“You think they’re trying to pull the same thing again, with Argentina?” Hughes asked.
“On the way up here,” Clete said, “I wondered if Tío Juan had really been careless, or whether he wanted me to find those maps.”
“Tío Juan? This Argentine colonel?” Hughes asked, and when Clete nodded, added, “Why would he do that?”
“It’s a long way up here from down there,” Clete said. “I thought of a lot of possibilities.”
There was a knock at the door and a new voice called, “Room service.”
This time there were two “waiters” who entered the room. They could have passed as brothers of the first “waiter.” They were pushing a food cart and a smaller cart holding an assortment of bottles, an ice bucket, an array of glasses, and a martini shaker.
Clete lifted one of the chrome domes over a plate and saw that it covered a hot turkey sandwich, which explained the very quick service.
“Everybody gets the same thing?” he asked.
Hughes nodded.
“That should be interesting,” Clete said. “They don’t have turkeys in Argentina. . . . Or cranberry sauce.”
“I didn’t think about that,” Graham said.
“Not a problem. If they’re as hungry as I am, it won’t make any difference.”
And then Clete’s brain went off on a tangent:
Maybe I could raise turkeys on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.
They’re probably no harder to raise than chickens.
Build some pens.
Hell, let ’em run loose.
They hunt wild turkey in Alabama.
That might be fun.
Hell, why not get some pheasants, too?
What about foxes? Do we have foxes down there, some other predator that would eat my turkeys and pheasants?
What the hell am I doing?
Am I that tired, that my brain goes off the track?
Or is it shutting down?
“Are you going to eat that, Clete?” Howard Hughes inquired. “Or just stand there holding that chrome thing and looking at it?”
“I think I just fell asleep standing up.”
“You want to just forget talking, Clete?” Graham asked.
“Let’s see what a healthy jolt of Jack Daniel’s does for me,” Clete said, and reached for the bottle and a glass, then poured three fingers of whiskey.
Hughes jerked his thumb at the waiters, signaling them to leave. Both said, “Yes, Mr. Hughes.”
When they had left the room Clete said, making it a question: “You seem to be pretty well known around here, Howard.”
Hughes shrugged but didn’t reply.
“You were saying Colonel Perón wanted you to see those maps?” Graham said.
“I think that’s possible,” Clete said.
“Why would he want to do that?”
“All kinds of possibilities,” Clete said. “The bottom line to all my thinking on the way up is that my Tío Juan is a lot smarter than I’ve been giving him credit for being.”
Graham grunted. “I tried to make that point to you.”
Frade raised his glass in a gesture of a toast, took a long sip of the drink, and when he’d swallowed and exhaled, went on: “Too smart—knowing Dorotea and I were going to the house—to leave something incriminating just lying around where I was likely to find it. And I thought that he’s smart enough to have put a hair or something in the lid of the map case that would tell him it had been opened.”
“You’re right, Alex,” Hughes said. “Our little Cletus has developed a real feel for the spy business, hasn’t he?”
“Fuck you, Howard,” Clete said sharply, raising his glass in Hughes’s direction in another mock toast, and taking another drink.
Hughes looked at him coldly.
“What did you say?” he asked incredulously after a moment.
“You’re out of line, Howard,” Graham said. “Clete, when I told him what I think of you, what Allen Dulles thinks of you, it was complimentary. The phrase ‘Little Cletus’ never came up.”
Unrepentant, Hughes blurted: “I’ve known him since he was in short pants, for God’s sake!”
“That was a long fucking time ago, Howard,” Clete said. “I’m a big boy now. The next time you say something like that to me, I’ll knock your goddamn teeth down your throat.”
Hughes assumed a boxing position. “Just a precaution, Major Frade, sir, in case you don’t take this as a compliment.”
“What?”
Hughes moved his fists and his feet around like a boxer.
Clete fought off the temptation to smile.
Hughes went on: “Boy, he’s really the old man’s grandson, ain’t he, Colonel Graham, sir?”
“Oh, shit,” Clete said, and laughed.
“I would take that as both a compliment and an apology, Clete,” Graham said.
“Still, I think I’d rather whip his ass,” Clete said, but he was smiling.
Graham, also smiling, asked, “Can we now get back to the spy business?”
“I’d much rather whip Howard’s ass,” Clete said.
“Be that as it may, Major Frade,” Graham said, “you were about to tell us why you think Perón wanted you to see what he had in his map case.”
Frade sipped at his glass, shrugged, then said, “There’s a lot of possibilities, but as absurd as this may sound, I think he might be trying to turn me.”
“That’s interesting,” Graham said. “Why would he want to do that?”
“He’s got all of his ducks in a row but me,” Clete said. “He’s the éminence grise behind the president now, and—”
“When I knew him he didn’t know what that meant,” Hughes said.
“God damn it, Howard!” Graham snapped. “Enough. And I mean it.”
Hughes threw up both hands in apology and surrender.
Clete looked at Hughes, shook his head, and went on, “—there’s no question in my mind that he wants to be president, and probably will be.”
“How much of a Nazi do you think he really is?” Hughes asked.
“I think he really believes that fascism, National Socialism, whatever, would bring some really needed efficiency to Argentina, but I don’t think he thinks the Germans are going to win the war any more than I do.”
“Really?” Graham asked softly.
“And I think the Germans have cut him in for a piece of the action in Operation Phoenix. I don’t know if he’s involved in the concentration camp inmate-ransoming operation or not. Or even if he knows about it.”
“Serious question, Clete,” Hughes said. “If you’re in his way, why doesn’t he take you out?”
“He’s my godfather. They take that seriously down there. That’s one reason. The second reason, probably, is that my father was very popular there, and if I were to get whacked, a lot of questions would be asked about who did it and why. Everybody knows the Germans had my father killed and had a shot at killing me. They’d be suspect. But if I had to bet, I’d bet on the godfather business. I think the sonofabitch really likes me.”
“But you don’t like him, right?” Hughes said. “ ‘The sonofabitch.’ Why?”
“For one thing, he’s a dirty old man.”
“How so?”
“He likes young girls.”
“So does Errol Flynn,” Hughes said. “He almost went to jail last year for diddling a couple of fifteen-year-olds. He’s still a good guy. What does it say in the Good Book? ‘Judge not, lest ye be judged’?”
“Tío Juan likes them younger. Like thirteen.”
“That’s a dirty old man,” Hughes agreed.
“Is that really it, Clete?” Graham asked. “You disapprove of his morals?”
“That’s part of it, certainly. I just don’t like him.”
“Your father did. And I’m sure he knew of the colonel’s proclivities.”
“Yeah, he knew. Enrico told me. Maybe it’s because he likes me. That makes me uncomfortable. I met the sonofabitch for the first time when I first went down there, and he treats me like the beloved nephew.”