[ONE]
Calle Agüero
Barrio Norte
Buenos Aires, Argentina
1515 28 November 1942
David G. Ettinger was sure he had the right number, but he checked again, taking from the breast pocket of his seersucker suit the slip of paper with “Ernst Klausner, calle Agüero 1585” written on it. He crossed the cobblestones of calle Agüero and stopped before Number 1585. The house number looked European—blue numbers on a white background, a porcelain medallion mounted to a brass plate.
The houses along both sides of the street were built up to the wide concrete sidewalks. Every twenty yards or so the thick trunks of elm trees pierced the sidewalk, their branches almost touching, shading the street and the sidewalks. The exterior walls of Number 1585 were of exposed aggregate concrete, and the windows had roll-down shutters in place, possibly because of the afternoon sun, or maybe because no one was at home.
The whole neighborhood looks European. Buenos Aires looks European. This could be a street in Madrid; for that matter in Berlin—say Tegel, or Wilhelmsdorf. In Berlin, the walls would be of concrete, carefully smoothed and marked to suggest stone blocks, but that’s the only real difference.
Except in Germany, a Jew would live in a Jewish neighborhood.
This neighborhood had no national flavor. He’d ridden several times on his bus rides through a section of town that could have been a suburb of London, and was in fact where many British lived. Pelosi had told him he had found an Italian section. Presumably there would be other neighborhoods with some kind of national identity, but this wasn’t one of them. This section of town looked—Argentinean.
First without realizing he was doing so, and then quite intentionally, he had looked for some outward sign—a kosher butcher shop, something like that—which would announce, “Here Live the Jews.” He’d seen signs for kosher meats two or three times, but not today, and not in this neighborhood.
And realized, The six pointed Jewish stars on the butcher shops here, as in the United States, are printed in gold, to attract the business of those who keep a kosher kitchen. This isn’t like Germany, where they are painted crudely in white on the plate glass, in compliance with provisions of the Racial Purity Act of 1933, to warn innocent Aryans they are about to risk contamination by entering the business premises of a Gottverdammte Jude.
Ettinger realized that he was feeling very powerful emotions now. There were probably several thousand people named Ernst Klausner in Germany…or there once were. But he had a strange feeling that this was the Ernst Klausner he knew. Ernst Klausner, of Heinrich Klausner und Sohn, G.m.b.H. The firm had been wholesale paper merchants, with their headquarters in Berlin, and branches all over Germany. They had lived in a villa in Berlin-Lichterfelde.
Ettinger walked up three shallow steps to the door of Agüero 1585, found the doorbell, and pressed it. He could not hear a sound from inside, and had just about decided that no one was home, when the door opened. A girl of about twelve or thirteen, her blond hair—Inge Klausner had been blond!—done up in rolled braids. She smiled a bit nervously and asked, “¿Señor?”
“Guten Tag, Fräulein,” Ettinger began, and saw relief in the girl’s eyes that she did not have to cope with Spanish. “My name is Ettinger. Is your mother or father at home?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“I’m looking for Herr Ernst Klausner, formerly of Berlin. Have I the right home?”
Concern came back in her eyes.
“My father will be here at six,” the girl said. “Perhaps it would be better, mein Herr, if you came back then.”
“The Frau Klausner I am looking for is named Inge,” Ettinger said.
From her eyes, Ettinger could see that he had hit home, but the concern in her eyes did not go away, and she didn’t respond directly.
“It would be better, mein Herr, if you came back when my father is here. At six, or a little after.”
“And if this is the home of Ernst and Inge Klausner, then you would be Sarah,” Ettinger said. “Who I last saw as a small child.”
She looked intently into his eyes. They were frightened, and he was sorry he had said what he had.
“Please,” the girl said. “Come in. I will telephone to my father.”
“¿Hola?”
“Ernst?”
“Who is this?”
“An old friend from Berlin, Ernst. David Ettinger.”
“Ach du lieber Gott!”
“Wie geht’s, Ernst?”
“You got out!”
“Obviously.”
“And your father and mother?”
“Mother is in New York. The others…”
There was a long silence.
“How did you find me?”
“Your daughter was kind enough to call you for me.”
“You are at my home?”
“Yes.”
There was another perceptible pause.
He doesn’t like me being here.
“I can’t leave here now, David. Could you come back to the house tonight? After six?”
“I have nothing else to do. I could wait for you.”
“Of course,” Ernst said. “Have you money, David? There is some in the house. I will tell Sarah to get you something to eat…”
“I have money, thank you. And I had an enormous Argentinean lunch before I came here.”
He thinks I am a refugee. I am, but not the way he thinks.
“I can’t leave here now. I will come, we will come, as soon as we can. Would you put Sarah on the telephone?”
Inge sobbed and dabbed at her eyes when she embraced him, but quickly recovered and announced, “We will have a coffee, David. Like old times.”
She motioned with her head for Sarah to come with her, and went into the kitchen, leaving Klausner and Ettinger alone.
“So, David,” Klausner said. “You are really all right? You need nothing?”
“Nothing, but I thank you for the thought.”
Klausner smiled. “You look prosperous. Can I ask? Did you bring anything out?”
“My Spanish cousins have been more than generous; and so far, I understand, they have kept the business from being sold to some deserving National Socialist.” He paused, then decided he could, should, tell Klausner everything. “I sold my interest in the German businesses to them. Technically, they are now owned by Spaniards. Germany has yet to expropriate Spanish-held property.”
“And you’re now living in Spain?”
“No. In the United States. Ernst, not for Inge’s ears, I am in the American Army.” He paused and chuckled. “I am a staff sergeant in the United States Army.”
Ettinger expected surprise at that announcement, but not the look of total bafflement that came to Klausner’s face.
“I was working in New York City,” Ettinger went on. “When I went to America, I took the examination for radio engineer, and I was working for RCA, the Radio Corporation of America…you know the name Sarnoff, Ernst, David Sarnoff? A Russian, a Jew, one of the great geniuses of radio…?”
