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Jimmy’s reply had immediately triggered a good deal of frenzied activity adding to the frenzied activity already in progress, which included the attempted assassination of Colonel Juan D. Perón, whom Clete referred to as his Uncle Juan.
Jimmy still had trouble remembering exactly what had happened and when, but in about the middle of it he had been in Mendoza—
That was right after Clete flew there with a wounded Colonel Perón in the back of the machine-gun-riddled SAA Lodestar.
And before the Squirt told me she’d loved me all her life—and I took her virginity. The next and last time we Did It was in the Lord Baltimore Hotel.
That was after I got checked out in the Lodestar, then headed to the Straits of Magellan. And after I came back from down there with the uranium oxide from the U-234.
And we loaded it on the Old Man’s Connie and flew it to Washington.
And the next thing I knew I was a captain.
And I was a widower—no—first I was a married man.
The next day I was a widower, and that afternoon I was a captain.
—on top of a mountain, in sort of a fort and prison run by Clete’s deputy, Major Maxwell Ashton III, and for the first time Jimmy and Clete were alone for a few minutes and Jimmy had just blurted out, “What the hell’s going on?”
“You mean here at Casa Montagna—aka Fort Leavenworth South?”
“Start with that.”
“Well, it also was built by my Great-uncle Guillermo,” Clete said, “which is why it’s called Estancia Don Guillermo. I never met him, but I understand he was not crippled by modesty and self-effacement. I inherited it from my father, and placed it in the service of the Office of Strategic Services. Next question?”
“How’d you go from being a hotshot fighter pilot to the OSS, Clete? I still remember your mom showing me the picture of you being awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for service there.”
Clete turned his head slightly and nodded. “That’s right. I never t
old you. As you know, I made Ace—that takes five kills and I got seven—with VFM-226 on Guadalcanal. For living to tell about it, there was a prize: The Corps sent me home to go on a War Bond tour. You can imagine how much fun that was. And following the tour, the Corps was sending me to Pensacola to teach fledging birdmen.
“I was in my room in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel trying to decide who I was going to have to kill to get out of both the tour and flight school when a full bull Marine colonel showed up. He handed me a picture of a man wearing what looked like a German uniform. ‘That’s your father.’
“I said, ‘Really?’ and he said, ‘We think he’s going to be the next president of Argentina.’
“And I probably said, ‘Really?’ again, and he said, ‘Lieutenant, we want you to go to Argentina and do two things. Blow up an ostensibly neutral ship which is supplying German submarines in the River Plate, and see what you can do to tilt your father to our side. Right now he’s favoring Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo.’”
“This is for real?”
Clete nodded again. “It was mind-blowing. I said, very respectfully, ‘Sir, I have never laid eyes on my father. That’s the first picture I ever saw of him. And I have no idea how to blow ships up. I’m a Marine fighter pilot.’”
“And?”
“He said, ‘You were a Marine fighter pilot. What you are now is a Basic Flight Instructor on temporary War Bond Tour Duty en route to Pensacola. We’ll teach you how to blow up ships, and I’m sure you’ll figure out some way to cozy up to your daddy once you get to Buenos Aires.’”
“Jesus!”
“Three weeks later, I got off the Panagra Clipper in the River Plate. My cover was that I had been medically discharged from the Corps and was now going to make my contribution to the War Effort by making sure none of the crude or refined product that the Old Man shipped there from Howell Petroleum Venezuela wound up in German, Italian, or Japanese hands.
“The Old Man arranged for me to stay with his major customer, who is a real pain in the ass. All Señor Enrico Mallin knew about me was that I was the Old Man’s grandson—not that my father was an Argentine.
“Two nights after I get to Buenos Aires, I’m having dinner with the Mallin family, trying to keep my eyes off his daughter—”
“His daughter?”
“Good-looking blond. You’ve met her. Her last name is now Frade.”
“That’s where you met her?”
