[ONE]
Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo
1115 15 December 1942
Two gauchos, sprawled on the wide steps to the verandah, were waiting for them when they returned from their ride. As they approached, Clete’s horse, a magnificent sorrel, shied at something and, with a shrill whinny, reared. Despite the strange saddle, Clete managed to keep his seat and to control the animal, and more than a little smugly noticed both surprise and approval on the faces of the gauchos.
The Norteamericano did not get his ass thrown. Sorry about that, guys!
The gauchos took the reins of the horses and led them away. And Clete followed his father and Claudia Carzino-Cormano onto the verandah. The more he saw this woman, the more he liked her. If she and Aunt Martha met, they would form an instant mutual admiration society. Like Martha, Claudia was a first-class horsewoman; and like Martha, she said what was in her mind, rather than what she thought a lady should say. And, like Martha, she ran a ranch. An estancia almost, but not quite, as large as San Pedro y San Pablo.
He was touched and amused at his father’s blustering attempts to paint her as just a platonic acquaintance who happened to drop by now and again. The servants obeyed her orders the way they’d obey the mistress of the place. And last night, when his father suggested, “Since it’s late, Claudia, why don’t you spend the night? I’ll have one of the guest rooms set up for you,” she winked at Clete and smiled.
“Thank you for your hospitality, Jorge,” she said.
And when he got up the next morning and went looking for something to eat, Claudia was already up too, wearing a white blouse and baggy trousers, and soft, black, tight-over-the-calf leather boots, obviously a gentle lady’s riding costume—which his father apparently expected him to believe just “happened” to be in the house.
“Your father is insufferable until he has had his second cup of coffee,” she greeted him. “It is best to ignore him, or anything he says.”
Clete had ridden hornless saddles before—at Texas A&M, the ROTC horses had Army-issue McClellan cavalry saddles—and after a few minutes, he became accustomed to the Argentine saddle. It was called a recado, Claudia told him. Although everyone else in the area had been using “English” saddles since the turn of the century, his father insisted on keeping them, because he was too cheap to throw anything away.
When Clete’s father overheard her tell Clete that, he flared up at her: “I am not cheap, my dear. I am frugal, and I respect our traditions. Since they have been properly cared for, they have not worn out.” She rode close to him then, murmured, “Precioso, I’m sorry,” and leaned out of her recado to kiss him.
Acting as if the kiss—which calmed him down immediately—never happened, Clete’s father then delivered a lecture on the history of their saddles. A brilliant saddler made them on the estancia during the tenure of Clete’s great-grandfather. The shape of the seat, he went on to say, together with estribando largo—long stirrups—permit the rider to sit in an almost vertical position, the merits of which for herding cattle over long hours do not have to be explained. Except perhaps to a woman.
“Sí, mi jefe,” Claudia replied, laughing.
When they came onto the verandah, Señora Pellano was supervising the arrangement of a little “after the morning canter” refreshment. There were two bottles of champagne in coolers, and an array of sweets and cold cuts.
“I would suggest, Cletus,” Frade said, “that you pass up the champagne.”
“Why?” Claudia demanded.
“I am reliably informed that it is not wise to fly an aircraft under the influence of alcohol.”
“Is he going flying?”
“I thought—it is a lovely day—that we would return you to your home in the Beechcraft. I will arrange for your car to be delivered there.”
“And Cletus will fly the airplane?”
“Certainly. Why not? He is an experienced military pilot. He probably knows more about flying than el Capitán Delgano.”
“Cletus?” Claudia asked, a hint of doubt in her voice.
“After flying the Wildcat fighter, Claudia,” his father persisted, “as he did in Guadalcanal, flying the Beechcraft will be like riding a tame old mare.”
“I’m sure I can fly it,” Clete said. “But I’d like to solo it an hour or so before I carry passengers.”
“Solo it?”
“Fly it alone for an hour.”
“Not only experienced, but cautious,” Frade said. “It is settled. We will have our sandwiches, and he will have coffee. And afterwards he will solo for an hour, and then we will fly you home. I’m sure your daughters will like to meet him. Perhaps he can take them for a ride. You might wish to call to make sure they are at home.”
“Precioso,” Claudia said, laughing, “if it is your intention to marry him off to one of the girls, as I suspect it is, you are going about it in exactly the wrong way. Young people never like the young people their parents consider suitable for them.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade said.
“El Teniente Frade is a fine pilot, mi Coronel,” el Capitán Gonzalo Delgano, Air Service, Argentine Army, Retired, reported. The two of them had just taken the stagger-wing Beechcraft on a thirty-minute orientation flight, with half a dozen touch-and-go landings. “As fine a pilot as I know.”
Don’t let it go to your head, Cletus, my boy. Unless you had dumped that airplane, it was the only thing he could say about the boss’s son’s piloting skills.
He also doesn’t like it a bit that I’m flying what he thought of as his personal airplane. But there’s nothing he can do about that, either, except smile.
“Then we can go?” el Coronel asked. “I will send for Señora Carzino-Cormano.”
“Not yet,” Clete said. “I’d like to solo it first.”
His father looked disappointed and a little annoyed, but finally said, “Whatever you think is best, Cletus.”
“I won’t be long,” Clete said, and walked back to the airplane.
The pilot in him now took over. He had no doubt that he could fly the airplane, but that presumed nothing would go wrong. A lot of things could go wrong: The checkout had been really inadequate, and there was no civilian equivalent of a Navy BuAir Dash One, “Pilot’s Instruction Manual,” to study for the CAUTION notices, which warned pilots what they should not do.
But I have to fly it. And not just to take Señora Carzino-Cormano safely home.
While he was looking the plane over earlier, he noticed a low-level chart in a compartment on the door, an Argentine Army Air Service map of the area. He examined this with great interest. In addition to pointing out the few available navigation aids, a dozen or so civilian airstrips—one was at the Estancia Santa Catharina, Señora Carzino-Cormano’s ranch—and a military air base ninety kilometers to the south, the chart showed the entire mouth of the Río de la Plata, including all of Samborombón Bay and a couple of miles of the coastline of Uruguay.