“Why did you leave Spain?” Klausner interrupted.
The question surprised Ettinger.
“I didn’t, I don’t, trust Franco,” he said. “It is only a matter of time before he joins the Axis. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already. What happened in Germany will happen in Spain.”
Klausner closed his eyes and shook his head, as if shocked and saddened by Ettinger’s stupidity.
“Franco is not as bad as you think, David,” he said.
What the hell is that all about? Franco is El Caudillo only because of the Germans, their Condor Legion, and all their other military support. He is as much a fascist as Mussolini and Hitler. But this is not the time to debate that.
“I was working for RCA, and I registered for the draft…”
“The what?”
“Military service, conscription,” Ettinger explained. “And Mr. Sarnoff—Ernst, you must know who he is. He worked with Marconi…”
Klausner was obviously wholly uninterested in a Russian Jew named Sarnoff, radio pioneer and genius or not. And Ettinger realized his attitude annoyed him.
“Mr. Sarnoff called me to his office. He said my work was essential to the war effort, and I did not have to go into the Army; all I had to say was that I did not wish to go, and he would arrange it.”
“So why are you in the American Army?” Klausner asked.
“I told Mr. Sarnoff that I wished to be an American citizen, and that I felt it my duty to serve.”
There he goes, shaking his head again. Or has his head ever stopped shaking, as if he is dealing with a pitiful idiot?
“And Mr. Sarnoff said to me, I know how you feel. I myself am going in the Army. And he told me when the war is over, I will not only have my job back, but that while I am in the Army, RCA will pay the difference between my Army pay and what I was making at RCA.”
“If the Americans win the war,” Klausner said.
“There is no ‘if,’ Ernst,” Ettinger said. “The Americans will win.”
Klausner shrugged.
Why am I growing so angry?
“When I was in an Army school in Baltimore,” Ettinger said, “I was taken, Ernst, to a shipyard in Kearny, New Jersey, which is right across the river from New York City. They are building one ship a day in that shipyard, Ernst. It takes them three weeks to build a ship. Every day, seven days a week, they launch a ship. And they told us they were not up to speed.”
“What?”
“Up to speed. It means that soon they will be making two ships a day, or three, or even four. And that is not their only shipyard. They have—I don’t know, ten, twenty shipyards, maybe more. Germany cannot make enough torpedoes to sink that many ships.”
Klausner shrugged again.
“On the way to Kearny, we passed the airport in Newark. It is bigger—three or four times the size of Tempelhof—and as far as I could see, enormous bombers were about to be flown to England. Not shipped, Ernst, flown.”
Klausner held up his hand to silence him. Ettinger followed his eyes. Inge was coming into the room with a tray.
“They are worse than the Viennese here,” she said, putting the tráy down in front of him. It held an assortment of pastries. “They take a Viennese recipe. If it says ‘six eggs,’ they use twelve. If it says ‘one cup of sugar,’ they use two. And the meat!”
“The meat is incredible,” Klausner agreed. “Cheap. Marvelous.”
Sarah put a coffee service on a low table. Inge poured coffee, handed cups to Ettinger and her husband, then started to pour a cup for herself.
“Liebchen,” Klausner said. “Why don’t you take Sarah for a little walk?”
It was said softly, but it was an order. She put the pot down and smiled.
“We will talk later, David,” she said. “You’ll stay for supper, of course.”
“We will talk,” Ettinger agreed.
“I am so happy that you are here,” Inge said.
“I am so happy to see you all,” Ettinger said.
Klausner waited until his wife and daughter had left the house.
“If you are in the American Army,” he challenged, “what are you doing in Buenos Aires, not in a uniform?”
“That, Ernst, I cannot talk about.”
“You are a spy.”
Ettinger laughed. “No. A spy? No.”
“I don’t believe you,” Klausner said. “I understand why you feel you must lie to me, David, but I don’t believe you.”
“I am sure we—we Americans—have spies here, but I am not one of them.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I cannot tell you.”
“A spy by another name. You are playing word games.”
“I am here to harm the Germans, Ernst.”
“Yes, of course you are. Thank you for your honesty.”
“Not the Germans. The Nazis.”
“Word games again. There is no difference between them. You should know that. You do know that.”
This time Ettinger shrugged.
“Let me tell you about the Argentineans, David. We Argentineans. I am not a German anymore. I speak the language. I read Goethe and Schiller, I eat apfelstrudel. But I am no longer a German. I am an Argentinean.”
“You are also a Jew.”
“I am an Argentinean who happens to be a Jew.”
“You are a German Jew who has lost his life and his family to the Nazis.”
“I am an Argentinean whose family, Inge and Sarah, has been saved by the Argentineans. I am an Argentinean. I became an Argentinean. I swore to defend this country, David, to obey its laws. Argentina is neutral. I want nothing to do with a spy from the United States of America or anywhere else.”
“They killed our people. They are killing our people.”
“I think it would be best if you left, David, before Inge and Sarah come home,” Klausner said.
Ettinger stood up, then looked down at Klausner.
“Because we were friends together in Germany,” Klausner said, “I will not report you to Internal Security. But please, please, do not come back, and do not tell anyone that you knew me in Berlin.”
“As you wish, Ernst,” Ettinger said.
“Auf Wiedersehen, mein alt Freund. May God be with you,” Ernst said.
[TWO]
4730 Avenida Libertador
Buenos Aires
0900 29 November 1942
Clete was wakened by Señora Pellano, who set a tray-on-legs with orange juice and coffee on his bed.
“Buenos días, Señor Cletus.”
“’Días, muchas gracias,” he said, smiling at her, carefully trying to sit up without upsetting the tray.
“Would you like me to bring you something to eat?”
“Let me come downstairs,” he said, smiling at her. “Give me thirty minutes to shower and shave.”
