Empire and Honor Page 3

  “Tell me what you know about Clete and Truman.”

  Graham ignored the question.

  “Truman made Sid give the Flying Brothel back to Howard. You could probably buy it cheap, if you’re interested.”

  “Tell me what you know about Clete and Truman,” the old man repeated.

  “Marcus, I really can’t.”

  The old man then sipped his scotch and said, “I understand. The war’s over. Hitler and Hirohito are gone, but Uncle Joe Stalin’s still around. And I’m a well-known Communist sympathizer and obviously can’t be trusted. Right?”

  Graham didn’t answer.

  “Consider this, Alex. All it would have taken when you were recruiting Clete for the OSS so that he could go to Argentina and make a Christian out of his goddamn father was a telephone call to Clete from me. Following which, he would have told you to go piss up a rope.”

  Graham met Howell’s eyes for a moment. He shrugged.

  “Okay, Marcus. A moment ago, you said Stalin’s still around. That situation is going from bad to worse. What Clete is doing—”

  “Goddamn it, Alex! Wouldn’t you say he’s done enough already? Get someone else to do what you think has to be done.”

  Graham didn’t reply.

  “I need him, Alex. My son Jim’s gone. I’m seventy-seven goddamn years old. Someone has to take over Howell Petroleum, take over the family.”

  “Marcus, if I could send Clete home, if I could even tell you what he’s doing, I would. I just can’t. I just can’t.”

  “Fuck you, Alex!” the old man said, furiously.

  He stood up, looked down at Graham for a moment, and then walked out of the Lafayette Room.

  In the lobby, he looked at the doorman and mimed steering a car.

  The doorman gave him a thumbs-up gesture and signaled his car was outside.

  Howell started for the door, and then changed his mind.

  He walked to the bank of elevators and took one to his penthouse apartment. There, he sat down angrily in a red leather armchair and picked up the telephone.

  “Person-to-person, Mr. Howard Hughes, the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation in Los Angeles, California.”

  There was a response, to which he responded: “If I had the goddamned number, I would have given it to you. I’m old but not completely senile.”

  He slammed the receiver into its cradle and looked out the window that provided a marvelous view across Pennsylvania Avenue of the White House.

  Ninety seconds later, the telephone rang. He picked it up before it could ring a second time.

  “Howard?” he said. “In which movie star’s boudoir did they find you?”

  “How are you, Mr. Howell?” Howard Hughes said sincerely.

  “A fat Mexican half-breed of our mutual acquaintance just told me you have a flying brothel for sale, cheap. True?”

  “I understand that’s what Truman called it,” Hughes chuckled.

  “Yes or no?”

  “Yeah. You’re interested?”

  “That depends on how much you want for this piece of fire sale merchandise.”

  Hughes told him.

  “Is that your best price, Howard? Or are you trying to take advantage of someone in his dotage?”

  “For you— God, I think you’re serious. What the hell would you do with it?”

  “What does anyone do with a flying brothel? Take fifty thousand off that price and you’ve got a deal. I’ll need somebody to fly it. I presume you can handle that?”

  “Mr. Howell, I have to tell you, if you’re thinking of Clete and SAA, so was Juan Trippe. He got to his senator, and all Constellations are embargoed from sale outside the U.S.”

  “That sonofabitch strikes again. But not a problem. How soon can you paint ‘Howell Petroleum’ on it and deliver it to Washington? No. New Orleans. I’m getting out of this goddamn town this afternoon.”

  “Three days, tops. I’ll bring it myself. But I’ll want the crew I bring with it back as soon as you can get your own.”

  “I don’t care what all those people are saying about you, Howard, I really don’t think you’re an unmitigated bastard.”

  Hughes laughed and hung up.

  Cletus Marcus Howell reached for a humidor, selected a long, thin brown cigar, and went carefully through a ritual of rolling it between his fingers, cutting the end of it, and lighting it with a wooden match.

  Then he went to a cabinet, opened it, and took out a bottle of Collier and McKeel Tennessee sour mash whiskey. He poured an inch and a half of it into a squat glass.

