[ONE]
The Vieux Carré
New Orleans, Louisiana
1955 1 November 1942
It was still raining when the 1938 Durham-bodied Cadillac pulled to the curb across the street from the Monteleone Hotel in the Vieux Carré. Clete wiped his hand on the window to clear the condensation.
“There he is. He even looks like the picture Graham showed me,” Clete said.
He started to open the door. His grandfather stopped him. He had a microphone in his hand.
“Samuel, the gentleman we are meeting is standing to the left of the…”
Clete took the microphone from him.
“Samuel, pull up in front of the hotel. Don’t get out of the car. I’ll call to him.”
“Have it your way,” the old man said, then leaned across Clete to look out the window he had cleared. “He doesn’t look like a Jew.”
“What does a Jew look like?”
“Not like that,” the old man said.
Samuel found a place in the flow of traffic and drove the thirty yards to the marquee of the Monteleone. Clete opened the door and called to Ettinger. Ettinger was visibly surprised to see the car, but after a moment came quickly across the sidewalk.
“We’re only going around the corner, but why get wet?” Clete said, offering his hand. “David, I’m glad to meet you.” Then he turned to the old man. “Grandfather, may I present Mr. David Ettinger? David, this is my grandfather, Mr. Cletus Marcus Howell.”
“How do you do?” the old man said.
“How do you do?” Ettinger said, offering his hand.
With a just-perceptible hesitation, the old man took it. Briefly. Then he picked up the microphone again. “Arnaud’s, Samuel,” he ordered. “After you have found a place to park the car, go into the kitchen and tell them I would be obliged if they gave you something to eat.”
Clete saw Ettinger’s eyebrow rise, and smiled at him.
A waiter greeted them at the door to Arnaud’s and led them through the crowded main dining area to a small private dining room. The waiter pulled aside the curtain on the doorway and bowed them in.
The table had been set. There was an impressive array of crystal, silver, and starched napkins. A menu was at each place.
“I took the liberty, Mr. Howell,” the waiter said, removing the cover from a plate in the center of the table, “to have a few hors d’oeuvres prepared for you, while you decide.”
“The last time you did that,” the old man said, “the remoulade sauce was disgraceful.”
“Indeed it was. The saucier was shot at dawn the next morning. We showed him no mercy, although he pleaded he was the sole support of his old mother. Can I bring you something from the bar?”
Clete saw Ettinger smiling; the smile vanished when Ettinger noticed the old man turning toward him.
“Mr. Ettinger?” the old man asked.
“Not for me, thank you, Sir. I wouldn’t want to anesthetize my tongue before eating in a place like this.”
The old man flashed Clete a triumphant smile.
“Then may I suggest we have a quick look at the menu to see whether fish, fowl, or good red meat?”
“May I ask that you order for me?” Ettinger said.
“I would be happy to translate the menu for you,” the old man said. “They do it in French only to humiliate their patrons.”
“I speak French, if your ordering for me would be an imposition,” Ettinger said.
“No imposition at all,” the old man said. “What would you recommend tonight, Harold?”
“I hesitate to recommend anything. You have been coming in here for thirty years, and I have yet to bring you anything that met your approval.”
“In that case, we will try to wash these hors d’oeuvres down with a bottle of Moët, the ’39, if there’s any left. And you will then go to the kitchen and tell the chef that we are hungry enough to eat anything that hasn’t fallen on the floor.”
“There was some shrimp-and-oyster bisque a while back that didn’t smell too badly.”
“We place ourselves in your somewhat less than knowledgeable hands,” the old man said.
“I am overwhelmed,” the waiter said. “It is, in any case, good to see you, Mr. Frade. Didn’t I hear you were in the Marines?”
“It’s good to see you too. I was in the Marines. I was just discharged.”
“Then welcome home.”
“Thank you.”
The waiter left.
The old man turned to Ettinger. “For reasons I can’t imagine, that man fancies himself the best waiter here; and by inference, the best in New Orleans.”
“It’s probably his table-side manner,” Ettinger said.
The old man actually chuckled.
“The problem with Argentina, Mr. Ettinger,” Cletus Marcus Howell proclaimed, “is that it is a theocracy.”
He was leaning back in his chair, cradling a brandy snifter in his hand. The dinner had gone well. The food, as Clete knew it would be, had been superb.
The shrimp-and-oyster bisque was followed by Filet de Boeuf à la Venison, a dish Ettinger had never previously encountered. When he admitted this, he thus offered the old man the opportunity to display his culinary knowledge as to its preparation.
Ettinger seemed not only genuinely interested, but also showed himself to be quite familiar with the subtleties of haute cuisine. He mentioned to the old man, for instance, that the Moroccans made a similar dish; they substituted mutton for the beef, however, while marinating it and otherwise cooking it like venison.
He also showed a genuine and knowledgeable enthusiasm for the wine. By the time the brandy was served, the old man was almost beaming. And Clete was amusing himself with what was surely his grandfather’s current opinion of Staff Sergeant Ettinger: Jew or not, that fellow is a gentleman.
He was even daring to hope that the old man was in such a good mood he would not mention his daughter. Clete now realized, resignedly, that that was not to be.
“A theocracy, Sir?” Ettinger asked.
“A government which is controlled by a religion,” the old man explained.
“Such as Spain,” Ettinger said.
“Precisely. And, as in Spain, that religion is Roman Catholicism,” the old man said. “Now, don’t misunderstand me. There is not a prejudiced bone in my body, and I have tried to pass my tolerance for other people’s religious convictions on to my son, and especially my grandson. As a matter of fact, I have a number of Roman Catholic friends, including, to put a point on it, the Archbishop of New Orleans. Weather permitting, for twenty-odd years, every other Thursday, I took his money at the Metairie Country Club.”
“You are speaking of theocracy,” Ettinger said.
“Indeed. You are, I understand, Spanish?”
“I am now an American citizen,” Ettinger said carefully. “I formerly held German citizenship. I am of Spanish heritage.”
“You know Spain?”
“I lived there.”
“Then you will feel right at home in Argentina. The most outrageous things are done there in the name of Christianity, which of course there means Roman Catholicism.”
“I see.”
“It doesn’t happen here,” the old man said. “Archbishop Noonan is as fine a gentleman as they come. But, of course, that is because our Constitution wisely forbids a state religion.”
“I understand.”
“The Roman Catholic theocracy in Argentina murdered my daughter, Cletus’s mother,” the old man said.
“Grandfather, do we have to get into this?”
“I think I should,” the old man said.
