Victory and Honor hb-6 Read online

  Welner had been el Coronel Jorge G. Frade’s best friend, as well as his confessor, and as soon as Clete had arrived in Buenos Aires Welner had appointed himself to that role for Cletus Frade. He had been very helpful in several difficult situations, and would doubtless be helpful in the future. But after his dinner with Dulles, Clete had never been able to look at Welner without remembering what Dulles had said about the highest priority of powerful, influential Roman Catholic clergymen.

  The second man was General de Brigada Alejandro Bernardo Martín, a tall, fair-haired, light-skinned thirty-nine-year-old. Frade was about as surprised to see Martín in uniform as he was to see either him or Father Welner in the hangar, and wondered who had had the big mouth announcing the Connie’s arrival.

  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, and usually wore civilian clothing.

  Also in the last twenty-odd months, Frade and Martín had become close friends. Before that, they had been adversaries, which caused Clete to consider that Martín’s first priority still was the Argentine Republic—and that the priorities of the Argentine Republic were most often not the same as those of the Office of Strategic Services.

  The third man was an American officer, Major Anthony J. Pelosi, whose pink and green uniform was adorned with the golden aiguillette of a military attaché, parachutist’s wings, and the ribbon of the Silver Star medal, the nation’s third-highest award for gallantry. His citation was as vague vis-à-vis exactly what he had done, and where, as was Frade’s Navy Cross citation, and for the same reasons.

  “Gentlemen,” Clete said, “may I say I’m dazzled by your military sartorial splendor? Alejandro, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in your general’s suit.”

  Martín said: “Surely you’ve heard, Colonel Frade, that Argentina is now at war and we are allies?”

  Frade had indeed been told that Argentina had declared war on the Axis powers on March 29, about six weeks earlier.

  He said: “I do remember hearing something about that, now that you mention it. It looks like our side is winning, doesn’t it?”

  “In Europe, Colonel, it seems we have won,” Martín said.

  He handed Frade a copy of the Buenos Aires Herald, an English-language newspaper.

  “This is today’s edition,” Martín said.

  Splashed across the front page was a photograph of an immaculately turned-out German officer sitting at a desk. His marshal’s baton lay on the desk beside his upside-down uniform cap, which held one of his gloves.

  The caption beneath the photograph read: German Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel signs a surrender document at Soviet headquarters in Berlin, May 9, 1945. The Soviets insisted that a second ceremonial signing take place in Soviet-occupied Berlin.

  “Interesting,” Clete said. “I heard the Krauts surrendered to General Eisenhower in Reims, France, on May seventh.”

  “It says the Russians demanded that there be a second signing in Berlin,” Martín pointed out unnecessarily.

  “Well, wherever it happened, it certainly calls for a celebration drink, wouldn’t you say, Alejandro?”

  “I would say that what calls for a celebration,” Father Welner said, “is that you pulled it off.”

  “Pulled what off?” Clete asked.

  “Bringing Karl and Peter here, of course,” Welner said. “I really didn’t think you stood much of a chance.”

  “Oh, ye of little faith!” Clete said. “What I’m wondering, Father, is who had the big mouth and told you—and the general—about it. I just don’t think your being here is a coincidence.”

  “I did,” Dorotea said simply. “I told both of them. I thought they might be able to help.”

  Clete looked at his wife. She was not only more intimately involved with his OSS activities than anyone suspected—except perhaps Martín and Welner—but she was very good at it.

  If she told them not only that I had gone to Washington, but why, she had her reasons. What the hell could they be?

  “How the hell could they have helped?” Frade asked, more confused than annoyed or angry.

  “Perhaps she had this in mind, Cletus,” the priest said, handing him an envelope. “There was no question in Dorotea’s mind that you would succeed.”

  Clete opened the envelope. It held two booklets called libretas de enrolamiento. One was in the name of Kurt Boltitz and the other in that of Peter von Wachtstein, both of whom, according to the LE, had immigrated to Argentina in 1938.

  “Karl,” Frade called out, “make Hansel stop forcing himself on that poor woman, and the both of you come over here.”

  When they had, Clete handed them the identity documents.

  “Say ‘thank you’ to Dorotea,” Clete said. “But not to either of these two, for I’m sure neither of them would break the—at least—ten laws of the Argentine Republic somebody had to break to get these.”

  Boltitz and von Wachtstein had known Martín officially when they had been respectively the naval attaché and the assistant military attaché for air of the embassy of the German Reich.

  Martín offered his hand to Boltitz and said, “Karl.”

  Boltitz replied, “Alejandro.”

  Martín then did the same thing to von Wachtstein.

  Neither said “thank you,” but profound gratitude could be seen in the eyes of the Germans.

  “How good are those, Alejandro?” Frade asked.

  “They will withstand all but the most diligent scrutiny,” Martín said, and then added: “We’ll get into that when we talk.”

  “Okay.”

  “It would be better if we talked now,” the priest said.

  Clete looked between the two Argentines and his wife.

  “Here?”

  “Why don’t we go to the house on Libertador San Martín?” Dorotea suggested. “The men could have a shower, and then we could talk over lunch. Everyone else can go to Doña Claudia’s house and we can all get together later.”

  Clete looked at his wife and thought: Why do I think this has been the plan all along?

  Beth Howell was visibly—and vocally—distressed at being separated from Boltitz. But aside from her exception, Dorotea’s plan went unchallenged.

  The men, plus Dorotea, went to what Cletus thought of as “Uncle Willy’s house by the racetrack”—it was across Avenida Libertador General San Martín from the Hipódromo de Palermo—in a four-car convoy. Martín’s official Mercedes led the way, followed by Tony Pelosi’s U.S. Embassy 1941 Chevrolet, then by Father Welner’s 1940 Packard 280 convertible—a gift from el Coronel Jorge G. Frade—and finally by the enormous Horch touring car that had been el Coronel Frade’s joy in life and in which he had been assassinated.

  Their route took them past the German Embassy on Avenida Córdoba, causing Clete to wonder if Martín had done so intentionally. There were two soldiers standing in front of the gate. They were wearing German-style steel helmets and German-style gray uniforms and were holding German 7mm Mauser rifles in what the Marine Corps would call the Parade Rest position.

  But they were not Germans. They were Argentines. And flying from atop the pole just inside the fence was the blue and white flag of Argentina, not the red swastika-centered flag of Nazi Germany that had flown there for so long.

  Clete wondered what Boltitz and von Wachtstein were thinking about that.

  [TWO]

  4730 Avenida Libertador General San Martín Buenos Aires 1405 11 May 1945

  When the parade of vehicles from the airport reached Uncle Guillermo’s turn-of-the-century mansion, Cletus saw proof that it had been no accident that everybody had come there for a talk over lunch. Dorotea indeed had set it up—and made sure they were expected.

  The first suggestion of that was the 1940 Ford station wagon parked at the curb. A legend painted on its doors read FRIGORÍFICO MORÓN. That, Frade thought, could be cons
idered disinformation—maybe even a cover—as the Frigorífico Morón—or Morón Slaughterhouse and Feeding Pens—no longer existed to process the cattle from his estancia. The property in Morón was now the site of Aeropuerto Coronel Jorge G. Frade.

  Two men were sitting in the Ford. Clete knew that they were armed with Remington Model 11 twelve-gauge riot shotguns, .45 ACP Thompson submachine guns, and Argentine versions of the U.S. 1911-A1 .45 ACP pistol. He was certain, too, that on the street behind the mansion there could be found another vehicle, maybe not another station wagon, but one also carrying the FRIGORÍFICO MORÓN legend on its doors, and also holding at least two well-armed men.

  The armed men were all ex–troopers of the Húsares de Pueyrredón. And they had been born—as had their parents and their parents’ parents, as far back as anyone could remember—on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.

  Clete’s father had versed him well in their distinguished history, to which he now was deeply connected.

  Back in 1806, Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo had been owned by Juan Martín de Pueyrredón. When the British occupied Buenos Aires, he escaped to the estancia, which encompassed some eighty-four thousand hectares, or a little more than three hundred twenty-five square miles. He turned several hundred of its gauchos—his gauchos—into a cavalry force, and returned to Buenos Aires and recaptured the city. Not overwhelmed with modesty, Pueyrredón named his force of ferocious cowboys the Húsares de Pueyrredón. The title was made official in 1810, and the regiment was the most senior unit of the Argentine army.

  From the beginning, gauchos of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo had done their military service with the Húsares and then returned to the estancia, either after completion of their required national service or on their retirement.

  As the estancia, under the Napoleonic Code, passed from one descendant of Juan Martín de Pueyrredón to another, many of the patrónes of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo—after starting their careers fresh from the military academy as subtenientes—in time became colonels commanding the Húsares de Pueyrredón. Two of the most recent colonels commanding, el Coronel Jorge G. Frade and his father, el Coronel Guillermo Alejandro Frade, had done so.

  El Coronel Jorge G. Frade would have preferred that his only son, Cletus, follow in the footsteps of his ancestors. But he’d taken what solace he could from knowing that Cletus had served with great distinction in the United States Corps of Marines, which el Coronel Frade had considered to be a military organization very nearly as prestigious as the Húsares de Pueyrredón.

  On el Coronel Frade’s assassination, the gauchos of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo—the ex–troopers of the Húsares de Pueyrredón—had no trouble at all passing their loyalty to the new patrón.

  First Lieutenant Cletus H. Frade, USMCR, had been more than a little discomfited to be crisply saluted by the estancia’s gauchos. More recently, he had been even more discomfited when Enrico Rodríguez spread the news all over the estancia of Clete’s promotion to lieutenant colonel—and the ex-troopers began addressing him as “mi coronel.”

  But he had grown used to it, and had come to think, perhaps immodestly, of the gauchos/ex–Húsares de Pueyrredón troopers as his private army. They were deployed all over Argentina, protecting the vast properties that he’d inherited after his father’s murder. As here at Uncle Willy’s house, they stood guard over Clete’s immediate and extended families, as well as at the various places where he had, as he thought of it, stashed people who needed either protection or confinement.

  Frade thought of all this when the massive iron gate to the mansion was opened to them by a tough-looking man cradling a Thompson in his arms and then when they had driven into the underground garage and another heavily armed man had opened the Horch’s door, smiled, and said, “Doña Dorotea,” and then come to attention and said, “Mi coronel.”

  Everyone exited their vehicles and followed Dorotea into the house itself. They were greeted by a small army of servants standing behind a distinguished-looking elderly man wearing a nicely tailored butler’s suit and tie. Antonio Lavalle had been Jorge Frade’s butler. Now he was head of Dorotea’s crews running everything for her everywhere.

  Dorotea turned to the newly arrived group of men and announced, “For those of you gentlemen who have not met our butler, this is Antonio Lavalle. He and his staff will assist those of you who would like to perhaps freshen up. Or who would simply prefer to relax. Please make yourself at home.”

  She then turned to Antonio Lavalle and said loud enough for everyone to hear, “And you may please start serving any of our guests in the library.”

  As Clete walked with his bride up the staircase to the mansion’s master bedroom that took up most of the third floor, he thought—as he often did—that he had many memories of Uncle Guillermo’s house, many of them very private and very touching—and too many of them of vicious murder.

  Clete’s father had been born here, and had insisted on turning over the mansion to him the first day that father and son had, over many drinks and emotional moments, reconnected.

  Not long after, Clete had been in the master bedroom when la Señora Marianna Rodríguez de Pellano—Enrico’s sister, who had cared for Clete from birth until his mother had gone to the States and died in childbirth—had had her throat cut in the kitchen. Assassins had killed her in order to get to Clete. But, when they’d come upstairs after him, he had shot them both dead with an Argentine .45—wounding one first in the leg before putting a round in his forehead.