Within a day or two, he thought with sudden excitement—presuming she’s not already here—the Reine de la Mer will be anchored out there, waiting to replenish German submarines. I’m supposed to find her and blow her up. I didn’t come here with the idea of finding her myself, but I can’t pass up the opportunity to see if I can.
He strapped himself in and looked out the window for el Capitán Delgano. When they first fired up the stagger-wing, Clete stood by the fire extinguisher for Delgano. And he expected Delgano to do the same for him; but Delgano was nowhere in sight. Clete pushed himself out of the leather-upholstered pilot’s seat, went back through the cabin, and opened the door.
“Something is wrong?” his father asked.
“I need the fire extinguisher, Dad,” Clete said. “I’m about to start it up. What happened to el Capitán Delgano?”
“That is the first time you have ever called me that,” his father said.
Christ, he looks as if he’s going to cry again!
He was touched by his father’s emotion, and felt tightness in his throat. And his own eyes grew moist. Jesus.
As if the display of emotion embarrassed him, Frade looked around for Delgano.
“He probably had to relieve himself,” he announced, and then indignantly, “He should have waited for you.”
“No problem, Dad. All you have to do is stand there while I start the engine, and give it a shot if it catches fire.”
It was immediately evident that el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade had no idea where he was to stand, or for that matter, how to operate the extinguisher.
Clete conducted a quick course in fire-extinguisher operation during aircraft engine start, then climbed back into the Beechcraft, strapped himself in, and slid the pilot’s window open.
“Clear!”
“Clear!” his father responded, with obviously no idea what he was saying.
Clete turned on the MAIN switch, then pushed ENGINE PRIME, and finally ENGINE START.
The engine coughed to life on the first try, and he saw his father smile triumphantly at Claudia, who had come to the airstrip from the house to watch him. Clete looked at her and gave her a thumbs-up. She crossed herself but smiled, making it a joke.
As the needles came off the peg, he removed the brakes, checked the wind sock, and began to taxi to the gravel strip, then down it. By the time he had turned it around, everything was in the green.
“Engage brain before beginning takeoff roll,” he said aloud, and shoved the throttle forward.
At just about the moment the airspeed indicator began operating, indicating forty, he felt life come into the wheel. The tail wheel lifted off. He held it on the ground, deciding it would take off at sixty or seventy. At sixty, it lifted into the air of its own accord. He eased back on the wheel and saw the ground drop away.
Claudia was waving cheerfully at him.
He put it into a shallow climb to the north, in the direction of Estancia Santa Catharina and Samborombón Bay. When he reached 4,000 feet, he played with it a little—more than he felt he could do with Delgano sitting beside him—to see how it flew. It wasn’t a Wildcat, but it was a damned nice little airplane.
He found Claudia’s estancia and landing strip without trouble. Giving in to the impulse, he made a low-level pass over it, rocking the wings as he did so. So far as he could tell, this dazzling display of airmanship went wholly unnoticed.
He looked at the elapsed time function on his Hamilton, and saw that it had taken him fifteen minutes to reach the estancia.
If I’m gone more than an hour, they will start shitting bricks. So I have to be back in forty-five minutes. Half of forty-five is twenty-two thirty. I can fly over the Bay for twenty-two thirty. If I can’t find the Reine de la Mer in twenty-two thirty, I’ll have to quit.
Eighteen minutes later, ten minutes after crossing the coastline, all alone on a vast expanse of bay, he spotted a ship dead in the water. He put the Beechcraft in a shallow descent from 5,000 feet, taking it right down to the waves. He retarded the throttle—watch it, Clete, you don’t want to stall it into the drink—and approached her from the stern. Her sternboard had a legend, which at first he couldn’t see.
He flew closer.
Don’t run into the sonofabitch!
A flag was on her stern pole. The wind was such that it was flapping, fully extended. Surprising him, he recognized it as Portuguese from one of the briefings Adams had given them in New Orleans.
And then the letters on her sternboard came into focus: REINE DE LA MER—LISBOA.
There you are, you sonofabitch!
He banked sharply to pass her on her port side, and waved cheerfully as he flew past.
Twenty crewmen waved cheerfully back, most of them standing beside canvas-draped objects that he strongly suspected were searchlights and machine-gun mounts.
He put the Beechcraft into a shallow turning climb until he was on a heading for Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.
No wonder those other guys got themselves killed. There is no way to approach a ship like that, at anchor twenty miles off shore, without being detected. Certainly not in the daytime. And even at night if you rowed out there, so they wouldn’t hear the sound of your engines, if that captain knows shit from shinola, he’s going to use his searchlights every couple of minutes to see what else is floating around out there.
So how do we fix explosives to her hull?
It can’t be done, not the way we’ve planned. I’ll have to come up with something else.
What? Find some excuse to bring a boat alongside and have Tony fix his charges while I go on board and…
And what?
The last team was probably eliminated trying something just like that.
By air?
Not with this airplane, certainly. Not even with a Wildcat. You can’t take out something that large with .50-caliber machine guns. I know that for a fact. And that ship has more antiaircraft weaponry on it than any Jap freighter I ever strafed.
What the hell do I do now?
[TWO]
Estancia Santa Catharina
Buenos Aires Province
1425 15 December 1942
“Take a good look, my darlings,” Claudia said to the two very beautiful, black-haired, stylishly dressed young women who came out to the Beechcraft as Clete was tying it down, “this is Cletus. El Coronel has decided that Cletus will marry one of you. Which of you will have him?”
“I said nothing of the kind,” el Coronel protested as the girls gave him their cheeks to be kissed.
The younger girl—she looked about twenty—blushed, giggled, and smiled. The other girl, who looked several years older, was obviously not amused.
“How do you do?” she said in English. “I have seen your pictures, of course. I am Isabela Carzino-Cormano. I am very pleased to make your acquaintance.”
It sure doesn’t sound like it.
“I am overwhelmed,” Clete said. “How soon do you think we can schedule the wedding?”
“I see that you take after Uncle…your father,” Alicia, the younger one, said with a giggle.
Isabela treated both of them to an icy smile.
They started to walk toward the ranch house.
“Somehow, I don’t think she intended that as a compliment,” Claudia said. “You may have to settle for Alicia.”