“You are embarrassing our guest,” Clete said.
“I don’t see why he should be embarrassed. He’s a Jew, as I understand it. To him this is a neutral matter. Why should he be embarrassed if I tell him what he will find when you reach Argentina?” He sat up and leaned across the table. “Am I embarrassing you, Mr. Ettinger?”
“No, Sir.”
“My daughter married an Argentinean, Mr. Ettinger. Cletus’s father is an Argentinean. Did you know that?”
“Colonel Graham mentioned something about Lieutenant Frade having been born there, Sir.”
“Jorge Guillermo Frade is his name,” the old man said. He pronounced it in Spanish—Horgay Goool-yermo Frah-day—each syllable reflecting his loathing. “Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day is, among other things, a cattleman.”
“Is that so?” Ettinger asked.
“I really wish you would stop this, Grandfather,” Clete said.
“Mr. Ettinger and the other fellow who’s going with you,” the old man said, “the Italian, have a right to know this story, Cletus. Please don’t interrupt me again.”
Clete sensed Ettinger’s eyes on him, and looked at him. The eyes seemed to say, I understand. Let him finish. There’s no way he can be stopped. Clete saw also in Ettinger’s eyes both sympathy for him, and pity for the old man.
“As I was saying, Mr. Ettinger,” the old man went on. “Horgay Goool-yermo Frah-day is a cattleman. My son James Fitzhugh Howell, Cletus’s uncle, was a cattleman. When Horgay Goool-yermo Frah-day heaved onto the scene, he was courting the lady who later became Mrs. Howell. Her family are cattlemen. Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day came to this country to do business with my daughter-in-law’s father. She wasn’t yet then my daughter-in-law, but I presume you’re following me?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“My son was at the Williamson ranch—my daughter-in-law’s maiden name was Williamson—when Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day came there to buy some breeding stock from Mr. Williamson. Handsome fella, charming. I’ll give him that, Horgay Goool-yermo Frah-day is handsome and charming. Spoke fluent English, with just enough of an accent to make the ladies flush. Like Charles Boyer, if you take my meaning.”
“‘Come wiss me to zee Casbah,’” Ettinger replied, in a very creditable mimicry of one of the actor’s most famous lines.
“Exactly, exactly!” the old man said, and then went on. “And they were about the same age, so my son asked Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day to come to New Orleans, to see the city. He came, and I opened my house to him. And I was the one, may God forgive me, who introduced him to my daughter. She wasn’t even through college, had a year to go at Rice. And Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day just swept that child off her feet.
“When he came to me and asked for her hand, I told him she was too young, and that I could not in good conscience offer my blessing until she’d finished her education.”
“I understand your position,” Ettinger said. “Any father would feel that way.”
“My wife, may she rest in peace, had passed on when my daughter was fourteen. They called it ‘consumption’ then; now they call it ‘tuberculosis.’”
“So you were both father and mother to your children,” Ettinger said.
“You could say that, Mr. Ettinger, yes,” the old man went on. “And so did Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day understand my position. Or so he said. So he went back to Argentina, and I thought—I’ve never believed that absence makes the heart grow fonder. And I concluded that would be the end of it. Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day would find some suitable young woman down there, and my daughter would find some suitable suitor here.
“Well, I’m an oilman, Mr. Ettinger…Did Cletus mention that?”
“Colonel Graham did, Sir.”
“I thought perhaps he might have,” the old man said. “Anyway, I’m an oilman, and the first thing oilmen learn is that the more you know about people you’re going to deal with, the better off you are. So I had a friend of mine with the foreign department of the National City Bank of New York City—when we first went into Venezuela, he was very helpful, and together we did all right down there—make some discreet inquiries about this fellow Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day down in Argentina. He reported back to me that he came from a fine family, which was highly regarded down there, and that they were, economically speaking, quite comfortable. To put a point on that, they have an estancia, what we call a ranch, that’s just slightly larger than the State of Rhode Island.”
“Very impressive,” Ettinger said.
“The next thing I know, a couple of months later, I get a telephone call from a fellow staying at the Roosevelt Hotel. Says he’s a friend of the family of Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day, and could we have lunch. I forget his name, but he was a gentleman. Charming fellow. I was halfway through having lunch with him—I had him out to the Metairie Country Club—before I realized that what he was doing was checking me out, to see if my daughter was suitable for Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day, not some Yankee gold digger after Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day’s daddy’s money.
“Well, I didn’t take offense, because I understood. There was nothing wrong with doing that. But I called him on it, and told him we could probably save some time by me letting him know I was dead set against any marriage, but just to put my cards faceup on the table, I wasn’t exactly walking around with holes in my shoes either.
“Then he told me—he was my kind of man, that fellow; I wish to God I could remember his name—that they weren’t exactly thrilled down there either that Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day was determined to marry a foreigner, but there wasn’t much that could be done about it.
“So I told him sure there was, all that had to happen was to have Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day’s daddy tell him, and mean it, that if he married the foreign girl he could go find himself a job someplace, ‘because the money tree would be cut off at the roots.’ I remember using those exact words.
“And then he told me that Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day’s daddy was about to pass on. Had kidney trouble, as I recall, and once the daddy was gone, there would be no control over him. And then we sat there in the bar drinking Sazeracs…
“I’ll tell you a secret about New Orleans, Mr. Ettinger. If you’re ever doing business in this town and the fellow offers you a Sazerac, turn him down. They sneak up on people; you could sell them the Mississippi River after they’ve had four of them.”
“I’ll remember that,” Ettinger said. “Thank you.”
“Anyway, I believed what this fellow was saying, so we sat there trying to salvage something from a bad situation. Well, after a while, it didn’t look too bad. Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day couldn’t marry while his father was dying. And they have some sort of Roman Catholic rule that the period of mourning is one year. So we had whatever time it took for Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day’s daddy to die, plus a year, during which time he would work at his end, and I would work here, to simply kill the whole idea of the two of them marrying. When I drove him back to his hotel, I remember feeling a little better about the whole thing. With a little bit of luck, Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day’s daddy would last a lot longer than anyone thought.
“Two weeks later he died. When my daughter heard about it, she wanted to go down there; and I had a hell of a time convincing her that before she could do that, the daddy would be a long time in his grave, and that it was unseemly, anyhow. They weren’t formally engaged.
“A month after he put his daddy in the ground, Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day showed up here with an engagement ring in his pocket. And then I realized that I had lost, my precious daughter was going to marry Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day whether or not I liked it, and there was nothing I could do about it but put on a smile and act like I liked it.
