"Yes, Sir. I'm sorry, but that's the way I see it. If I had a couple of weeks, I could take soundings of the whole damned bay and come up with some decent charts. But I'll have no more than six or eight hours, and if I start maneuvering all over the bay, it will be damned obvious what I'm doing."
"Sir," Clete asked, "can you find someplace out there, within, say, a fifty-mile circle of the last known sighting of the Reine de la Mer someplace that the sub could more or less easily find, deep enough for her to lie on the bottom?"
"Frade, you probably know more about submarines than I do."
"I know nothing about submarines, Captain, except that I'm glad I don't have to serve on one."
"What are you thinking, Clete?" Graham asked.
"If the Captain can find such a place, and give its location to the skipper of the submarine
"That won't be a problem. I've made rendezvous at sea with the Devil Fish before," the Captain interrupted.
Then the sub could move close to the Reine de la Mer, Clete went on, "lie on the bottom, and surface, periscope depth only, at a specified time. If we can establish radio contact with the sub"
"And we don't know that we can," Graham interrupted.
If we can get a decent transmitter and a decent receiver from Captain Jernigan, and get it off the ship and to my father's estancia, Ettinger will be able to talk to the submarine. All he'll need is the frequency and the schedule."
"My orders are to give you whatever you ask for," Captain Jernigan said. "Butand this is probably none of my business how are you going to operate a transmitter without being caught at it? The minute we entered Samboromb?n Bay, la Armada Argentina came aboard from a pilot boat and sealed our radios. I'm sure they monitor the frequencies you'll have to use, and they'll start looking for the transmitter. What do they call it, 'triangulation'?"
"We'll keep moving the transmitter," Clete said. "Ettinger will know how to deal with that. OK, for the sake of argument. We find someplace the sub can hide on the bottom. Captain Jernigan gives the sub the precise location, plus the frequencies, the times, and the codes, when he makes the rendezvous at sea. The sub comes into Samboromb?n Bay, finds the place it can hide, hides, and then, at the scheduled time, surfaces to periscope depth and tells us she's arrived.
"The next night, I go find the Reine de la Mer, radio its position to Ettinger, who relays that position to the sub. The sub goes after the Reine de la Mer either submerged or on the surface."
"Again, I don't know a hell of a lot about submarines," Captain Jernigan protested, "but I don't think it's as easy as they make it in the movies for a submarine to hit a ship at night. I think they need more to aim at than running lights."
"It has to be at night," Graham said. "During the day the Argentine Coast Guard patrols the Bay, and the Air Service of the Argentine Army routinely overflies it."
"Ships don't enter the Bay at night?" Captain Jernigan asked.
"The channel-marking buoys are not illuminated," Graham said. "I don't know what they do in an emergency."
"Put a Coast Guardsman on the buoys with a lantern?" Jernigan asked facetiously.
"So I'll get them to light it up, turn their floodlights on," Clete said.
"How?"
"I'll buzz the Reine de la Mer," Clete said. "That'll make them turn their lights on to look for me."
"Or off," Graham said softly. "How about it, Captain? If you were anchored out there and heard an airplane engine, what about the lights?"
"Off," Captain Jernigan said without hesitation. "If they can't see you they can't bomb you."
"Sir, what if you were attacked by an airplane, strafed by a light airplane?" Clete asked. "Even strafed ineffectually," he added.
"What do you mean, 'ineffectually'?" Graham asked.
"Say with a .30-caliber Browning. That's about all I could get into the Beechcraft."
"One plane, even a fighter plane?" Jernigan said. "I'd try to fight. The natural instinct would be to fight."
"And to turn on good floodlights, if you had them, right?"
"Yes," Jernigan agreed.
"OK," Clete said.
"It's occurred to you, no doubt," Graham said, "that if they put their floodlights on you, they will get the Bofors on you seconds later?"
"And if they have their floodlights on, the submarine will have a better target than running lights."
There was no response from anyone.
"Has anybody got a better idea?" Clete said.
"I'm not sure if it's a better idea," Graham said, "but it's another idea. What about a boat? If there was a boat, I'm talking about a small boat, say, twenty-five feet, running around out there."
"The last three guys who tried that disappeared," Clete said. "No way. They would just blow it out of the water. I'll find the ship with the airplane and get them to turn their lights on."
There was silence for a moment, then Graham said, OK. The first priority is to take the transmitter and the receiver ashore. I'll go to the U.S. Embassy and have them bring them ashore under diplomatic immunity."
"That should be no problem, Sir," Commander Jernigan said. "I have some crates for the Embassy. I'll just crate up some radios and send them ashore with the other diplomatic cargo."
"Clete, what about putting Captain Jernigan's communications officer together with Sergeant Ettinger?"
"That would depend on the communications officer," Clete said without thinking, then added, "Sir, no disrespect intended. But does your communications officer know radios, or is he just filling the billet?"
"I've got a chief radioman who knows all there is to know about radios," Captain Jernigan said.
"Then he's the man, Sir, who should get together with Sergeant Ettinger," Clete said.
"Then that's our first order of business," Graham said. "Getting the Chief in here, telling him what we need, and then getting him ashore to meet Ettinger."
"I think our first order of business is to see my father," Clete said.
Captain Jernigan's eyebrows rose in question, but he didn't put the question in words.
"Do you know where he is?" Graham asked.
"By now, he should be at his house, here in Buenos Aires." "OK. We'll go face the lion in his den," Graham said. "Captain, you have my authority to make your Chief privy to your orders. When I visit the Embassy, I'll arrange for him to call on the Naval attach?."
[THREE]
1728 Avenidct Coronel Diaz
Buenos Aires
2005 24 December 1942
"I will listen to your plans, Colonel," el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade said to Colonel A. F. Graham, USMCR, "and you have my word as an officer that they will not go further than this room. But I must tell you, Sir, that I do not share my son's confidence that you are now telling him, or me, the truth."
They were seated around a large table in the library. A silver coffee service had just been delivered, together with a walnut cigar humidor. Having dismissed the servants, el Coronel Frade ceremoniously served the coffee and offered the cigars.
Frade was seated at the head of the table, with Clete and Graham facing each other across it. Enrico had pulled a chair up from another table, and was sitting with the Remington in his lap, five feet behind el Coronel Frade. He had declined coffee, but he now held a large, thick, black cigar in his teeth.