“Can’t I have both?”
“That’s an idea,” el Coronel said. “That is an American custom. The Mormons in Utah can have as many wives as they wish.”
“Really?” Alicia asked. “That’s terrible!”
“A man must be prepared to make many sacrifices in life,” el Coronel said. “Two wives, four, six…whatever duty requires.”
“Now, I am not amused,” Claudia said. “Jorge, you always go too far!”
She said that because she’s pissed that he hasn’t proposed marriage to her. Why not? I have no idea.
The faces of Claudia’s daughters showed that they had made the same interpretation.
“I saw you, Cletus,” Alicia changed the subject quickly, “at the English Tennis Club, playing with Dorotea Mallín.”
“If you two play hard to get,” el Coronel said, “I am sure that Dorotea would be happy to have him.”
“She’s only a kid, Dad,” Clete blurted.
“She’s what, eighteen, nineteen years old,” his father said. “That’s old enough.”
“And she looked at him as if he gives milk,” Alicia said. “Everybody at the English was talking.”
“That is quite enough!” Claudia Carzino-Cormano flared. “You’re embarrassing Cletus. That includes you, Jorge!”
El Coronel did not seem at all repentant, but he moved to another subject.
“We have decided, your mother and I, about the travel arrangements for tomorrow,” he announced to the girls, then stopped. “Why don’t we go into the house? I don’t suppose that you have any champagne chilled, Claudia?”
“You can have coffee. You have had quite enough champagne.”
“A few glasses…”
“Most of two bottles. You convinced yourself that Cletus wrecked the airplane, and that it was your fault. Coffee!”
“As you wish,” Frade said, and marched across the verandah as if he owned it, to sit in a leather armchair. To judge by the cigar humidor and ashtray on a table beside it, he had used the chair before. He opened the humidor, extended it to Clete, who took one of the large black cigars inside.
“I was not at all concerned with Cletus’s ability to fly the airplane. I thought perhaps he had mechanical difficulties, or ran out of fuel.”
“Or became lost, or the wings or the engine fell off. You have an active imagination, precioso, and it was running at full speed.”
“I was speaking of the travel arrangements for tomorrow,” el Coronel said, changing the subject. Again he addressed Isabela and Alicia. “This afternoon, Enrico will come here in the station wagon for the luggage. He and Señora Pellano will carry it to my house, where she will arrange things for your stay. In the morning, your mother and I will drive to Buenos Aires in my Horche, and you will go with Cletus in his Buick. You will have to direct him to my house, as he does not know the way.”
“Is he going to the funeral?” Isabela asked, surprised. Unpleasantly surprised, it was immediately clear.
“Of course he is,” Claudia Carzino-Cormano said quickly, and a little sharply. “Jorge was his cousin.”
“If I have a choice in the matter, I would prefer to drive into Buenos Aires this afternoon with Enrico in the station wagon,” Isabela said.
What did I ever do to you, honey? As far as I’m concerned, I don’t want to go to the goddamned funeral in the first place, and so far as I’m concerned, you can walk to Buenos Aires.
“You will not go with Enrico and Señora Pellano in the station wagon,” her mother said flatly. “It would be unseemly for Cletus and Alicia to travel alone.”
“And it won’t be unseemly for him to be at the funeral?”
“You are excused, Isabela,” Claudia Carzino-Cormano said furiously.
Claudia waited until the sound of Isabela’s high heels on the tile floor of the house had died.
“I’m am so sorry, Cletus,” she said. “I apologize.”
“Did I somehow give offense?”
“She was close to Jorge,” Claudia said.
“Not really,” Alicia added. “But now that he’s dead, she’s convinced herself she was in love with him.”
Her mother looked angrily at her.
“That’s a terrible thing to say!”
“It’s true. She’d wear widow’s black if she thought she could get away with it. It draws attention to her.”
Claudia glowered at her, then shrugged her shoulders and let the remark go unchallenged.
“I always thought that Isabela and Jorge…” el Coronel said, leaving the rest unsaid. “But that certainly doesn’t give her the right to treat Cletus as if…as if he’s an enemy officer.”
“Jorge, she wasn’t doing that at all!” Claudia said.
“Why else would she feel it was unseemly for Cletus to be at Jorge’s funeral?”
“Because she is a fool, Uncle Jorge,” Alicia said.
“Alicia, that’s the last word I want to hear from you,” Claudia said angrily, and turned to el Coronel. “Honey,” she said almost plaintively, “I’ll speak to her. I’ll make sure she understands that it was the anti-Christ communists who killed Jorge, not the Americans.”
While he was flying an airplane for the Germans, who are murdering hundreds of thousands of women and children.
“Please do,” Frade said, not pleasantly. “I think an apology to Cletus is in order.”
That was not a suggestion from a visitor. Obviously, my father has the same kind of authority in this house as Claudia does in his. I wonder why he never married her. He said she was a widow.
“No apology is necessary,” Clete said. “Except from me. I’m sorry to be a source of unpleasantness, Claudia.”
“Oh, honey, you’re not,” Claudia said, and kissed him. “You’re a source of joy.”
“Speak to her,” el Coronel Frade said.
“You mean right now?” Claudia asked.
“Yes, I mean right now,” el Coronel said. There was a tone of command in his voice, and Claudia reacted to it.
“Excuse me, please, Cletus,” she said, and went in the house.
“Alicia,” el Coronel Frade ordered, “would you have someone bring us some champagne?”
“Do I get any of it?”
“If you can drink it before your mother comes back,” Frade said with a smile.
“Sounds fair enough,” Alicia said, and went quickly into the house.
Now that was a father talking to his daughter, and vice versa. What the hell is their relationship?
“I’m sorry about this, Cletus,” el Coronel said.
“No problem, Dad. I was raised with Uncle Jim’s girls. They drove both of us crazy, too.”
[THREE]
The Plaza Hotel Bar
Buenos Aires
1710 15 December 1942
Señor Enrico Mallín, with Señorita Maria-Teresa Alberghoni on his arm, entered the bar via the street entrance rather than through the lobby. They had just come from her apartment.