“The first time this theocracy business came up was when my daughter came to me and said she wanted me to know she was going to take instruction in the Roman Catholic Church. Now, as I told you, I have nothing whatever against the Roman Catholic Church. The Archbishop here is a close personal friend. But I asked her why she wanted to do that—she was raised Episcopal, and theologically, there’s not a hell of a difference between the two. And she said that for her marriage to be recognized down there, she had to get married in a Roman Catholic Church, and she couldn’t do that unless she was confirmed into the Roman Catholic Church, and that her Episcopalian confirmation didn’t count.
“So I called my friend the Archbishop, and he told me that was so, she couldn’t get married unless she was confirmed as a Catholic, but that I shouldn’t get so upset, it wasn’t as if she was going to become a Holy Roller or a Jew…no offense, Mr. Ettinger…”
“None taken, Mr. Howell,” Ettinger said.
“…certainly none was intended. And the Archbishop said he would personally take care of my daughter, and that if I liked, he would perform the marriage himself, to let her new in-laws understand that our family was held in a certain regard by the Roman Catholic Church here.”
“That was very gracious of him,” Ettinger said.
“So that’s the way it happened. A month before the official one-year mourning period was up, Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day showed up in New Orleans. I put him up in an apartment we have here in the Quarter…Cletus used to take girls there when he was at Tulane; he thought I didn’t know, and I never said anything; did the same thing myself when I was in college…and we started making arrangements for the marriage.
“It was one hell of a wedding, I’ll tell you that. Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day must have a hundred and two kinfolk, and I think every one of them showed up, all the way from Argentina. They were married by the Archbishop in what they call a High Nuptial Mass in the Cathedral of St. Louis, which is also right here in the Quarter.
“I gave her away, and she was a most beautiful bride, Mr. Ettinger, so beautiful and so happy. I even went along with that dowry custom of theirs, not that Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day needed it. I gave her twenty-four-point-five percent of Howell Petroleum (Venezuela)…. Am I going too fast for you, Mr. Ettinger?”
“I didn’t quite understand that last. I don’t mean to seem too inquisitive.”
“Not at all. I think it’s important, with you going down there, that you understand the situation as fully as possible. I owned one hundred percent of Howell Petroleum (Venezuela). I wanted to keep control, of course, so I had to have fifty-one percent. I had two children. That left forty-nine percent for them. Half of forty-nine percent is twenty-four-point-five percent. You understand?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“At the time I thought it would give my daughter a little walking-around money, so she wouldn’t have to go to Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day every time she wanted a dress or a pair of shoes. So they got married and went on their honeymoon. To Europe. All over Europe. But no matter where they were, or what they were doing, my daughter wrote me a letter, two, three times a week.
“And then, before they left Europe—they were in Venice; I still have the letter—she wrote that she was in the family way, and that she wanted me to come down to Argentina and visit them, just as soon as she got her feet on the ground.
“Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day didn’t invite me, you understand, my daughter did. So I went down there several months later. Went supercargo on one of our tankers. She was eight months along when I got there. She looked terrible. She was all alone in their house in Buenos Aires. Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day was out at the estancia, and sent his regrets, and would be in town in a couple of days. That poor child was lonely. Hardly any of the servants could speak any English, and she didn’t speak a hell of a lot of Spanish. But I was concerned about the way she looked, so I called the Ambassador, and he recommended a good American doctor to me…his name was Kennedy, he’d trained at Massachusetts General, and he was down there teaching Argentine doctors at the medical school of the University of Buenos Aires…and I took my daughter to see him.
“And I was right. She was a sick girl. The details are unimportant, but she was a sick girl; he took me aside and told me if she got through this confinement, she should never have another child. He told me he wasn’t sure how that pregnancy was going to turn out, either. Well, he was wrong about that, of course. Cletus has been as healthy as a horse all his life. But he was right about my daughter. She damned near died in childbirth.
“Anyway, when Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day finally could get away from his estancia and come to Buenos Aires, I not only pulled him aside for a little chat, but I took him to see Doctor Kennedy. He didn’t want to go, I could tell that; he didn’t say anything, but I could tell he thought I was putting my nose in where it had no business. And Dr. Kennedy told him what he told me, that if my daughter managed to pull through this confinement, she should never try to have another child. It would kill her.
“So I stayed down there until the day came. She had…she had a terrible time, and we damned near lost her. She was in the hospital over a month. And I was there when they baptized Cletus into the Roman Catholic Church. They make a big thing of it down there. They did it in a place called the Basilica of Our Lady of Pilar. Their Archbishop did it.
“And then when I was sure my daughter was all right, a week or two after that, I came home. It was a pity, of course, I thought, that they could have only the one child…one child tends to get spoiled. But at least they had that, and with a little bit of luck, she could get her health back.
“Nine months after that, I got another letter. She was in the family way again. I decided against going down there…God only knows what I would have said to Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day for doing that to her, knowing what was at stake. But I telephoned Dr. Kennedy—telephoning down there in those days wasn’t as easy as it is now—and asked him to see her. And two days after that I got a cable from Kennedy, saying that Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day had told him his services would not be required.”
“Why?” Ettinger asked. “Did he say?”
“I think Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day was telling me to keep my nose out of his business,” the old man said. “So I didn’t know what the hell to do. So I went down there again, and when I saw her, she looked even worse than I imagined she would. So I had a real man-to-man talk with Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day, and he finally gave in, and I took my daughter to Dr. Kennedy. And he said—and I was there when he said it, and I know damned well that Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day understood what he said—that it was his advice, considering the clear threat to the mother’s life, that the pregnancy be terminated.”
“I understand,” Ettinger said.
“And Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day said that he would have to talk that over with his wife and his priest, and that he would let us know what had been decided.”
“Abortion is against the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church,” Ettinger said.
“Yeah. It is. That’s what he said. But he said that under the circumstances, he was willing to let my daughter come to the United States to have the baby. Our medicine was better than their medicine, and he knew it. So we got on a ship and came here. She was sick all the way, never got out of her bed. Lost a lot of weight. Had no strength. I radioed ahead and we had an ambulance waiting on the dock when we got to Miami. I put her in a hospital in Miami and telephoned down there and told him she was in pretty bad shape. I suggested he get on a ship and come to Miami. He said he couldn’t get away right then—that’s what he said, he couldn’t get away—and would I please keep him posted.
