So how do we fix explosives to her hull?
It can't be done, not the way we've planned. I'll have to come up with something else.
What? Find some excuse to bring a boat alongside and have Tony fix his charges while I go on board and. . .
And what?
The last team was probably eliMi?ated trying something just like that.
By air?
Not with this airplane, certainly. Not even with a Wildcat. You can't take out something that large with .50-caliber machine guns. I know that for a fact. And that ship has more antiaircraft weaponry on it than any Jap freighter I ever strafed.
What the hell do I do now?
[TWO]
Estancia Santa Catharina
Buenos Aires Province
1425 15 December 1942
Take a good look, my darlings, Claudia said to the two very beautiful, black-haired, stylishly dressed young women who came out to the Beechcraft as Clete was tying it down, "this is Cletus. El Coronel has decided that Cletus will marry one of you. Which of you will have him?"
"I said nothing of the kind," el Coronel protested as the girls gave him their cheeks to be kissed.
The younger girlshe looked about twentyblushed, giggled, and smiled. The other girl, who looked several years older, was obviously not amused.
"How do you do?" she said in English. "I have seen your pictures, of course. I am Isabela Carzino-Cormano. I am very pleased to make your acquaintance."
It sure doesn't sound like it.
"I am overwhelmed," Clete said. "How soon do you think we can schedule the wedding?"
"I see that you take after Uncle ... your father," Alicia, the younger one, said with a giggle.
Isabela treated both of them to an icy smile.
They started to walk toward the ranch house.
"Somehow, I don't think she intended that as a compliment," Claudia said. "You may have to settle for Alicia."
"Can't I have both?"
"That's an idea," el Coronel said. "That is an American custom. The Mormons in Utah can have as many wives as they wish."
"Really?" Alicia asked. "That's terrible!"
"A man must be prepared to make many sacrifices in life," el Coronel said. "Two wives, four, six ... whatever duty requires."
"Now, I am not amused," Claudia said. "Jorge, you always go too far!"
She said that because she's pissed that he hasn't proposed marriage to her. Why not? I have no idea.
The faces of Claudia's daughters showed that they had made the same interpretation.
"I saw you, Cletus," Alicia changed the subject quickly, "at the English Tennis Club, playing with Dorotea Mallin."
"If you two play hard to get," el Coronel said, "I am sure that Dorotea would be happy to have him."
"She's only a kid, Dad," Clete blurted.
"She's what, eighteen, nineteen years old," his father said. "That's old enough."
"And she looked at him as if he gives milk," Alicia said. "Everybody at the English was talking."
"That is quite enough!" Claudia Carzino-Cormano flared. "You're embarrassing Cletus. That includes you, Jorge!"
El Coronel did not seem at all repentant, but he moved to another subject.
We have decided, your mother and I, about the travel arrangements for tomorrow," he announced to the girls, then stopped. "Why don't we go into the house? I don't suppose that you have any champagne chilled, Claudia?"
"You can have coffee. You have had quite enough champagne."
"A few glasses..."
"Most of two bottles. You convinced yourself that Cletus wrecked the airplane, and that it was your fault. Coffee!"
"As you wish," Frade said, and marched across the verandah as if he owned it, to sit in a leather armchair. To judge by the cigar humidor and ashtray on a table beside it, he had used the chair before. He opened the humidor, extended it to Clete, who took one of the large black cigars inside.
"I was not at all concerned with Cletus's ability to fly the airplane. I thought perhaps he had mechanical difficulties, or ran out of fuel."
Or became lost, or the wings or the engine fell off. You have an active imagination, precioso, and it was running at full speed."
"I was speaking of the travel arrangements for tomorrow," el Coronel said, changing the subject. Again he addressed Isabela and Alicia. "This afternoon, Enrico will come here in the station wagon for the luggage. He and Se?ora Pellano will carry it to my house, where she will arrange things for your stay. In the morning, your mother and I will drive to Buenos Aires in my Horche, and you will go with Cletus in his Buick. You will have to direct him to my house, as he does not know the way."
"Is he going to the funeral?" Isabela asked, surprised. Unpleasantly surprised, it was immediately clear.
"Of course he is," Claudia Carzino-Cormano said quickly, and a little sharply. "Jorge was his cousin."
If I have a choice in the matter, I would prefer to drive into Buenos Aires this afternoon with Enrico in the station wagon," Isabela said.
What did I ever do to you, honey? As far as I'm concerned, I don't want to go to the goddamned funeral in the first place, and so far as I'm concerned, you can walk to Buenos Aires.
"You will not go with Enrico and Se?ora Pellano in the station wagon," her mother said flatly. "It would be unseemly for Cletus and Alicia to travel alone."
"And it won't be unseemly for him to be at the funeral?"
"You are excused, Isabela," Claudia Carzino-Cormano said furiously.
Claudia waited until the sound of Isabela's high heels on the tile floor of the house had died.
"I'm am so sorry, Cletus," she said. "I apologize."
"Did I somehow give offense?"
"She was close to Jorge," Claudia said.
"Not really," Alicia added. "But now that he's dead, she's convinced herself she was in love with him."
Her mother looked angrily at her.
"That's a terrible thing to say!"
"It's true. She'd wear widow's black if she thought she could get away with it. It draws attention to her."
Claudia glowered at her, then shrugged her shoulders and let the remark go unchallenged.
"I always thought that Isabela and Jorge ..." el Coronel said, leaving the rest unsaid. "But that certainly doesn't give her the right to treat Cletus as if... as if he's an enemy officer."
"Jorge, she wasn't doing that at all!" Claudia said.
Why else would she feel it was unseemly for Cletus to be at Jorge's funeral?"
"Because she is a fool, Uncle Jorge," Alicia said.
"Alicia, that's the last word I want to hear from you," Claudia said angrily, and turned to el Coronel. "Honey," she said almost plaintively, "I'll speak to her. I'll make sure she understands that it was the anti-Christ communists who killed Jorge, not the Americans."
While he was flying an airplane for the Germans, who are murdering hundreds of thousands of women and children.
"Please do," Frade said, not pleasantly. "I think an apology to Cletus is in order."
That was not a suggestion from a visitor. Obviously, my father has the same kind of authority in this house as Claudia does in his. I wonder why he never married her. He said she was a widow.
"No apology is necessary," Clete said. "Except from me. I'm sorry to be a source of unpleasantness, Claudia."