“And now get out of here, before Delgano sees you.”
“What are you goin
g to do about Delgano while you’re gone?” Dorotea asked. “If they think we have the Nazis, he’ll be all over the place.”
“I’m taking him to Brazil with me,” Clete said. “The minute he shows up here, the managing director of South American Airways is going to tell Chief Pilot Delgano to get us seats on the first Varig flight.”
VIII
[ONE]
Aboard Varig Flight 525 Above Durazno, Uruguay 1505 17 July 1943
“Yes, I would. Thank you very much,” Cletus Frade said in response to the stewardess’s question if he would like another glass of merlot.
“And me, too, if you please,” Gonzalo Delgano said, flashing his most dazzling smile at her.
And then he watched her walk forward in the cabin.
“I forgot about that,” Frade said. “But you really are going to enjoy that, aren’t you, Señor Jefe de Pilotos?”
“Forgot about what?”
“You get to pick the stewardesses.”
“Excuse me?”
“You ever see an American football game, Gonzo?”
“In the newsreels,” Delgano said, confused.
“All those enormous young men, rushing at each other, knocking each other down, getting their teeth knocked out, breaking their arms and legs?”
Delgano nodded.
“Ever wonder why they do it?”
“It is sort of brutal, isn’t it?”
“In the newsreels you saw, did they show the cheerleaders?”
“Excuse me?”
“The pretty young girls in short skirts bouncing around?” He raised his arms above his head in a punching motion. “ ‘Go Aggies! Go Aggies!’ They’re called ‘cheerleaders.’ ”
“Yes, now that you mention it. Very interesting.”
“That’s why they do it,” Clete said seriously.
“That’s why who does what?”
“The young men are so willing to have their arms broken and their teeth knocked out. The winning team gets their pick of the cheerleaders. If you score more than twelve points, you get two.”
Delgano looked at him in shock, then realized his chain had been pulled.
“Holy Mother of God, Cletus, for a moment I actually believed you.”
“Same thing with chief pilots,” Frade said. “If he doesn’t dump more than one airplane in six months, or forget to put the wheels down for the same period of time, he gets his pick of the stewardesses.”