“Well, they fixed her up in Miami well enough so we could put her on a train and bring her here, and I put her in the hospital again here. They fixed her up well enough so I could take her to the house, and I found nurses and whatever else she needed. She was even able to get out of bed for my son’s, James Fitzhugh Howell’s, wedding. We took her to Texas on a train, and she got all dressed up and watched him get married.
“Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day wrote that he would do whatever he could to be in New Orleans when the baby was born. My daughter really wanted him to come. He got here five days after my daughter’s funeral, Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day did. He was all upset about that. He said that his wife should be buried in their family tomb in Buenos Aires, not in what he called ‘un-consecrated ground’ here. I buried her, with her baby in her arms, in our family plot. I told him she was going to stay buried where she was buried, where she belonged. And then finally he got around to asking about Cletus…asked when could he take him back to Argentina, and could I recommend a nurse to care for the child on the trip. I told Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day that my son and his wife were caring for my grandson in Texas, and that if he went near him, my son was going to kill him.”
“And what was his reaction to that?”
“I had the feeling that Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day was relieved, that the whole unfortunate business of his marriage to the foreigner from North America was over. He wouldn’t have to concern himself with raising a child, he could spend all of his time on his estancia, and he could get married again to some Argentine woman without having to worry about a child.”
“That’s a tragic story,” Ettinger said.
“I don’t like to air the family linen in public, Mr. Ettinger…” the old man said.
The family linen, maybe not, Clete thought, but I’ve never known you to pass up an opportunity to proclaim what an unmitigated sonofabitch Hor-gay Goool-yermo Frah-day is. I wonder if it has ever occurred to you that it’s damned embarrassing for me.
Probably not. You expect me to hate him as much as you do—after all, he killed my mother. And since the child cannot choose his father, it’s obviously nothing for me to be embarrassed or ashamed about.
But it is, damn it, it is. And there’s no way I have ever been able to stop you.
“…but I thought, since you are going down there, a little insight into the way their minds work might be useful to you. They’re all, pardon the French, sonsofbitches. The man my daughter married is not some anomaly. I, for one, haven’t been surprised at all that the Argentines are on the side of the Germans in this war against us.”
“I appreciate your sharing this with me, Mr. Howell,” Ettinger said.
“I thought it was my duty,” the old man said. “And now, Mr. Ettinger, unless you’ve made other plans, I was going to suggest you ride out to the house with us. I’ve got a bottle of cognac out there, much too good for Cletus, that I think you might appreciate.”
“I hate to impose, Mr. Howell.”
“Nonsense. No trouble at all. We’ll have a little cognac and a cigar, and whenever you feel you should, I’ll have Samuel drive you back to the Monteleone.”
“Thank you very much, Sir. I’d like that.”
“If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to wash my hands,” the old man said, and stood up. “If the waiter should get lost and come in here, Cletus, will you ask him to have Samuel bring the car around?”
“Yes, Sir,” Clete said. He waited until the old man had gone, then said, “David, I’m sorry you had to sit through that. There was no stopping him.”
“Actually, it was a fascinating story,” Ettinger said. “And no, you couldn’t have stopped him. He’s like my mother.”
“Your mother? Where is she?”
“In New York. She and I got out. She hates like he does. When I told her I was going to Argentina, she was disappointed. She had visions of me blowing up the Brandenburg Gate with Adolf Hitler on it.”
“You told your mother you were going to Argentina?” Clete asked incredulously, angrily. “Jesus Christ, Ettinger, what the hell were you thinking about?”
Ettinger looked both shocked and distinctly uncomfortable.
I guess I sounded like a Marine officer, and he didn’t expect that. Well, that’s what I am.
“I presume you signed the same form that I did, which made it pretty clear it’s a General Court-martial offense to have diarrhea of the mouth about what we’re doing?” Clete went on coldly.
“I felt relatively sure that whatever I told my mother, she would not rush to the telephone to pass it on to the Abwehr.”
“Don’t be flip with me, Sergeant!” Clete said coldly. “Exactly how much did you tell your mother?”
“Just that I was going to Argentina, Sir.”
That’s right, Sergeant, you call me “Sir.”
“To do what?”
“She knew what I’ve been doing here…”
“You told her what you were doing for the CIC? She and who else?”
“Just my mother, Sir. I had to tell her something. I couldn’t just suddenly vanish. And what I told her seemed to be the best story I could come up with. The subject of what I was supposed to tell my mother never came up at the Country Club…”
“You should have been able to figure that out without a diagram. You were supposed to tell her nothing! Damn it, Sergeant, you were in the CIC! You certainly should have known better than to tell anyone, much less a civilian…”
“Sir, I don’t mean to be insolent, but your grandfather seems…”
“What my grandfather knows or doesn’t know is not the subject here. What you told your mother is.”
“Yes, Sir. I led her to believe that I would be doing the same thing there that I’d been doing here. Making sure that the refugees are in fact refugees. I told her that when I had an address, I would send it to her, but that she shouldn’t expect to hear from me for a while.”
“I can’t believe you told her where we’re going!”
“Sir, I thought it would put her mind at rest,” Ettinger said.
“You did?” Clete asked sarcastically.
“Mother knows that Argentina is neutral,” Ettinger explained. “And her memories of Argentina seem to begin and end with the Teatro Colón:”—Buenos Aires’ opera house—“Spanish-speaking people with exquisite manners.”
“She’s been there?” Clete asked, wondering why he was surprised.
Ettinger nodded. “So have I. But I was a kid, and I can’t remember a thing. My grandfather took us there.”
“And how much did you tell your grandfather?”
“My grandfather died in a concentration camp, Sir.”
“What’s that, an attempt to invoke my sympathy?” Clete snapped, and was immediately ashamed of himself. “Sorry, Ettinger. Colonel Graham told me about your family. I was out of line.”
Ettinger met his eyes. After a moment, he said, “So, apparently, was I. What happens now?”
“I don’t know what the hell to do about this, frankly.”
“If it would make it any easier for you, I’ll report my…indiscretion to the people from the Country Club tomorrow.”
“‘Indiscretion’?” Clete snapped. “I’d call it stupidity. Incredible stupidity.”
“Yes, Sir. I can see from your standpoint that it would be.”
“And from your standpoint?”
“I had to tell her something, Lieutenant. That was the best I could come up with.”
“Incredible stupidity,” Clete repeated.
Ettinger stood up.
“Where are you going?” Clete demanded.
“Back to the hotel, Sir. Under the circumstances, it would be awkward with your grandfather. I’ll make a report…”
“If a report is made, Sergeant, I’ll make it,” Clete thought aloud, and then added, “The damage, if any, has already been done.”