  Chimes announced that someone was at his door.

  When he opened it, three men were standing there. Two were tall, muscular, and young. The third, who stood in front, was shorter, trim, and in his fifties.

  “I understand you don’t talk to Democrats,” the older man said, “but I was hoping you’d make an exception for me.”

  “Please come in, Mr. President,” Howell said.

  “You fellows wait out here, please,” Harry S Truman said. “I know Mr. Howell doesn’t like me, but I don’t think he’ll try to kill me.”

  The President walked into the suite and closed the hall door behind him.

  The two men looked at each other without speaking. Finally, Howell raised his glass.

  “May I offer you—”

  “If that came out of that Collier and McKeel bottle, you certainly may,” Truman said.

  “How do you take it?”

  “The same way you do, straight.”

  Howell poured the whiskey and handed Truman the glass.

  Truman raised it, touched it to Howell’s, and said, “The United States of America.”

  “The United States of America,” Howell parroted.

  The two sipped the whiskey.

  “You ever hear, Mr. President,” Howell then asked, “that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel?”

  “In this case, it’s my last refuge to . . . how do I say this? . . . turn you off.”

  “Is that so?”

  “I just spoke with our mutual friend Colonel Graham,” the President said.

  “He told me.”

  “I mean he called me after you talked to him,” Truman said. “He said he thought he should tell me you were entirely capable of buying that flying brothel Howard Hughes built and flying down to Buenos Aires in it.”

  “I’m a little old for brothels, flying or otherwise, but yes, I just spoke to Howard. I told him to paint Howell Petroleum on that airplane and deliver it to me in New Orleans.”

  “And then you’re going to fly to Buenos Aires in it? You do move fast, don’t you?”

  “I’ve learned that’s the way you stay ahead of the pack,” Howell said.

  “And I’ve learned over the years that there are some men who don’t take orders, or even suggestions, from anyone.”

  “I suppose that’s true.”

  “That puts me on the spot,” Truman said. “I realize I can’t keep you from going down there to see your grandson.”

  “No, you can’t.”

  “So I have no choice but to tell you something—what your grandson is doing down there—that is absolutely none of your business, and then rely on your good judgment—and, okay, your patriotism—that what you do with that information won’t hurt the United States and a good number of other people.”

  “You can tell me, or not tell me, anything you want, Mr. President. But if it’s your intention to tell me something and then imply that I am now silenced by patriotism, that, I’m sorry, just won’t work. The war is over.”

  “No, Mr. Howell, the war just started.”

  “Is that so?”

  “That’s so. And Cletus is right now up to his ears in that war.”

  “I’m listening, Mr. President. As long as you understand what I just said.”

  “I understand. Cletus was in Berlin the day I told Joe Stalin we had the atom bomb, and the day I told George Marshall I wanted all aid to the Soviet Union shut
off immediately. Were you aware of that?”

  Howell nodded.

  “Do you know why he was there?”

  Howell shook his head and said, “No.”

  “Shortly before the Germans surrendered, a German general named Gehlen, who was in charge of German intelligence vis-à-vis the Soviets, met and struck a deal with Allen Dulles, the OSS man in charge of Europe . . .”

  [THREE]

  Edificio Libertador

  Avenida Paseo Colón

  Buenos Aires, Argentina

  0900 6 October 1945

  There were two armed soldiers in field uniforms virtually indistinguishable from that of the defeated Wehrmacht—their helmets and leather accoutrements were German, and their rifles Mausers from the Waffenfabrik in Berlin—standing at what an American soldier would call Parade Rest before the heavy iron gate at the Edificio Libertador when the Mercedes-Benz turned off Avenida Paseo Colón.

  The soldiers popped to Present Arms as the Mercedes approached and then was passed inside the gate. The Mercedes was an Ejército Argentino vehicle, a convertible sedan painted olive drab. A sergeant was driving and a corporal sat beside him.

