Blood and Honor (Honor Bound 2)

She kissed him quickly and chastely on the cheek, then ran to the taxi and stepped in.

Clete watched the taxi drive off, then walked back into the foyer and went back upstairs.

Chapter Ten

[ONE]

1728 Avenida Coronel Diaz

Palermo, Buenos Aires

2055 10 April 1943

With his shotgun leaning on the paneled wall behind him, Enrico had been half dozing in an oversize dark-red leather armchair in the foyer. He almost jumped to his feet when Clete came off the elevator.

"I suppose you're going with me?" Clete asked.

Clete was now wearing a glen plaid suit, a stiffly starched white shirt, a somewhat somber tie, and wing-tip shoes. Khakis, boots, and a sweater were not the proper uniform to meet the head of the FBI in Buenos Aires-if only to politely tell him to go fuck himself.

"Where are we going?"

"To the Cafe Colon, near the opera."

"I will drive you."

"I'll drive myself, thank you," Clete said. "I am a big boy. I can even tie my own shoes."

The brilliant wit sailed over Enrico's head.

"I will go with you, of course," he said.

They went to the basement garage through the kitchen. The keys to the Buick were in the ignition, and it started immediately. But as Clete was about to put it in gear, Enrico touched his arm and opened the glove compartment and pointed.

The garage was dimly lit, and it took Clete a moment to recognize that En-rico was pointing at a.45 pistol.

It's an Argentine copy, not a Colt 1911Al, he thought. But essentially the same gun.

"OK, Enrico," he said. "Gracias."

Enrico closed the glove compartment, and Clete put the car in gear and drove out of the garage and headed downtown.

Avenida 9 de Julio, which dead-ends at Avenida del Libertador at the tracks leading to the main railroad station, is one of the widest streets in the world. Like Libertador, it commemorates Argentine Independence. While he was in Washington Clete couldn't help comparing that city to Buenos Aires. Libertador was something like Constitution Avenue, he concluded. But Washington didn't have a main avenue called The Fourth of July. He wondered why not.

There was another difference, too. Washington was "browned out." This meant that signs were not illuminated, that the lights which in peacetime shone on government buildings were no longer turned on at dusk, and that by law the top half of automobile headlights were painted over.

Theoretically, this was to deny German submarines reflected light that would allow them to more easily torpedo ships in the Atlantic. There was even a hint that it was a protective measure against German bombers attacking the nation's capital.

These measures might have made some sense in New York City, or Miami, but Washington was too far from the ocean for its night lighting to be seen there. In other words, he concluded, it was a propaganda action, to remind the Amer-ican people they were at war. This also explained the Air Raid Wardens and the patriotic citizens who spent their nights on building roofs prepared to call the alarm when the first German bomber was sighted.

The lights were on on Avenida 9 de Julio, and the huge advertising signs mounted on the buildings lining both sides of the street were brilliantly illumi-nated.

So far as he could tell, they had not been followed from the house.

He found both the Teatro Colon and a place to park the Buick without trou-ble, but they had to circle the theater-which occupies most of a city block- before he found the Cafe Colon, a not very impressive establishment literally in the shadow of the opera building.

Tony had said Leibermann would be in the basement, so he looked for and finally found a narrow curving stairway leading downward. There were perhaps twenty tables in the dimly lit room, half of them occupied.

He looked around the room. At a table halfway across it, a plump, rather dowdy-looking bespectacled man made an "over here" gesture with his hand, and Clete walked to the table. Clete signaled for Enrico to sit at another empty table. Without rising, the man put out his hand and said, in perfect Spanish, "Dr. Livingston, I presume?"