“Sir, I don’t think there will be any damage. I made the point to my mother that this assignment, including our destination, was classified. She won’t say anything to anybody.”
“We don’t know that, do we?”
“No, Sir. We don’t.”
If I turn him in for this, it will really screw things up. Colonel Graham feels that getting us down there as soon as possible is damned important. If they have to scrounge around for a replacement for Ettinger—and that would obviously be difficult—God only knows how long a delay there would be.
Or this fellow Pelosi and I will get sent down there by ourselves.
I need him. It’s as simple as that.
“We never had this conversation, Ettinger,” Clete said. “You understand me?”
“Yes, Sir. Thank you.”
“Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not being a nice guy. I just think turning you in would do more damage to this mission than taking you with us.”
“I understand.”
“I wonder if you do,” Clete said. “But the subject is closed. The conversation never occurred. Clear?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Besides,” Clete said, smiling. It took more than a little effort. “If you were missing when my grandfather finishes his piss call, I would have to explain your absence. My grandfather, as you may have noticed, is a difficult man.”
“I repeat, Lieutenant, thank you. I really want to go on this mission. It’s much more important than what I’ve been doing.”
“Try to keep that in mind,” Clete said. “Now let’s change the subject.”
Ettinger nodded, then smiled.
“My grandfather was not unlike yours. A difficult man.”
I don’t really give a damn about your grandfather, Ettinger.
“Really?”
“He believed what he wanted to believe, and the facts be damned. He chose to believe that despite what was going on, he was perfectly safe in Berlin. What was happening to the Jews there was happening only to the Slavic Jews, not to good German Jews like him. After all, he had won the Iron Cross as an infantry officer in France in the First World War.”
“That didn’t do him any good?”
“No. They took him away. He died ‘of pneumonia’ in a place called Sachsenhausen.”
“You hate the Germans? In the way my grandfather hates the Argentines?”
“No. I understand that the flesh is weak. If you hate weak people, you hate everybody. If you’re asking if I’m motivated to go to Argentina, yes, I think I can do—we can do—some good down there.”
“Blowing up ‘neutral’ ships?”
“That, certainly. And perhaps doing something about keeping the Argentine equivalent of the Nazis from taking over the country. The Nazis took over Germany because nobody fought back.”
Cletus Marcus Howell pushed open the curtain and came back into the small room. His eyes passed back and forth between them as if he sensed something was wrong.
“Have you asked for the car?” he demanded after a moment’s hesitation.
“No, but I will bet it’s been waiting outside for the last half hour while you bored David with our family linen.”
“I don’t think I bored Mr. Ettinger, did I, Mr. Ettinger?”
“Not at all, Sir.”
“Sometimes, Cletus, I don’t understand you at all,” the old man said. “Shall we go?”
[TWO]
The Gulf, Mobile & Ohio Railway Terminal
Canal Street
New Orleans, Louisiana
1030 2 November 1942
Second Lieutenant Anthony J. Pelosi, CE, AUS, late of the 82nd Airborne Division, had been thinking—especially for the last couple of hours—that Captain McGuire was right after all: Applying for this OSS shit was a mistake; where he belonged was with the 82nd Airborne.
In another couple of weeks, he would have made first lieutenant (promotion was automatic after six months’ time in grade), and as a first lieutenant he could not be ranked out of command of his platoon. He would have been the permanent—not the temporary—commanding officer of an Engineer platoon in the 82nd Airborne Division…and not where he was, masquerading as a goddamned civilian.
When Colonel Baxter F. Newton-Haddle called him in for what he called a “pre-mission briefing,” he told him he was to report for duty in New Orleans in civilian clothing. He asked him if that was going to pose any problem. Pelosi said, “No, Sir.”
Tony Pelosi liked and admired Colonel Newton-Haddle. For one thing, the Colonel was also a paratrooper. Paratroopers are special people. In the briefing Colonel Newton-Haddle gave when they first came to the Country Club, he told them about what the people in OSS did—like making night jumps into France and Italy and connecting up with the resistance and showing them how to blow up bridges and tunnels. Doing those kinds of things would maybe make being in the OSS OK. But what he was about to do now was go into some goddamned South American neutral country where a bunch of taco eaters in big hats sat around in the shade playing guitars.
Colonel Newton-Haddle didn’t tell him much about what he was supposed to do in Argentina, except they had to “take out” a ship, some kind of a freighter that was supplying German submarines. He explained that the ship would be neutral. By “take out” Colonel Newton-Haddle obviously meant “blow up,” or at least put a hole in it large enough to sink it.
That bothered Tony Pelosi. It wasn’t a warship, but a civilian freighter. If there were people on it, they would be civilians; and if they were on the ship when he set off his charges—as sure as Christ made little apples—some of them would get hurt, get killed. German sailors were one thing, civilian merchant seamen another.
When he was in OCS, he’d studied the Geneva Convention long enough to know that if they were caught trying to blow a hole in a civilian merchant ship, they would not be treated like prisoners of war, but like criminals, maybe even pirates. If they were caught after they blew it up, and civilians had been killed, they might be put on trial in some taco eaters’ court for murder.
This wasn’t what he had had in mind when he volunteered for the OSS. Parachuting into France to show the French underground how to blow up the Nazi submarine pens at St. Lazaire was one thing; sneaking into some South American neutral country pretending to be a civilian and blowing up a civilian ship was different.
Anyway, when Colonel Newton-Haddle asked him if civilian clothing was going to pose a problem, he said “No, Sir,” because he didn’t think it would be. But when he got home, went to his room and locked the door so nobody in the family would see him and ask what he was doing, and tried to put on his civilian clothes, none of them fit.
The first thing he thought was that the goddamned dry cleaners had shrunk them. That had happened before. But not even his shirts fit, and the dry cleaner couldn’t have fucked them up, because his shirts had been washed and ironed in the house by the maid.
After a while, though, what happened finally hit him: All the physical training he’d gone through, first basic training, then Officer Candidate School, and then jump school had really changed his body. He had real muscles now. That was why his jackets were too tight at the shoulders and he couldn’t even button his shirt collars.
It didn’t matter as long as he could wear his uniform. Colonel Newton-Haddle not only told him that he could wear his uniform at home, because that would keep people from asking questions about how come he wasn’t, but that he should. And there wasn’t a hell of a lot wrong with wearing the parachute wings and jump boots; that went with being an officer of the 82nd Airborne Division. He wore his uniform the two times he went out with his brothers, Angelo, Frank, and Dominic. And if it weren’t for Dominic, he knew damned well he could have gotten laid. But you don’t try to get laid when you’re out with a brother who is a priest and who is out drinking with you only because of a special dispensation from the pastor of his parish, because he told him you were going overseas.
