Which is true. I'm in love with her or think I am. I never felt this way about anybody else before but that does not add up to us living happily ever after in a vine-covered cottage by the side of the road. What I should be is grateful that Juan or Pancho or whatever the fuck the sonofabitch's name is has come into her life, getting me out of it without causing her any pain. Or getting her killed, which would have been a genuine possibility. And if these bastards do succeed in killing me, which is also a genuine possibility, it will be easier on the Princess. I will have been just one in a long line of her ex-boyfriends, not her lover or, Jesus Christ, even worse, her fianc?.
Shit!
He walked out the bath into his bedroom and looked at the bed.
I don't want to get in there. That's not my bed, it's my father's bed, and I don't care if they have gone to great pains to remove everything that was his from his apartment, it's still his apartment and his bed.
And for some reason, I'm not at all sleepy. Probably all the alcohol I didn't have, and all the coffee strong enough to melt the teeth of a mule I did.
Tony! I have to see him, and I have to see Ettinger. And Peter. I really want to see Peter. He knows who ordered the assassination of my father, and I think he 'II tell me.
He went to the dressing room and quickly pulled on khaki trousers, a polo shirt, and a tweed jacket. He hadn't gotten as far as taking off his boots, and getting dressed took less than a minute.
When he went through the sitting, his suit was already gone. He went down the wide stairs, then to a corridor under them. Just off that was the stairwell to the basement garage.
Half a dozen cars were in the garage, but none was in the place reserved for his father's beloved Horche.
I wonder where that is? Do the cops have it?
He went to a 1940 Ford station wagon, parked between an ancient, immaculately maintained Rolls Royce sedan and a small Mercedes sedan. The Ford was locked.
"Damn!"
"Se?or?"
He turned to find a middle-aged man in his shirtsleeves.
"May I help you, Se?or?"
"Can you get me the keys to this?" he said, pointing to the Ford. "I would be pleased to conduct the Se?or anywhere he wishes to go," the man said, pointing at the Rolls Royce.
"Just get me the keys to this, please," Clete said.
[THREE]
Avenida Pueyrred?n 1706
Capital Federal, Buenos Aires, Argentina
0005 10 April 1943
When Clete drove past Peter's apartment building looking for a place to park, he saw the doorman sitting behind his tiny desk in the lobby, his hands folded on his stomach, sound asleep.
He thought it very likely that the doorman got a weekly envelope from Teniente Coronel Mart?n of the Bureau of Internal Security in exchange for a report on who rode up to Piso 10 and when and how long they stayed.
Or perhaps two envelopes, the second from the Polic?a Federal. Or maybe even three. Peter told me that there are two obscure flunkies at the Embassy who really work for the Military Attach?, who is really, in addition to his other duties, the counterintelligence officer. They're probably keeping an eye on Peter, too.
If I go up to see Peter or just ask the doorman if he's at home that means Martin and probably the Polic?a Federaland Colonel Whatsisname. . . Gr?ner. . . will hear about it. I can't risk that, so what the hell do I do?
Don't try to see Peter tonight, obviously.
Shit.
But then the doorbells caught his eye. The doorbell system was mounted on a marble pillar outside the lobbyClete had never seen anything like it anywhere but in Buenos Aires. There were buttons for each apartment, and an intercom. You pushed the proper apartment number, identified yourself, and if the person called wanted to let you in, he pushed a button operating the solenoid-controlled lock on the plate-glass door leading into the lobby.
The question is,Clete decided, can Sleepy in the lobby see who's pushing the bells if he wakes up? He looked. He can, if he wakes up. But even if he does, he won't know what button I've pushed. I can at least talk to Peter, if not go up to his apartment. Tell him to call me, or something.
He parked the Ford around the corner and walked back to the apartment building. The doorman was still asleep.
It took three long pushes at button number 10 before there was an annoyed, even angry, "Hola?"
"Clete."
There was just a moment's hesitation.
"Go around the corner, to your right," Peter's metallic-sounding voice said.
Clete turned from the doorbell system on the marble pillar and walked away. The doorman was still asleep. To the right was in the opposite direction from where he had parked the Ford.
He turned on his heel, went to the Ford, and started driving around the block. No pedestrians were on the sidewalk, and so far as he could tell, no one was sitting in any of the automobiles parked along the curb on Avenida Pueyrred?n. On his second pass past the apartment building, he saw Peter walking quickly toward the corner.
He drove by him, flicked his headlights, and pulled to the curb. Peter jumped in the front seat, and Clete drove off.
"See if anyone's following," Peter ordered.
There were no headlights in the rearview mirror.
"Nobody," Clete said. "Where should we go?"
"There's a bar on Libertador that's usually crowded this time of night," Peter said. "Just past the American Ambassador's residence, by the railroad bridge. It's called 'The Horse.'"
"How are you, my friend?" Major Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein of the Luftwaffe said to Major Cletus Howell Frade of the U.S. Marine Corps.
"How do you think?" Clete replied, raising his glass of Johnny Walker to touch Peter's.
They were sitting at a small table on a balcony overlooking the ground-floor bar and restaurant of The Horse. When they started up the balcony stairs, they got an odd look from the waiter, who could not understand why two young men would go to the nearly deserted balcony when at least a half-dozen attractive, and unattached, women were sitting at the bar.
The two had met the previous December. When Clete first came to Argentina, his father turned the Guest House over to him"Uncle Willy's House" across from the racetrack on Avenida del Libertador. After a trip to Uruguay, where he had acquired explosives to blow up the Reine de la Mer never used, as it turned outClete returned to the house to find Peter sitting in the sitting room, sipping his fourth glass of cognac as he listened to Beethoven's Third Symphony on the phonograph.
Either because she didn't know that Clete was staying in the house, or because she was so detached from reality that she did not consider that a Luftwaffe officer and a U.S. Marine Corps officer were officially enemies, Beatrice Frade de Duarte had ordered von Wachtstein to be put up in the guest house.
It was then well after midnight, and there was nothing the two young officers could do but declare that a temporary truce existed between them. They sealed the truce with a glass of cognac, and then another. And several more.
And then it became apparent that they really had a great deal in common. Both were fighter pilots, which provided an immediate bond between them. Peter had heard of the exploits of the greatly outnumbered Marine fighter pilots on Guadalcanal, and had an understandable fellow fighter pilot's professional admiration for someone who had been one of them. And Clete had heard of the ferocious valor of German fighter pilots defending Berlin from waves of B-17 bombers and had a fellow fighter pilot's professional admiration for someone who had been one of them.