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He had to convince Admiral Souers, who was presiding over the burial of the OSS, that General Greene and others had to be told of Operation Ost and ordered to support it. Otherwise Operation Ost was going to blow up in everybody’s face, and those faces included President Harry S Truman’s and General of the Army Dwight David Eisenhower’s.

Mattingly’s orders to Cronley were that once the documents were safely in Frade’s hands, he was to catch the next Germany-bound SAA flight and return to Kloster Grünau, where he was to keep his mouth shut, and, if the 18th Infantry showed up, to stall them as long as possible before surrendering.

Cronley had not been able to comply with his orders.

* * *

Cletus Frade had met Jimmy Cronley’s SAA aircraft at Aeropuerto Coronel Jorge G. Frade. He was driving a Horch automobile — very much like Colonel Mattingly’s — and had with him his wife, a long-legged blond with a flawless complexion who spoke English like the King.

What Jimmy hoped was discreet questioning produced the information that the airport was named “Frade” because Clete had dedicated it to his father—that despicable Argentinian sonofabitch? — and that the Horch—“Nice car. Where’d you get it?”—had been his father’s.

They drove into Buenos Aires, a city that didn’t look like anything Mexican, and stopped at a mansion overlooking a horse racetrack. Clete had told him the mansion, built by his Grand-uncle Guillermo, was where Clete and his wife and kids lived because Dorotea thought the “big house” was about as comfortable as a museum.

When they went inside, things immediately became even more complicated.

The Old Man was there. And Martha and Beth and Marjie Howell.

All the Howell women kissed Cronley, which he sort of expected. What he didn’t expect was the way the Squirt kissed him. Clete’s baby sister wasn’t supposed to kiss him that way, and he absolutely wasn’t supposed to have the instant physical reaction to it that he did. All he could do was hope that no one happened to be glancing six inches below his belt buckle.

But even that went into the background when Cronley, almost casually, mentioned to Clete that he had been talking with some of Gehlen’s people at Kloster Grünau about where a missing submarine, U-234, might have made landfall in Argentina, and they had come up with a very likely answer.

“Jesus Christ, didn’t Mattingly tell you?” Clete said.

“What?”

“Apropos of nothing whatever, my last orders from General Donovan were to keep two things going at all costs — Operation Ost and the search for U-234. So tell me, what did you and the boys in the monastery come up with?”

Jimmy’s reply had immediately triggered a good deal of frenzied activity adding to the frenzied activity already in progress, which included the attempted assassination of Colonel Juan D. Perón, whom Clete referred to as his Uncle Juan.

Jimmy still had trouble remembering exactly what had happened and when, but in about the middle of it he had been in Mendoza—

That was right after Clete flew there with a wounded Colonel Perón in the back of the machine-gun-riddled SAA Lodestar.

And before the Squirt told me she’d loved me all her life — and I took her virginity. The next and last time we Did It was in the Lord Baltimore Hotel.

That was after I got checked out in the Lodestar, then headed to the Straits of Magellan. And after I came back from down there with the uranium oxide from the U-234.

And we loaded it on the Old Man’s Connie and flew it to Washington.

And the next thing I knew I was a captain.

And I was a widower — no — first I was a married man.

The next day I was a widower, and that afternoon I was a captain.

— on top of a mountain, in sort of a fort and prison run by Clete’s deputy, Major Maxwell Ashton III, and for the first time Jimmy and Clete were alone for a few minutes and Jimmy had just blurted out, “What the hell’s going on?”

“You mean here at Casa Montagna — aka Fort Leavenworth South?”

“Start with that.”

“Well, it also was built by my Great-uncle Guillermo,” Clete said, “which is why it’s called Estancia Don Guillermo. I never met him, but I understand he was not crippled by modesty and self-effacement. I inherited it from my father, and placed it in the service of the Office of Strategic Services. Next question?”

“How’d you go from being a hotshot fighter pilot to the OSS, Clete? I still remember your mom showing me the picture of you being awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for service there.”

Clete turned his head slightly and nodded. “That’s right. I never told you. As you know, I made Ace — that takes five kills and I got seven — with VFM-226 on Guadalcanal. For living to tell about it, there was a prize: The Corps sent me home to go on a War Bond tour. You can imagine how much fun that was. And following the tour, the Corps was sending me to Pensacola to teach fledging birdmen.

“I was in my room in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel trying to decide who I was going to have to kill to get out of both the tour and flight school when a full bull Marine colonel showed up. He handed me a picture of a man wearing what looked like a German uniform. ‘That’s your father.’

“I said, ‘Really?’ and he said, ‘We think he’s going to be the next president of Argentina.’

“And I probably said, ‘Really?’ again, and he said, ‘Lieutenant, we want you to go to Argentina and do two things. Blow up an ostensibly neutral ship which is supplying German submarines in the River Plate, and see what you can do to tilt your father to our side. Right now he’s favoring Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo.’”

“This is for real?”

Clete nodded again. “It was mind-blowing. I said, very respectfully, ‘Sir, I have never laid eyes on my father. That’s the first picture I ever saw of him. And I have no idea how to blow ships up. I’m a Marine fighter pilot.’”

“And?”

“He said, ‘You were a Marine fighter pilot. What you are now is a Basic Flight Instructor on temporary War Bond Tour Duty en route to Pensacola. We’ll teach you how to blow up ships, and I’m sure you’ll figure out some way to cozy up to your daddy once you get to Buenos Aires.’”

“Jesus!”

“Three weeks later, I got off the Panagra Clipper in the River Plate. My cover was that I had been medically discharged from the Corps and was now going to make my contribution to the War Effort by making sure none of the crude or refined product that the Old Man shipped there from Howell Petroleum Venezuela wound up in German, Italian, or Japanese hands.

“The Old Man arranged for me to stay with his major customer, who is a real pain in the ass. All Señor Enrico Mallin knew about me was that I was the Old Man’s grandson — not that my father was an Argentine.

“Two nights after I get to Buenos Aires, I’m having dinner with the Mallin family, trying to keep my eyes off his daughter—”

“His daughter?”

“Good-looking blond. You’ve met her. Her last name is now Frade.”

That’s where you met her?”

“You want to hear this story or not?”

“Go!”

“The phone rings. The butler tells my future father-in-law it’s for him. Señor Mallin snaps, ‘You know I don’t take calls at dinner,’ and the butler replies, ‘Señor, it is el Coronel Frade.’

“Mallin turns white. He takes the phone and oozes charm as he tells el Coronel Frade how pleased he is to hear his voice, and asks how might he be of service.