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

Frade walked to the wall-mounted telephone intending to call Gonzalo Delgano, but then changed his mind.

He walked instead to the door.

"Enrico, I need a half-dozen reliable men to go to Mendoza with me right now. Don't tell them where we are going, only that they'll be there several weeks at least."

"We are taking the German woman to Casa Montagna, Don Cletus?"

Enrico knows about Casa Montagna?

"That's right."

"You are going to fly?"

"Just as soon as I can get the Lodestar in the air."

"And who will help you fly?"

"Dona Dorotea."

"What will Delgano say?"

"I think he will be distressed that I allowed Dona Dorotea to fly the airplane from here to Jorge Frade, when it appears there first thing tomorrow morning. It's about six hundred miles to Mendoza."

"He will be even more distressed if you kill yourself and everybody else before tomorrow morning, Don Cletus. Call Major Delgano. Either have him come here or, if time is so important, go to Buenos Aires."

"Then he would learn what I'm doing."

"He would learn anyway, Don Cletus. Don Cletus, you would insult him if you did this without him. He is now one of us."

Frade considered that a moment.

Damn it, he's right.

If I were Delgano, after all he's done already, and got the idea I was hiding something from him, I'd be insulted.

"What I think we should do, Don Cletus, is drive into Buenos Aires to his home. . . ."

"I don't know where he lives."

"I do. And you tell him what you need. The worst thing that can happen is that he will tell you he doesn't want to do it. But he would not betray you. I told you. He is now one of us."

"You're right, Enrico. Thank you, my friend."

"Or--I just thought of this--you could telephone him and tell him that there is something he needs to look at on your airplane. And then go to Buenos Aires in one of the Pipers and bring him here. If the clowns are listening, there is nothing suspicious about that."

"You would let me fly into Buenos Aires all by myself?"

The gentle sarcasm was lost on Enrico.

"If you give me your word of honor you will not leave the airfield when you are there and are very careful while you are there."

Frade, knowing he could not trust his voice, clapped the old soldier on both arms. He went back into the house, picked up the telephone, and, when the estancia operator came on the line, told her to get Chief Pilot Gonzalo Delgano in Buenos Aires for him.

IV

[ONE]

Approaching El Plumerillo Airfield

Mendoza, Mendoza Province, Argentina

1745 14 August 1943

"I have been in here before," Gonzalo Delgano's voice came over the earphones.

"Chief Pilot," Frade ordered sternly, "take command of the aircraft."

Frade took his hands off the yoke and raised them much higher than was necessary to signal he was no longer flying the Lodestar.

Delgano smiled at him.

"Sometimes there's a little crosswind coming off the mountains," Delgano said, nodding toward the Andes. "You can tell when the wind-sock pole is bent more than forty-five degrees."

He demonstrated a bent wind-sock pole with his index finger.

Frade smiled at him.

Delgano shoved the yoke forward so that he could make a low-level pass over the field to have a look at the wind sock.

They were not in communication with the El Plumerillo tower. Delgano was not surprised; he told Clete that there was only one Aeropostal flight into Mendoza every day at about noon--and sometimes not that often--and as soon as it took off again, the tower closed down. There was some other use of the field by the military, and even some private aviation traffic, but not enough to justify a dawn-to-dusk tower. The runway was not lighted, which made a tower useless at night.

Delgano had told Frade just after they had taken off that at this time of year they should not be surprised if the field was closed due to weather or--flying dead-reckoning navigation due to no reliable radio navigation aids--they could not even find the field before dark. Winds aloft could knock them as much as fifty or a hundred miles off course.

They were in no danger. There was more than enough fuel to take them back to Buenos Aires, where runway and taxi lights had been installed at Aerodromo Jorge Frade in Moron while they had been in the United States. Nor would they have trouble finding Jorge Frade, as there was both a radio beacon and an around-the-clock tower operation using a Collins Model 7.2 transceiver, which was just about the latest thing in the States.

And the radio direction finder would be working, awaiting the six Lodestars en route from the United States. No one knew when they would leave or arrive, but Jorge Frade had to be ready to guide them in.

The primitive conditions at El Plumerillo would soon change. While they were in the United States, Guillermo de Filippi--"Senor Manana," SAA's chief of maintenance--had finally managed to get contracts for the construction of a combined hangar/passenger terminal/tower, as well as landing lights.

Frade had quickly decided that simply installing the landing lights and having SAA give them to the airfield would be cheaper in the long run--and get them installed much quicker--than would entering into lengthy negotiations, with the inevitable greasing of the appropriate palms of the local authorities to have them do it.

The wind sock was full and parallel to the runway, indicating that the wind was blowing along the runway. But the pole was perfectly erect, so no crosswind.

Delgano moved the throttles forward and picked up the nose. He would gain a little altitude, then make a 180-degree turn for a straight-in approach.

"Try very hard not to bend it, Gonzo," Frade said.

Delgano took a hand from the yoke long enough to give Frade the finger.

The passenger compartment was crowded, just about full. The first three rows of seats were occupied by six peones, all of them former members of the Husares de Pueyrredon, five of whom were having their first experience with aerial flight. In the aisle between their seats were bags holding rifles, pistols, and submachine guns that had been stored in the basement of el Coronel's garage since the time he had been planning to stage a coup d'etat against the then-president of Argentina.

Sergeant Sigfried Stein--who had come to Argentina as Team Turtle's explosives expert and been converted to a reasonably well-qualified radio technician and, more recently, to "Major" Stein to deal with the Froggers--had been brought along not only to continue dealing with the Froggers but also to set up a Collins Model 7.2 transceiver and the SIGABA encryption device. Not at the airport, though; a Collins for that purpose would be flown in when the tower was finished.

The transceiver and encryption equipment on the Lodestar would be installed in Casa Montagna for use by Captain Madison R. Sawyer III. Sawyer, who was no longer needed to blow up German replenishment ships in the River Plate, now was to be in command of what Frade privately thought of as "the insane asylum." Using the very latest cryptographic technology, Sawyer would be able to communicate with Frade in Buenos Aires and with Second Lieutenant Len Fischer at the Army Security Agency facility at Vint Hill Farms Station, Virginia, and through Vint Hill with Colonel Graham in Washington, D.C.

In the row behind the peones sat Enrico Rodriguez. Dona Dorotea's in-flight luggage filled the seat across the aisle from him.

In the next row, Sawyer was sitting across the aisle from Stein.

Behind him sat Oberstleutnant Frogger, across from his father.

Behind them, Father Welner and Dona Dorotea sat where they could keep a close eye on Frau Frogger, who lay on a mattress in the aisle. An hour before, Welner had woken her long enough to give her a drink laced with sedative.