“How do you mean, useful?”
“Tilt this country toward us, and away from Mr. Hitler and Company.”
“My initial impression of my father is that he’s a strong, intelligent man, who will tilt the way he decides to tilt, completely unaffected by his son’s nationality, or by what his son thinks or asks him to do. Incidentally, I’m quite sure he’s figured out that I’m not down here to make sure Mallín isn’t diverting crude to the Germans.”
“What makes you think so?”
“He as much as told me. It was by shading, innuendo, not in so many words.”
“What were the circumstances?”
“There was an Internal Security officer. A lieutenant colonel named Martín…”
“Not just ‘an Internal Security officer,’ Clete,” Nestor interrupted him. “Colonel Martín is Chief of the Ethical Standards Office of the Bureau of Internal Security. He reports only to the Chief of Internal Security, an admiral named de Montoya. A very competent, and thus dangerous, man.”
“My father said he’d been to see him, asking about me. As a matter of fact, he said that’s how he learned I was in Argentina.”
“That was quick work on Martín’s part,” Nestor said admiringly. “They apparently made the connection between you and your father more quickly than we thought they would. Go on.”
“Anyway, this Colonel Martín was in the Alvear Palace when I met my father.”
“Possibly surveilling your father. But that’s unlikely. He’s too important for something like that.”
“My father introduced us,” Clete went on, aware he was growing annoyed at Nestor’s frequent interruptions. “Later he told me who Martín was. And this is the innuendo I meant: He told me that I have nothing to worry about since I’m down here only for Howell Petroleum—to make sure Mallín is not diverting petroleum products.”
Nestor grunted.
“And does Mallín have any idea that you’re not down here to do that?”
“No. Or at least he didn’t. My father said Martín would probably go to see him. And that would arouse his suspicions.”
“Worst possible scenario: You will be expelled from Argentina despite your father, or possibly because your father will arrange it. You would probably have time to go underground, but that would be sticky.”
I can think of a worse scenario: The same thing will happen to me, to all three of us, that happened to the last OSS team.
“Alternative scenario,” Nestor went on. “Even if Martín has questions about your cover, he won’t connect you with the repleni
shment-ship problem yet, and you will not be expelled from Argentina.” He paused a moment, then finished that thought. “Both Martín and Admiral de Montoya are obviously reluctant to anger your father. But he will keep you under surveillance.”
“I understand.”
“You will have to be extra careful when you go to Uruguay. Which brings us to that.”
“Uruguay?”
“How soon do you think you can tear yourself away to go to Uruguay?”
“What will I do in Uruguay?”
“You and Pelosi are going to Montevideo, where you will hire a car and drive to Punta del Este. It is a rather charming little town on the Atlantic coast, quite popular with Argentineans escaping the heat of Buenos Aires. After you take the sun on the beach at Punta for a day or two, you will drive north—I’ll furnish a map—to near the Brazilian border. A quantity of explosives and detonators will be air-dropped to you there.”
“Air-dropped from where?”
“From Brazil, onto a rice field we have used before.”
“How do I get the explosives past Argentine customs when we come back? Or past Uruguayan customs leaving Uruguay?”
“The explosives themselves should pose no problem. They have been molded into a substance that looks exactly like wood, and precut to form the parts of a wooden crate. You will assemble the crates—there will be two of them, with a total weight of just over twenty-two pounds—and fill them with souvenirs of your holiday…not too heavy souvenirs; the explosives only look like wood and don’t have wood’s strength. They make some rather attractive doodads of straw, in the shape of chickens, horses, cows, et cetera. These would be ideal. You will quite openly carry the crates onto and off the ferry and through Argentine customs.”