It was clear that the corporal thought this highly unlikely.
"Is that so? You got anything to prove it, Colonel!"
Colonel Graham had with him his Marine Corps identification card, his JCS Letter Orders, and another plastic enclosed card identifying him as the Deputy Director For Western Hemisphere Operations of the Office of Strategic Services. But before leaving Porto Alegre, he had placed all of these documents into the false bottom of one of his suitcases.
But, he realized, he was not without the means to convince the corporal that he was a fellow Marine.
"Listen to me, son," he said. "Unless I am inside the Embassy talking to the Duty Officer within the next thirty seconds, you're going to be a buck private on your way to permanent duty cleaning mess-hall grease pits on Parris Island so fast it will take a week for your ass to catch up with you. Now open this god-damned gate!"
"Aye, aye, Sir," the corporal said as he reached for the key to the padlock. As they reached the open door to the Embassy building, the corporal vol-unteered the information that Mr. Stevenson was in the building but had left or-ders that he was not to be disturbed by anybody but the Ambassador.
"That was before I got here, son," Graham said. "Tell him I'm here."
"Aye, aye, Sir," the corporal said. "I'll take you to his office."
"Thank you."
The office of the Cultural Attach‚ was in the basement of the villa. The corporal knocked on the door.
It was opened by a nice-looking young man in his thirties whose face bore a look of resigned tolerance.
"Corporal, I said I didn't want to be bothered," he said, and then saw Gra-ham. "Jesus Christ! Colonel Graham!"
"Hello, Stevenson," Graham said.
"You know the Colonel, Sir?" the corporal asked. "Yes, I do," Stevenson said.
"Yes, Sir. Then I'll just log him in."
"No, Corporal, don't do that," Graham said. "Actually, since you didn't see me, there's no reason to log me in." The corporal looked at Stevenson.
"You didn't see Colonel Graham, Corporal," Stevenson said. "I'll explain this to the Security Officer."
"Yes, Sir."
"Come in, Colonel," Stevenson said. There was a man sitting on a battered leather couch in Stevenson's small office.
"Don't tell me this is the legendary Colonel A. F. Graham in the flesh," the man said.
"Who are you?"
"My name is Leibermann, and before you jump all over Stevenson's ass for talking to me, I came to see him."
"Is that so? Why?"
"Has my fame preceded me?" Leibermann asked. "Can I infer from the ut-ter lack of surprise on your face that you know who I am?"
"I know who you are, Mr. Leibermann. What I'm curious about is what you're doing here."
"Tex Frade asked me to see what I could do to keep your man Ettinger alive. I'm sorry to tell you I failed."
"What are you saying? Ettinger's dead?"
"Dead, and they mutilated the corpse to send a message."
"What kind of a message? To whom?"
"That's what Stevenson and I were talking about," Leibermann said. "But since Stevenson won't tell me what Ettinger was doing over here, we aren't do-ing very well with our little game of Twenty Questions."