  In the rear seat was General de Brigada (Brigadier General) Eduardo Ramos, commandant of Campo de Mayo, the huge army base and site of the Military Academy north of Buenos Aires. Ramos was a tall, trim, and erect officer with a full, neatly trimmed mustache beneath a rather prominent nose. Beside Ramos was his aide-de-camp, Capitán Ricardo Montenegro, who looked like a younger version of General Ramos.

  The Mercedes rolled up to the main entrance and stopped. The corporal in the front seat jumped out and opened the rear door, and then stood at attention as General Ramos and Capitán Montenegro got out. The two officers climbed a wide, shallow flight of stairs to the huge double doors to the building.

  Two more soldiers stood on either side of the doors. They were dressed in uniforms of the late eighteenth century, closely patterned on those of Hungarian Hussars, except for their headgear, silk top hats with a large black plume rising from them. They were members of the Húsares de Pueyrredón, Argentina’s oldest and most prestigious regiment.

  When the British occupied Buenos Aires in 1810, Juan Martín de Pueyrredón, a large estancia owner, recruited a cavalry force from the gauchos—cowboys—on his estancia and marched on Buenos Aires. They had no uniforms. Pueyrredón seized a British merchantman in the harbor, found in its cargo a large supply of silk top hats, and issued them to his men, whom he then somewhat immodestly decreed to be the Húsares de Pueyrredón.

  The Húsares saluted with their drawn sabers as Ramos and Montenegro passed them and entered the long, wide, high-ceilinged foyer and marched toward the bank of elevators.

  A flag officer of the Argentine navy, trailed by his aide, came down the foyer toward the door.

  “Hola, Eduardo,” Vicealmirante Guillermo Crater called cheerfully, putting out his hand. “Up early this morning, are you?”

  “Admiral,” Ramos replied curtly, and kept walking without taking the outstretched hand.

  Ramos had not forgiven Vice Admiral Crater for what had happened outside a downtown motion picture theater five days after the Japanese capitulation. They were standing on the sidewalk, waiting for their cars after watching newsreels of the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay. That sequence had begun with an aerial view of the U.S. Pacific fleet at anchor, which was what was on Crater’s mind.

  “Well, Eduardo, we were lucky, weren’t we?” Crater had begun the conversation.

  “Excuse me?”

  “To be on the right side,” Crater had said. “I would really have hated to see all those ships, even half of all those battleships and aircraft carriers, sitting out there”—he had gestured toward the River Plate—“and thinking of us as the enemy. Wouldn’t you?”

  You sonofabitch! General Ramos had thought.

  You’ve been cheering for the goddamn Americans all along!

  He had not responded. Instead, he had given Crater a cold smile and turned his back on him.

  At the elevator bank, a teniente (lieutenant) sat at a small desk beside the last elevator door. A sergeant, a Schmeisser submachine gun slung in front of him, stood beside him. The lieutenant got to his feet as Ramos and Montenegro approached.

  “Mi General?” he asked politely.

  “The general is here to see el Colonel Perón,” Montenegro answered for Ramos.

  The lieutenant consulted a list, and then politely announced, “Mi General, you’re not on the minister of War’s schedule.”

  “I know,” Ramos snapped. “Open the damned door!”

  As a general rule of thumb, lieutenants do not challenge generals. And, in this case, the lieutenant knew that General Ramos was both a member of the clique at the top of the Ejército Argentino and one of Perón’s oldest and closest friends.

  The bronze elevator door whooshed open, and Ramos and Montenegro got on. The elevator rose quickly and smoothly to the twentieth floor, where the doors opened onto the foyer of the offices of the minister for War of the Argentine Republic.

  Ramos marched to the minister’s outer office.

  A major, seeing Ramos, rose to his feet behind a large, ornately carved desk.

  “Be so good as to tell el Coronel Perón that I am here,” Ramos ordered, and then, as if anticipating the question, added, “He does not expect me.”

  The major walked quickly to ceiling-high bronze double doors, opened the left one, and entered. The door closed automatically behind him.

  Fifteen seconds later, he reappeared, now holding the door open.

