Reluctantly, but with no other choice that he could see, Peter went to Clete for assistance. And Clete in turn went to his father, carrying with him Generalleutnant von Wachtstein's letter to Peter. The letter so moved el Coronel Frade that he wept. And he immediately enlisted his brother-in-law, Humberto Valdez Duarte, Managing Director of the Anglo-Argentine Bank, to deal with the secret investment and safekeeping of the money.
"Saying I'm sorry about your father seems pretty damned inadequate, Cletus."
Clete shrugged his understanding.
"Tell me what you know about what happened," he said.
"I didn't know about the details," Peter said. "But I was aware that some-thing like that was going to be attempted. I tried to tell your father that.... I'm terribly sorry, Clete."
"Why?"
"I suppose I don't enjoy the complete confidence of Oberst Gr?ner," Peter said. "Oh, you mean why did they... ?"
"Kill my father?"
"The order came from Berlin. Both Gr?ner and the Am
bassador tried to stop it. Gr?ner for professional reasons-he knew how angry your father's friends would be. Von Lutzenberger? I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he happily went along with Gr?ner's objection that it would cause trouble. What I think-and this is only a guess-is that there were several reasons for the assassination. One, they didn't want your father to become President of Ar-gentina. Two, they couldn't let the destruction of the Reine de la Mer go un-avenged. You were in America... your father was here. What do they call that, 'two birds with one stone'?"
"Christ!"
"Three," Peter went on, "they wanted to punish your father for changing sides, to make the point that traitors can expect to be punished. Four, they wanted to frighten the Grupo de Oficiales Unidos, make the point that they have the ability to assassinate anyone who gets in their way."
"But Gr?ner gave the order, right?"
"Gr?ner carried out the order."
"What's the difference?"
Peter shrugged.
"I'm going to get that sonofabitch," Clete said evenly.
"If you could get him, which might not be easy to do..."
"I'm going to get that sonofabitch!"
"... all that will happen is that they will send somebody else in, even be-fore they persona non grata you out of Argentina," Peter said. "As a matter of fact, there's already somebody here."
"Excuse me?"
"I spent most of the day with Standartenf?hrer Josef Goltz."
"What's a Standartenf?hrer?"
"Colonel, in the SS," Peter said. "We had a Lufthansa Condor flight to-day..."
"I saw it. It was making its approach as we came in," Clete said. "Good-looking plane."
"... and he was on it. I thought it was significant that he left Berlin right af-ter we cabled them about what had happened to your father."
"You think he's the man who ordered-"
"I don't know that," Peter said. "It's possible. He's some sort of a big shot, I know. Just before he came here he was at Wolfsschanze..."
"Where?"
"Hitler's headquarters-it means 'Wolf's Lair'-near Rastenburg, in East Prussia. That it even exists is supposed to be secret. And he's Sicherheitsdienst."