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Office of Ethical Standards, Bureau of Internal Security Ministry of Defense Edificio Libertador, Avenida Paseo Colón Capital Federal, Buenos Aires, Argentina 1220 13 July 1943
Major Gonzalo Delgano, Argentina Air Service, Retired, stood outside the office door of Colonel Alejandro Bernardo Martín, chief of the Office of Ethical Standards, and waited patiently until Martín sensed he was there and looked up at him.
Martín smiled and waved Delgano into his office.
“And how is the soon-to-be chief pilot of South American Airways doing this morning? Have you got time for lunch?”
“Not only do I have time, I need sustenance badly,” Delgano said. “I spent the morning marching around what is to be the airfield of South American Airways.”
“Really? And where is that?”
“In Morón, about seven kilometers from El Palomar.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Absolutely. No sooner had I hung up talking to you this morning than Frade was on the phone. He said he would meet me in half an hour at El Palomar, and wanted my opinion of what he called ‘the base.’ I thought he was going to show me some maps—”
“But?” Martín interrupted, smiling.
“When I got to El Palomar, one of his bodyguards—not Enrico Rodríguez . . . the other one?”
“Sargento Rodolfo Gómez, Retired?”
Delgano nodded. “ . . . Gómez was there, with a Ford station wagon. And a few minutes later, Frade landed in a Piper Cub.”
“And where was Sergeant Major, Retired, Rodríguez? In the Piper Cub?”
Delgano nodded again. “With his shotgun. Which I had the feeling he wanted to use on me. Anyway, Rodríguez got out of the airplane and I got in, and off we took. Five minutes later, we landed on what I later learned was the feeding field for Frade’s slaughterhouse. You know, where they hold the beef if too many show up at once?”
"I know the place.”
“There must have been five hundred heads on the field, being rounded up and loaded on trucks by his gauchos—I later learned it was for movement to another slaughterhouse he owns out by Pilar—plus a small army of surveyors, plus half a dozen pieces of engineering equipment—bulldozers, scrapers, that sort of thing—waiting for the surveyors to finish putting flags in the ground so they could get to work.”
“He’s building an airfield out there? Did he tell you why?”
“He did,” Delgano said, smiling. “He said he thought at first he’d build ‘the base’ on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo but had decided against it . . .” He stopped, shook his head, chuckled, then went on. “. . . because he wanted to spare you having to drive all the way out to the estancia all the time to make sure he wasn’t doing anything he shouldn’t be.”
“He actually said that?” Martín asked, smiling.
Delgano nodded.
“And that he didn’t want to rent hangars and shops—or build them—at El Palomar because he thought they’d want too much rent. And he had been thinking of closing the Morón slaughterhouse anyway.”
“What we have here, Gonzalo, is another incident of Don Cletus telling us the truth but making us wonder what he’s not telling us.”
“Yes, sir, I think that’s the case.”
“But he’s right. We can keep an eye on South American Airways easier in Morón than we could at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo. I’m presuming it is suitable for an airfield?”
“Ideal, actually. He can put in two runways without much leveling, and there’s a railroad siding. Where cattle have arrived until now, railway wagons of stone from Mendoza will soon start arriving to pave the runways. He’s got everything pretty well figured out.”
“That’s what worries me,” Martín said. “Can he finish his airfield by the time he gets airplanes?”
“Probably not,” Delgano said. “He said we ought to be hearing when the first Lodestar will be at Pôrto Alegre in the next couple of days.”
“You have to admire his self-confidence. He doesn’t have permission from the interior ministry to start his airline, and he’s already building an airfield for it, and buying airplanes.”
“Fourteen of them,” Delgano said. “Which poses the problem of getting the right kind of pilots for them.”