In her apartment earlier, watching her postcoital ablutions through the glass wall of her shower, and then watching her dress, he told himself she was not only an exquisitely lovely young woman, but a sweet and gentle one as well, worth every peso she cost him.
It was not impossible, he also told himself, that she was beginning to love him for himself—she certainly acted like it in bed. Perhaps she was not submitting to his attentions solely because of the allowance he gave her, and the apartment, and his guarantee of her father’s loan at the Anglo-Argentinean Bank. He was flattered by such thoughts, of course, but he was at the same time aware that they were not without a certain risk…if she let her emotions get out of control, for example.
An arrangement was an arrangement. And its obligations and limitations had to be mutually understood between the parties. She would never become more than his Miña, and he would never be more than her good friend, her protector. She was expected to be absolutely faithful to her good friend—the very idea of another man touching Maria-Teresa, those exquisite breasts, those soft, splendid thighs, was distasteful. And he was expected to be faithful to her. Excepting of course, vis-à-vis his wife.
The relationship was an old—he hesitated to use the word “sacred”—Buenos Aires custom. His father had a Miña; his grandfather had a Miña; and most of the gentlemen of his professional and social acquaintance had Miñas. When he was a young man, his father explained to him the roots of the custom: It first developed in the olden days, when marriages were arranged with land and property, not love, as the deciding factor, and a man could not be expected to find sexual satisfaction with a woman who might have brought 50,000 hectares as her dowry but was as ugly as a horse.
In the olden days, a gentleman was expected to provide for the fruit of any such arrangement. And he was ostracized from polite society if he failed to do so. Some of the affluent Buenos Aires families (those who were perhaps a little vague about their lineage) could often trace their good fortune back to a greatgrandmother or a great-great-grandmother who had an arrangement with a gentleman of wealth and position.
Just before the turn of the century, when Queen Victoria was on the British throne, the custom was buttressed by Queen Victoria’s notion—shamelessly aped by Argentine society, as were other things British in those days—that ladies could have no interest in the sexual act save reproduction. A man, a real man, needed more than a woman who offered him her body only infrequently and with absurd limitations on what he might do with it.
In exchange for certain considerations, a Miña well understood her sexual role.
In more recent times, the necessity for permanence in the relationship between a Miña and her good friend died out. This was because the efficacy of modern birth-control methods obviated the problem of children. On more than one occasion, however, Enrico Mallín considered giving Maria-Teresa a child. He loved his own children, of course, but they had inherited their mother’s English paleness. He thought it might be nice to have a child or two with Maria-Teresa—a child who would have his olive skin and dark eyes, his Spanish blood.
Of course, on reflection, he realized the foolishness of this notion, and ascribed it to his fascination with her olive skin and dark eyes.
Because a Miña was not a whore or a prostitute, it would be ungentlemanly to conclude an arrangement with her in such fashion that she was forced into one of those professions afterward. Hence the allowance, at least a part of which the girl was expected to save for a dowry—which she could use after the arrangement came to an end. And hence the note at the Anglo-Argentinean Bank which Enrico had guaranteed for her father’s business. When a Miña had enough money to wish to begin her married future, it was usually time for her good friend to wonder whether the grass might be greener elsewhere.
Maria-Teresa Alberghoni was Enrico Mallín’s third Miña, and she had been with him for four years. While he couldn’t imagine replacing her, in the back of his mind it seemed to him that their arrangement would doubtless come to an end in another two or three years…though in truth, he didn’t really want to do without Maria-Teresa. The grass is rarely greener than where you are standing.
Although one of the best in Buenos Aires, the Plaza Hotel is, after all, nothing more than a hotel. A hotel accommodates travelers…or sometimes a man and a woman not married to each other who require a bed behind a locked door.
Appearances are important. Unless it is for some specific function—such as a ball, or a wedding reception that their husbands are unable to attend—ladies should not risk gossip by being seen in a hotel without their husbands. Specifically, a lady would not think of entering the bar at the Plaza Hotel without her husband; and gentlemen of Enrico Mallín’s social and professional circle had an unspoken agreement never to take their wives to the bar at the Plaza under any circumstances.
This left the gentlemen free to take their Miñas there in the almost certain knowledge that they were safe from their wives.
The girls liked the system too. They could move from table to table chatting happily with their friends, while the gentlemen were afforded the opportunity to show off their Miñas to their peers, and to have private conversations about business, or whatever else needed to be discussed in confidence, in a place where the walls do not have ears.
As a matter of fact, in Enrico Mallín’s judgment, the showing-off aspects of the custom had recently started to get a little out of hand. For one thing, certain gentlemen were beginning to bedeck their Miñas in jewelry and furs. There was nothing wrong, certainly, with giving your Miña a couple of small gold trinkets, or even a silver-fox cape, especially if she had done something to make you extraordinarily happy, or as a farewell gift, if the relationship was drawing to an end.
But these weren’t trinkets, these were diamonds and other precious jewels, and heavy gold bracelets, and quite expensive fur coats. Once one or two gentlemen started this practice, all the Miñas would begin to expect it.
And worse than that, certain gentlemen started to appear in the Plaza bar with a Miña on each arm. And there was one old fool, Hector Forestiero—he was as bald as a cucumber and must be in his seventies—who was showing up with three. Enrico had no idea what exactly he thought he was proving by this—to suggest that he had enough money for three Miñas, or that he was still virile enough to handle a ménage à quatre in bed.
The Plaza bar was L-shaped. The bar itself, with its comfortable stools, occupied a corner of the room. On either side, there were leather-upholstered chairs and tables under large mirrors and mahogany paneling.
The place was full, but that was not unusual.
When the maître d’hôtel saw Mallín and Maria-Teresa, he came quickly to them and led them to a table at one end of the L. He snatched a brass “Reservado” sign from it and held Maria-Teresa’s chair as she sat down.
Enrico looked around the room and nodded to several gentlemen of his acquaintance. A waiter appeared a few minutes later, automatically delivering a plate of hors d’oeuvres; a Johnnie Walker Black with two ice cubes and a little water for Mallín; and a gin fizz for Maria-Teresa.
