Honor Bound (Honor Bound 1)

Mallín flashed a smile.

“Well, then,” he said, “we can have a little chat now, and wait for your luggage, Clete. Sorry about this.”

“Don’t be silly,” Clete said.

They followed her out of the butler’s pantry through a dining room, where an enormous table was already set with five places, and then across a foyer to double doors, behind which was a sitting room. One wall was filled with books.

Pamela arranged herself gracefully on a dark-brown leather couch, then reached to a side table and pressed a button.

“Perhaps it would be easier if you told me what’d you’d like,” she said. “Alberto’s English is not as good as it could be. I am permitted to offer you a drink? Henry—perhaps I shouldn’t say this—used the word ‘boy.’”

In Spanish, Clete said, “A weak one. I had champagne on the plane, and a beer at the hotel. And a glass of water first, please? The airplane dehydrated me.”

“He also didn’t tell me that you spoke Spanish,” Pamela said. “I’m disappointed; I looked forward to having someone in the house who speaks English.”

Clete switched to English: “I don’t speak English, but if you’re able to put up with my American…”

“Beggars can’t be choosers, can they?” she asked with a laugh.

A middle-aged male servant in a linen jacket appeared at the double doors, then walked into the room.

“Alberto, this is Mr. Frade, who will be staying with us. He speaks Spanish, but you are to speak Spanish with him only in an emergency. You understand? I am determined that you improve your English.”

“Sí, Señora,” he said.

“Mr. Frade will have first an agua con gas and then a scotch with a little water and ice; Mr. Mallín will have…what, Henry?”

“Scotch is fine.”

“…and if you have opened the dinner wine, I will have a Malbec. We are going to have a Malbec?”

“Sí, Señora,” he said, and half backed out of the room.

Pamela turned to Clete.

“I believe polite custom requires me to ask, ‘How was your flight?’”

“Very long,” Clete said.

She laughed dutifully. “And now you can’t get the authorities to release your luggage. I wonder what that was all about.”

So do I. Am I already a paranoid secret agent, wondering why they were searching our luggage?

“What I’m wondering,” Mallín said, “is what brings you to Argentina. Would it be rude of me to ask?”

“No, of course not. Actually, it’s pretty silly. There are apparently paranoid people in our government who suspect that both crude from Venezuela and refined product from the States is being diverted to the Germans or the Italians.”

“That’s absurd!” Mallín flared.

“So my grandfather said,” Clete replied. “But after extensive negotiations with the government, a solution was reached. If representatives of Howell, American representatives, were actually present in Argentina to more or less swear that our product is in fact staying in Argentina, the government would be satisfied. And I was chosen to come for several reasons—for one, my middle name is Howell; for another, I was recently discharged from the service and needed a job.”

“Oh, you were in the service?” Pamela asked. “Which one?”

“I would like to know where the idea started that SMIPP could be involved with something like that,” Mallín said indignantly.

“The Marine Corps, briefly,” Clete said.

“And you were released?” Pamela asked. “Or shouldn’t I have asked?”