Victory and Honor Page 5

  The Connie stopped, then shut down its engines as the ground crew backed up the tug to it and connected to the front landing gear.

  The tug dragged the airplane to the tarmac, past three enormous hangars, and then pushed the Connie, tail first, into the center hangar.

  “It would seem, Gonzalo,” the pilot said solemnly to his first officer, “that we have once again cheated death.”

  “Cletus, you know damned well I don’t like it when you say that,” Delgano said as he unfastened his harness, stretched in his seat, and then stood.

  “Well, you may be happy with near-empty tanks—maybe ten minutes left—but I’m always concerned.”

  Delgano snapped his head around to examine the fuel gauges.

  They showed there was considerably more fuel remaining than ten minutes.

  “Gotcha!” Frade cried happily.

  Delgano shook his head and left the cockpit.

  Frade looked out the window. The Connie was the only airplane in the hangar, but there were a number of automobiles, most of them large and chauffeur-driven.

  Frade waited until the REAR DOOR light glowed red and then he killed the MASTER POWER switch and left his seat.

  By the time he walked through the passenger compartment he was the last person in it.

  When he stood on the platform at the head of the ladder, the first thing he looked for was the couple he often in the past called—to their great annoyance—Hansel und Gretel.

  When he found them, his throat tightened and his eyes teared.

  Hansel—Hans-Peter Baron von Wachtstein—had his arms around Gretel—the former Alicia Carzino-Cormano—in a bear hug that suggested neither had the slightest intention of ever breaking the embrace in their lifetimes.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a shrill whistle. He knew it well, including the time it had brought three taxis to a dead halt at once during rush hour on Avenida 9 de Julio. His wife made it by squeezing her tongue tip with two fingertips, then quickly exhaling. It was a skill Clete had never mastered, either as a Boy Scout when all the other members of Troop 36, Midland, Texas, could do it with ease, or after his marriage, when he had tried even harder to learn how.

  He found her standing near the foot of the stairway.

  Doña Dorotea Mallín de Frade, who had just turned twenty-two, was the image that came to mind when one heard the phrase “classic English beauty.” She was tall and lithe, blond, and had startlingly blue eyes and a marvelous milky smooth complexion.

  Standing off to the right was Enrico Rodríguez and another man who looked very much like him. They both cradled Remington Model 11 twelve-gauge riot shotguns in their arms as they kept a wary eye on everybody in the hangar. The other man, former Sargento Rodolfo Gómez, had, like Rodríguez, retired from the Húsares de Pueyrredón. He now was rarely more than fifty feet from Doña Dorotea and her children—and usually closer.

  Clete was not wearing his Marine Corps uniform, nor his SAA captain’s uniform. He was far less formally attired in khaki trousers, a yellow polo shirt, battered Western boots, and a wide-brimmed Stetson hat once the property of his late uncle James Fitzhugh Howell—who for almost all of Clete’s life was the only father Clete had known.

  Frade went quickly down the stairs and embraced his wife.

  Dorotea put her mouth close to his ear and whispered: “You done good, my darling. And do I have a reward for you in mind!”

  “You mean maybe two empanadas and a beer?” he asked, teasing.

  “Maybe afterward,” Dorotea said, flicked her tongue in his ear, and broke their embrace.

  Then something caught his eye. Three men were walking up to them.

  One of the men wore a clerical collar and was fond of referring to himself as a simple priest. This was not precisely the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Clete had once thought of the Reverend Kurt Welner, S.J.—a bespectacled, slim, fair-skinned man who’d lost most of his light brown hair and looked to be in his forties—as the éminence grise behind the throne of the Cardinal Archbishop of Argentina and the official chair of the president of the Argentine Republic, whose confessor he was.

  Events over the last twenty-odd months had caused Frade to add to that the throne of the Papal Nuncio to Argentina, and to conclude that if Welner was not de jure Pope Pius XII’s man in Argentina, he held that role de facto. Well, maybe not directly, but through one or more of the most senior cardinals in Pius XII’s inner circle.

  At dinner one night in Lisbon, Allen W. Dulles had told Frade that when dealing with Welner—or any other Roman Catholic clergyman of importance—the thing to keep in mind was that they understood their first priority was to preserve the Roman Catholic Church and always acted accordingly.

  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 wou
ld 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 considered 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.