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

"Erich is offended by Peron's morality, as manifested in his sexual tastes. He was one of the colonels who went to discuss them with him. You've heard about that, of course?"

"No," Frade said simply.

"A number of his fellow coronels went to Juan Domingo and asked him, in essence, 'Juan Domingo, what about this thirteen-year-old girl?' To which he replied, 'What's wrong with that? I'm not superstitious.'"

"Jesus Christ!" Clete said. "Is that true?"

"Unfortunately," Wattersly said. "I know because I was a member of the delegation."

"That degenerate sonofabitch!" Inspector General Nervo said bitterly.

"Now," Wattersly went on, "when furthering the interests of the Germans--protecting the landing site at Samborombon Bay, for example, or shooting up your Casa Chica in Tandil--coincides with what Peron wants, Erich will do it. He is sure God wants him to.

"But, and this is the point of this, he does not want Peron to become president--and will do whatever he thinks is necessary to see that Peron doesn't."

"That's not in the cards, is it?" Frade asked.

"Edmundo hasn't touched on this, Cletus, so I will," Inspector General Nervo said.

That's the first time he's called me by my first name.

Does that mean he's starting to like me?

Or just a slip of the tongue?

"What all of us in this room are doing is trying to prevent a civil war," Nervo said. "None of us wants what happened in Spain to happen here. Brother killed brother. A half-million people died. Her cities lie in ruins. The Communists took the national treasury to Russia to protect it--then kept it. Priests were shot in the street. Nuns raped. Need I go on?"

"No, sir. I'm aware of the horrors of the Spanish Civil War."

Nervo nodded, then went on: "The reason I looked away when your father--and of course Edmundo--were setting up Operation Blue was that I knew your father would not permit that to happen here. With him in the Casa Rosada and Ramirez as minister of war, there would be no civil war. Nor would Argentina become involved in the war itself. At the time, I thought the war was not Argentina's business.

"Things changed, of course, when your father was assassinated. I assumed that General Ramirez would step into your father's shoes and become president. That didn't happen. Ramirez decided that as minister of war he could keep a tighter grip on things--I'm talking about the armed forces, of course--than he could from the Casa Rosada. He put General Rawson into the Casa Rosada. I now believe that was the right decision.

"What I should have seen and didn't--Martin did; Wattersly did; others did; I didn't--was that as it becomes apparent to the German leadership that they have lost the war, they are becoming increasingly desperate. Desperate is the wrong word. Irrational? Insane? Insane. That's the word.

"I should have seen that when they tried to assassinate you. The first time. Trying to assassinate the son of the man who was about to become president of the nation was insanity! And I certainly should have seen it when they assassinated your father. But I didn't.

"It was only when el Coronel Martin brought to me proof of Operation Phoenix and then this other unbelievable operation of ransoming Jews out of concentration camps that my eyes were really opened.

"Do they really believe the Americans are going to stand idly by while Hitler and Himmler and the rest of the Nazis--thousands of them--thumb their noses at them from their refuge in neutral Argentina?

"What the Americans would do is sail a half-dozen battleships up the River Plate and tell us to hand over the bastards. At which point proud and patriotic Argentines would set out to do battle with our pathetic little fleet of old de stroyers! I don't want the Edificio Libertador taken down by sixteen-inch naval cannon.

"Unfortunately, this is life, not a movie. A bugle is not going to sound and the cavalry will not charge across the pampas to set everything right overnight.

"I would estimate that from sixty to seventy percent of the officer corps of the army think all those stories about concentration camps and the murder of hundreds of thousands of people in them are propaganda in the newspapers, which are all controlled by Jews. They believe it is only a matter of time before the godless Communists are driven back into Russia, and the American and British are driven out of Italy and North Africa by the Germans, who have secret weapons they will unleash on the forces of the Antichrist, if not tomorrow, then next week."

He stopped.

"Sorry, I got a little carried away." He passed his whisky glass to La Valle. "May I have some more of Don Cletus's scotch, please, La Valle?"

"You're doing fine, General," Clete said.

"Hear, hear," Wattersly said.

Nervo didn't reply. He just looked between Frade, Martin, and Wattersly as he took several deep swallows from a whisky glass that La Valle had handed him so quickly that Clete decided La Valle must have had it waiting.

Finally, Nervo took a last sip, signaled La Valle for another, and went on, his voice now very calm.

"Within the officer corps of the Armada Argentina, I would estimate twenty- or twenty-five percent are German sympathizers. What that translates to mean, come the civil war, is that the navy--after the Nazis are hung, or forced to walk the plank, or simply shot--will be firmly in the hands of the pro-British forces, which means they will be able to bring the Casa Rosada, the Retiro train station, and Plaza San Martin under naval gunfire.

"At those locations, proud and patriotic soldiers--after standing the anti-Germans in the officer corps against a wall and shooting them for treason--will engage the Armada Argentina with field artillery.

"I'm not sure if you know this, Cletus, but everybody else in your library knows that this has happened before in the history of the Argentine Republic. I don't intend to let it happen again," Nervo said softly, then took another sip of his fresh drink.

"None of us do," Martin said.

"I'd say the general has summed up the situation rather well," Wattersly said.

Lauffer nodded.

"All right, Cletus," Nervo said. "Your turn. Tell us--the truth--about your airline."

Frade looked at him.

And now I'm going to have to lie.

Frade then bought a moment of thought by passing his empty glass to La Valle.

I really don't want to lie to Nervo--to any of these people--but I certainly can't tell them that SAA has already begun to infiltrate Gehlen's men into the country.

So what to do?

"When in doubt, tell the truth" isn't going to work here.

What about "The truth, part of the truth, but nothing about Gehlen"?

La Valle delivered a fresh drink to Clete, who took a sip, then began: "You're going to find this hard to believe, General, but here's what I know. President Roosevelt wanted to punish Juan Trippe of Pan American Airways because of Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh."

"The first man to fly across the Atlantic?" Nervo asked.

"Yes, sir. What happened is . . ."

It took five minutes--which seemed longer--for Clete to relate the story. Nervo never for a second took his eyes off Clete's while he listened.

"That's what I know, General," Clete finished.

"And you believe this story?"

"Sir, the proof is at Aeropuerto Jorge Frade: three Lockheed Constellation aircraft."

"Edmundo?" Nervo asked.

"That story is so incredible, I'm tempted to believe it," Wattersly said.

"Why was Father Welner on the first flight to Portugal?" Martin asked Frade.

"Yes," Nervo added. "Why?"

"He came to me just before we took off," Frade immediately answered. "He said that the Vatican wanted him to carry a message to the cardinal archbishop here that they didn't want to trust to their usual communications channel."