"Thank you. I really thought that would be your reaction. On my part, un-less asked directly, I will not report that we made a passenger stop here."
"Thank you."
"I am, of course, honor bound to inform Coronel Martin. But I don't think that will be a problem for you. He already knows about your radio station, and I'm sure understands the mission of the second OSS team. If he wanted to shut you down, he could have done so before now."
Clete nodded.
"What about the people at Posadas?" Clete asked.
"I may be wrong, but I don't think they will have anything to say. They know nothing except that you and I took on fuel and some unidentified passen-gers at Posadas in connection with Outline Blue. They may have thought that Captain Ashton's accent was odd, but he spoke Spanish-and you speak Spanish like an Argentine-and they have no reason to suspect that any of you are norteamericanos."
"And Colonel Porterman?"
"If the airplane appears at Campo de Mayo, he will presume that any prob-lems we faced were solved. He took my word that your passengers and their cargo do not pose any threat to Argentina. He was a friend of your father's. He wishes you no harm."
"OK, Capitan," Clete said, putting out his hand to Delgano. "We have a deal. Now let's get the aircraft unloaded, and then we'll take it to Campo de Mayo."
As Clete was walking Delgano through the preflight check of the Lockheed, Tony Pelosi arrived in the 1941 Studebaker Clete had seen at the radio station. Chief Schultz drove up fifteen minutes later at the wheel of a Model A truck.
Ettinger, Clete decided, is probably monitoring the radio.
Then he sensed that something was not as it should be. Neither the Chief nor Tony smiled when they came up. The reverse. They both looked uncom-fortable.
"Where the hell is my brass band?" Clete asked.
"Ettinger took off," Tony blurted.
"He did what?"
"He took off."
"Took off to where?" Clete asked.
Tony looked uncomfortably at Delgano, visibly wondering if he should continue talking in the presence of an Argentine.
"I have two men here who were supposed to keep Sergeant Ettinger on the estancia," Delgano said.
"How much does this guy know?" Tony blurted.
"He knows the Germans are trying to kill Ettinger," Clete said.
"He probably went to Uruguay," Chief Schultz said.
"What the hell for?"
"The Chief thinks it's got something to do with the message where you told Graham the name of the German in Montevideo," Tony said.
"How did he see that?" Clete asked furiously.
"That's my fault, Cle... Major," Tony said. "Ettinger was awake when I started to encrypt it. The Chief was asleep. Ettinger's better with that than I am. So, instead of fucking it up, or waking the Chief, I asked Ettinger if he would do it."
"Jesus H. Christ, Tony! I can't believe you were that stupid!"
"Neither can I, now," Tony said. "Anyway, the next morning, he wasn't there. He left this for you."
Tony handed him a sheet of paper, on which Ettinger had typed:
Clete: