing that riding in the backseat of a convertible going as fast as he intended to drive was no fun, he put the roof up.
That situation lasted perhaps two miles, until Isabela tapped him imperiously on the shoulder and asked him if he would be good enough to please raise the windows. The wind was mussing her hair and she was getting dusty.
That was the last word Isabela spoke before they reached Buenos Aires. It was hotter than hell in the Buick with the roof up.
Alicia Carzino-Cormano tried to make conversation. "Now tell the truth, Cletus," she asked him, "aren't you really just a poco interested in Dorotea Mallin?" Watching them play tennis, she saw him looking at her in a certain way.
Actually, Alicia, you saw me looking down her dress and at her crotch, because 1 am a perverted dirty young man.
"Alicia, don't let your imagination run away with you. And since you're so curious, there is a young woman in America I'm involved with."
He was glad to get rid of both of them at his father's house on Avenida Coronel Diaz and drive quickly to the Guest House.
One of the maids greeted him at the door, then asked him if he would like her to park the Buick.
Thank you, no. Sweetheart. You are probably a worse driver than my father.
"No, gracias. I'm going to leave it right where it is."
His answer brought him a lecture about petty crime on the streets of Buenos Aires. She assured him that if he left the car outside overnight, in the morning there would be nothing left but the windshield, and perhaps not even that.
Getting the car into the garage also posed a problem. They couldn't find the keys. Se¤ora Pellano would of course know where the keys were, the maid told him, but Se¤ora Pellano was unfortunately at the house on Avenida Coronel Diaz. They wound up telephoning Se¤ora Pellano and asking where the keys were.
Finally, stopping off at the kitchen to load a silver champagne cooler with ice and two bottles of cerveza, Clete was able to take the elevator to Uncle Guillermo's playroom and get on the horn to Nestor. Predictably, Nestor was not thrilled to hear from him.
"I saw that boat you were talking about, the one you're think-ing of buying? Reine de la Mer,'' Clete said.
"I'd really rather hear it from you in person, Clete. Why don't you come here?"
"Certainly."
"You have your car?"
"Yeah."
"We can take a ride."
"I'm on my way," Clete said.
[FIVE]
Jasper C. Nestor came out of his house and got in the Buick. As soon as he was seated, Clete said, "There's a Fiat parked down the street that was parked across the street from the Guest House when I drove out of the garage."
"Well, they can't hear us as long as we're driving. You implied that you know where the Reine de la Mer is?"
"She's at anchor twenty miles or so offshore in the Bay of Samboromb¢n."
"How do you know that?"
"I saw her there. I was flying my father's airplane."
"You're sure it's the Reine de la Mer
? How can you be sure?"
"Because I flew close enough to read her sternboard. And as a bonus, I got a good look at all the nice searchlights and ma-chine-gun mounts on her superstructure."
"You... flew close enough to read her sternboard?"
"I buzzed her, all right? That was the only way I could get close enough to read the sternboard."
"I'm not sure that was wise."
"Why?" Clete asked incredulously.
"We would have found her."
"You didn't, did you?"
"And now they know you've found her."
"Mr. Nestor, I don't think there's any way to get close enough to her to blow her up. At least, I can't think of one."
"Point one, Frade, is that you're not to blow her up, you are to disable her. And as quickly as possible, certainly within the next week or ten days. If she replenishes one German submarine, that's one too many. Point two is that you seem to have forgotten that it is not your function to question your orders, but to obey them."
"Did you hear what I said? There is no way to get close to her where she lies. And even if we could, I don't believe that the explosives we have would do much damage."
"There's enough explosives-you have more than twenty pounds. If judiciously placed, that's more than enough to disable her. That's what we're after."
"If we could get to her steering... or to her engines, and had an hour or so to do it, possibly. Pelosi is very good at what he does, but..."
"But what?"
"There's no way to get close to that ship, much less get aboard her."
"You have to try."
"I'll have a shot at anything that looks like it has a chance of succeeding, but I'm not going to commit suicide."
"What did you say?"
"I said I'm not going to commit suicide. I respectfully suggest you send a message to Colonel Graham..."
"Colonel Graham is the Deputy Director of the OSS. I have no intention of bothering him with something like this. What he expects from me, and what I expect from you, is that we carry out the mission assigned by the OSS."
"I respectfully request, Sir, that you send a message to Colonel Graham and tell him that I said there's no way to take the Reine de la Mer out with the men and materiel I have."
"It doesn't work that way, Frade," Nestor said. "We receive our orders and we carry them out to the best of our ability."
What is this "we" crap? You'll be in your office in the Bank of Boston.
"Why didn't we, or the English, sink the Reine de la Mer off Lisbon, once she was identified? Or here, as she came into the Rio de la Plata estuary? The Navy is operating in the South At-lantic. And there's even a destroyer, the Alfred Thomas, making a port call here the day before Christmas."
"Where did you hear about the Alfred Thomas?" Nestor in-terrupted.
