The Honor of Spies

When Clete had first come to Argentina and made his peace with his father, his father had turned the mansion over to him. Clete had been in Guillermo Jorge Frade's enormous bed when the first assassination attempt had been made. The assassins came there after slitting the throat of the housekeeper, la Senora Mariana Maria Dolores Rodriguez de Pellano, Enrico's sister, in the kitchen.

And three days later, having learned of the attempted assassination, la Senorita Dorotea Mallin, whom Clete had thought of as "The Virgin Princess," had stormed into the bedroom, angrily berating Cletus for not having called her. In the discussion that followed, la Senorita Mallin had not only lost her virginity but become with child.

The memory of that had caused Clete's stomach to almost literally turn when his mind filled with images of Juan Domingo Peron and his thirteen-year-old paramour in the same bed. He wasn't sure that a coat of paint and a thorough fumigation would correct the situation, but it couldn't hurt.

"Your Tio Juan is one of the things we have to talk about," Martin said. "This is important, Cletus."

"You're asking," Clete said thoughtfully. "Usually, it's 'come with me or get tossed into the back of a BIS car in handcuffs.' "

"I'm asking," Martin said.

After a moment, Clete said, "Okay. I'll send Enrico to put Dorotea in the Horch. It's in the hangar. Then, just as soon as that crowd thins out, we'll drive to the house on Libertador. Under the capable protection of the stalwart men of the Bureau of Internal Security."

"Thank you," Martin said sincerely. And then he chuckled. "I was just thinking, honestly, that 'with Don Cletus's private army out there, it should be completely safe.' How many of your men are out there, anyway?"

"Mi coronel, I told Gomez to bring at least thirty," Enrico Rodriguez answered for him. "And I told him that if anything happened to Dona Dorotea or Don Cletus, I would kill him."

He pushed the bolt-release button on the side of the Remington Model 11. With a loud metallic chunk, it fed a brass-cased round of double-ought buckshot into the chamber.

Then Enrico stood up and walked down the aisle of the passenger compartment to the door.

[TWO]

Suite 308

Hotel Casino de Carrasco

Montevideo, Uruguay

1745 1 October 1943

SS-Brigadefuhrer Manfred von Deitzberg was a little surprised that everything so far had gone as smoothly as von Gradny-Sawz had said it would. Neither the immigration officers in Buenos Aires nor those here had questioned his Jorge Schenck passport.

Halfway across the River Plate, it occurred to von Deitzberg that the South American Airways Lockheed Lodestar was far more comfortable than the last transport aircraft he had flown in--the Heinkel, which had taken him from Berlin to the submarine pens at Saint-Nazaire.

That had triggered several thoughts, the first that he didn't care what he had to do to avoid it, he was not going to return to Germany aboard a gottverdammt U-boat. That had been immediately followed by the realization that he probably would not be returning to Germany by any means.

The conversation he had had with von Gradny-Sawz had brought that out in the open. Von Deitzberg had known it all along, of course, but even privately thinking that the war was lost had, until now, seemed treasonous.

How can the truth be treasonous?

Von Paulus had lost 100,000 men defending Stalingrad and had taken the 70,000 still alive into Russian captivity when he finally had to surrender.

Doenitz has had to call off the submarine interdiction of the supply convoys from the United States and South America because of his losses.