"I am honored, Sir and Madam," he said, "to meet the parents of the coura-geous officer who gave his life in the war against Bolshevism."
Beatrice did not seem to hear him.
"Good afternoon, Peter," she cried happily.
Peter von Wachtstein clicked his heels and bowed.
"Se¤ora," he said.
Beatrice pushed between Frau Ambassador von Lutzenberger and Stan-dartenf?hrer Goltz to clutch Peter's hand and offer him her cheek.
"And we are going to see you over the weekend, aren't we?" Beatrice said. "You'll come to the estancia for the memorial mass?"
"I hope to have that privilege, Se¤ora," Peter said.
"You'll sit with us, of course. I'll tell Se¤ora Carzino-Cormano," she said, then kissed her cheek again before resuming her place in line to shake the hand of Gradny-Sawz.
"Anton," she said, gushing sincerity. "Thank you for coming."
"Thank you having me, my dear Se¤ora," Gradny-Sawz said, and the Ger-man delegation was through the line.
A white-gloved servant showed them the door of the reception. Another servant stood just inside the door holding a tray of champagne glasses.
"The bar, gentlemen, is at the rear of the room," he said.
They all took champagne and moved into the reception.
Goltz turned over his shoulder.
"What was that about, von Wachtstein?" he asked. "With our hostess?"
Ambassador von Lutzenberger answered for him: "There is to be a private memorial service, family and friends only, for Oberst Frade at his estancia on Sunday. To which, apparently, our von Wachtstein has been invited. Since he escorted the remains of Hauptmann Duarte to Buenos Aires, the Duartes seem to have almost adopted him."
"How interesting," Goltz said.
Fascinating. Von Wachtstein has developed a friendship, a close friendship, with the people who run the Anglo-Argentine Bank. That may prove very useful indeed.
[FOUR]
Clete's first visitors in the upstairs sitting were Se¤ora Claudia Carzino-Cormano and her daughters. He had been sitting slumped in an armchair with a drink, reading with disbelief the Buenos Aires Herald.
It was clear to him that the front-page story-which described him as a hero of the Battle of Guadalcanal, retired from the Marine Corps as a Major, and an Argentine citizen-had come directly from the typewriter of the Infor-mation Officer at the American Embassy. He wondered if it had been written at the Ambassador's orders, or whether Colonel Graham had something to do with it. That seemed unlikely, but Graham routinely did unlikely things.
Accordingly to other stories in the Herald, the Germans and the Japanese were retreating on all fronts after suffering severe losses. Hitler was about to fall on his knees and beg for mercy, and Emperor Hirohito was next in line.
The last he had heard, the Germans were still occupying most of the land-mass of Europe. And the Japanese were still in Singapore, and for that matter, the Philippines, plus all the little Pacific islands from which the Marine Corps would have to remove them, in fighting that was going to be at least as bloody as it had been on Guadalcanal.
He wondered how the readers of the Herald reconciled the optimistic news reports on the front page with the two and a half pages of obituaries, often with photographs, of the Anglo-Argentines who had been killed fighting with the His Britannic Majesty's Royal Army, Navy, and Air Force all over the world. Three Anglo-Argentines, he noticed, had been killed fighting with His Royal Aus-tralian Air Force in New Guinea, another place from which the Japanese obvi-ously had no plans of retreating.
When he saw Claudia enter the room, he dropped the newspaper on the floor beside him, jumped to his feet, and went to her.
"How're you holding up, sport?" he asked, although through her black veil he could see in her eyes and the strain oh her face the answer to that.
She pushed the veil off her face and hugged him and tenderly kissed his cheek.
"So far, not bad," she said. "At least I'm not drinking my way through it."
She indicated the whiskey glass he had left on the wide arm of the chair.