W.E.B. Griffin - Victory and Honor

After a moment’s hesitation, Martín lifted the flap of the briefcase and looked inside.

“¡Madre de Dios!” he softly exclaimed a moment later.

“Gotcha! Now you can apologize.”

“What’s this for?” Martín asked.

“El General Bernardo Martín, master of the outrageous personal question. One man should never ask another why he is giving his wife a little pocket change for her purse.”

“Forgive me,” Martín said sarcastically.

The two looked at each other and smiled.

“Clete, be careful,” Martín said. “I don’t think the most dangerous part of this will be flying across the Atlantic Ocean.”

“Great minds walk the same paths,” Frade said, then shook Martín’s hand and walked out of the Executive Suite of South American Airways.

Aboard Ciudad de Rosario Approaching Val de Cans Airfield Belém do Pará, Brazil 0135 17 May 1945

Captain Cletus Frade had been at the controls of the Constellation Ciudad de Rosario as she took off from Aeropuerto Coronel Jorge G. Frade, breaking ground at 1832. Mario Peralta was in the right seat.

As soon as the aircraft reached cruising altitude, he had turned the plane over to Peralta and sent another SAA backup pilot to the cockpit. Then he crawled into one of the two crew bunks and closed his eyes.

Three minutes later, Siggie Stein shook his shoulder.

“Don’t shoot the messenger, Colonel. Your Collins is out.”

A dozen Collins Radio Corporation Model 7.2 transceivers and SIGABA encryption systems had been acquired for Team Turtle at Stein’s suggestion—“Trust me, they’re six months ahead of state of the art”—from the Army Security Agency at Vint Hill Farms Station in Virginia. They were to provide secure communication with the ASA—and thus with the OSS—from anywhere in Argentina.

They were “installation systems,” which translated to mean they were designed for use in a communications center, rather than “mobile,” which would have meant installation in a truck.

One day at Estancia Don Guillermo, Clete had idly commented that he wished he could have the communications capability in the Red Lodestar.

“If you want to take a chance on me really blowing one up, I can have a shot at it,” Stein had replied matter-of-factly. “Maybe el Jefe will have some ideas on how to do it.”

Clete had remembered then—and only then, which embarrassed him—that Colonel Graham had told him that when being interviewed by OSS experts to see if he was qualified to be the radar man on Team Turtle, they had reported that Stein knew more about the transmission of radio waves than they did.

And that Stein and former Chief Radioman Oscar Schultz, USN, had become instant buddies when they started talking about communications equipment in a cant only the two of them understood.

Two weeks later, a SIGABA and Collins 7.2 were up and running in the Red Lodestar. Clete had not been surprised when a similar installation in SAA’s first Constellation had worked well in Argentina. But he had been surprised—perhaps awed—when the system had worked in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean and later on the ground at Lisbon.

Frade sat up in the crew bunk and said, “Siggie, I don’t want to go to Germany without it. I won’t go to Germany without it. What’s wrong with it? Belay that. I wouldn’t understand. Can you fix it, or are we going to have to go back to Buenos Aires for another one?”

“I think I can fix it if you can get me into the radio shop at Belém. Your call. It’ll take me a couple of hours to get another system out of the warehouse at Jorge Frade.”

“And to fix it at Belém?”

“Thirty minutes, if I’m right about what’s wrong.”

“Did Mother Superior teach you how to pray, Sergeant Stein?”

“She didn’t have to. I’m a Jew. We pray a lot.”

“Start now,” Frade ordered.

He had then lain back down and closed his eyes.

Ten minutes after that, he opened them again, sat up, pushed himself off the bunk, and went looking for Stein, Boltitz, and von Wachtstein. He found them sitting in the seats for the backup crew, trying to doze.

He beckoned for them to follow him back into the sleeping section, motioned for the doors to the cockpit and the seating area to be closed, and then began, “We have a small problem. Belay that. We have a few small problems, plural.

“The Collins 7.2 is out. We can’t do without it. Siggie thinks he can fix it if he can get into the Army Air Forces’ radio maintenance facility at Val de Cans. The problem there is they may not let him in. The only reason we’re going in there is because the Argentine Foreign Ministry leaned on somebody. The Collins 7.2 is a classified American radio, and they’re going to wonder what the hell SAA is doing with one.”

“Show them the phony OSS credentials,” Stein suggested.

“The problem there—the problems—are that they are phony and that after I used them to get Karl and Hansel out of Fort Hunt, there’s a good chance that the Army has spread the word to be prepared to arrest on sight Area Commander C. Frade of the OSS.”

“So, what are you going to do?” von Wachtstein asked.

“Hansel, when you were a little boy back in the Schloss, did you ever act in a play?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know, in a play, like Hansel und Gretel ?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Try to remember what your teacher taught you. You’re going back on the stage when we get to Val de Cans. The play is called ‘Here come the mysterious, all-powerful heroes of the Office of Strategic Services.’ Starring Cletus Frade, All-American Boy. Now here’s how it’s going to work.”

He told them.

Karl Boltitz asked dubiously, “Cletus, do you really think that’s going to work?”

“It’ll either work or we’ll add new meaning to the Army Air Corps’ song.”

He then sang, “We live in fame or go down in flames, nothing can stop the OSS Air Corps . . . ”

Frade now was standing between the pilot and copilot seats. The lights of the huge Brazilian airfield were in sight.

Mario Peralta had been in the pilot’s seat during the seven-hour flight from Buenos Aires, as Clete had instructed, and another SAA backup pilot was flying as copilot.

“Give it to him, Mario,” Frade ordered, “and then let me sit there.”

Peralta did as ordered, but it was obvious he had been looking forward to making the approach and landing himself.

When Frade had strapped himself in and put on the headset, he gave another order, this time to the copilot: “I’ll take it. You go back and send von Wachtstein up here.”

“Sí, señor,” the copilot said, his tone making it clear that he also had been looking forward to the approach and landing.

I knew that was going to piss them off. So why did I do it?

Because Peter needs more landing practice, and I’m the most qualified person to sit in the left seat to keep him out of trouble while he does it.

So fuck the both of you.

“Sit down, Hansel, and strap yourself in.”

Von Wachtstein complied.

“You feel qualified to land this?”

Von Wachtstein considered the question and then nodded.

“Got the checklist?”

Von Wachtstein nodded again.

Frade keyed the microphone.

“Val de Cans tower, this is South American Airways Double Zero Nine. This is a Lockheed Constellation. I am ten miles south, at five thousand feet, indicating Two Nine Zero. Request approach and landing.”

“SAA Double Zero Nine, I have you on radar. Descend on present course reporting when at three thousand feet.”