“I would be happy to serve it here.”
“Downstairs, please.”
“Sí, Señor Cletus,” she said, and went to the wardrobe and took out a dressing gown and laid it on the bed before leaving.
Even in the house on St. Charles Avenue, he thought, I was never treated this well, like an English nobleman in the movies.
There were two maids, so that no matter what hour of the day, his needs would not go unattended. There was also a cook and a houseman, a dignified old man named Ernesto. The staff was run with an iron hand by Señora Pellano, who, his father had told him, came from a fine family who had been in service to the Frades for three generations. One of the maids was a Porteño, the other from a family who lived on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo. Both were young and attractive, which made him somewhat uncomfortable. He would have preferred maids twice their age.
Despite the physical comforts, he had spent an uncomfortable night at the house on Libertador—his second night there—primarily because he was bored. Exploring Granduncle Guillermo’s playroom, which is what he finally did after everything else failed, didn’t really help to cure his boredom.
At ten of the morning after their meeting, his father called to ask if he was comfortable, and to apologize: He had to leave town and would be in touch in a couple of days, after he returned; if Clete needed anything in the meantime, Señora Pellano would provide it. He did not mention how they parted the day before.
When Clete tried to call Mr. Nestor at the Bank of Boston to tell him where he was living, he was told that Nestor, too, was out of town.
“And is there a message, Señor?”
“No, thank you. I’ll call again.”
And Pelosi was unavailable. Mallín had arranged a tour of the tank farm for him, and he would be gone all day.
Clete took a stroll around the neighborhood, including a walk through the stables of the Hipódromo. The horses were magnificent, and he liked their smell. It was comforting.
But with that out of the way, he couldn’t find much else to do. Except explore Granduncle Guillermo’s playroom. It was still relatively early in the evening when he searched through an absolutely gorgeous, heavily carved desk, made from some kind of wood he didn’t recognize, and came across a locked compartment at the rear of one of the large drawers.
Feeling childishly mischievous, he looked for keys. None of the two dozen he could find fit the simple lock. So, telling himself that he knew better than what he was doing—but his father did tell him the place was his—he went downstairs and asked Señora Pellano were he could find tools.
“If anything needs fixing,” she told him patiently but firmly, “I will fix it myself; or else the houseman will do it.”
“All I need is a screwdriver,” he said. “A small one. And maybe a small knife. I’ll take care of it myself.”
She led him to a toolbox in the basement. The box held both a penknife and a screwdriver.
The locked drawer quickly yielded to the removal of the brass screws of the lock.
It contained more evidence of Granduncle Guillermo’s preoccupation with the distinguishing characteristics of the opposite gender. The drawer contained two leather-covered boxes, each containing fifty or sixty lewd and obscene photographs.
Clete had never seen anything like them (even at stag movies at his fraternity house at Tulane). They were glass transparencies, about four by five inches. Not negatives, positives. He suspected that there was probably some kind of a projector, to project them on a screen.
To judge by the appearance of the women, they had been taken a long time ago, certainly before the First World War, possibly even before the turn of the century. The women were far plumper—plusher—than currently fashionable, and wore their hair either swept up or braided, while all the men had mustaches and were pretty skinny.
Holding them up to the light, he examined every last one of them, concluding that they knew the same positions then that he was used to. The women far outnumbered the men, and it was possible to suspect that the women were more interested in other women than in the scrawny men in their drooping mustaches.
After carefully replacing the glass plates in their boxes and relocking the drawer, Clete realized that he was going to have to commit the sin of Onan. Somewhat humiliated by the process, he did so.
At least I won’t stain the sheets tonight, he thought afterward.
Unfortunately, things didn’t work out that way. He woke up from a painfully realistic dream—Princess Dorothea the Virgin was exposing her breasts to him—to find that he had soiled the sheets after all.
He took a shower, hoping that by morning the sheets would be dry and the maid would not notice, and tittering, report her finding to Señora Pellano.
Clete drank the orange juice and half the coffee, took another shower, put on a short-sleeve shirt and a pair of khaki pants, and rode the elevator down to the main floor. The twelve-seat dining-room table had been set for one and laid out with enough food to feed six hungry people.
Halfway through his scrambled eggs, he heard the telephone ring, and a minute later, Señora Pellano set a telephone beside him. It looked as if it had been built by Alexander Graham Bell himself.
“It is a Señor Nestor. Are you at home, Señor Clete?”
He picked up the telephone.
“Good morning, Sir.”
Shit, I’m not supposed to call him “Sir.”
“Good morning, Clete,” Nestor said. “Jasper Nestor of the Bank of Boston here.”
“I tried to call you yesterday to tell…”
“I called the Mallín place, and they told me where to find you.”
“My father offered me this pla—”
“The reason I’m calling, Clete,” Nestor interrupted, “and I know this is damned short notice. The thing is, there’s a small party at the Belgrano Athletic Club this evening. We sponsor, the bank, one of the cricket teams. Nothing very elaborate—no black tie, in other words. Just drinks and dinner. There’s a chap I want you to meet. I introduced you at the bank, if you’ll remember. Mr. Ettinger?”
“Yes, I remember meeting Mr. Ettinger.”
“Well, you have things in common—being newcomers and bachelors. Why don’t we put you two together and see what happens? Or do you have other plans?”
“No. Thank you very much.”
“Perhaps we’ll have a few minutes for a little chat ourselves. Right about seven? Would that be convenient? Do you know where it is, can you find it all right?”
“Yes. I have a guest card. I’ve played tennis there.”
“Good. Look forward to seeing you about seven.”
[THREE]
The Belgrano Athletic Club
Buenos Aires
1925 29 November 1942
I wonder what the rules of that game are, Clete thought as he looked out the window of the bar at a cricket game being played under field lights.
He held a scotch and water—he had told the barman to give him a very light one—and was munching on potato chips, waiting for Nestor to show up.
