The Honor of Spies

And then finally the Jesuits. When they had gone through the line, the Papal Nuncio and Father Welner, each with his own umbrella holder, walked to the Mercedes limousine and got in.

Clete turned and went into the galley, which was between the cockpit and the passenger compartment. He quickly found a bottle of brandy and a snifter. He half filled the glass, then took it and the bottle to one of the first seats, sat down, and took a healthy swallow.

A sudden memory filled his mind.

"This is a long goddamn way from our puddle jumper, isn't it, Uncle Jim?" he said softly but aloud, his eyes filling with tears and his voice on the edge of breaking. "Here I am having a little snort after flying this great big beautiful sonofabitch across the Atlantic!" He raised the glass, said, "Mud in your eye!" and drained it.

James Fitzhugh Howell, Clete's uncle, who had raised him and was really the only father he had known as a child and young man, had taught Clete to fly in a Piper Cub when he was thirteen.

He poured more cognac and estimated it would be another three or four minutes before he could leave the Ciudad de Rosario and go down the stairway and put his arms around Dorotea and feel her warmth and smell her hair.

Three minutes later, a familiar voice pleaded: "Please don't say it, Cletus."

"But they will," Clete said. "If we keep meeting this way on my airplane, people will talk."

El Coronel Alejandro Bernardo Martin of the Bureau of Internal Security slipped into the seat beside him.

Clete raised his glass in salute.

"How much of that have you had?" Martin asked.

"A lot. I try never to fly sober."

"We have to talk," Martin said, shaking his head.

"Not now, please, Alejandro. You may not believe this, but I have just flown this great big airplane back and forth across the Atlantic. I have earned this." He raised the glass again. "Care to join me?"

Martin said: "SS-Brigadefuhrer Manfred von Deitzberg has just flown across the River Plate to Montevideo. In one of your airplanes."

Clete looked at him, both eyebrows raised in surprise.

Martin went on: "Carrying the passport of an ethnic German Argentine--Jorge Schenck--who died in a car crash in 1938."

"I wondered why that sonofabitch came back," Clete said, "and what he wants."

"Well," Martin said, "Adolf Hitler himself has ordered the destruction of your airplanes--the big ones--as well as your elimination. And the elimination of the Froggers. And while von Deitzberg is here, to make sure Operation Phoenix is running smoothly. There's almost certainly more."

"Where are you getting all this?" Clete asked, adding incredulously, "Adolf Hitler?"

Martin nodded. Then he asked: "Where are you going from here?"

"First, to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, and then, first thing in the morning, to Mendoza. My Lodestar's at the estancia."

"You couldn't spend the night here? Either at your place on Libertador or the big house on Coronel Diaz? There's some people I want you to talk to."

"So far as the house on Coronel Diaz is concerned, the last time that Enrico and I went there"--he nodded toward Rodriguez, who was sitting across the aisle feeding brass-cased shells into his Remington Model 11 riot shotgun--"you might recall that 'members of the criminal element' tried to kill us. Dorotea's here . . ."

"I saw her. With Sargento Gomez and what looks like four of his friends standing with her."

". . . and I don't want some bastard taking a shot at her. And, so far as the house on Libertador is concerned, I'm not sure they've had time to finish fu migating."

"Fumigating? Rats?"

"In a manner of speaking. After my Tio Juan moved out, I had the whole house painted and fumigated."

"That was necessary?"

"I thought so."

The house on Libertador had been built by Clete's late granduncle, Guillermo Jorge Frade, who had the reputation of being very fond of both women and horse racing, not necessarily in that order. The master bedroom, which took up most of the third floor of his mansion, offered a place in which he could entertain his lady guests and watch the races in the Hipodromo across the street, either separately or simultaneously.