“And?”
“And… next day came the news that my father had been assassinated. The word Graham got was that the people involved with my father in Outline Blue, the coup d’état, were convinced the Germans were behind it, and were furious. Graham suggested I go back as an Argentine — since I was born here — and cozy up to whoever was the new president.”
“Wasn’t that risky?”
“Graham knew damned well how risky. But he saw how angry I was. It didn’t occur to me that he was thinking, What the hell, Frade’s expendable.”
“You’re bitter?”
“I was for a while. But when I grew up, I realized that not being told you’re considered expendable is one of the rules in this game we’re playing. You should write that down.”
“Would you believe I’ve already figured that out? That I’m considered expendable and nobody told me?”
“I think you’re referring to Mattingly,” Clete said. “I want to talk about that, but let me finish this first.”
Cronley gestured Go on.
“Tony and I came back here on the next Clipper — Tony on a diplomatic passport, me as an Argentine citizen coming home to bury his father. The funeral was spectacular.”
“Spectacular?”
“A delegation of Argentine Army brass met the Clipper. After stopping at the military hospital to pick up Enrico—”
“What was Enrico doing in the hospital?”
“Still bleeding from the multiple double-aught buckshot when they murdered my father. The only reason he was alive was that the guys with the shotguns apparently decided that anybody bleeding from so many holes wasn’t worth shooting a third time.
“So we pushed Enrico’s wheelchair out of the hospital and loaded him into an open Army Mercedes… I should mention he was wearing his dress uniform over nine miles of bloody bandages… and then drove to the Edificio Liberator, Argentina’s Pentagon, where my father had been lying in state. In a closed coffin. There wasn’t much left of his head.
“That afternoon they moved him to the family mausoleum in the Recoleta Cemetery. In a parade through downtown Buenos Aires. He was escorted by the entire Húsares de Pueyrredón regiment in their dress uniforms. I had never seen some twenty-two hundred men on horses in one place. The Argentine Army band marched along, playing appropriate music. Like I said, spectacular.
“Sometime during the funeral, Martín approached me and without coming right out and saying it — they call that obfuscation, and he’s good at it — let me know that he was going to be the liaison officer between me and the Argentine brass — Army and Navy — and that as my father’s son I was welcome in the land of my birth. I was not going to be stood against a wall for being a spy — as long as I didn’t do anything stupid, like blow up neutral ships or shoot the SS officer at the German embassy who I suspected of having ordered the murder of my father.
“My Uncle Humberto, who is a good guy, came to me right after the funeral. He said we had to talk about my inheritance and thought it best done at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo. So we went out there, primarily because it was the only way I could get Enrico if not back in bed then at least off his feet.”
“Explain that?”
Clete nodded. “Enrico told me that God had spared him so that he could protect me, and that he would be with me from that moment on. He wasn’t kidding. I figured if I went to the estancia, Enrico could sit in an armchair and not bleed while I watched the grass grow, heard about my inheritance, and figured out how I could cozy up to whoever was going to be the new president.
“At the estancia was Gonzo Delgano. My father had told me that he knew — and Gonzo knew he knew, but both pretended they didn’t — that his Staggerwing pilot was really a BIS agent keeping an eye on my father. I figured Martín was keeping him there to watch me, so I pretended I thought he was an airplane pilot, period.
“About the time Enrico stopped bleeding all over the carpets while following me around, maybe a week later, Tony showed up in his Army attaché’s uniform to deliver a message. The U.S. Air Force base at Puerto Alegre had an aircraft they were ordered to deliver to el Coronel Jorge Frade as a gift from the President of the United States. They had learned that he had passed, so who got the airplane?
“That was a no-brainer for me. I did. Uncle Humberto had explained that I had inherited everything my father owned. So I told Gonzo that we were about to get a Staggerwing to replace the one I had landed in the water and did he want to go to Brazil with me and check it out before I flew it back?
“He told me he would have to check with his wife.
“I knew, and he knew I knew, that he meant Teniente Coronel Martín. But what the hell?
“So we stopped in Buenos Aires long enough to pick up an impressive document saying that I was the sole heir of the late Colonel Frade, and flew to Puerto Alegre in a Brazilian Ford trimotor.”
“And they gave you a replacement Staggerwing?”
“No. They gave me a Lockheed Lodestar painted Staggerwing red.”
“What the hell?”
“Much later, I found out that what had happened was that when the order had come down from the commander in chief to instantly send a Staggerwing painted Staggerwing red to Brazil, for further shipment to a Colonel Frade, there was a little problem. There were no Staggerwings in the Air Force inventory, and Beech had stopped making them in 1939. There was, however, a Lodestar fresh from the factory, with an interior designed for the comfort of some Air Force general. So they painted it Staggerwing red and flew it to Brazil.
“Gonzo was less than thrilled. He had permission ‘from his wife’ to bring a Staggerwing into Argentina, not a sixteen-passenger twin-engine transport. I told him he could watch from the ground as I took off for Buenos Aires in the Lodestar.”
“Where’d you learn to fly a Lodestar? In the Marines?”
“Well, I had some time in your dad’s Twin Beech, of course, and I had some time in the right seats of Gooney Birds, C-47s, on Guadalcanal. I lied about how much time I had doing that, then talked the Air Force guy who’d flown the Lodestar to Brazil into giving me a quick transition — I shot a couple of touch-and-goes.
“At the last minute, Gonzo says he’ll come with me if I agree to fly to Santo Tomé, in Corrientes, instead of Buenos Aires. I asked why, but he wouldn’t tell me. Turned out my father had built an airstrip at Santo Tomé for the Staggerwing when he commanded the Húsares de Pueyrredón. I found out later he and Martín wanted me to take the Staggerwing there from the git-go.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Telling me would’ve meant they’d have had to also tell me that General Rawson had decided he was going to have to take over for my father in Operation Blue, the coup d’état, and that was about to happen. If it fell apart, Rawson and the other senior officers would be jailed, or more likely shot. Unless they could get out of the country. To Uruguay.”
“In the Staggerwing,” Jimmy said, connecting the dots. “That nobody knew you had.”
“Right. You can cram eight people into a Staggerwing if you have to. So we flew to Santo Tomé. Gonzo called Martín, and Martín told me to fly the Lodestar to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, without being seen, and keep it under cover until I heard from him.
“By then I had pretty much figured out what was going on. I asked, and he told me.
“A week later I got a call, and flew the Lodestar to Campo de Mayo, the big army base, from where General Rawson was running the revolution.”
Jimmy smiled. “And because the revolution succeeded, the Lodestar wasn’t needed to get the brass out of Dodge City. But you still got to be a good guy by making it available.”