The Belgrano Athletic Club looked as if it had been miraculously transported intact from England. In the bar, a paneled room with photographs on its walls of the Stately Homes of England, the conversation was in English—English English—and even the bartender spoke as if London was his home.
The bar was for men only, but there were a good number of women outside in the stands watching the game, and parading past the windows of the bar. Good-looking, long-legged, nice-breasted blond women, in lightweight summer dresses.
Just what I don’t need after Granduncle Guillermo’s dirty pictures.
I wonder what the boys on Guadalcanal are doing right now.
“Ah, there you are, Clete!” Nestor said behind him. “Admiring the view, are you?”
Clete turned to face him. Ettinger was with him.
“Good evening.”
“You remember David, of course. You met him at the bank?”
“Yes, of course. How are you, Mr. Ettinger?”
“We’re quite informal here,” Nestor said. “It really should be ‘David’ and ‘Clete.’”
“Nice to see you again, David,” Clete said.
They shook hands.
“Let me find us something to drink. You all right, Clete, or will you have another?”
“I’m fine, thank you just the same.”
As soon as he was out of sight, David asked, “No Tony? I thought maybe I’d be introduced to him too.”
“He wasn’t invited. He’s not even supposed to know who Nestor is.”
“I meant I thought Nestor the banker might invite him as a courtesy to an employee of Howell Petroleum. One of the things I’ve learned is how much Howell money flows through the Bank of Boston.”
Clete shrugged.
“Maybe later. Nestor strikes me as a very cautious man.” He smiled at Ettinger. “All things considered, you like being a banker?”
Ettinger looked at Clete a moment as if wondering if he should say what he wanted to. He glanced around to make sure no one was within eavesdropping range, and then said, “I had a very strange, disturbing thing happen to me yesterday.”
“What was that?”
“I went to see some people I used to know…”
“Used to know”? Oh. In Germany. One of the Jewish families on Nestor’s list.
“People named Klausner. A man named Ernst Klausner. We were rather close at one time. Until he found out what I was doing here—”
“You told him?” Clete interrupted, shocked and then angry.
Jesus Christ, here he goes again. First he tells his mother he’s going to Argentina, and then he tells somebody he used to know—
“I told him I was in the Army, nothing else. At that point, he pulled the welcome mat out from under my feet. He told me he was now an Argentinean, not a German, and that as an Argentinean, he should report me to the authorities. For auld lang syne, he wouldn’t, but don’t come back.”
“Jesus! Was this before or after you asked him about the ships?”
“I didn’t get as far as asking him anything. And he didn’t seem at all concerned what the Germans are doing to Jews in Germany. He’s out, and that’s all he cares about it.”
“Did you tell Nestor?”
“Of course.”
Well, Nestor is the Station Chief. If he’s not upset that David ran off at the mouth, why should I be?
Because if we get caught, we go to jail, or worse, not Nestor.
“And what was his reaction?”
“He said there were a lot of other names on the list.”
Two other men came to the window, effectively shutting off further conversation. A moment later, Nestor rejoined them.
“We owe you an apology for keeping you waiting, Clete,” he said, handing Ettinger a drink.
“Not at all.”
“We were out buying David a car.”
“Really?”
“A ’39 Ford, with the steering wheel on the wrong side,” Ettinger said.
“You’ll have to take me for a ride in it,” Clete said.
“As soon as I actually get it, I’d be delighted to.”
“This is Argentina, Clete,” Nestor explained. “You don’t buy a car and drive off the lot with it the same day. With a little bit of luck, David may lay his hands on it in a week or ten days.”
“I love the view from here,” Ettinger said. “Look at that blonde!”
Clete had noticed her too. A stunning female, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat and a pale-yellow dress.
“Her husband is probably standing at the bar,” Clete said, laughing.
“He’s not,” Nestor said. “He’s one of ours at the bank. And he’s out of town. But if he was here, he would take it as a compliment.”
“It was intended as one.”
“I think maybe we better wander in,” Nestor said.
“Wander in where?” Clete asked.
“To the lounge.”
“I hate to walk away from the parade,” Clete said.
“They’ll be in the lounge,” Nestor said. “They’re not allowed in here, which I think is a rather good idea. But they will be in the lounge, and they will, of course, be at dinner.”
Clete’s companion at dinner turned out to be the blonde who had caught David’s attention.
Her name, she told him in a delightful British accent, was Monica Javez de Frade. But they were not related.
“We’re not even a poor branch of your family. No relation at all.”
Which means that Nestor told you who I am. Or that word had spread around the bank who I am—who my father is—after Nestor introduced me around his office.
The proof of that theory seemed to come when she told him that Pablo, her husband, was in “real estate” at the bank, and worked closely with Nestor.
“Agricultural real estate, unfortunately,” Monica added, “which means that poor Pablo spends most of his time in the country, leaving poor Monica to spend most of her time alone in the city.”
Clete smiled politely, telling himself that her remark had the meaning he was giving it only because his near-terminal chastity—and Granduncle Guillermo’s dirty pictures—had inflamed his imagination.
But during supper, and during the award afterward of small silver cups to the triumphant members of the Banco de Boston cricket team, Monica’s knee kept brushing against his. At each encounter, Clete quickly moved his knee away…until he decided to leave his knee there. Then the pressure of her knee against his increased. He withdrew it then, telling himself that the cure for his near-terminal chastity should not involve a married woman, and especially one whose husband worked closely with Jasper Nestor.
Laying her hand on his arm to distract his attention from one of the cricket players’ lengthy tribute to his teammates—and for no other purpose, Clete, get your imagination under control—Monica asked if he had found an apartment, or whether he was staying with his father.
“My father has a guest house. I’m staying there.”
“On Avenida Libertador?”
“Yes. You know the house?”
“I know about it,” she said. “The place one of the legendary Frades built with the master apartment on the top floor so he could watch the races at the Hipódromo without crossing the street?”
And for other purposes.
“That’s the place.”
“I’ve always wanted to see it.”
“Anytime. It would be my pleasure.”
The cricket player finally finished his speech, there was unenthusiastic applause, and a short man with a bushy mustache stepped to the lectern to announce the conclusion of the evening’s events. He told everyone he wished to thank them for coming, and especially the Banco de Boston for their generous support.
People started rising to their feet, including Monica, who managed to brush her breasts against Clete’s arm in the process.
Nestor appeared.
“About ready, Clete? I’d love to stay for the dancing, but I have an early-morning appointment.”
“Thank you, Señora de Frade.”
“Oh, Monica, please.”
“Thank you, Monica, for the pleasure of your company.”
“Perhaps we’ll see each other again,” she said, giving him her hand.
“When is Pablo due back, Monica?” Nestor asked.
“The day after tomorrow.”
“It’s always a pleasure to see you,” Nestor said. “Clete?”
Clete followed him to the door, where Ettinger was waiting.
“Well, now that you and David have been introduced,” Nestor said as he drove down Avenida Libertador, “it will seem perfectly natural that you meet for lunch or dinner. Two bachelors, so to speak, out on the town.”
“Yes,” Clete agreed.
“You seem to have made quite an impression on the de Frade woman, Clete,” Nestor added. “Which might not be a bad thing.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
“With her husband out of town as much as he is, hostesses are always looking for a suitable bachelor to be her escort at dinner. You really should be socially active.”
No way, thank you very much.
“I volunteer,” David said from the backseat.
“She didn’t seem nearly as interested in you, I’m afraid, David.” Nestor laughed. “And they always ask the husband-less woman if the proposed dinner partner is satisfactory to her before they invite him.”
Señora Pellano was waiting up for him in the foyer of the Guest House.
“I thought perhaps you might like a little something to eat, Señor Cletus.”
“No. Thank you very much. And you don’t have to wait up for me like this, Señora Pellano.”
“It is my pleasure, Señor Cletus.”
“I’m going to turn in, Señora Pellano. Good night.”
“Buenas noches, Señor Cletus.”
He started toward the elevator. The telephone rang.
“A gentleman called before,” she said. “Not an Argentine. His Spanish was not very good. He said he would call again. Perhaps that is him.”
Pelosi. I wonder what he wants.
Clete waited for her to answer the telephone.
“It is a lady, Señor Cletus,” she said, and handed him the telephone.
“¿Hola?”
“Cletus, Monica. I wondered if you would really go home.”
“I really went home.”
“I’m still at the club. I stayed for the dancing. I’m bored.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Cletus, did you mean it when you said you would show me the Guest House?”
“Of course.”
“You also said ‘anytime.’ I could be there in fifteen minutes.”
“Why don’t you come over, Monica? I’ll show you my etchings.”
“Oh, that sounds delightfully wicked. I’ll be right there.”
Or maybe Granduncle Guillermo’s dirty pictures.
“I’m driving myself,” Monica said. “And I’d really rather not drive home to drop the car off and look for a cab. Is there room in your garage?”
There was only one car in the basement garage, which was large enough for four cars, a Fiat sedan used by Señora Pellano.
“Yes, there is.”
“Then be a dear and have it open when I get there, will you? We don’t want people talking, do we? Or would you prefer that I take a taxi?”
“I’ll have the gates and the garage open.”
“Fifteen minutes,” she said, and hung up.
He hung up the telephone and turned to find Señora Pellano looking at him.
“I’m to have a guest,” he began. “She wants to park her car in the garage.”
“I’ll have Ernesto open it.”
“I can do that.”
“And I’ll set out some agua mineral con gas and some ice in the reception room,” she said. “Unless you would prefer it in the apartment? Señor Cletus?”
“The reception room will be fine, thank you.”
“And then I will say good night, Señor Cletus.”
“Thank you, Señora Pellano.”
“I hope you have a good alarm clock,” Monica said, looking at him over the rim of the scotch and water he had made her. “I absolutely have to be home by seven. If I’m not, the children are liable to wake up and ask where Mommy is.”
Children? Of course, children. She’s a married woman. Married women have children.
This is not the smartest thing you have ever done, Clete. It may turn out to be the dumbest. But there doesn’t seem to be any question that you are about to return to the ranks of the sexually active.
Maybe that will put the Virgin Princess out of your mind.
“I think there’s one in the apartment. Shall we go have a look?”
“Splendid idea,” Monica said. “And why don’t I carry this tray along with us, so you won’t have to wake the servants?”
She picked up the tray with the ice and soda water on it, smiled at him, and waited for him to show her the way to the bedroom.
[FOUR]
4730 Avenida Libertador
Buenos Aires
1745 30 November 1942
Cletus Howell Frade, First Lieutenant, USMCR, and Laird of the Manor, in T-shirt and khaki trousers, was sitting on a heavy wooden chair—so heavy it absolutely could not be tipped back on its rear legs, and he had really tried—on the balcony outside his bedroom. A liter bottle of Quilmes Cerveza (beer) rested on his abdomen. His feet, in battered boots he’d owned since before he went to College Station to join the corps of cadets at Texas A&M, rested on the masonry railing. And he was watching an exercise boy let a magnificent Arabian run at a full gallop at the racetrack across the street.
“I wish I was up there with you, you lucky sonofabitch, whoever you are,” he announced to the world in general.
And immediately regretted it. Every time he opened his mouth and a sound came out, even a cough, either Señora Pellano or one of the maids appeared with a warm smile on her face and inquired, “¿Sí, Señor?”
He glanced over his shoulder to see if one of them was headed his way. No one was coming through the bedroom—or Granduncle Guillermo’s playroom, as he had come to think of it.
