Frade thought of all this when the massive iron gate to the mansion was opened to them by a tough-looking man cradling a Thompson in his arms and then when they had driven into the underground garage and another heavily armed man had opened the Horch’s door, smiled, and said, “Doña Dorotea,” and then come to attention and said, “Mi coronel.”
Everyone exited their vehicles and followed Dorotea into the house itself. They were greeted by a small army of servants standing behind a distinguished-looking elderly man wearing a nicely tailored butler’s suit and tie. Antonio Lavalle had been Jorge Frade’s butler. Now he was head of Dorotea’s crews running everything for her everywhere.
Dorotea turned to the newly arrived group of men and announced, “For those of you gentlemen who have not met our butler, this is Antonio Lavalle. He and his staff will assist those of you who would like to perhaps freshen up. Or who would simply prefer to relax. Please make yourself at home.”
She then turned to Antonio Lavalle and said loud enough for everyone to hear, “And you may please start serving any of our guests in the library.”
As Clete walked with his bride up the staircase to the mansion’s master bedroom that took up most of the third floor, he thought—as he often did—that he had many memories of Uncle Guillermo’s house, many of them very private and very touching—and too many of them of vicious murder.
Clete’s father had been born here, and had insisted on turning over the mansion to him the first day that father and son had, over many drinks and emotional moments, reconnected.
Not long after, Clete had been in the master bedroom when la Señora Marianna Rodríguez de Pellano—Enrico’s sister, who had cared for Clete from birth until his mother had gone to the States and died in childbirth—had had her throat cut in the kitchen. Assassins had killed her in order to get to Clete. But, when they’d come upstairs after him, he had shot them both dead with an Argentine .45—wounding one first in the leg before putting a round in his forehead.
Three days later, as Clete lay in the bed, an angry la Señorita Dorotea Mallín burst in and gave him hell for not calling her after the attack. What happened next caused Clete’s first son to be conceived—and for Clete to no longer be able to lovingly refer to Dorotea as “the Virgin Princess.”
And, late one December night, it had been in Uncle Willy’s house that Clete had first come across a young man in the library. The stranger, slumped in one of the armchairs, had worn a quilted, darkred dressing gown. There’d been a cognac snifter resting on his chest, a lit cigar in the ashtray on the table beside him, and Beethoven’s Third Symphony coming from the phonograph.
That night First Lieutenant Cletus H. Frade, USMCR, met Capitán Hans-Peter Freiherr von Wachtstein of the Luftwaffe. Peter had accompanied to Argentina the body of Clete’s cousin, who’d been killed at Stalingrad flying as an observer in a German Storch. While Clete and Peter immediately understood that they were enemies, they also learned they were fighter pilots—and more. “Suppose,” Peter had suggested, “that as officers and gentlemen, we might pretend it’s Christmas Eve? We’d only be off by a couple of weeks.” They had—and over time had become close friends.
[THREE]
4730 Avenida Libertador General San Martín Buenos Aires 1500 11 May 1945
Hors d’oeuvres and cocktails were being served when Clete and Dorotea entered the enormous, richly appointed library. The Frades looked as satisfied—maybe as satiated—as if fresh from the shower.
Clete saw the look Peter von Wachtstein was giving him and had an epiphany.
I know what you’re thinking, Hansel!
“How come you and Dorotea, who you last saw only a week ago, just got to enjoy the splendors of the nuptial couch, while I—without the opportunity to do the same since last July—sit here sucking on a glass of wine and a black olive with my equally sex-starved wife but two kilometers away?”
Or words to that effect.
Clete and Dorotea walked across the polished hardwood floor toward von Wachtstein.
“I have several things to say to you, Hansel,” Clete said as he took two glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon from a maid, handing one to his wife.
“Really?” von Wachtstein said.
“‘Life is unfair,’” Clete intoned solemnly.
“Is it?”
“‘Fortune favors the pure in heart.’”
“You don’t say?”
“‘Patience is a virtue, and all things come to he who waits.’”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Dorotea asked, confused.
“Hansel, you may wish to write some, or all, of that down,” Clete concluded.
Clete looked around the room. With the exception of Father Welner, who was smiling and shaking his head, everyone looked baffled.
“Why don’t we go in and have our lunch?” Clete went on. “I’m sure that everyone—Peter especially—is anxious to get this over and move on to other things.”
Frade stood at the large double doors between the library and the ornate dining room and waited politely as his guests passed through.
When the last of them had done so, Clete looked around the library.
With a couple of exceptions, he thought, it’s just like it was the night I found Peter here listening to the phonograph. Then there was only one leather armchair and footstool. Now there’s two, because Dorotea wanted her own.
And, of course, when this was my father’s library, there was no hobbyhorse or baby blue prison pen to keep the kids from crawling around—or any other accoutrements of toddlers and infants.
My father never had anything to do with kids.
Would he have liked it—or not given a damn?
His reverie was interrupted by Lavalle.
“Mi coronel,” the butler said, “there is a telephone call.”
“When did you start calling me ‘mi coronel,’ Antonio?”
Both Dorotea and Lavalle had told Clete—many times—that gentlemen referred to their butlers by their surnames. Clete thought it was not only rude but also that gentlemen referred to their friends by their given names, and Antonio Lavalle often had proved just how good a friend he was.
“When you were promoted, mi coronel,” Lavalle said with a smile.
Clete smiled and shook his head.
“Tell whoever it is that we’re having lunch and I’ll call back.”
“It is el Señor Dulles.”
Clete gave that a long moment’s consideration, then said: “Start feeding the hungry, Antonio. Tell Doña Dorotea I had to take a call.”
Clete walked to one of the large, brown-leather-upholstered armchairs. As he settled in it, his mind went back to the first time he’d met Allen Welsh Dulles.
It had been a remarkable meeting—one in which some staggering pieces of the greater espionage puzzle that affected Clete began to fall into place. It had taken place at Canoas Air Base, Puerto Alegre, Brazil, in the commanding officer’s Mediterranean-style red-tile-roof cottage in July of ’43, days after “Aggie”—Colonel Graham—had sent “Tex”—Frade—a cryptic radio message that he was to see the CO at “Bird Cage”—Canoas, where the first Lockheed Lodestars destined for the newly formed South American Airways had been sent for final delivery to el Señor Cletus Frade, managing director of SAA.