The waiter barely had time to prepare Mallín’s drink when Alejandro Kertiz appeared. Kertiz was a lawyer with a pencil-line mustache and a taste for flashy clothing. His Miña was cut from the same bolt of cloth. Her clothing was too tight, too revealing, and she apparently applied her lipstick with a shovel.
Enrico Mallín did not like Alejandro Kertiz. His grandmother—perhaps even his mother—was probably a Miña. You don’t need a good family to be a successful lawyer, just a devious mind and a complete lack of morals. Mallín avoided Kertiz whenever possible. He certainly did not want to give the impression that he and Kertiz were anything more than casual acquaintances.
“My dear Enrico,” Kertiz began. “Would there be room for us with you? The place is jammed.”
“I would be honored,” Mallín said.
The two sat down after Kertiz’s Miña leaned across the table to kiss Maria-Teresa’s cheek.
“I was hoping to run into you,” Kertiz said, and started looking around for a waiter.
Even the waiters recognize you for what you are and try to ignore you.
By snapping his fingers so loudly and so often that everyone in the room was looking their way, Kertiz finally attracted the attention of a waiter, and grandly ordered “whatever Señor Mallín and the Señorita are having, plus a Dewar’s White Label, doble, with soda, for the Señorita and myself.”
Good manners require that I protest and tell the waiter to put that on my bill. To hell with him. Let him buy his own whiskey. On the other hand, if I permit him to buy me a whiskey, I am indebted to him.
“Put that on my bill, por favor,” Mallín ordered.
Kertiz waited until the waiter delivered the drinks, then said, “Corazonita,”—Little Heart—“why don’t you go powder your nose and take Señor Mallín’s little friend with you? I wish to discuss something in confidence with him.”
The young women left the table.
“She’s so very attractive,” Kertiz said, obviously referring to Maria-Teresa, and then added, “Pity.”
“Yes, I think she is,” Mallín said. “What do you mean, ‘pity’?”
“None of them—sadly—seem able to deny themselves the attentions of a young man,” Kertiz said. He reached into his pocket, produced a brownish envelope, and handed it to Mallín.
There was a photo inside. It showed Maria-Teresa standing by the railing of the canal across from the English Yacht Club at El Tigre. She was holding the hand of a dark-skinned young man. His back was toward the camera; his face could not be seen, but Mallín could see his dark skin, and that he was touching Maria-Teresa’s face with his hand.
Another goddamned Italian! Mallín thought furiously. A stevedore from La Boca, or a vegetable salesman, all dressed up in his one suit of “good” clothes.
“I took my family out to El Tigre yesterday,” Kertiz said. “To the Yacht Club. You know that my wife’s grandfather was one of the founding members?”
“I had heard something like that,” Mallín said.
While your grandmother was a Miña.
“And I had the camera with me, a Leica I-C, with a shutter speed of one one-thousandth of a second. With the new American film and the Leica, one can take photographs with practically no light.”
“Fascinating!”
How dare the ungrateful little bitch do this to me!
“I wasn’t sure at first that it was actually your little friend, but I took the shot anyway, and I developed the film…. I have my own laboratory, I think you know, complete in every detail.”
“How nice for you.”
“And I examined the negatives, and then made an enlargement, so I could tell for sure.”
“It is her cousin Angelo,” Mallín said. “I know the boy well. He works in her father’s restaurant.”
“Oh, I am so happy to hear that,” Kertiz said, making it quite clear that he thought that possibility was remote indeed. “I would hate to think that she does not find satisfaction with you, my friend.”
“May I have this?” Mallín asked.
“Of course. I made it for you.”
“Muchas gracias.”
“De nada.”
Soon after the girls returned to the table, without the manners to excuse himself, Kertiz jumped up and walked across the room to invite himself to sit with another gentleman and his Miña. A minute or so after that, he rather imperiously waved for his Corazonita to join him.
Of course, you sonofabitch. You accomplished at my table what you set out to do. Rub this disloyal bitch’s philandering in my face.
“I didn’t think to ask, Teresa,” Mallín said when they were alone. “Did you have a pleasant Sunday?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“And what did you do?”
“Well, I went to an early mass at San Juan Evangelista, then we had a family dinner, and then visited with relatives.”
You are a bad liar.
Did you really go to mass? Or were you in bed all morning with your vegetable salesman? Perhaps in bed with your young man in the apartment I provide for you? After you told your father you were going to mass, did you then take your vegetable salesman into our bed?
“I was thinking that perhaps one day we should drive out to El Tigre,” Mallín said.
Well, that caused a reaction, didn’t it? Your eyes are frightened.
“El Tigre?”
“I thought we might go out there for lunch,” he said. “Get out of the heat of the city.”
“That would be very nice,” Teresa said.
“It’s been some time since I have been there,” he said. “When was the last time you were there?”
Teresa shrugged.
“A long time ago. I don’t remember.”
Mallín stood up, so suddenly it frightened her.
“I am leaving you now, Maria-Teresa,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
He threw Kertiz’s photograph on the table.
“If you want to go out to El Tigre, have your vegetable sales-boy take you there.”
“Enrico!”
“Get your things out of the apartment today,” he went on. “And please tell your father that I am no longer able to guarantee his loan at the bank.”
“Enrico, amado”—beloved.
“Don’t ‘amado’ me, you treacherous little bitch!” Mallín said, louder than he intended. He glanced around the bar. People were looking at him. Kertiz had a smug look on his face.
He marched out of the bar with as much dignity as he could muster.
There wasn’t a taxi in sight. There was never a taxi when you needed one.
He felt like crying.
Finally, a taxi appeared and he flagged it down and told the driver to take him to the Edificio Kavanagh. He would get the Rolls and drive around until he had his emotions under control, and then he would go home, where he would have several stiff drinks.
Pamela would be pleased to see him. She didn’t expect him for several hours. Perhaps he would surprise everyone, Pamela, Dorotea, and Little Enrico, and take everybody out for dinner.
[FOUR]
4730 Avenida Libertador
Buenos Aires
1730 16 December 1942
Clete put the top up on the Buick convertible, marveling again that the General Motors automotive engineers had the ingenuity to come up with a device that would raise and lower the top at the push of a button (unlike the do-it-yourself bullshit he and Tony had had with the ’37 Ford in Punta del Este). Then he carefully locked the car and walked into Uncle Guillermo’s house.