Colonel Newton-Haddle had also told him he should explain to his family that he was going on temporary duty with a special engineer unit, and gave him an address in Washington where they could write to him. But he was not to tell them anything about going to Argentina; that was classified. So he hadn’t. An order is an order.
So what he did was wear his uniform all the time he was home. And then, along with his uniforms, he packed a sports shirt, a pair of pants, a two-tone (yellow sleeves and collar, blue body) zipper jacket with “Pelosi & Sons Salvage Company” lettered on the back, and a pair of shoes. They got him a compartment on the Crescent City Limited, and he decided to just wait until he was almost in New Orleans to change into the civilian stuff. The OSS gave him a check for two hundred dollars to buy civilian clothing; he’d do that in New Orleans. And he’d ask what he should do with his uniforms; he didn’t think they’d want him to take them down to South America.
Two things went wrong with that plan. First of all, he wasn’t all alone in the compartment. He thought he would have it all to himself, but when he got on the train there was already a guy in it. He was an expediter for the Western Electric Company, whatever the fuck that meant. So Tony had to come up with a bullshit story about having just been discharged from the 82nd Airborne because of a bad back he got jumping. Even when he showed the guy the draft card Colonel Newton-Haddle gave him that said he was an honorably discharged veteran, he didn’t think the Western Union guy believed him. And he sure gave him a funny look when he started changing out of his uniform and putting on the Cicero Softball League jacket.
He really hated taking off his uniform, especially the jump boots. You had to earn jump boots, and he really liked the way they felt, as well as the way they looked (he’d polished them so you could actually see your face reflected in the shine of the toes). He wondered when the hell he would ever be able to put them on again.
And then his goddamned civilian shoes were too small. He couldn’t figure that out. As far as he knew, there were no muscles in the feet, so they shouldn’t have grown the way his back and arms and neck had. But he could barely get the goddamned things on his feet; and when he did, it hurt him even to walk around the compartment. And when he walked three cars down to the dining car to have breakfast, his feet hurt him so much he didn’t believe it.
When he got back to the compartment, he took off his shoes. And when they pulled into the train station in New Orleans, he took his socks off and put the shoes back on without them.
Fuck how it looks. If I wear the socks, I’ll never make it all the way down the platform and into the station.
Halfway down the platform, Tony saw Staff Sergeant Ettinger waiting for him, just inside the station at the end of the platform. Ettinger was wearing a three-piece suit, and he was talking to a tall guy wearing a cowboy hat, boots, and a sheepskin coat.
The shit-kicker probably asked him a question or something.
When Ettinger saw him, he smiled and waved, and Tony walked up to him.
“What do you say, Ettinger?” Tony said.
“Nice trip, Tony?”
“It was all right.”
Tony saw the cowboy looking at his bare ankles.
Fuck you, Tex! Anybody wearing beat-up boots like yours is in no position to say anything about anybody else.
“Tony, this is…Mr. Frade,” Ettinger said.
Mr. Frade? This cowboy is Lieutenant Frade? A Marine officer?
“Good morning, Sir,” Lieutenant Pelosi said.
“’Morning,” Clete replied. “Pelosi, from here on in, you can belay the ‘Sir’ business.”
“Excuse me?”
“We’re supposed to be civilians. Civilians don’t say ‘Sir.’ I’m Clete. He’s David. What’s your first name?”
“Anthony, Sir,” Tony said. Then, “Sorry.”
“That all your luggage, Anthony?”
“Yes, S—Yeah.”
“We’re parked out in front,” Clete said, then laughed. “What did you do, Anthony, forget your socks?”
“My shoes are too small.”
“Well, then, we better stop on the way to the hotel and find you some that fit,” Clete said. “Our mentors, who got here at seven this morning, are already convinced that David and I are retarded; if you showed up in bare feet, that would be too much for them.”
Ettinger laughed.
Tony Pelosi had no idea what a “mentor” was, but he was goddamned if he was going to ask.
[THREE]
The Franco-Spanish Border
1525 3 November 1942
Train Number 1218 of the Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Français (Paris-Barcelona-Madrid) would be late crossing the border, but there was nothing the officials of the French National Railroad could do about it. It had been requested of them by the representative of the German Rail Coordination Bureau: (a) that a goods wagon then sitting in Paris (number furnished herewith), a Grande Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits sleeping car with crew, and a first-class passenger car be attached to Number 1218; and (b) that Number 1218’s schedule be “adjusted” to permit a fifteen- to thirty-minute ceremony at the Spanish border; and (c) that officials of the Spanish National Railroad be informed of the change of schedule.
At 1455, fifteen minutes before Number 1218 was due, the gate (an arrangement of timbers and barbed wire) across the tracks on the Spanish side of the border was moved aside by Spanish Border Police. A moment later a tiny yard engine pushed a passenger car of the Spanish National Railroad across what everybody called “No-Man’s-Land” to the similar gate across the tracks on the French side of the border.
After a minute’s conversation between French and Spanish officials, the French gate was opened and the yard engine pushed the Spanish passenger car approximately 300 meters farther into the Border Station, where it stopped. About forty rifle-armed members of the Guardia Nacional, all wearing their distinctive stiff black leather hats, debarked from the passenger car and formed two ranks on the platform. A moment after that, two officers of the Guardia Nacional came down from the passenger car, together with four more enlisted men, two of whom carried flags on poles.
One of the flags was that of Spain. The other was unusual. But it was finally identified by one of the French customs officials as the flag of Argentina. The men carrying the flags arranged themselves before the members of the Guardia Nacional, and the two Guardia Nacional enlisted men who had gotten off the train last took up places beside them.
At 1505, five minutes early, Number 1218 moved into the station, on a track parallel to the one where the Spanish National Railways car had stopped. The members of a small Luftwaffe band, equipped primarily with trumpets and drums, descended from the passenger car and formed up quickly under the direction of their bandmaster. They were followed by a mixed detachment of Luftwaffe, Waffen-SS, and Wehrmacht troops, three of each under the command of a Luftwaffe captain. They formed up and were marched back to the goods wagon, from which four of their number removed two sawhorses.
