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

El Coronel Alejandro Bernardo Martin of the Bureau of Internal Security slipped into the seat beside him.

Clete raised his glass in salute.

"How much of that have you had?" Martin asked.

"A lot. I try never to fly sober."

"We have to talk," Martin said, shaking his head.

"Not now, please, Alejandro. You may not believe this, but I have just flown this great big airplane back and forth across the Atlantic. I have earned this." He raised the glass again. "Care to join me?"

Martin said: "SS-Brigadefuhrer Manfred von Deitzberg has just flown across the River Plate to Montevideo. In one of your airplanes."

Clete looked at him, both eyebrows raised in surprise.

Martin went on: "Carrying the passport of an ethnic German Argentine--Jorge Schenck--who died in a car crash in 1938."

"I wondered why that sonofabitch came back," Clete said, "and what he wants."

"Well," Martin said, "Adolf Hitler himself has ordered the destruction of your airplanes--the big ones--as well as your elimination. And the elimination of the Froggers. And while von Deitzberg is here, to make sure Operation Phoenix is running smoothly. There's almost certainly more."

"Where are you getting all this?" Clete asked, adding incredulously, "Adolf Hitler?"

Martin nodded. Then he asked: "Where are you going from here?"

"First, to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, and then, first thing in the morning, to Mendoza. My Lodestar's at the estancia."

"You couldn't spend the night here? Either at your place on Libertador or the big house on Coronel Diaz? There's some people I want you to talk to."

"So far as the house on Coronel Diaz is concerned, the last time that Enrico and I went there"--he nodded toward Rodriguez, who was sitting across the aisle feeding brass-cased shells into his Remington Model 11 riot shotgun--"you might recall that 'members of the criminal element' tried to kill us. Dorotea's here . . ."

"I saw her. With Sargento Gomez and what looks like four of his friends standing with her."

". . . and I don't want some bastard taking a shot at her. And, so far as the house on Libertador is concerned, I'm not sure they've had time to finish fu migating."

"Fumigating? Rats?"

"In a manner of speaking. After my Tio Juan moved out, I had the whole house painted and fumigated."

"That was necessary?"

"I thought so."

The house on Libertador had been built by Clete's late granduncle, Guillermo Jorge Frade, who had the reputation of being very fond of both women and horse racing, not necessarily in that order. The master bedroom, which took up most of the third floor of his mansion, offered a place in which he could entertain his lady guests and watch the races in the Hipodromo across the street, either separately or simultaneously .

When Clete had first come to Argentina and made his peace with his father, his father had turned the mansion over to him. Clete had been in Guillermo Jorge Frade's enormous bed when the first assassination attempt had been made. The assassins came there after slitting the throat of the housekeeper, la Senora Mariana Maria Dolores Rodriguez de Pellano, Enrico's sister, in the kitchen.

And three days later, having learned of the attempted assassination, la Senorita Dorotea Mallin, whom Clete had thought of as "The Virgin Princess," had stormed into the bedroom, angrily berating Cletus for not having called her. In the discussion that followed, la Senorita Mallin had not only lost her virginity but become with child.

The memory of that had caused Clete's stomach to almost literally turn when his mind filled with images of Juan Domingo Peron and his thirteen-year-old paramour in the same bed. He wasn't sure that a coat of paint and a thorough fumigation would correct the situation, but it couldn't hurt.

"Your Tio Juan is one of the things we have to talk about," Martin said. "This is important, Cletus."

"You're asking," Clete said thoughtfully. "Usually, it's 'come with me or get tossed into the back of a BIS car in handcuffs.' "

"I'm asking," Martin said.

After a moment, Clete said, "Okay. I'll send Enrico to put Dorotea in the Horch. It's in the hangar. Then, just as soon as that crowd thins out, we'll drive to the house on Libertador. Under the capable protection of the stalwart men of the Bureau of Internal Security."

"Thank you," Martin said sincerely. And then he chuckled. "I was just thinking, honestly, that 'with Don Cletus's private army out there, it should be completely safe.' How many of your men are out there, anyway?"

" Mi coronel, I told Gomez to bring at least thirty," Enrico Rodriguez answered for him. "And I told him that if anything happened to Dona Dorotea or Don Cletus, I would kill him."

He pushed the bolt-release button on the side of the Remington Model 11. With a loud metallic chunk, it fed a brass-cased round of double-ought buckshot into the chamber.

Then Enrico stood up and walked down the aisle of the passenger compartment to the door.

[TWO]

Suite 308

Hotel Casino de Carrasco

Montevideo, Uruguay

1745 1 October 1943

SS-Brigadefuhrer Manfred von Deitzberg was a little surprised that everything so far had gone as smoothly as von Gradny-Sawz had said it would. Neither the immigration officers in Buenos Aires nor those here had questioned his Jorge Schenck passport.

Halfway across the River Plate, it occurred to von Deitzberg that the South American Airways Lockheed Lodestar was far more comfortable than the last transport aircraft he had flown in--the Heinkel, which had taken him from Berlin to the submarine pens at Saint-Nazaire.

That had triggered several thoughts, the first that he didn't care what he had to do to avoid it, he was not going to return to Germany aboard a gottverdammt U-boat. That had been immediately followed by the realization that he probably would not be returning to Germany by any means.

The conversation he had had with von Gradny-Sawz had brought that out in the open. Von Deitzberg had known it all along, of course, but even privately thinking that the war was lost had, until now, seemed treasonous.

How can the truth be treasonous?

Von Paulus had lost 100,000 men defending Stalingrad and had taken the 70,000 still alive into Russian captivity when he finally had to surrender.

Doenitz has had to call off the submarine interdiction of the supply convoys from the United States and South America because of his losses.

Africa has been lost. And Sicily has been lost.

The English and the Americans are in half of Italy, and when they have captured the rest of it, they would start planning the cross-Channel invasion of France, from England. Which would succeed.

How is facing facts with a military professional's eye treasonous?

I will, of course, continue to honorably perform my duty as a German officer as long as that is possible.

But my duty is not to throw my life away by throwing myself under the tracks of a Russian tank rolling down the Unter der Linden--as they will sooner or later.

Rather, my duty is to carry out my orders to establish a sanctuary here in South America from which the leaders of National Socialism can rise, indeed, phoenixlike from the ashes.

I am not being treasonous; I am being professionally realistic .

A taxi took von Deitzberg from the airport to the Hotel Casino de Carrasco on the shore of the River Plate. He was shown to a comfortable small suite on the third floor, from which he could see the beach.