A man was loitering at the corner of Calle Jorge Newberry, and Clete wondered whether the man was there to watch him.
He was in an unpleasant mood. Who the hell was Jorge Newberry, anyway? he thought as the man on the corner glanced his way, then averted his gaze.
The plan was to leave Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo for Estancia Santa Catharina sometime in the morning. To Clete’s way of thinking, that meant sometime before ten-thirty. But it was twelve-thirty before the two-car, Horche-Buick convoy finally set out down the gravel road to Estancia Santa Catharina. During the forty-mile trip, he had to swallow the dust from his father’s Horche.
And, of course, Claudia’s daughters were not prepared to leave when they arrived. Argentina, while very unlike Mexico, had mañana in common with the republic immediately south of the Rio Grande.
“Since you have nothing to do in Buenos Aires,” his father said cheerfully, “I’m sure you won’t mind waiting for the girls to finish their packing while Claudia and I drive ahead. The girls will show you the way.”
“Fine,” Clete said.
The trouble was that he had something to do in Buenos Aires. He had to get in touch with Nestor and tell him he had found the Reine de la Mer and that he could forget taking her out by planting a charge against her hull. It couldn’t be done that way. And since he could think of no way to do it himself, that would be up to Nestor to figure out.
On the flight back to the ranch, inspired by an Errol Flynn Battling the Dirty Nazis movie he vaguely remembered, he considered sneaking aboard the ship, overpowering the crew, placing scuttling charges, and then slipping away.
It worked for Errol Flynn. But, he finally remembered—shooting down the only idea he had been able to come up with—that ship in the movie was tied up at a wharf, not anchored twenty-odd miles offshore.
But of course he could not tell his father that, so he smiled and waited patiently for the girls to put their goddamned gear together. He occupied himself by putting the convertible top down, because he would no longer be swallowing his father’s dust.
When she finally came out to the car, Isabela Carzino-Cormano insisted on riding in the backseat. Fine gentleman that he was, knowing that riding in the backseat of a convertible going as fast as he intended to drive was no fun, he put the roof up.
That situation lasted perhaps two miles, until Isabela tapped him imperiously on the shoulder and asked him if he would be good enough to please raise the windows. The wind was mussing her hair and she was getting dusty.
That was the last word Isabela spoke before they reached Buenos Aires. It was hotter than hell in the Buick with the roof up.
Alicia Carzino-Cormano tried to make conversation. “Now tell the truth, Cletus,” she asked him, “aren’t you really just a poco interested in Dorotea Mallín?” Watching them play tennis, she saw him looking at her in a certain way.
Actually, Alicia, you saw me looking down her dress and at her crotch, because I am a perverted dirty young man.
“Alicia, don’t let your imagination run away with you. And since you’re so curious, there is a young woman in America I’m involved with.”
He was glad to get rid of both of them at his father’s house on Avenida Coronel Díaz and drive quickly to the Guest House.
One of the maids greeted him at the door, then asked him if he would like her to park the Buick.
Thank you, no. Sweetheart. You are probably a worse driver than my father.
“No, gracias. I’m going to leave it right where it is.”
His answer brought him a lecture about petty crime on the streets of Buenos Aires. She assured him that if he left the car outside overnight, in the morning there would be nothing left but the windshield, and perhaps not even that.
Getting the car into the garage also posed a problem. They couldn’t find the keys. Señora Pellano would of course know where the keys were, the maid told him, but Señora Pellano was unfortunately at the house on Avenida Coronel Díaz. They wound up telephoning Señora Pellano and asking where the keys were.
Finally, stopping off at the kitchen to load a silver champagne cooler with ice and two bottles of cerveza, Clete was able to take the elevator to Uncle Guillermo’s playroom and get on the horn to Nestor. Predictably, Nestor was not thrilled to hear from him.
“I saw that boat you were talking about, the one you’re thinking of buying? Reine de la Mer,” Clete said.
“I’d really rather hear it from you in person, Clete. Why don’t you come here?”
“Certainly.”
“You have your car?”
“Yeah.”
“We can take a ride.”
“I’m on my way,” Clete said.
[FIVE]
Jasper C. Nestor came out of his house and got in the Buick. As soon as he was seated, Clete said, “There’s a Fiat parked down the street that was parked across the street from the Guest House when I drove out of the garage.”
“Well, they can’t hear us as long as we’re driving. You implied that you know where the Reine de la Mer is?”
“She’s at anchor twenty miles or so offshore in the Bay of Samborombón.”
“How do you know that?”
“I saw her there. I was flying my father’s airplane.”
“You’re sure it’s the Reine de la Mer? How can you be sure?”
“Because I flew close enough to read her sternboard. And as a bonus, I got a good look at all the nice searchlights and machine-gun mounts on her superstructure.”
“You…flew close enough to read her sternboard?”
“I buzzed her, all right? That was the only way I could get close enough to read the sternboard.”
“I’m not sure that was wise.”
“Why?” Clete asked incredulously.
“We would have found her.”
“You didn’t, did you?”
“And now they know you’ve found her.”
“Mr. Nestor, I don’t think there’s any way to get close enough to her to blow her up. At least, I can’t think of one.”
“Point one, Frade, is that you’re not to blow her up, you are to disable her. And as quickly as possible, certainly within the next week or ten days. If she replenishes one German submarine, that’s one too many. Point two is that you seem to have forgotten that it is not your function to question your orders, but to obey them.”
“Did you hear what I said? There is no way to get close to her where she lies. And even if we could, I don’t believe that the explosives we have would do much damage.”
“There’s enough explosives—you have more than twenty pounds. If judiciously placed, that’s more than enough to disable her. That’s what we’re after.”
“If we could get to her steering…or to her engines, and had an hour or so to do it, possibly. Pelosi is very good at what he does, but…”
“But what?”
“There’s no way to get close to that ship, much less get aboard her.”
“You have to try.”
“I’ll have a shot at anything that looks like it has a chance of succeeding, but I’m not going to commit suicide.”
“What did you say?”