He looked back toward the river and the racetrack. Thirty or forty sailboats were on the river, and there was activity at the racetrack, as if they were preparing for a race. He took another pull at the neck of the bottle of cerveza.
Damned good beer. They really know how to eat and drink down here.
He was not looking forward to the evening. He was going to dinner, where he would meet his aunt Beatrice and his uncle Humberto for the first time. Until three days before, he had been blissfully unaware that he had an Uncle Humberto or an Aunt Beatrice or a Cousin Jorge who got himself killed at Stalingrad. And whose death, his father said, left Aunt Beatrice shattered enough to need a psychiatrist’s attention.
There was of course no way to get out of going.
“Beatrice will inevitably find out that you are in Buenos Aires,” his father told him on the telephone, “and would be deeply hurt if you do not pay your respects.”
“I understand.”
“Beatrice and your mother were close, Cletus. They were brides together, and young first mothers. She held you as a baby.”
And now she’ll want to know how come her baby is dead, and I’m alive.
Shit.
“I will try to make it an early evening. May I send a car for you at nine forty-five? They usually sit down to dinner at ten-thirty or eleven.”
An early dinner?
“Thank you.”
He was also having troubling feelings about the events of the previous evening.
After their first coupling—which took place no more than ninety seconds after they stepped off the elevator and walked into the playroom, and lasted about half that long—Monica confided to him that a combination of Pablo’s diminishing sexual drive and the attention he was spending on his Mina had combined to almost entirely deny her the satisfactions of the connubial couch.
Their initial coupling was followed by three others. The last two shattered the hope that his near-terminal chastity was solely responsible for his carnal thoughts about the Virgin Princess, and that once that condition was cured, his shameful thoughts about her would disappear.
That didn’t happen. He managed to perform—although he wasn’t too sure he could the last time Monica reached for it—in a manner that did not bring shame on the reputation of the commissioned officer corps of the United States Marines. But clear images of the pert, yet ample virgin breasts of Señorita Dorotea Mallín kept flashing into his mind, even as he was somewhat feverishly attending to the business at hand.
Which is what you get, you pre-vert, for looking down the front of her dress whenever you have the chance.
At least I got out of her house before I made an ass of myself. I think Mallín was looking at me funny toward the end, which means that he caught me looking at her.
On the other hand, there’s no denying that I miss her something awful. Just seeing her, hearing her talk and laugh. Just having her look at me. The funny thing is that when I think about her—except when I’m banging a thirty-two-year-old mother of three—it’s not her breasts, or even that absolutely perfect ass, but her eyes. Christ, she has beautiful eyes!
Thank God, I got out of there before I made any kind of a pass at her.
Or am I going to be a fool and call her up when the Buick comes and ask her if she’d like to go for a ride?
In his mind he heard her voice: “I have never been in a Buick droptop, Cletus. Will you take me for a ride when it arrives?”
“Convertible, Princess. Convertible. Sure. Be happy to.”
“Señor Cletus, Señor Nestor wishes to see you,” Señora Pellano announced, startling him—he hadn’t heard her come up.
“He’s here?”
“Sí, Señor. In the reception.”
What the hell does he want?
“Ask him to come up, please, Señora Pellano,” Clete said.
When, a minute or so later, he heard the sound of the elevator door opening, he took his booted feet off the railing and stood up and smiled at Jasper C. Nestor. The Spymaster was wearing a seersucker suit, and he was carrying a soft-brimmed straw hat in one hand and a package in the other.
“I’m glad I caught you at home, Clete,” Nestor said, thrusting the package at him. “A little housewarming gift.”
The package gurgled. It was booze of some kind.
“Thank you,” Clete said. “I’m a little disappointed, though, frankly.”
“How’s that?”
“From Humphrey Bogart movies, I had the idea that spies met in an alley in the tough part of town at midnight, not at someplace like the Belgrano Athletic Club. And I certainly didn’t expect the Spymaster to show up bearing a housewarming gift.”
He’d intended to be witty. From the strained smile on Nestor’s face, Clete saw he hadn’t been taken that way.
I will henceforth go easy on the humor.
“We’re not spies, Clete,” Nestor said after a moment. “We’re gentlemen. The FBI are the spies.”
“And not gentlemen?”
“Rarely, Clete, rarely. There is always an exception.”
Clete shook the package.
“Would you like a little of whatever this is? Or something else?”
“I would prefer one of those,” Nestor replied, indicating Clete’s beer. “If that would…”
Clete pushed the call button. They were all over the house. Granduncle Guillermo knew how to live.
Señora Pellano appeared immediately.
“Would you bring the Señor a beer, please? And a glass. Señor is a gentleman.”
“Actually, on a hot day, I rather like to drink from the bottle,” Nestor said, smiling, and then turned and gestured off the balcony. “Beautiful view from here.”
“It’s a beautiful house,” Clete said.
“And how kind of your father to make it available to you.”
“I thought so.”
“There are other advantages as well.”
“Such as?”
“It establishes you as the beloved son of el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade,” Nestor said. “That could prove very valuable.”
Clete nodded.
“Have you thought about calling Señora Frade? You seemed to be getting along splendidly with her last night. A—I almost said ‘affair’—relationship with her might be valuable to us.”
“She called me,” Clete said. “The phone rang the minute I walked in the door last night.”
“And will you see her?” Nestor asked, then caught the look on Clete’s face. “Really? Good boy.”
“Is that why I was at the dinner? You wanted me to meet her?”
“I wanted you to meet David in a credible situation,” Nestor said. “Señora Frade, so to speak, was an unexpected bonus. Letting it travel around town that she has added you to her list of admirers—her long list of admirers—will paint the sort of picture about you we want.”
Her long list of admirers? Incredible!
“Inasmuch as you elected to ignore your instructions vis-à-vis your cover,” Nestor went on, “that may prove quite valuable. More gossip-worthy, so to speak.”