They set up the sawhorses on the platform between the Guardia Nacional and the band. The sawhorses were then covered with a pleated black material which concealed them. They then returned to the goods wagon, from which they removed a very heavy casket, across which the flag of Argentina was draped diagonally. The flag had three broad stripes running horizontally, first light blue, then white, then again light blue. In the center of the white central stripe was the face of maybe the sun-god. It was golden and smiling. Radiating from it were red streaks, which were probably intended to represent sunbeams.
In the opinion of most of the French Railway officials, it was not a very civilized flag. Perhaps the sort of thing one might expect of some far-off former colony which now imagined itself to be a nation, but not civilized. Provincial people like that never knew when to stop; they could be counted on, so to speak, to try to gild the lily.
The casket-carrying detachment arranged themselves around the casket, four men to a side, one man at the head. The Luftwaffe captain placed himself at the foot of the casket, ordered “Vorwärts!” and somewhat awkwardly (it was extraordinarily heavy), the casket was carried down the platform and installed on the sawhorses.
As soon as this was accomplished, officers and enlisted personnel of the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe, and the Waffen-SS began to debark from the passenger and Wagons-Lits cars—enlisted and officers from the former, and from the latter officers only, including a Luftwaffe Oberst, an Oberstleutnant from the Wehrmacht, a Waffen-SS Obersturmbannführer (the Waffen-SS equivalent of an Oberstleutnant, or lieutenant colonel), a Luftwaffe Hauptmann, and then a tall, thin, olive-skinned man wearing a uniform no one could recall ever seeing before.
It was decided that he must have something to do with the casket covered with the smiling sun-god flag, and that he therefore must be an Argentinean. It was also noticed that the Luftwaffe Hauptmann in his dress uniform had the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross hanging around his neck. One didn’t see too many of those.
The officers and men who had debarked from the passenger car formed a double rank facing the Guardia Nacional. Two photographers in Wehrmacht uniforms, one still and one motion picture, and a Wehrmacht lieutenant armed with a clipboard now appeared.
At this point, two more uniformed officers descended from the Spanish National Railways car that had been pushed backward into the border station. One was a coronel, the other a teniente. They were photographed and filmed as they walked across the platform and exchanged military salutes and then handshakes with the German officers and with the one who was probably an Argentinean.
All the officers then formed in a line, facing the flag-covered casket. The Luftwaffe colonel looked at the officer commanding the mixed detachment of German Armed Forces personnel. He in turn looked at the bandmaster, who raised his drum major’s baton.
“Achtung!” the officer commanding the mixed detachment barked, and everybody came to attention, including the members of the Guardia Nacional.
The bandleader moved his drum major’s baton downward in a violent motion. The strains of “Deutschland, Deutschland, Über Alles” erupted from the band. The officers in the rank, except the Wehrmacht Oberstleutnant and the Luftwaffe captain with the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, extended their arms in the locked-elbow, fingers-together, flat salute of the Third Reich. The Oberstleutnant and the Hauptmann rendered the old-fashioned hand salute.
The German national anthem was followed by those of Spain and Argentina. And most of the French Railway officials agreed that the Argentinean anthem, like the sun-god flag, was a bit overdone.
When the music was finished, the casket was carried back to the goods wagon and placed aboard, with the photographers recording the event for posterity. The Spanish personnel returned to their passenger car and boarded it, and it immediately moved back across the border.
The German military personnel, except the officers, reboarded the first-class car. The officers entered the railroad station, where refreshments had been laid out for them. Number 1218 then backed out of the station to the yard, where the first-class passenger car was detached for subsequent attachment to Number 1219 (Madrid-Barcelona-Paris), which was due at the border crossing at 1615. Number 1218 then returned to the place where it had originally stopped, and the word was given first to the Feldgendarmerie and then to the French Immigration et Douane and Sûreté Nationale personnel that they might now commence their routine immigration, customs, and security checks of Number 1218’s passengers.
A few minutes later, the Luftwaffe captain with the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross came out of the station alone. He had with him not only his cognac snifter, but a bottle of cognac. He boarded the Wagons-Lits car.
At 1550, only twenty-five minutes behind schedule, the conductor signaled Number 1218’s engineer that he could proceed through No-Man’s-Land to Spanish customs. They were only five minutes behind the regular schedule. The ceremony had not taken as long as they had planned for. They probably wouldn’t have been late at all, perhaps even a few minutes early, had not the Sûreté Nationale grown suspicious of some travel documents and checked them out. They discovered four more Jews trying to reach Spain on forged travel documents and passports.
[FOUR]
So far as he could recall, el Coronel Alejandro Manuel Portez-Halle of the Office of Liaison of the Royal Army to the Foreign Ministry had never heard the name of el Coronel Juan Domingo Perón of the Argentinean Army, until three days before when this rather absurd business of the Germans sending a body home to Argentina came up.
This was both surprising and rather embarrassing—he had spent enough time in Argentina over the years to learn at least the names of the more important Argentinean officers. On the other hand, the Foreign Ministry seemed to know a great deal about el Coronel Juan Domingo Perón, including the fact that he was quite close to el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade. Portez-Halle had come to know Frade rather well when he’d been in Argentina. He’d even spent some time on Frade’s estancia, San Pedro y San Pablo, shooting partridge and wood pigeon. In the evenings, over cigars and surprisingly first-rate Argentinean brandy, they’d shared stories of their days as junior officers.
Frade was important because of his connection with the Grupo de Oficiales Unidos. According to the latest word from the Spanish Embassy in Buenos Aires, these men were about to stage a coup d’état. And Frade was reported to be the brains behind the plot, and certainly the financier.
Colonel Juan Domingo Perón, Portez-Halle had been told, was attached to the Argentinean Embassy in Berlin and would be accompanying the young Argentinean’s body to Lisbon, where it would be put aboard an Argentinean merchant vessel for repatriation. The dead officer was the nephew of el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade. Which probably explained why the Germans were going to all the fuss they were making. They knew who Frade was, too.
The Foreign Ministry originally intended to send an official of suitable rank—say, a deputy minister—to represent El Caudillo (General Francisco Franco, the Spanish dictator) at the border. But after Portez-Halle had brought up the Perón-Frade-Portez-Halle connection, it was obvious that he should go. He would, he said, take El Coronel Perón into his home during the layover in Madrid. And have a dinner for him. Considering the importance of Perón’s connection to Frade, it was suggested that El Caudillo himself might come to dinner. Or drop by to show his respect.
There had not been time, of course, to issue a formal invitation to el Coronel Perón, but Portez-Halle had not considered that a major problem. He would seek him out at the border, identify himself as a friend of Jorge Guillermo Frade, and make the invitation there.