“I said I’m not going to commit suicide. I respectfully suggest you send a message to Colonel Graham…”
“Colonel Graham is the Deputy Director of the OSS. I have no intention of bothering him with something like this. What he expects from me, and what I expect from you, is that we carry out the mission assigned by the OSS.”
“I respectfully request, Sir, that you send a message to Colonel Graham and tell him that I said there’s no way to take the Reine de la Mer out with the men and materiel I have.”
“It doesn’t work that way, Frade,” Nestor said. “We receive our orders and we carry them out to the best of our ability.”
What is this “we” crap? You’ll be in your office in the Bank of Boston.
“Why didn’t we, or the English, sink the Reine de la Mer off Lisbon, once she was identified? Or here, as she came into the Río de la Plata estuary? The Navy is operating in the South Atlantic. And there’s even a destroyer, the Alfred Thomas, making a port call here the day before Christmas.”
“Where did you hear about the Alfred Thomas?” Nestor interrupted.
“Apparently it’s common knowledge.”
“I asked you how you heard about it. Did Ettinger tell you?”
You don’t like it that Ettinger told me about the destroyer and didn’t tell you. And that I didn’t tell you either. But screw that. I’m not going to let you get on Ettinger’s back for that.
“No, I heard it from Enrico Mallín. Why can’t this destroyer sink the Reine de la Mer?”
“It’s not your business to question decisions like that, if I have to point that out to you. But the reasons seem self-evident. The Reine de la Mer is a Portuguese ship. Portugal is neutral. The United States does not torpedo neutral ships.”
“But it’s all right for the three of us to sink it? What’s the difference? Aside from the fact that a destroyer has the capability to take it out, and we don’t?” Clete asked, and then went on without waiting for a reply: “I’d like to plead my case up the chain of command.”
“It doesn’t work that way. You’re in the OSS now. You take your orders from me, and you don’t have the privilege of questioning them. What’s the matter with you, Frade?”
Clete felt frustration and anger sweep through him.
“I know what orders are, Mr. Nestor, and I’ll try to obey mine,” he said. “All I’m asking you to do is pass the word up the chain of command. Tell them that I told you that I’ll need more to take out the Reine de la Mer than good intentions and twenty pounds of explosives. A very fast powerboat, maybe. Certainly another two hundred pounds of high explosive. Or a TBF from Brazil. Something.”
“A what from Brazil?”
“A TBF,” Clete repeated. And then, when he realized that Nestor had no idea what a TBF was, he added, “A torpedo bomber.”
“A torpedo bomber?” Nestor asked sarcastically.
“I’m a fighter pilot, but I can fly TBFs. I could go to Brazil, pick up the plane, fly it to that dirt strip we used for the airdrop in Uruguay, where Pelosi would be waiting with enough avgas to get me to the Reine de la Mer…”
Nestor looked at him with incredulous contempt.
“…and put a torpedo in her.”
Nestor shook his head sadly, as if he had failed to make a point to a backward child.
“Frade, that would be just as much an act of war as the Alfred Thomas attacking the Reine de la Mer.”
“I could then fly over my father’s estancia, put the plane on a course that would carry it out over the Atlantic, and bail out,” Clete said.
“And that’s what you want me to suggest to my superiors?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“You simply refuse to understand the situation. Sinking the Reine de la Mer with a torpedo bomber was, I am quite sure, one of the options considered. It was obviously discarded. It’s out of the question. Quite impossible.”
“So is doing the Reine de la Mer any harm with twenty pounds of explosive. And I will not order my men to do something that has no chance of success, and that will get them killed,” Clete said. “I respectfully request that you pass that up the chain of command.”
“I don’t think there is any point in continuing this conversation, Lieutenant Frade,” Nestor said. “You leave me no choice but to report your insubordination—if that’s all it is—up, as you put it, ‘the chain of command.’”
“What do you mean, ‘if that’s all it is’?” Clete demanded, coldly angry.
“What would you call it when an officer refuses to obey an order because there is an element of personal risk involved?”
Clete pulled to the curb and slammed on the brakes.
“Get out,” he ordered. “Before I punch you into next week.”
Nestor looked at him in surprise, then opened the door and stepped out.
[SIX]
Avenida Alvear
Buenos Aires
1815 17 December 1942
“And here we are at the Alvear Palace Hotel,” Oberst Karl-Heinz Grüner, military attaché of the Embassy of the German Reich to the Republic of Argentina, said quite unnecessarily to Hauptmann Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein, who was residing there. “Just a few minutes’ walk from the Duarte mansion.”
They were both in civilian clothing, and had just come from Peter’s formal introduction to Ambassador von Lutzenberger at the embassy.
“I estimate a three-minute walk, Herr Oberst,” Peter said straight-faced.
“No more, I am sure.”
The military mind at work. Or an oberst-and-higher’s mind at work. My father can’t park a car without a detailed operational plan. Why should this man be any different?
“It was the original intention of the Argentines to line with cavalry from the Husares de Pueyrredón both sides of Avenida Alvear from the Frade mansion to the Basilica of Saint Pilar, which is approximately a kilometer in that direction,” he pointed. “I talked them out of that.”
“Yes, Sir?”
“The avenue will be lined from a point approximately twenty-five meters from the Duarte mansion with troops of a regular regiment—the Second Regiment of Infantry. There will be a representative honor guard of the Husares de Pueyrredón at the mansion itself. On my side, I thought it would be best, for public relations purposes, to have regular troops in field gear—they wear our helmets, you know, and are armed with Mausers, and look very much like German troops. And on their side, I suspect they were pleased at the suggestion. With that many men in those heavy winter-dress uniforms, in this heat, it was statistically certain that a number of Husares would faint and fall off their mounts.”
He looked at Peter with what could have been the suggestion of a smile.
“It is always embarrassing, Herr Oberst, when men faint while on parade.”
“Precisely,” Grüner said. “I had a tactical officer at the infantry school who used to quite unnecessarily threaten us that anyone who fainted on parade would regret it.”
Peter now felt quite safe in smiling at Grüner, and did so. Grüner smiled back.
“The Husares de Pueyrredón, the mounted troopers,” he went on, “will line the path of the procession from the point where Avenida Alvear ends at the Recoleta Park, at the foot of this small hill.” He pointed again, and resumed walking.