“Sir, I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Your father proudly introduced you to a number of important officers as ‘my son, late Teniente of the air service of the U.S. Marine Corps, who served at Guadalcanal.’”
“How did you hear about that?” Clete asked, surprised.
“I have a number of friends in the Argentine military. I presume you had reason to ignore your instructions about your cover?”
“I suppose I could tell you that it just slipped out. But the truth of the matter is, I was a little drunk at the time, and didn’t want my father to think I was shirking my duty to God and country.”
“From what I hear, the both of you were three sheets to the wind. I’m sure meeting him was emotional for the both of you, but you might consider the ill-wisdom of excessive alcohol.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Señora Pellano came onto the balcony with a bottle of cerveza and a glass on a tray.
Nestor stopped her when she started to pour, took the bottle from her, and put it to his lips.
Is he doing that because he really likes to, or to play “I’m just one of the boys” with me?
“I hope I haven’t disturbed anything?” Nestor asked.
“No. Not a thing. I was sitting here catching the breeze and feeling sorry for myself.”
“Why sorry? Don’t tell me Señora Frade didn’t turn out to be as advertised.”
“I miss flying. I even miss the goddamned Marine Corps. I’m a much better Naval Aviator than I am a saboteur.”
“Perhaps your father will let you fly his airplane. Or one of them.”
“I didn’t know he had an airplane.”
“He has a Beechcraft biplane, and at least one Piper Cub.”
“You mean a stagger-wing Beechcraft?”
“Your father’s has the top wing behind the lower…yes, I suppose it would be a ‘stagger-wing.’ And as I say, at least one Piper Cub. The use—on the larger estancias—of small aircraft is quite common.”
“They were getting into that in Texas and Oklahoma, too,” Clete said.
If my father has a Beech stagger-wing, he’ll probably let me fly it.
“We considered, of course, that you might not find your father to be the ogre Mr. Howell paints him to be. And in time, that you might manage to get close to him. We didn’t think it would happen so quickly.
“Do you think he’ll turn out to be useful to us?”
“How do you mean, useful?”
“Tilt this country toward us, and away from Mr. Hitler and Company.”
“My initial impression of my father is that he’s a strong, intelligent man, who will tilt the way he decides to tilt, completely unaffected by his son’s nationality, or by what his son thinks or asks him to do. Incidentally, I’m quite sure he’s figured out that I’m not down here to make sure Mallín isn’t diverting crude to the Germans.”
“What makes you think so?”
“He as much as told me. It was by shading, innuendo, not in so many words.”
“What were the circumstances?”
“There was an Internal Security officer. A lieutenant colonel named Martín…”
“Not just ‘an Internal Security officer,’ Clete,” Nestor interrupted him. “Colonel Martín is Chief of the Ethical Standards Office of the Bureau of Internal Security. He reports only to the Chief of Internal Security, an admiral named de Montoya. A very competent, and thus dangerous, man.”
“My father said he’d been to see him, asking about me. As a matter of fact, he said that’s how he learned I was in Argentina.”
“That was quick work on Martín’s part,” Nestor said admiringly. “They apparently made the connection between you and your father more quickly than we thought they would. Go on.”
“Anyway, this Colonel Martín was in the Alvear Palace when I met my father.”
“Possibly surveilling your father. But that’s unlikely. He’s too important for something like that.”
“My father introduced us,” Clete went on, aware he was growing annoyed at Nestor’s frequent interruptions. “Later he told me who Martín was. And this is the innuendo I meant: He told me that I have nothing to worry about since I’m down here only for Howell Petroleum—to make sure Mallín is not diverting petroleum products.”
Nestor grunted.
“And does Mallín have any idea that you’re not down here to do that?”
“No. Or at least he didn’t. My father said Martín would probably go to see him. And that would arouse his suspicions.”
“Worst possible scenario: You will be expelled from Argentina despite your father, or possibly because your father will arrange it. You would probably have time to go underground, but that would be sticky.”
I can think of a worse scenario: The same thing will happen to me, to all three of us, that happened to the last OSS team.
“Alternative scenario,” Nestor went on. “Even if Martín has questions about your cover, he won’t connect you with the replenishment-ship problem yet, and you will not be expelled from Argentina.” He paused a moment, then finished that thought. “Both Martín and Admiral de Montoya are obviously reluctant to anger your father. But he will keep you under surveillance.”
“I understand.”
“You will have to be extra careful when you go to Uruguay. Which brings us to that.”
“Uruguay?”
“How soon do you think you can tear yourself away to go to Uruguay?”
“What will I do in Uruguay?”
“You and Pelosi are going to Montevideo, where you will hire a car and drive to Punta del Este. It is a rather charming little town on the Atlantic coast, quite popular with Argentineans escaping the heat of Buenos Aires. After you take the sun on the beach at Punta for a day or two, you will drive north—I’ll furnish a map—to near the Brazilian border. A quantity of explosives and detonators will be air-dropped to you there.”
“Air-dropped from where?”
“From Brazil, onto a rice field we have used before.”
“How do I get the explosives past Argentine customs when we come back? Or past Uruguayan customs leaving Uruguay?”
“The explosives themselves should pose no problem. They have been molded into a substance that looks exactly like wood, and precut to form the parts of a wooden crate. You will assemble the crates—there will be two of them, with a total weight of just over twenty-two pounds—and fill them with souvenirs of your holiday…not too heavy souvenirs; the explosives only look like wood and don’t have wood’s strength. They make some rather attractive doodads of straw, in the shape of chickens, horses, cows, et cetera. These would be ideal. You will quite openly carry the crates onto and off the ferry and through Argentine customs.”
Now this is more like Errol Flynn battling the Dirty Nazis. The problem is, although I know Nestor is dead serious, I’m having trouble believing that I am about to go to some field near the Brazilian border and have explosives air-dropped to me.