"Apparently it's common knowledge."
"I asked you how you heard about it. Did Ettinger tell you?"
You don't like it that Ettinger told me about the destroyer and didn't tell you. And that I didn't tell you either. But screw that. I'm not going to let you get on Ettinger's back for that.
"No, I heard it from Enrico Mallin. Why can't this destroyer sink the Reine de la Mer?"
"It's not your business to question decisions like that, if I have to point that out to you. But the reasons seem self-evident. The Reine de la Mer is a Portuguese ship. Portugal is neutral. The United States does not torpedo neutral ships."
"But it's all right for the three of us to sink it? What's the difference? Aside from the fact that a destroyer has the capability to take it out, and we don't?" Clete asked, and then went on without waiting for a reply: "I'd like to plead my case up the chain of command."
"It doesn't work that way. You're in the OSS now. You take your orders from me, and you don't have the privilege of ques-tioning them. What's the matter with you, Frade?"
Clete felt frustration and anger sweep through him. "I know what orders are, Mr. Nestor, and I'll" try to obey mine," he said. "All I'm asking you to do is pass the word up the chain of command. Tell them that I told you that I'll need more to take out the Reine de la Mer than good intentions and twenty pounds of explosives. A very fast powerboat, maybe. Cer-tainly another two hundred pounds of high explosive. Or a TBF from Brazil. Something."
"A what from Brazil?"
"A TBF," Clete repeated. And then, when he realized that Nestor had no idea what a TBF was, he added, "A torpedo bomber."
"A torpedo bomber?" Nestor asked sarcastically.
"I'm a fighter pilot, but I can fly TBFs. I could go to Brazil, pick up the plane, fly it to that dirt strip we used for the airdrop in Uruguay, where Pelosi would be waiting with enough avgas to get me to the Reine de la Mer..."
Nestor looked at him with incredulous contempt.
"... and put a torpedo in her."
Nestor shook his head sadly, as if he had failed to make a point to a backward child.
"Frade, that would be just as much an act of war as the Alfred Thomas attacking the Reine de la Mer.''
"I could then fly over my father's estancia, put the plane on a course that would carry it out over the Atlantic, and bail out," Clete said.
"And that's what you want me to suggest to my superiors?"
"Yes, Sir."
"You simply refuse to understand the situation. Sinking the Reine de la Mer with a torpedo bomber was, I am quite sure, one of the options considered. It was obviously discarded. It's out of the question. Quite impossible."
"So is doing the Reine de la Mer any harm with twenty pounds of explosive. And I will not order my men to do something that has no chance of success, and that will get them killed," Clete said. "I respectfully request that you pass that up the chain of command."
"I don't think there is any point in continuing this conversa-tion, Lieutenant Frade," Nestor said. "You leave me no choice but to report your insubordination-if that's all it is-up, as you put it, 'the chain of command.' "
"What do you mean, 'if that's all it is'?" Clete demanded, coldly angry.
"What would you call it when an officer refuses to obey an order because there is an element of personal risk involved?"
Clete pulled to the curb and slammed on the brakes.
"Get out," he ordered. "Before I punch you into next week."
Nestor looked at him in surprise, then opened the door and stepped out.
[SIX]
Avenida Alvear
Buenos Aires
1815 17 December 1942
"And here we are at the Alvear Palace Hotel," Oberst Karl-Heinz Grner, military attach‚ of the Embassy of the German Reich to the Republic of Argentina, said quite unnecessarily to Hauptmann Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein, who was residing there. "Just a few minutes' walk from the Duarte mansion."
They were both in civilian clothing, and had just come from Peter's formal introduction to Ambassador von Lutzenberger at the embassy.
"I estimate a three-minute walk, Herr Oberst," Peter said
straight-faced.
"No more, I am sure."
The military mind at work. Or an Oberst-and-higher's mind at work. My father can't park a car without a detailed operational plan. Why should this man be any different?
"It was the original intention of the Argentines to line with cavalry from the Husares de Pueyrredon both sides of Avenida Alvear from the Frade mansion to the Basilica of Saint Pilar, which is approximately a kilometer in that direction," he pointed. "I talked them out of that."
"Yes, Sir?"
"The avenue will be lined from a point approximately twenty-five meters from the Duarte mansion with troops of a regular regiment-the Second Regiment of Infantry. There will be a representative honor guard of the Husares de Pueyrredon at the mansion itself. On my side, I thought it would be best, for public relations purposes, to have regular troops in field gear-they wear our helmets, you know, and are armed with Mausers, and look very much like German troops. And on their side, I suspect they were pleased
at the suggestion. With that many men in those heavy winter-dress uniforms, in this heat, it was statistically cer-tain that a number of Husares would faint and fall off their mounts."
He looked at Peter with what could have been the suggestion of a smile.
"It is always embarrassing, Herr Oberst, when men faint while on parade."
W E B Griffin - Honor 1 - Honor Bound Page 44
