"She'd probably be all right here," Tony said practically. "This place is built like a bank. But the estancia would be better, obviously."
Clete didn't want to think about, much less talk about, the danger Dorotea was going to find herself in. He changed the subject again.
"Is Maria-Teresa pushing you to get married?"
"She's a good Italian Catholic. Good Italian Catholic girls can't go to con-fession and get absolution unless they swear to God that they'll stop... you know. If they don't get absolution, they can't take Holy Communion. That kind of pushing. She hasn't said anything."
"You haven't told her what you do, I hope?"
"Her father thinks the Reine de la Mer blew up by itself; that all the talk about Americans taking it out is bullshit. I sit there nodding my head in agree-ment. Maria-Teresa thinks I'm sort of a clerk for the Military Attach‚ at the em-bassy. So does he, by the way, the Military Attach‚."
"He's giving you trouble?"
"Not trouble. He's a colonel, I'm a lieutenant. When colonels have things they don't want to do, and there's a lieutenant around, the lieutenant does them. Last week, I inventoried the Embassy Post Exchange."
"No kidding?" Clete asked, chuckling. "That's right. He doesn't know you're OSS, does he?"
"I was told to wait until you got back and tell him. But I don't know. They gossip like fucking women around the embassy. I think everybody there knows you're OSS. And some people know I was here before."
"Commander Delojo will get him off your back."
"Are we back to him, I hope?" Tony said.
"OK. Sorry, Tony. I needed a minute. Your fearless leader has feet of clay."
"What the fuck does that mean, 'feet of clay'? I've always wondered."
"You know, I don't know," Clete confessed. "It probably means I'm telling you that you see in me a lot more than you can expect to get."
"I don't know," Tony said thoughtfully. "I mean, aside from nearly getting Mrs. Pelosi's baby boy killed, doing something that nobody in their right fuck-ing mind would even think about trying to do, what have you done so wrong?"
"You want me to( st
art with the replenishment ship?"
"Why not?"
"There's not really much more on that than when you left Washington," Clete said. "We're getting lots of intelligence about ships headed in this direc-tion. The last count was five of them. Nothing specific, nothing solid, on any one of them."
"Maybe they're sending five so we can't take them all out."
"Graham says that's not likely. For one thing, the Germans don't have that many torpedoes."
"How does Graham know that?"
"They've got a good idea of how many the Germans can make, and they're not all that hard to spot when they're being moved. Graham thinks that one of the five ships is the replacement; the others are decoys. The real ship, Graham says, may not be one of the five we know about."
"What about the airplane? How are you going to get that into the country now that..."
"... my father can't arrange it?" Clete furnished. "I don't know. Graham may come up with something. It's in Brazil, and so is the other team. They've been told to prepare to infiltrate across the Uruguay River into Corrientes Province, near some town called Santo Tome. Until Delojo gets, quote, his feet on the ground, unquote, that's something else I'm supposed to figure out how to do, get them-and all their goddamned equipment-from there to here."
"Tell me about Delojo," Tony said. "What's this business all about that you've retired from the Marines-I saw that story in the Herald-and this Commander Whatsisname has become the Naval Attach‚?"
"Graham convinced me I would be more useful if I came back here as an Argentine. Out of the Marines, and as an Argentine. That way, presuming this coup d'‚tat they're planning comes off, I'm supposed to be in a position to in-fluence the new government."
"But if you came back as an Argentine... How did you manage that, by the way?"
"I've got an Argentine passport."