  “Mi General, the minister will see you.”

  Ramos announced, “Capitán Montenegro will see that we are not disturbed. You will see that the telephone doesn’t ring unless General Farrell is calling.”

  He then walked into Perón’s office.

  General Edelmiro Julián Farrell had been the dictator—or, more kindly, the de facto president—of Argentina since February 24, 1944. He had made no secret of his sympathies for the Axis during the war, but most people believed they were rooted in the ancestral hate of the Irish for all things British rather than admiration for the Nazis and Adolf Hitler.

  The vice president, secretary of War, and secretary of Labor and Welfare of the Argentine Republic, el Coronel Juan Domingo Perón, was a tall, olive-skinned man with a luxurious head of black hair. He came out from behind his enormous desk to greet General Ramos. He opened his arms to Ramos, and they patted one another’s back.

  “And to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure, Eduardo?” Perón asked.

  “Unexpected, to be sure. But pleasure? I don’t think you’re going to take much pleasure in my being here when you learn why.”

  “That sounds ominous,” Perón said.

  “How long have we known each other, Juan Domingo? Been friends?”

  Perón considered the question for a moment as he waved Ramos into one of the chairs facing his desk.

  “From our first day at the academy, I would say,” Perón said. “When they lined us up—me, then Jorge, then you—according to size.” He made a gesture with his hands. “Just before they started screaming at us.”

  “I thought of Jorge on my way over here,” Ramos said. “If he were still here, I think he’d agree with my coming to say what I have to say.”

  “If Jorge was still here, he’d be over there.” Perón gestured out the windows, which looked down on the Casa Rosada and the Plaza de Mayo.

  “He would have made a good, even a great, president.”

  “Yes, he would have. Are you finished beating around the bush, Eduardo?”

  Ramos nodded.

  “There is a plot to assassinate you, Juan Domingo,” he said.

  “As you well know,” Perón replied, “every afternoon, after their third martini at the Circulo Militar, a dozen senior officers with nothing better to do sit around deciding which of us should be assassinated.”

  “This isn’t like that, Juan Dom
ingo. This threat is bona fide. Even Farrell takes this seriously. You will shortly be arrested for your own protection.”

  Perón considered that for a moment.

  “What are they upset about now?” he finally asked.

  “There’s a long list.”

  “And what’s on that long list?”

  “Aside from Señorita Evita Duarte, you mean?”

  “Aside from my personal life is what I mean.”

  “Shall I start with your relations with the Nazis?”

  “Which Nazis? The ones we’re supposed to have here in Argentina?”

  “Them, too. But what they’re concerned about is the ones in Germany who want to come here.”

  “What am I supposed to have done in that regard?”

  “Let me back up a little. These people have always been more than a little upset that you didn’t sever your relationship with Rudy Nulder when the rest of us did.”

  El Señor Rodolfo Nulder was the director of security at the Secretariat of Labor and Retirement Plans.

  “And I was a little upset with people, including you, for your treatment of Rudy after his resignation—”

  “He didn’t resign, Juan Domingo. He was cashiered.”

  “Rudy is a classmate of ours, Eduardo.”

  “And of Jorge Frade’s, who said that if Rudy ever put foot on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo again he’d kill him. Your loyalty to your friends may be commendable, but the fact is Rudy is a pervert and a cashiered officer.”

  “I think we had better drop this subject,” Perón said icily.

  Ramos met Perón’s eyes for a long moment before going on.

  “It has come to their attention that Rudy Nulder, when you sent him to get our diplomats out of Berlin—”

  “You mean when President Farrell sent him?”

  “—carried with him one thousand blank passports,” Ramos finished.

  “How could they possibly know that? Did Cletus Frade tell them?”

  “How could Cletus possibly know about it?”

  “Then Martín,” Perón said.

  General de Brigada Alejandro Bernardo Martín was chief of the Ethical Standards Office of the Argentine Ministry of Defense’s Bureau of Internal Security, the official euphemism for the Argentine intelligence and counterintelligence service.