At that point the plans went awry.
“I’m not going any further than the border,” Perón told him. “And if it wasn’t for the insistence of the Germans, I wouldn’t have come this far. But I thank you for your most gracious offer of hospitality.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I’d looked forward to it.”
“It’s simply impossible,” Perón replied, “but I’ll tell you what you could do.”
“Tell me.”
“The young Luftwaffe officer, the captain?” Perón went on, just perceptibly nodding his head toward a blond-headed young German around whose neck, Portez-Halle noticed, hung the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross.
“Yes. That’s Baron von Wachtstein. He’s escorting the remains. He’s a very nice young man. I’m sure he would be most grateful for a hot meal and a warm bed in Madrid. They just took his fighter squadron away from him, and he’s very unhappy about that. I don’t think he should be left alone in Madrid; he takes a drink sometimes when he perhaps should not, if you take my meaning.”
“It will be my pleasure,” Portez-Halle said.
“I would be in your debt,” Perón said.
Once the Paris-Barcelona-Madrid train cleared Spanish customs, changed engines, and got underway, Colonel Portez-Halle went into his luggage, took out a small leather box, and told el Teniente Savorra that he was going to look in on the young German officer.
As he walked into the Wagons-Lits sleeping car, he wondered idly what had been the peculiarly Teutonic logic behind the decision to send the Wagons-Lits on to Barcelona and Madrid with a lowly captain as its sole passenger. They could more easily have detached the car at the border and sent it back to Paris with all the other German officers. It would make more sense to have one junior officer change cars than ten or fifteen officers, including a German and an Argentinean full colonel. Colonel Portez-Halle had long ago decided he would never understand how the German mind worked. But it was sometimes interesting to try.
He next wondered if he was going to have to knock at each of the doors in the Wagons-Lits car until he found the young officer. But this didn’t happen. He faintly heard an obscenity, and knowing that would have been impossible through a closed door, he walked down the corridor until he came to an open one. And there was the young officer, attired in his underwear.
“Guten Tag, Herr Hauptmann,” Colonel Portez-Halle said.
“Buenas tardes, mi Coronel,” Hauptmann Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein replied, visibly surprised, as he started to rise.
“Yo soy el Coronel Portez-Halle.”
“A sus órdenes, mi Coronel. Yo soy el Capitán von Wachtstein.”
“You speak Spanish very well, Captain.”
“Gracias, mi Coronel.”
“I thought perhaps you might like a small taste of brandy.”
“You’re very gracious,” Peter said. “I was just changing out of my uniform. You’ll have to excuse me. I didn’t really expect visitors.”
“Colonel Perón asked me to look after you.”
“Then you are both very gracious,” Peter said.
“An old friend of the family, I gathered?” Portez-Halle asked as he walked into the compartment, laid the small leather case on the seat, and started to open it.
“No, Sir,” Peter said. “I met the Colonel when I got involved in all this…” He gestured vaguely in the direction of the goods wagon.
“Then I must have misunderstood,” Portez-Halle said. He took two small crystal glasses from the case, then a flat-sided crystal flask.
“Are you familiar with our brandy?”
“At one time I was so fond of it, Sir, that it was said I grew too familiar with it.”
Portez-Halle glanced at him and smiled. The Argentinean was right; this was a nice young man, and his behavior suggested that he was accustomed to dealing with senior officers. He could also smell cognac on his breath. Perón had been right about that too. Alcohol had ruined the career of more than one fine young officer of Portez-Halle’s acquaintance.
“You served with the Condor Legion, I gather?”
“Yes, Sir.”
The least I can do for someone who risked his life to spare Spain from the communists is take him into my home overnight and keep him from temptation.
Portez-Halle poured brandy into both glasses, handed one to Peter, then raised the other.
“Por Capitán Duarte. Que Dios lo tenga en la gloria.” (Freely: “May he rest in peace.”)
“El Capitán Duarte,” Peter said politely.
“You knew him well?” Portez-Halle asked.
“I never knew him at all. All I know about him is that he was shot down at Stalingrad flying a Fieseler Storch that he should not have been flying in the first place, and that he was apparently well-connected.”
“Why do you say that?”
“They’re sending his body home, they relieved me of my command of a fighter staffel to go with it, and you saw that business at the border. They did just about the same thing when we left Berlin.”
“Colonel Perón suggested that you yourself are ‘well-connected.’”
“My father is Generalmajor Graf von Wachtstein, if that’s what you mean.”
“Why do I have the feeling, Captain, that you are not particularly pleased with the assignment?”
“I am an officer. I go where I am sent, and do what I’m told to do.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Just before you came, mi Coronel, I was asking myself the same question. I concluded that only a fool would be unhappy with this assignment. I’m going to a neutral country where it is highly unlikely that I will be asked to lay down my life for the Fatherland.”
“And did you decide whether or not you were such a fool?” Portez-Halle asked with a smile.
“I am not a fool,” Peter said.
“You’ll be staying in Argentina?”
“You caught me in the midst of my metamorphosis between soldier and diplomat,” Peter said. “I was, more than symbolically, changing into civilian clothing to go with my new diplomatic passport. I am being assigned to the German Embassy in Buenos Aires as the assistant military attaché for air.”
“An important stepping-stone in a career,” Portez-Halle said. “I was once an assistant military attaché. In Warsaw, 1933–34. It was said that it would round out my experience.”
“That has been mentioned to me,” Peter said.
“What is your schedule in Madrid?”
“I change trains to Lisbon.”
“Is someone meeting you?”
“I was told someone from our Embassy will meet the train, arrange for the casket to be taken care of overnight, get me a hotel for the night, and then put both of us aboard the Lisbon train in the morning.”
“It would give me great pleasure, Hauptmann von Wachtstein, if you would permit me to have you as my guest at my home while you are in Madrid.”
“That’s very gracious, but unnecessary, Sir.”
“It would be my pleasure.”
And, Portez-Halle had a sudden pleasant inspiration, I will send a letter with you to Jorge Guillermo Frade. You will meet him, of course; but he would be likely to dismiss you as unimportant. I will write dear old Jorge that our mutual friend el Coronel Juan Domingo Perón considers von Wachtstein to be a charming young officer—and I agree—and that he was chosen to accompany the remains both because of his distinguished war record and because his father is a major general.
Frade will like that. And it will let him know that I did my best to pay our most sincere respects to the late Captain Duarte—both personally and as the special representative of El Caudillo.
“Well then, Sir, thank you very much.”