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“Do what you’re told, Major,” Martín said. “Get me on a stretcher and get me to Don Cletus’s office!”
—
“Aside from what you did to my trousers, which were nearly new, what’s the damage?” Martín, after finding Frade’s bottle of Rémy Martin and taking a long swig, inquired of the cirujano mayor.
“You were lucky, mi General. There is simply a good deal of muscle damage. You will be on crutches for six weeks or so. But there is no bone damage, no arterial damage. I repeat, you belong in the hospital. You should be x-rayed and you should have a couple of liters of blood. And you should not be drinking that.”
“It has reduced the pain from excruciating to barely tolerable,” Martín said. “And with that in mind, I think I will have another little taste of the Rémy Martin before you admit the people waiting to see me. I would not want them to see me, as the senior officer present, drinking on duty.”
Martín picked up the bottle of cognac again and took another healthy swallow.
“Please let my people in, Cirujano Mayor,” he then said.
Major Habanzo and Captain Garcia came into the office followed by a teniente coronel of the Patricios—whose face Martín knew but whose name would not come—and Hans-Peter von Wachtstein, who now was wearing the uniform of an SAA first officer.
“You first, please, el Coronel,” Martín said. “What’s the situation?”
“The airfield is secure, mi General. The press is at the gates demanding entrance and to know what’s going on. I have told them nothing except that they will be arrested if they try to force their way in.”
“And the Horse Rifles?”
“They have been disarmed and placed in Hangar Two, mi General.”
“Habanzo, what about the passengers for the Berlin flight? Where are they?”
“In the passenger terminal, mi General. And they demand to know what’s going on.”
Flight 2230 was scheduled to depart at nine P.M. It would fly across the Atlantic Ocean to Dakar, and then to Lisbon, Portugal, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and ultimately Berlin. Its passengers would include a half-dozen senior Argentine diplomats and other government officials; three priests, one of them a Jesuit; and seven prominent Argentine businessmen. The pilot-in-command was supposed to be SAA Captain Cletus Frade.
“What happens now, Peter, without Cletus?” Martín asked. “Can you go without him?”
“No,” von Wachtstein said simply.
“Why not? He’s not the only SAA pilot.”
“The four pilots here now are qualified to fly the airplane, but none is certified for Berlin. During the flight we were going to teach them how to fly across the Russian Zone into Berlin.”
“You and Frade were to teach them, you mean.”
“Right.”
“Why can’t you do that yourself?”
“Because it has to be done by the pilot-in-command, and the pilot-in-command has to be a captain. I am only a first officer.”
“SAA has other captains certified to fly into Berlin, right?”
“Five other captains.”
“Why can’t we use one of them?”
“We need two. We’d have to find them and get them out here to the field. That would take at least two hours. Is that what you want me to do?”
Martín bit off the reply that came to his lips.
You’re more than a little drunk, Bernardo. Your mind is not as badly muddled by all that Rémy Martin as it would have been by morphine. But there’s no question that while the four ounces—at least—of the cognac you gulped down took some edge off my pain, it was at the price of at least partial intoxication.
Which is probably why I think I am facing a Kasidah situation.