  Three days later, as Clete lay in the bed, an angry la Señorita Dorotea Mallín burst in and gave him hell for not calling her after the attack. What happened next caused Clete’s first son to be conceived—and for Clete to no longer be able to lovingly refer to Dorotea as “the Virgin Princess.”

  And, late one December night, it had been in Uncle Willy’s house that Clete had first come across a young man in the library. The stranger, slumped in one of the armchairs, had worn a quilted, darkred dressing gown. There’d been a cognac snifter resting on his chest, a lit cigar in the ashtray on the table beside him, and Beethoven’s Third Symphony coming from the phonograph.

  That night First Lieutenant Cletus H. Frade, USMCR, met Capitán Hans-Peter Freiherr von Wachtstein of the Luftwaffe. Peter had accompanied to Argentina the body of Clete’s cousin, who’d been killed at Stalingrad flying as an observer in a German Storch. While Clete and Peter immediately understood that they were enemies, they also learned they were fighter pilots—and more. “Suppose,” Peter had suggested, “that as officers and gentlemen, we might pretend it’s Christmas Eve? We’d only be off by a couple of weeks.” They had—and over time had become close friends.

  [THREE]

  4730 Avenida Libertador General San Martín Buenos Aires 1500 11 May 1945

  Hors d’oeuvres and cocktails were being served when Clete and Dorotea entered the enormous, richly appointed library. The Frades looked as satisfied—maybe as satiated—as if fresh from the shower.

  Clete saw the look Peter von Wachtstein was giving him and had an epiphany.

  I know what you’re thinking, Hansel!

  “How come you and Dorotea, who you last saw only a week ago, just got to enjoy the splendors of the nuptial couch, while I—without the opportunity to do the same since last July—sit here sucking on a glass of wine and a black olive with my equally sex-starved wife but two kilometers away?”

  Or words to that effect.

  Clete and Dorotea walked across the polished hardwood floor toward von Wachtstein.

  “I have several things to say to you, Hansel,” Clete said as he took two glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon from a maid, handing one to his wife.

  “Really?” von Wachtstein said.

  “‘Life is unfair,’” Clete intoned solemnly.

  “Is it?”

  “‘Fortune favors the pure in heart.’”

  “You don’t say?”

  “‘Patience is a virtue, and all things come to he who waits.’” />
  “What the hell are you talking about?” Dorotea asked, confused.

  “Hansel, you may wish to write some, or all, of that down,” Clete concluded.

  Clete looked around the room. With the exception of Father Welner, who was smiling and shaking his head, everyone looked baffled.

  “Why don’t we go in and have our lunch?” Clete went on. “I’m sure that everyone—Peter especially—is anxious to get this over and move on to other things.”

  Frade stood at the large double doors between the library and the ornate dining room and waited politely as his guests passed through.

  When the last of them had done so, Clete looked around the library.

  With a couple of exceptions, he thought, it’s just like it was the night I found Peter here listening to the phonograph. Then there was only one leather armchair and footstool. Now there’s two, because Dorotea wanted her own.

  And, of course, when this was my father’s library, there was no hobbyhorse or baby blue prison pen to keep the kids from crawling around—or any other accoutrements of toddlers and infants.

  My father never had anything to do with kids.

  Would he have liked it—or not given a damn?

  His reverie was interrupted by Lavalle.

  “Mi coronel,” the butler said, “there is a telephone call.”

  “When did you start calling me ‘mi coronel,’ Antonio?”

  Both Dorotea and Lavalle had told Clete—many times—that gentlemen referred to their butlers by their surnames. Clete thought it was not only rude but also that gentlemen referred to their friends by their given names, and Antonio Lavalle often had proved just how good a friend he was.

  “When you were promoted, mi coronel,” Lavalle said with a smile.

  Clete smiled and shook his head.

  “Tell whoever it is that we’re having lunch and I’ll call back.”

  “It is el Señor Dulles.”