“What does that mean?”
“I’m drawing flight pay. Or at least I think I am; I haven’t been paid in months….”
“I don’t think I understand.”
“The Marine Corps pays pilots extra for flying. To qualify for it, you have to fly at least four hours a month.”
“You don’t need money,” Humberto said.
“Uncle Humberto, I’m surprised at you. You, of all people, a banker, must certainly know there is no such thing as too much money!”
Uncle Humberto laughed dutifully. Then he put his hand on Cletus’s arm and, when Cletus looked at him in surprise, met his eyes. “What were you really doing with the airplane, Cletus?” he asked. “Or what are you planning to do with it?”
“You don’t really want to know, in case someone asks you about it.”
“What, Cletus?”
“I’m going to fly to Montevideo in the morning.”
“Why?”
“Captain Ashton has been ordered to Río de Janeiro. Me taking him out of the country in the Lodestar seems to me to be the best way to do that. Once he’s in Uruguay, no problem. He has a Uruguayan passport. Getting him out of Argentina is the problem.”
“Am I allowed to ask why he’s going to Río?”
“I think when he gets there they’re going to hand him a diplomatic passport and put him on the next plane back to Buenos Aires.”
“So all you have to do is get him to Uruguay? You won’t have to bring him back?”
“When he comes back, he’ll be legal.”
“And you are just going to illegally—that is, without going through customs and immigration—just going to fly to Montevideo?”
“Another option would be to fly him across the Río Plate in one of the Cubs and put him out in some farmer’s field, but I think the Lodestar makes more sense. If I dumped the Cub landing it, that would be kind of hard to explain.”
“‘Dumped the Cub’?”
“Crashed it.”
“Yes, it would. You are planning to land at Carrasco?”
Clete nodded.
“And what about customs and immigration?”
“Don’t I have an estancia over there someplace?”
“You have a small estancia and a large one, and you have a summer house near Puente del Este.”
“And did my father ever fly the Beech to Uruguay?”
“The Staggerwing? Yes, he did. Often.”
“And did he always cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s for immigration and customs, or did he just go?”
Humberto’s shrug answered the question. “I see your thinking. You think that because your name…”
“…is Frade, I can get away with a lot in Argentina, and presumably in Uruguay, too.”