"So you kept it."
In your shoes, I would have done the same thing.
"Your father was keeping it for me."
"Where?"
"I don't know for sure. In some safe place. Probably with the records of the investments. And I don't like to think what would happen to a lot of people Ambassador von Lutzenberger and maybe even your uncle Humbertoif those records fell into the wrong hands."
"Where do you think they are?"
"Did your father have a safe at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo? Or some other place besides the obvious . . . bank safety-deposit boxes, for example?"
"I don't know. Seems likely. But I don't know. I'll ask Claudia."
"I don't think there's a hell of a lot of time."
"I understand," Clete said. "Maybe Enrico knows. I'll ask him, too."
"Be careful, diplomatic immunity or not," Peter said.
"I don't have diplomatic immunity."
"You don't?" Peter asked, visibly surprised. "Alicia told me you were going to be the Assistant Naval Attach?."
"That changed. I came back here on my Argentine passport."
"But you're still OSS?"
"I'm still what?"
"Sorry."
Clete shrugged.
"I was asking as a friend, concerned for your welfare. You understand that, I hope?"
Clete nodded again.
"You can count on them trying to kill you, you know that?" Peter said.
"When I was in fighter school, the instructors kept harping, 'watch your back, watch your back, watch your back.' I didn't know what they were talking about then, but eventually I got pretty good at it."
He looked at his watch. It was quarter to one.
"I'll see Claudia in the morning," he said. "And Enrico. They should have an idea where my father would put something he didn't want anybody else to get at."
"I better go home," Peter said.
"I'll drop you."
"You go, I'll finish my drink, then catch a cab."
"OK."
"This might be a good place to meet, if we have to."
"Sure. What'll we call it, in case anybody is listening, as they probably will be."
"It's The Horse. Let's call it The Fish."
They looked at each other. Clete stood up and put out his hand.
"It's good to see you, amigo," he said. "But do me a favor, will you?"
"Certainly."
"Try to walk like a man when you leave. The waiter is three-quarters convinced that we're a pair of fairies."
"What the hell, we've been up here by ourselves, holding a whispered conversation, doing everything but holding hands, what do you expect him to think?"
[FOUR]
Recoleta Plaza
Buenos Aires, Argentina
0145 10 April 1943
There was no answer when Clete rang the bell of Tony Pelosi's apartment in a run-down building in the heavily Italian La Boca* district.
He's probably out with Maria-Teresa, damn him!
Though Clete thought it was a dump, Tony had selected his apartment primarily because it was close to the Ristorante Napoli. Its proprietor, Se?or Alberghoni, had a daughter named Maria-Teresa. Tony was in love . . . not a very smart thing for someone in Tony's line of work to be, Clete thought.
He drove back through downtown on Avenida del Libertador, then headed for Belgrano, where Ettinger had an apartment on Calle Monroe (Monroe Street). Just before he reached the Avenida 9 de Julio, there was a traffic holdup of some sort. He crept along for a block or two, and the jam cleared. As he passed Avenida 9 de Julio, he looked up and saw the source of the trouble.
*"The Mouth." so called because it is the mouth of the Riachuelo Industrial Canal opening on the river Plate. Shipping tycoonand second husband of Jacqueline KennedyAristotle Onassis got his start operating a small ferry across the Riachuelo Canal.
What looked like half a squadron of cavalry, each splendidly mounted trooper holding a lance, was moving at a walk. He couldn't see an artillery caisson, but he thought there was only one reason cavalry would be moving through downtown Buenos Aires at this hour. He checked the Hamilton chronograph. It was twenty minutes to two. The schedule of events called for the casket to be moved, starting at one.
He accelerated, drove three blocks farther, and turned left, reaching Avenida Alvear as the lead troopers of the cavalry came into sight. He drove ahead of them to the park that fronts the Recoleta Cemetery and the Basilica of Our Lady of Pilar, stopped, and got out.
He stood in the shadow of the Recoleta Cemetery wall and watched the procession arrive. The maneuver had obviously been planned carefully and rehearsed, for it went off like clockwork.
The procession stopped by the front of the church. A half-dozen troopers in the lead of the procession dismounted, and the reins to their mounts were given to the troopers beside them. The dismounted troopers then marched to the head of the procession and held the bits of the horses of the commanding officer and the detachment of eight officers riding immediately behind him. They dismounted and marched to the caisson, where they unstrapped the casket, shouldered it, and marched into the church with it.
Two minutes later, they came back out, remounted, waited for the horse-holders to regain their mounts, and then did a column left at the walk back toward Avenida Alvear.
Clete waited until the last of them had left, then got back in the Ford and returned to Avenida del Libertador.
He wondered if Enrico had been able to get out of the hospital to go to the Edificio Libertador.
He hoped so, but it was too late to do anything about it if there was a hitch in that plan.
I'll make damned sure he's at the funeral tomorrow, if I have to go to the hospital and get him myself.
[FIVE]
As he drove back past The Horsewhich he now thought of as The Fishon Avenida del Libertador, he had a sudden thought:
There's a secret compartment in Uncle Willy's desk. Did my father know about it? Would he hide Peter's father's letters and the records Peter was talking about in there?
It was an uncomfortable thought. He had discovered the secret compartment by accident when he lived in Uncle Willy's house. It held some of Uncle Willy's secrets: a large collection of glass slides showing a number of Frenchmen and Frenchwomenthe ladies were a bit overplump, and the gentlemen were wearing nothing but mustaches and black socksperforming various obscene sexual acts on one another.
On the one hand, the chances that his father even knew about the secret compartment were remote. And even if he did, would he use the secret compartment to conceal important documents? But on the other hand, it might be just the place his father would choose to use, because it was so unlikely. And the secret compartment was certainly large enough.
What the hell, I'm practically right in front of the place. It will only take me a minute to look. And Peter is obviously scared shitless, with reason, that somebody will find his father's letter.
Directly across Libertador from the racetrack, he stopped before the cast-iron gates of a large, turn-of-the-century masonry house. The gates carried both the house number4730and the crest of the Frade family. He blew the horn, and thirty seconds after that there was a glow of light as the basement garage door opened. A moment later, without question, a stocky, middle-aged man started to pull the gates inward.