Top Secret (Clandestine Operations 1)

“You want to hear this story or not?”

“Go!”

“The phone rings. The butler tells my future father-in-law it’s for him. Señor Mallin snaps, ‘You know I don’t take calls at dinner,’ and the butler replies, ‘Señor, it is el Coronel Frade.’

“Mallin turns white. He takes the phone and oozes charm as he tells el Coronel Frade how pleased he is to hear his voice, and asks how might he be of service.

“A very loud voice that can be heard all over the dining room announces, ‘It has come to my attention that my son is under your roof. I would like to talk to him.’

“‘Your son, mi Coronel?’

“‘For Christ’s sake, Mallin! I know he’s there. Get him on the goddamned phone!’”

Cronley laughed.

“How’d he know you were there?”

“You met General Martín. The guy who runs the Bureau of Internal Security. He was a light colonel then, Number Three at BIS. It was brought to his attention that an American named Cletus Howell Frade, whose passport said he was born in Argentina, had just gotten off the Panagra Clipper. He checked and—lo and behold!—there it was, el Coronel Frade had a son named Cletus Howell Frade. He asked my father if there was anything el Coronel thought he should know about his son who had just arrived in Buenos Aires.”

“Why’d he do that?”

“My father was about to stage a coup d’état, following which he would become president of the Argentine Republic . . .”

“He was what?”

“. . . which Martín thought was a good thing, and didn’t want anything screwing it up. Are you going to stop interrupting me?”

“Sorry.”

“So I took the phone from Mallin. And a deep voice formally announced, ‘This is your father. Would it be convenient for you to take lunch with me tomorrow?’ I said, ‘Yes, sir,’ and he replied, ‘The bar at the Alvear Palace. Half past twelve.’ And he hung up.

“At twelve-forty the next day, ten minutes late—there are two bars at the Alvear, and I’d gone to the wrong one—I walked into the bar looking for a guy in a German uniform. No luck. But a guy wearing a tweed jacket and silk scarf looked hard at me. I walked over and in my best Texican Spanish asked if he was Colonel Frade.

“‘You’re late,’ he announced. ‘I hate to be kept waiting. That said, may I say I’m delighted to see you’ve returned safely from Guadalcanal.’”

“He knew you’d been on Guadalcanal?”

“Yeah. I found out later he knew just about everything else I’d ever done in my life, like when I was promoted from Tenderfoot in Troop 36, BSA, in Midland.

“Then he said, ‘With your approval, I suggest we have a drink, or two, here and then go to the Círculo Militar for lunch. That’s the officers’ club.’

“In the next thirty minutes, over three Jack Daniel’s—doubles—he politely inquired into the health of the Howells, including the Old Man, then announced I had arrived conveniently in time for the funeral next week of my cousin.”

“You had a cousin down here?”

“Cousin Jorge, the son of my father’s sister, Beatrice. Pay close attention, Jimmy, it gets complicated from this point.

“My father said Aunt Beatrice, who’d always been a little odd, poor woman, had just about gone completely bonkers when Cousin Jorge died in the crash of a Storch at Stalingrad. He was afraid she wasn’t going to make it through the funeral, which was going to include the posthumous presentation of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross.”

“You had a cousin who was a German pilot at Stalingrad?” Jimmy said incredulously.

“He was an Argentine captain, at Stalingrad as an observer.”

“Jesus Christ!”

“And sometime during this exchange of family gossip, I told him the bullshit cover story about me being medically discharged from the Corps, and how I was in Argentina to check on what happened to Howell Venezuela crude and refined product.

“To which he replied, ‘Teniente Coronel Martín—who’s seldom wrong—thinks the OSS sent you down here.’ So I asked him who Martín was, and he told me, and I said he’s wrong, to which he replied, (a) ‘Please do not insult me by lying to me,’ and (b) ‘Don’t worry about Martín. I can handle him until we get you safely out of the country.’