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“Good. I was wondering how I was going to find you.”
“Excuse me?”
“Have you got something that says you’re the ambassador? A diplomatic passport, a carnet, something like that?”
“I don’t think I like your attitude or tone of voice, señor.”
“I don’t like yours much, either,” Frade said. “We’re back to how do I know you’re who you say you are?”
“Señor Aragão has told you who I am.”
“He’s told me who he thinks you are.” Frade looked at Aragão. “Has this fellow ever shown you his identification, Fernando?”
“Actually, no,” Aragão replied. “But—”
“There you go,” Frade said.
Coldly furious, de Hernández said, “I asked you before, señor. Who are you?”
“If you can show me something that says you’re the Argentine ambassador, I’ll tell you. Otherwise, I’m going to get in a taxi and go to the hotel. It’s been a long flight, and I’m tired.”
The ambassador came up with a diplomatic carnet and shoved it at Frade.
Frade examined it.
“This is in Portuguese,” he said. “I don’t speak Portuguese. You don’t have a passport?”
The ambassador produced his diplomatic passport. “I hope you find that satisfactory, señor,” he said sarcastically.
“Well, it’s a step in the right direction. Have you got our overflight clearances, Mr. Ambassador?”
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After a moment’s hesitation, he said, “There is a problem. A small problem—”
“In other words, you don’t have them?”
“You said that once I established my bona fides you would identify yourself.”
“My name is Frade. General Farrell sent word to me that you—the Argentine Foreign Ministry anyway; I don’t recall that he specifically mentioned the Argentine ambassador to Portugal—would have the necessary overflight permission waiting for me when we arrived in Lisbon. And now you’re telling me you don’t have them. I can’t believe that General Farrell would tell me something he didn’t believe. Exactly what’s going on here, Mr. Ambassador?”
“Would you be so kind, Señor Frade, to tell me your function in this mission?”
“I’m the managing director of South American Airways. When General Farrell asked me to set this up, I was of course, as a patriotic Argentine, anxious to do what I could to rescue our diplomats from Germany, and I decided the best way I could do that was to fly the mission myself.”
“You’re a pilot?”
“How could I possibly fly this mission if I wasn’t a pilot, Mr. Ambassador?”
“I wasn’t told any of this,” the ambassador said.
“Why should you have been? And there is another problem, Mr. Ambassador. When we were at the North American Val de Cans Airfield in Brazil, I was summoned by the general in command. He made two things clear to me. First, that he suspects this flight is a cover under which senior former German officials—Nazis, to put a point on it—will be allowed to escape Germany under Argentine diplomatic protection—”
“That’s outrageous!”
“That’s what the North American general suspects. Second, he told me that if we are caught smuggling Nazis out of Germany, not only will we be tried by a U.S. Military Tribunal and put in prison for at least ten years, but they will confiscate the airplane.”
“They couldn’t do that,” Ambassador Hernández said. “We have diplomatic immunity!”