When they reached the foot of the small incline, he stopped and pointed again.
“There is the Basilica of St. Pilar,” he said. “Did you have the opportunity to visit churches when you were in Spain?”
“On one or two occasions, Herr Oberst. I am Evangelisch”—Protestant.
“Yes, I know. So am I,” Grüner said. “And there are not very many of us in Bavaria. The Recoleta Cemetery, where Hauptmann Duarte’s remains will be interred, is immediately behind the Basilica. What I started to say was that if you visited a Catholic church in Spain, you will feel quite at home in this one. It is jammed with larger-than-life-sized statues of various saints—I have often wondered if the admonition against making even graven images is in the Catholic version of the Ten Commandments…”
Peter chuckled, and Grüner smiled.
“…including one of St. Pilar,” Grüner continued, “the source of whose prestige in the Catholic faith remains a mystery to me, plus the to-be-expected Spanish Baroque ornamentation covering every inch of the place.”
Peter chuckled again as Grüner started across the street, and they started walking up a fairly steep hill toward the Basilica.
“How the Husares will keep their mounts’ footing on this incline,” Grüner observed, “is fortunately not my problem.”
They reached the church and stopped in a small exterior courtyard.
Grüner pointed again.
“Following the high requiem mass, the casket will be brought to this point. By that time, the dignitaries—including you and me, of course—will be standing there, against that wall. The Ambassador will step forward, and you and I will also step forward, stopping one pace behind him. The Ambassador will then briefly express the condolences of the Führer and the German people to the Duarte family and the government of Argentina. He will then take one step backward, and I will take one step forward.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“You will be holding a small pillow on which will rest the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“I will then read the order of the Oberkommando of the Wehrmacht posthumously awarding, in the name of the Führer, the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross to Hauptmann Duarte. I will then take three steps forward to the casket. You will follow me, do a left face to me, and extend the pillow to me. I will take the decoration from the pillow and pin it to the Argentine colors that will be covering the casket.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“How do you feel about that, Herr Hauptmann?”
“Sir?”
“I personally felt the Knight’s Cross was a bit much,” Grüner said. “It is a decoration that should be won because of outstanding valor. A simple Iron Cross would be sufficient, I think.”
“Herr Oberst, it is not my place to question the award of a decoration by the Oberkommando of the Wehrmacht.”
“Nor mine,” Grüner said. “But between soldiers…”
Peter did not reply.
“We will then, at my command, do the appropriate facing movement, so that we are facing the casket. On my command, we will take two steps backward and then render the German salute. The Navy somehow gets away with the hand-to-the-temple salute, but those of us in the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe must obey the Führer’s order to render the German salute. Don’t forget!”
“No, Sir.”
“On my command again, we will conclude the salute, do an about-face, and march back to our positions behind Ambassador von Lutzenberger.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“The casket will then be carried out of this courtyard, to the right and through the main entrance to the cemetery. You will remain behind, and when the last of the dignitaries has left the courtyard, you will enter the cemetery through that gate.”
He pointed, then walked to a small iron gate in the wall, which turned out to be locked.
“I will see that it is unlocked,” Grüner said. “For now, we will enter the cemetery by the main gate.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“You will pass through that gate and—you will probably have to move quickly—proceed to the Duarte tomb, where you will remain until the casket has been placed inside. After the family has departed, you will remove the Knight’s Cross from the casket, return it to its box, and proceed to the Duarte mansion, where, exercising great tact, you will present the decoration to Señor Duarte.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“I say ‘exercising great tact’ because of the mother. She is, poor lady, not in the best of health, mentally speaking.”
Oberst Karl-Heinz Grüner made a circling motion with his index finger at his temple.
“I understand, Herr Oberst.”
“We will now locate the Duarte tomb for you, and the path from the small gate in the courtyard.”
“Yes, Sir.”
That took about five minutes. Peter found the cemetery fascinating. It was almost literally a city of the dead, with every inch except the walkways covered with elaborate tombs, some small and some as large as small houses. In fact, they all looked like houses. Almost all of them had a glass-covered wrought-iron door, through which small altars could be seen. The altars were usually complete to either a large brass cross or a statue of Christ on His cross, or both. And in each tomb/chapel a casket could be seen, either on the altar itself or in front of it. Several of the caskets were small and white, children’s caskets, which made Peter uncomfortable.
When Oberst Grüner saw him looking into the tombs, he explained:
“The most recently deceased has his casket left on or in front of the altar until the next death in the family, whereupon it is placed in what for a better word I think of as the basement of the tomb. There are three, four, as many as six subterranean levels, I’m told.”
“Fascinating.”
“Bizarre, is more like it. Catholic bizarre, plus Spanish bizarre. Incredible!”
Something else raised Peter’s curiosity as they walked through the cemetery, a tomb with no Catholic symbols or pious words—the burial place of an atheist and his family? He asked Grüner about it: “I thought only Catholics could be buried in a Catholic cemetery.”
“So did I, until I came here.” He paused and shook his head at the failure of Argentines to be logical. “Consecrated ground, they call it. No heathens or Evangelische need apply. The last time I was here—it’s over there someplace—I even came across a tomb reserved for Freemasons. I thought the Catholics hated Freemasons about as much as the Führer.” He smiled. “There is no explanation, except that this is Argentina, and Argentina is like nowhere else in the world.”
Finally, they were through, just outside the cemetery’s main gate. Grüner made Peter recite, in detail, his role in the funeral of Hauptmann Duarte.
I expected this. Sound military practice. You tell someone what you’re going to teach him. You teach him what you want him to know. And then you make him tell you what he has just been taught.
“So, this is done,” Grüner said. “And what do you suppose we should do now?”
“I have no idea, Herr Oberst,” Peter replied.
“What do all soldiers, from private soldiers to Feldmarschalls, do when they have finished their assigned duties and there is no superior officer around?”
“Look for a woman?” Peter blurted.
Grüner chuckled. “Close, but I was thinking of finding a beer,” he said. “Fortunately, we are close to a place where we can do just that. And who knows, there just might be someone there who catches your eye.”