Empire and Honor (Honor Bound 7)

Tiny nodded.

“Not badly. Anyway, Mattingly told me that General White ‘suggested’ that since Charley Company had to be reconstituted—filled with replacements and trained—what the company needed more than a second lieutenant was a good first sergeant. He’d worry about making me a second lieutenant later. So I did that.

“And then, later, after Mattingly had made bird colonel, he decided he needed a company of good troops for OSS security and laid that requirement on General White, who sent him Charley Company—less officers, because he didn’t want them seeing things they shouldn’t and then running their mouths when they went home—on indefinite temporary duty. So here I am.”

“That’s a hell of a story,” Cronley said.

“Yeah.”

“So, what happens now? About you getting a commission?”

“Well, that was finally offered. But if I took it—the Army doesn’t like to leave directly appointed second lieutenants where they’ve been enlisted men—I knew I’d wind up as a platoon leader in, say, the 102nd Quartermaster Mess Kit Repair Company, or in some other outfit unimportant enough to let black officers command black troops, and I didn’t want that.”

He met Cronley’s eyes, and added, “What’s going on here is important. I wonder if you understand just how important.”

Cronley said aloud what he was thinking: “It doesn’t seem fair.”

“You are a naïve second lieutenant, aren’t you, Lieutenant? With all possible respect, Lieutenant, sir.”

“There was a tactical officer at A&M who was always saying the first thing a second lieutenant should do is find a good non-com and listen to him. It looks like I’ve found him.”

“I would say that’s a fair assessment of our situation,” Dunwiddie said. “May I refresh the lieutenant’s libation, sir?”

“Thank you. And I don’t mean that just fo

r the Jack Daniel’s.”

[FOUR]

Aeropuerto Coronel Jorge G. Frade

Morón, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

1005 10 October 1945

Despite several large signs in Spanish and English proclaiming ONLY AUTHORIZED VEHICLES BEYOND THIS POINT, a number of unauthorized vehicles were lined up on the tarmac in front of the passenger terminal.

There were two Mercedes-Benz and one Leyland buses, a spectacular flaming red with black fenders Horch soft-top touring sedan, a custom-bodied 1940 Packard Super 180 convertible, an only slightly smaller 1940 Packard 120 convertible, and a 1939 black Mercedes closed sedan.

The occupants of all the vehicles were awaiting the arrival of South American Airways Flight 207. It had originated in Berlin, and then—after stops at Rhine-Main Airfield, Frankfurt am Main, Lisbon, Portugal, and Dakar, Senegal—had headed out over the Atlantic Ocean.

Just over an hour before, it had established radio contact with the SAA station in Montevideo, Uruguay—120 miles east of Buenos Aires—and reported its estimated time of arrival at Aeropuerto Coronel Jorge G. Frade. SAA Montevideo had then telephoned to SAA Jorge Frade—and to some other interested persons—the imminent arrival of the Ciudad de Rosario, a Lockheed Constellation aircraft.

Even with its landing gear extended and its flaps fully down as it made its approach to Jorge Frade, the Ciudad de Rosario was, in the opinion of both her pilot in command, Cletus Frade, and her first officer, Hans-Peter von Wachtstein, one great big beautiful bird.

“Hansel,” Frade ordered, “inasmuch as our women and little ones are probably down there watching, please try very hard to get us on the ground without splattering us all over the runway.”

Von Wachtstein responded with a gesture, holding up his left hand balled into a fist, except for the center finger, which was extended. Then he moved that hand to the throttle quadrant and, with a gentle touch that most surgeons would envy, began to retard engine power.

—

As the Ciudad de Rosario turned on final, the two men in the huge Packard got out and walked to the Horch.

“Dorotea,” General de Brigada Bernardo Martín, who was in mufti, said to Señora Dorotea Mallín de Frade, “we need a quick word with Cletus, and we should have it in private.”

Señora Frade—often referred to as Doña Dorotea, a term recognizing her position within the Argentine social hierarchy—was a tall, long-legged, twenty-two-year-old blue-eyed blonde with a marvelous milky complexion. She looked like what came to mind when one heard the phrase “classic English beauty.”

“I gather you want this ‘private word’ before I see him?” she asked.