W. IV - Honor Bound 05 - The Honor of Spies

As Clete walked onto the verandah with Dorotea, he could see the other guests having a cocktail in the sitting room, the other side of a reception line headed by Dona Claudia de Carzino-Cormano with her daughters, Alicia, Baroness von Wachtstein, and Isabela, a quite beautiful, black-haired, stylishly dressed female whom Clete thought of, and often referred to, as "El Bitcho."

Dorotea led the way down the reception line.

She and Claudia exchanged compliments.

Fischer followed her.

"Claudia, this is Wilhelm Fischer. He's from South Africa, and he's come here to show us how to grow grapes. Willi, this is our hostess, la Senora Carzino-Cormano, known as the Lioness of the Pampas."

"How do you do?" Claudia replied as she flashed Clete an icy look. "Welcome to Estancia Santa Catalina."

"You are very kind to have me, madam," Fischer replied, and--certainly without thinking about it--clicked his heels as he bent over her hand.

"I thought only Germans did that," Cletus said.

"Cletus, my God!" Claudia exclaimed.

"Did I say something wrong again?"

She did not respond directly.

"This is your party, Cletus," Claudia said. "You're supposed to be standing here greeting people. And then you're the last to show up."

Then she kissed his cheek--a real kiss, as opposed to pro forma.

"I don't do standing in line very well," he said.

She shook her head, then said, "Juan Domingo called. He can't be here."

"Oh, God, what a shame!" Frade replied with great insincerity, then moved to Alicia.

"Alicia, this is . . ."

"I heard," she said. "Welcome to our home, Mr. Fischer. I'm Alicia von Wachtstein."

"The baroness von Wachtstein," Clete furnished. "You are required to back out of her presence."

"Oh, God, Clete, don't you ever stop?" she said, giggling.

"You are very kind," Fischer said, and bent over her hand, this time not clicking his heels.

"And this, Willi, is la Senorita Isabela Carzino-Cormano."

Isabela neither smiled nor offered Fischer her hand.

"How do you do?" she said rather icily to Fischer.

"Any friend of mine, right, Izzy baby?" Frade said.

Isabela glowered at Frade, then put out her hand to Fischer, who bent over it and remembered again not to click his heels.

Dorotea and Alicia, now arm in arm, walked into the house.

"Now that the ladies have gone to powder their noses, or whatever, Willi, why don't we go to Switzerland?"

"Excuse me?"

"Over there," Clete said, nodding at a corner of the room where Father Welner, Karl Boltitz, Peter von Wachtstein, and Humberto Duarte stood talking.

He took Fischer's arm and propelled him across the room. It was an opportunity he didn't think he would have.

The men, all holding drinks, stopped talking when Frade and Fischer walked up.

"I was just telling Willi, here," Frade said, "that this is Switzerland, a neutral corner of the property where, under the benevolent eye of Father Welner, we're all noncombatants. Willi, you know Father Welner, of course, and my Uncle Humberto."

Humberto Duarte smiled and said, "Of course," although he had never seen Fischer before.

"These gentlemen, Willi, are Major Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein, whose wife you just met, and Kapitan zur See Karl Boltitz, of the German Embassy. Gentlemen, this is Wilhelm Fischer, whom Humberto prevailed upon to come all the way here from South Africa to teach me how to grow better grapes."

In turn, von Wachtstein and Boltitz clicked their heels as they offered Fischer their hands. And again Fischer remembered not to click his.

A maid walked up with drinks on a tray, interrupting the conversation. When Frade had taken a bourbon and water and Fischer a glass of red wine, and she left, Boltitz asked: "If I may ask, Mr. Fischer, is Afrikaans anything like German?"

"If you're politely asking if Willi speaks German, Karl," Frade said. "Yes, he does."

"Then we can chat in German," Boltitz said.

"He got his the same way Hansel and El Jefe got their Spanish," Frade said.

"How is that?" Boltitz asked a little uneasily.

"He had a sleeping dictionary," Frade said. "And even more interesting, you have a mutual friend. Claus something. What was your friend's last name, Willi?"

Fischer met his eyes for a moment.

"Von Stauffenberg," Fischer said. "Claus, Graf von Stauffenberg."

"I don't place the name," Boltitz said.

"Nor I," von Wachtstein said.

"Sure you do, Hansel," Frade said. "You told me you visited him in the hospital."

Von Wachtstein looked at Frade as if Frade had lost his mind.

"I was with Claus the day before he was . . . injured," Fischer said.

"Cletus, what the hell is going on here?" von Wachtstein snapped.

"Just remember that this is Wilhelm Fischer, of Durban, South Africa, whom Humberto arranged to come here to teach me how to grow better grapes," Frade said. "None of us can afford to have anyone--especially El Bitcho--looking at him suspiciously."

"Cletus," Boltitz said very seriously, "Delgano is paid to be suspicious, he's very good at being suspicious, and it looks as if he's about to walk over here."

"Not a problem. He already knows who Willi really is."

"And who might that be?" von Wachtstein asked more than a little sarcastically.

"Oberstleutnant Wilhelm Frogger, late of the Afrikakorps, Herr Major," Fischer said. "And more recently of the Senior German Officer Prisoner of War Detention Facility at Camp Clinton, Mississippi."

He let that sink in a moment.

"I saw it as my duty as a German officer to give my parole to Major Frade in order to assist him in dealing with my parents. And to assist however I can in that other project you and our friend Claus are involved in."

Neither von Wachtstein nor Boltitz could keep their surprise--even shock--off their faces.

"We'll all have to get together, and soon, to have a little chat," Frade said, then turned to face a short, muscular man of about forty with large dark eyes.

"Ah, Gonzalo!" he said. "Willi, this is Gonzalo Delgano, chief pilot of South American Airways. Gonzo, this is Mr. Wilhelm Fischer, who has come all the way from South Africa to teach me how to grow grapes."

"How do you do, Mr. Fischer?" Delgano asked. "Welcome to Argentina."

[TWO]

Estancia Santa Catalina

Near Pila

Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

2320 13 August 1943

Cletus Frade was already annoyed when Father Welner came up to him in the library, where, over postdinner brandy and cigars, he was talking business with Humberto Duarte, Gonzalo Delgano, and Guillermo de Filippi, SAA's chief of maintenance. Frade, at Delgano's suggestion, had hired de Filippi away from Aeropostal, the Argentine airline, to work for SAA.

Like Delgano, de Filippi was a former officer of the Argentine army air service. According to Delgano, he had gone to Aeropostal after he had failed a flight physical and could medically retire. Frade wasn't sure how true this story was. It was entirely possible that de Filippi, like Delgano, was actually working for the Bureau of Internal Security and that el Coronel Alejandro Bernardo Martin had ordered Delgano to get SAA to hire him as another means of keeping an eye on SAA.

But it wasn't this that bothered Frade, who knew that Martin and BIS were going to watch SAA as a hawk watches a prairie dog. It was de Filippi himself. Behind his back, when talking to Delgano, he called de Filippi "Senor Manana," which made reference to de Filippi's standard reply when asked when something he had been told to do would be done. Manana was the Spanish word for "tomorrow."

De Filippi had just told Frade that it would not be the day after manana, but the day after the day after manana before the Lodestar that Clete and Delgano had flown from Burbank would be ready to fly to Rosario, Cordoba, and Mendoza.