"Or I will place an armed guard at your door."
"OK," Clete said. "I won't try to leave, and I won't communicate with anyone without your permission."
"On your word of honor as an officer and a gentleman?"
"On my word of honor as an officer and a gentleman," Clete parroted.
I wonder if I mean that? What is the really honorable thing to do? Pass up an opportunity to try to keep one of my men alive? Or live up to Martin's adult version of Boy Scout's Honor?
"Suboficial Mayor Rodriguez," Mart?n said, turning to Enrico, "are you armed?"
Enrico looked at Clete for guidance.
"Tell him, Enrico."
S?, mi coronel," Enrico said, patting the small of his back to indicate that he had a pistol concealed there.
Mart?n picked his briefcase up from where he had set it on the floor, opened it, and produced a .45 automatic.
"I really hope you won't have occasion to need this," he said, handing it to Clete.
Then he nodded at Lauffer and left the room.
[FIVE]
The Embassy of the United States of America
Montevideo, Uruguay
2205 18 April 1943
"I will take you there, Se?or, of course," the taxi driver at the bus terminal said to the somewhat rumpled-looking middle-aged man, "but it is a long way, an expensive trip, and the norteamericano Embassy is not open at this hour."
"You are very kind, Se?or," Colonel A. F. Graham, USMCR and have just earned yourself a very nice tip"but please take me there anyway. Someone is waiting for me."
That's the absolute opposite of the truth. If I can find Stevenson, he will be the most surprised sonofabitch in Uruguay.
The Embassy of the United States was in a stone villa, inside a tall stone-and-steel-spear fence. A brass sign was on the fence gate pillar, and a painted wooden sign announced the hours the Embassy was open for business. The gate was firmly closed with a heavy chain and a large padlock.
There was also an intercom device with a button.
Graham pushed the button. Thirty seconds later, a voice barely comprehensible through staticbut obviously Americanannounced "Cerrado" Closed.
Deciding that communication over that device would be impossible, Graham put his finger back on the button and held it there.
There were several more "closed" announcements over the next two minutes, and then there was a flash of light as the door of the Embassy villa opened and an indignant young man in Marine khakis appeared and shouted, "Cerrado! Cerrado!"
Graham kept his finger on the button until the Marinea corporalcame down to the gate.
"Cerrado, Se?or," he said with finality.
"Good evening, Corporal. My name is Graham. I would like to see Mr. Ralph Stevenson, who is the Cultural Attach?."
The Corporal was visibly surprised that the middle-aged man wearing rumpled clothes and badly needing a shave spoke English so well.
"Sorry. We're closed. You'll have to come back in the morning."
"I would like to see either Mr. Stevenson, please, or the duty officer."
"You American?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact, I am."
"Is this some sort of bona fide emergency?"
"Yes, I would say so, Corporal."
"What kind of an emergency?"
"Corporal, listen to me carefully. I may not look like one, but I happen to be a colonel of the United States Marine Corps."
It was clear that the corporal thought this highly unlikely.
"Is that so? You got anything to prove it, Colonel!"
Colonel Graham had with him his Marine Corps identification card, his JCS Letter Orders, and another plastic enclosed card identifying him as the Deputy Director For Western Hemisphere Operations of the Office of Strategic Services. But before leaving Porto Alegre, he had placed all of these documents into the false bottom of one of his suitcases.
But, he realized, he was not without the means to convince the corporal that he was a fellow Marine.
"Listen to me, son," he said. "Unless I am inside the Embassy talking to the Duty Officer within the next thirty seconds, you're going to be a buck private on your way to permanent duty cleaning mess-hall grease pits on Parris Island so fast it will take a week for your ass to catch up with you. Now open this goddamned gate!"
"Aye, aye, Sir," the corporal said as he reached for the key to the padlock. As they reached the open door to the Embassy building, the corporal volunteered the information that Mr. Stevenson was in the building but had left orders that he was not to be disturbed by anybody but the Ambassador.
"That was before I got here, son," Graham said. "Tell him I'm here."
"Aye, aye, Sir," the corporal said. "I'll take you to his office."
"Thank you."
The office of the Cultural Attach? was in the basement of the villa. The corporal knocked on the door.
It was opened by a nice-looking young man in his thirties whose face bore a look of resigned tolerance.
"Corporal, I said I didn't want to be bothered," he said, and then saw Graham. "Jesus Christ! Colonel Graham!"
"Hello, Stevenson," Graham said.
"You know the Colonel, Sir?" the corporal asked. "Yes, I do," Stevenson said.
"Yes, Sir. Then I'll just log him in."
"No, Corporal, don't do that," Graham said. "Actually, since you didn't see me, there's no reason to log me in." The corporal looked at Stevenson.
"You didn't see Colonel Graham, Corporal," Stevenson said. "I'll explain this to the Security Officer."
"Yes, Sir."
"Come in, Colonel," Stevenson said. There was a man sitting on a battered leather couch in Stevenson's small office.
"Don't tell me this is the legendary Colonel A. F. Graham in the flesh," the man said.
"Who are you?"
"My name is Leibermann, and before you jump all over Stevenson's ass for talking to me, I came to see him."
"Is that so? Why?"
"Has my fame preceded me?" Leibermann asked. "Can I infer from the utter lack of surprise on your face that you know who I am?"
"I know who you are, Mr. Leibermann. What I'm curious about is what you're doing here."
"Tex Frade asked me to see what I could do to keep your man Ettinger alive. I'm sorry to tell you I failed."
"What are you saying? Ettinger's dead?"
"Dead, and they mutilated the corpse to send a message."
"What kind of a message? To whom?"
"That's what Stevenson and I were talking about," Leibermann said. "But since Stevenson won't tell me what Ettinger was doing over here, we aren't doing very well with our little game of Twenty Questions."
"I told you, Milton, I don't know what Ettinger was doing there," Stevenson protested. "I never heard his name before you walked in here tonight!"
You call him by his first name, do you, Stevenson? That means that (a) you are probably seeing more of him than Wild Bill Donovan would like you to, (b) that you like him, and (c) Leibermann likes you, or else he wouldn't have made a point of telling me he came to see you to keep him out of trouble with me.
"What does this mean, Colonel?" Leibermann asked sarcastically. "That the OSS not only doesn't talk to FBI, they don't talk to each other, either?"
"I think the word is 'compartmentalization,'" Graham said. "Nobody knows anything more than they have to."