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

Frade's anger flared. His mouth almost ran away with him. At the last instant, he stopped himself.

"Do you?" he asked politely.

"He's a Marine. He was on Guadalcanal. Now he's in the Naval Hospital in San Diego."

Oh, shit!

"I flew with VMF-225 on Guadalcanal," Clete said. "How badly was he hurt?"

"Rather badly, I'm afraid. But he's alive. Colonel Graham didn't mention your Marine service."

"No reason he should have," Clete said.

"I served with Graham in France in the First World War. We stayed in touch. And then, when the Corps said I was too old to put on a uniform, I'd heard rumors that Alex was up to something. I went to him and asked if there was anything I could do. And here I am."

He looked at Frade. Smiling shyly, he said, "Semper Fi!"

" Semper Fi, Senor Aragao," Clete replied with a grin.

Thank you, God, for putting that cork in my mouth!

In the next hour and a half, Clete learned a good deal more about the pudgy man with the pencil-line mustache and the slicked-back hair.

The briefcase contained all the paperwork for what the newly appointed Lisbon station chief of South American Airways had done, which included renting hangar space--"That may have been premature," Aragao had said, "as the nose of that airplane you flew in obviously won't fit in the hangar, much less the rest of it. Not to worry; I'll deal with it"--office space, arranging for office personnel, the ticket counter at the airport, and personnel to staff that, too.

The list went on and on.

It was only when he finally had finished all that that Aragao, almost idly, said, "While it can wait, one of these days we'll have to figure out how I'm to be repaid. This really came to a tidy amount."

"You used your own money to pay for all this?" Clete asked.

"I wasn't given much of a choice."

"May I ask what you did before you . . ."

"I'm Portuguese. I'm a fisherman. Someone once calculated that we provide twenty percent of the fresh seafood served in the better restaurants between Boston and Washington. And then, too, we import foodstuffs--anchovies, for example, and olive oil, that sort of thing--into the United States. My grandfather founded that business. I was born here and spent a good deal of time here before the war; no eyebrows rose when I showed up and stayed."

"Give me the account numbers and routing information, and as soon as I get to Buenos Aires, I'll have the money cabled."

Aragao smiled at him.

"Graham said he thought I'd like you."

[FOUR]

Portela Airport

Lisbon, Portugal

2245 30 September 1943

Capitan Cletus Frade of South American Airways, trailed by a flight engineer and one of the backup pilots, took a little longer to perform his "walk-around" of the Ciudad de Rosario than he usually did, and he habitually performed a very thorough walk-around.

He had an ulterior motive: He wanted to have a good look at the passengers as they filed down a red carpet to the boarding ladder, and the best place from which he could do so was standing under the wing, ostensibly fascinated with Engine Number Four.

The passengers had just been served their dinner, but in the airport restaurant. That would keep the weight of their dinner and the Marmite containers and the rest of it off the Ciudad de Rosario. Once on board, they would be served hors d'oeuvres, champagne, and cocktails. Capitan Frade had made it very clear to the chief steward that every empty bottle, soiled napkin, and champagne stem was to be taken off the aircraft before the door was closed.

The headwind he expected over the Atlantic Ocean worried him. Depending on how strong it was, every ounce of weight might well count if they were to have enough fuel to make it back across. And if not, at least he could see nothing wrong with erring on the side of caution.

Frade paid particular attention to the clergy and religious as they mounted the ladder. There were four nuns escorting half a dozen children. He didn't even try to guess which of them were the children of the two SS officers he was going to fly to Argentina. And any of the nuns could have been the children's mothers, except for one, who looked as if she was well into her eighties.

All but one of the Jesuits were in business suits, looking like Welner; the exception was wearing a black ankle-length garment. The Franciscans were all wearing brown robes held together with what looked like rope. They all wore sandals, and most of them did not wear socks. Clete had no idea which of them usually wore a black uniform with a skull on the cap.

When the last passenger had gone up the stairway, Clete motioned for the people with him to get on board, and then he followed.

As Frade walked down the aisle to the cockpit, Father Welner caught his hand.

"No kiss-anything-good-bye jokes, all right?"

Ten minutes later, Clete eased back on the yoke.

"Retract the gear," Clete ordered.

"Gear coming up," the copilot responded.

"Set flaps at Zero."

"Setting flaps at Zero," the copilot responded. A moment later, he announced: "Gear up and locked. Flaps at Zero."

"You've got it," Capitan Frade said, lifting his hands from the yoke. "Take us to 7,500 meters. Engineer, set power for a long, slow, fuel-conserving ascent to 7,500."

"Si, Capitan."

Ten minutes after that, there was nothing that could be seen out the windscreen.

"Passing through four thousand meters," the copilot reported.

"Give the passengers the oxygen speech," Clete said.

"Are we going to come across somebody up here, Capitan?"

"I decided I didn't want to waste any fuel trying to meet up with the Americans," Clete said. "And I'm hoping that if there are Germans up here, they won't be able to find us--you'll notice I have turned off our navigation lights--or if they do, we'll be able to outrun them."

"I agree, Capitan," the copilot said.

Clete looked at him.

He was crossing himself and mumbling a prayer.

XI

[ONE]

2404 Calle Bernardo O'Higgins

Belgrano, Buenos Aires, Argentina

0815 1 October 1943

SS-Brigadefuhrer Ritter Manfred von Deitzberg, first deputy adjutant to Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler, awoke sweat-soaked in the bedroom of his apartment in the petit-hotel at O'Higgins and Jose Hernandez in the up-scale Belgrano neighborhood.

Worse, he knew that he was going to be sick to his stomach again. He padded quickly across the bedroom to the bathroom and just made it to the water closet before he threw up.

First, an amazing volume of foul-smelling green vomitus splashed into the water. This was followed moments later by a somewhat lesser volume of the green vomitus.

Von Deitzberg now desperately wished to flush the toilet but knew from painful past experience that this was not going to be immediately possible. For reasons known only to the gottverdammt Argentines, the water reservoir was mounted so high on the wall, with a flushing chain so short, it was damned near impossible to pull it when sitting on the toilet, and absolutely impossible to do so when one was on one's knees hugging the toilet.

It would be out of reach until he managed to recover sufficiently to be able to get off his knees and stand up with a reasonable chance of not falling over; that, too, had happened.

The entire sequence had happened so often--this was the fourth day--that von Deitzberg knew exactly what to expect, and that happened now. There were two more eruptions--this varied; sometimes there were three or more--after which von Deitzberg somehow knew that was all there was going to be. Then he could very carefully get to his feet, stand for a moment to reach the gottverdammt flushing chain handle, and then quickly hoist the hem of his nightgown and even more quickly sit on the toilet seat in anticipation of the burst of vile-smelling, foul-looking contents of his bowels that most often followed the nausea.