“The detonators will pose a problem. There will be a dozen of them. They’re quite sensitive. Probably the best way is for one of you to tape them to your body. Argentine Customs is very unlikely to submit you to a body search.” He paused and smiled. “Or perhaps you could wear your cowboy boots. I’m sure you could conceal them in your boots.”
And blow my goddamned leg off!
“Is there any way I could take Ettinger instead of Pelosi?” Clete asked. “Pelosi is young. Excitable. And doesn’t speak Spanish well.”
“But knows about explosives and airdrops,” Nestor said, shaking his head no. “Besides, I want Ettinger to continue what he’s doing with the Hebrew community here.”
“We’ve discussed that. He knew only one family on that list of names, and they told him to bug off.”
“He’s going to have to go back to Klausner and try again.”
“He’s convinced me that would be a waste of time, and that Klausner would very possibly turn him in. Or at least report to Internal Security that Ettinger has contacted him.”
“He’ll have to go back.”
“You tell him.”
“I have information that may change Klausner’s attitude,” Nestor answered, ignoring Clete’s last remark.
He took what looked like several sheets of folded yellow paper from the inside pocket of his seersucker jacket and handed them to Clete. When Clete started to unfold them, he saw it was really one long sheet of paper, and recognized the carbon copy from a radio-teletype machine.
“This will be released to the Argentinean press in the morning. Even if they run it, Herr Klausner might not see it,” Nestor said as Clete started to read it.
FROM SECSTATE WASHINGTON 0645 28 NOVEMBER 1942
VIA PANAMA TO ALL AMEMBASSIES SOUTHAMERICA FOR IMMEDIATE PERSONAL ATTENTION AMBASSADORS
(1) SECSTATE DESIRES IMMEDIATE TRANSMITTAL AT AMBASSADORIAL LEVEL TO HIGHEST POSSIBLE LEVEL HOST GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL, FOLLOWED BY WIDEST POSSIBLE DISSEMINATION TO ALL CHANNELS OF PUBLIC INFORMATION.
DECLARATION BEGINS:
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE
WASHINGTON, DC
28 NOVEMBER 1942
FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT, THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA; HIS MAJESTY GEORGE VI, KING OF ENGLAND AND EMPEROR OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE; JOSEF STALIN, CHAIRMAN OF THE SUPREME SOVIET OF THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS; AND GENERAL CHARLES DE GAULLE, CHAIRMAN OF THE FRENCH NATIONAL COMMITTEE, ON BEHALF OF THEIR GOVERNMENTS, AND IN THE NAME OF THEIR PEOPLE, HEREWITH DECLARE:
THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT, NOT CONTENT WITH DENYING TO PERSONS OF JEWISH RACE IN ALL THE TERRITORIES OVER WHICH THEIR BARBAROUS RULE HAS BEEN EXTENDED THE MOST ELEMENTARY HUMAN RIGHTS, ARE NOW CARRYING INTO EFFECT HITLER’S OFT-REPEATED INTENTION TO EXTERMINATE THE JEWISH PEOPLE IN EUROPE.
FROM ALL THE OCCUPIED COUNTRIES, JEWS ARE BEING TRANSPORTED, IN CONDITIONS OF APPALLING HORROR AND BRUTALITY, TO EASTERN EUROPE. IN POLAND, WHICH HAS BEEN MADE THE PRINCIPAL NAZI SLAUGHTERHOUSE, THE GHETTOS ESTABLISHED BY THE GERMAN INVADERS ARE BEING SYSTEMATICALLY EMPTIED OF ALL JEWS EXCEPT A FEW HIGHLY SKILLED WORKERS REQUIRED FOR WAR INDUSTRIES.
NONE OF THOSE TAKEN ARE EVER HEARD OF AGAIN. THE ABLE-BODIED ARE SLOWLY WORKED TO DEATH IN LABOR CAMPS. THE INFIRM ARE LEFT TO DIE OF EXPOSURE AND STARVATION, OR ARE DELIBERATELY MASSACRED IN MASS EXECUTIONS.
THE NUMBER OF VICTIMS OF THESE BLOODY CRUELTIES IS RECKONED IN MANY HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF ENTIRELY INNOCENT MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN.
THE GOVERNMENTS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA; THE KINGDOM OF ENGLAND AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE; THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS; AND THE FRENCH NATIONAL COMMITTEE CONDEMN IN THE STRONGEST POSSIBLE TERMS THIS BESTIAL POLICY OF COLD-BLOODED EXTERMINATION.
DECLARATION ENDS.
(2) SECSTATE DESIRES NOTIFICATION BY MOST EXPEDITIOUS MEANS OF COMPLIANCE, TO INCLUDE NAME AND TITLE OF FOREIGN OFFICIAL TO WHOM DECLARATION DELIVERED, AND DATE AND TIME.
CORDELL HULL
SECRETARY OF STATE
“Jesus H. Christ!” Clete said.
“Rather nauseating, isn’t it?” Nestor said.
“Hundreds of thousands of people murdered?” Clete asked incredulously.
“The ambassador said he’s been led to believe it’s many more than that,” Nestor said evenly. “He thinks there was probably quite a discussion in Foggy Bottom…”
“What?”
“…at the Department of State,” Nestor explained somewhat condescendingly. “They call it ‘Foggy Bottom’ in Washington. The ambassador thinks there was probably quite a discussion—with the decision made at the highest levels, perhaps by the Secretary himself—before they came up with the ‘hundreds of thousands’ language. Even that boggles credulity. One’s mind can accept the death of one person, a hundred persons, even a thousand. Credulity is strained at tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. The death, much less the murder, of millions is simply—beyond human comprehension.”
“In other words, you believe this?”
“We know it to be a fact; our people have seen the death camps.”
“Jesus!”
“Give me a call when you return from Punta del Este. Have a good time. I’ve been there. The women on the beach are stunning; made me wish I was a bachelor.”
He put his beer bottle down on the banister.
“I can find my way out,” he said.