Griffin W.E.B. - Honor Bound 01 - Honor Bound

Galle doubted that the FBI or the New Orleans police were even aware of the apartment. And if they were, he doubted that they either tapped the telephone or intercepted his mail. To make sure, however, he sent mail to the apartment. When it arrived, he saw no indication that it was tampered with.

He had the operator connect him, station-to-station, with a number in Silver Spring, Maryland. He doubted the FBI knew of the existence of that apartment or that telephone number either, and he thought the odds were remote indeed that they had tapped that line.

He gave the woman who answered the names of Cletus Howell Frade and Anthony J. Pelosi, and asked her to inform the appropriate functionary that he had just issued visas for their residence in Argentina and that in his judgment they should be watched on their arrival to make sure they were indeed in Buenos Aires to open a local office of Howell Petroleum (Venezuela). As an afterthought, he asked the woman to add that Cletus Howell Frade had been born in Argentina, and that the security forces might be interested to learn who were his relatives, if any, in Argentina.

[FOUR]

Office of the Managing Director

Sociedad Mercantil de Importaci?n de Productos Petroliferos

21st Floor, Edificio Kavanagh

Calle Florida 1065

Buenos Aires, Argentina

0930 18 November 1942

Enrico Mallin, the Managing Director of SMIPP (pronounced "smeep"), was six feet two inches tall, weighed one hundred ninety-five pounds, had a full head of dark-brown hair, a full, immaculately trimmed mustache, and was forty-two years old. He was educated at the Belgrano Day School, operated by two English expatriate brothers named Green; the University of Buenos Aires; and the London School of Economics. After that, he embarked on what he referred to as "postgraduate schooling" in the United States. In 1938 he spent six months in Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas learning what he could about the operation of the American petroleum industry. There was no question in his mind that the Americans knew more about doing business imaginatively, efficiently, and profitably than anyone else, including the Dutch Shell people and British Petroleum, who were supposed to be the best in the world.

He spent a month actually working as a roughneck on a rig in East Texas, and wound up in Tulsa, learning something about seismological data. Argentina wasn't quite ready to develop its own production . . .Although there was certainly oil in the country, it was not now economically feasible to search for it, much less produce it. But someday these things would change, and when they did, Mallin would be ready.

He also returned from the United States with a number of "barbaric Yankee habits," as his wife (n?e Pamela Holworth-Talley, whom he met at the Victoria and Albert Hall in London when she was nineteen and he was twenty-two) only half jokingly referred to them. In the States, for instance, he acquired a taste for sour-mash bourbon whiskey, jalapeno peppers, chili con carne (which he insisted on not only making himself, but forcing upon civilized people), and the really outrageous habit of rising in the middle of the night to go to work.

In the middle of the night—which, so far as Pamela was concerned, was somewhere between five-thirty and quarter to six in the morning—Enrico (whom Pamela called "Henry") would rise quietly from their bed in the master's suite of the large, Italian-style mansion on the corner of Calle Arcos and Virrey del Pino in Belgrano. He would then have a quick shower and a shave, dress, back his Rolls-Royce drop-head coupe out of the garage, exchange an early-morning wave with the policeman on guard at the Mexican Ambassador's house across the street, and drive downtown to the Edificio Kavanagh. The Kavanagh Building, built in 1937 (in the style now called Art Deco), was in 1942 Buenos Aires' first and only skyscraper.

Sometimes, if he was hungry, or for other good reasons, he would drive the drop-head Rolls into the courtyard of the apartment building at 2910 Avenue Canning in Palermo, where he maintained an apartment (4D; two bedrooms, a sitting room, and a kitchen with a nice view of the gardens) for Teresa, his twenty-one-year-old mistress. Teresa could be counted on to provide him with coffee or whatever else he needed. But most of the time he drove directly downtown to the Edificio Kavanagh.

There he would turn into the driveway to the underground parking garage, sound the horn, and wait until the uniformed attendant emerged from his cubicle and opened the gate. He would roll down the window and hand the attendant a coin. The attendant would touch the brim of his cap, smile, and murmur, "Gracias, Se?or Mallin."

Enrico would have much preferred to deal with the attendant on a monthly basis. That way he would find the gate already open when he arrived, and his secretary could deliver an envelope to the attendant once a month. The arrangement would save him at least a minute a day, but this was Argentina.

He would then park the Rolls in space number one of the seven reserved near the elevator for employees of Sociedad Mercantil de Importaci?n de Productos Petroliferos, enter the elevator, exchange greetings with the operator, and ride to the twenty-first floor. Although office hours did not begin until nine, and the first employees would not begin to arrive until half past eight, once he reached his offices, one of the ornately carved mahogany double doors would be open, waiting for him.

The night man worked for Sociedad Mercantil de Importaci?n de Productos Petroliferos, not for the Edificio Kavanagh. He could be counted on to have the door open in anticipation of Mallin's arrival. He could also be counted on to have a kettle of water simmering in the small kitchen in Se?or Mallin's private office, and to have checked with the Communications Department to make sure that all communications Se?or Mallin would possibly be interested in were neatly laid out on the conference table in Se?or Mallin’s office.

Enrico would brew his own tea (Hornyman's Special) in a china teapot, remove his jacket and loosen his tie while he was waiting for it to steep, and then begin his day by reading the material from the Communications Department.

Very little of this was addressed to him personally. And very little of what he read required any action on his part. He made the odd note now and again to query one of his Division Chiefs, but the basic purpose of his spending an hour or two reading the communications was simply to get an idea of what was going on.

One piece of wisdom he brought home from America—an insight that was ignored at the London School of Economics—was the leadership philosophy he acquired from a marvelous curmudgeonly character of an American oilman, Cletus Marcus Howell. Howell told him—actually proclaimed—that if you have to look over the shoulder of the people you've hired to make sure they do what you tell them to do, you've hired the wrong people.

The philosophy was simplistic, of course, but in practice it worked. And in the case of Cletus Marcus Howell, in that wonderful American expression, he put his money where his mouth was in his relationship with Sociedad Mercantil de Importaci?n de Productos Petroliferos. SMIPP had represented both Howell Petroleum and Howell Petroleum (Venezuela) in Argentina for many years. There were twice-annual visits (annual now, because of the war) by Howell's accountants to have a look at the books. But aside from that, Howell (or his people) rarely asked questions and never offered any criticism of the way Mallin was running things.

They offered, of course, constructive suggestions, but these were precisely that: both constructive and suggestions. Generally speaking, when other SMIPP clients offered "constructive suggestions," they were actually criticizing. And "suggestions" was a euphemism for orders.