Colonel Graham pushed past Frade, entered his room, and closed the door.
“The question was, ‘Are you acquainted with Howard Hughes?’ You may answer ‘Yes, sir’ or ‘No, sir.’”
“Yes, sir.”
“Mr. Hughes told me you are the son of Jorge Guillermo Frade. You have the same answer options, Mr. Frade.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
“Sir, permission to speak, sir?”
“Granted. You may stand at Parade Rest.”
“Yes, sir. Sir, did Howard tell you I wouldn’t know the sonofabitch if I fell over him?”
“He did mention something along those lines. Tell me, Mr. Frade, are you looking forward to the War Bond Tour? And teaching people how to fly?”
“No, sir.”
“If I could get you out of both, would you accept a top-secret overseas assignment involving great risk to your life?”
“What kind of an assignment?”
“What part of ‘top secret’ didn’t you understand, Mr. Frade?” Graham said.
Then he handed Frade a photograph of a man wearing what looked like a German uniform, including the steel helmet, standing and saluting in the backseat of an open Mercedes-Benz.
“That’s what your father looks like. I don’t want you falling over the sonofabitch without knowing who he is.”
“Colonel, what’s this all about?”
“I’ll answer that, Mr. Frade, but it’s the last question you get. What I want you to do is go down to Argentina and persuade your loving daddy to tilt the other way. Right now he’s tilted toward Berlin.”
He handed Frade a sheet of paper. The letterhead read: OFFICE OF STRATEGIC SERVICES, WASHINGTON, D.C. Clete had never heard of it.
“Sign that at the bottom. It’s a formality. What it is is your acknowledgment that you fully understand all the awful things your government will do to you if you run off at the mouth.”
There was too much small print to read. Frade looked at Graham.
“Or don’t sign it, Mr. Frade. Your call. But I’m on a Transcontinental and Western flight to Washington in ninety minutes. With you or without you.”
He extended a pen to Frade, who took it and scrawled his signature.
Graham then folded the sheet of paper and put it in his suit coat’s inside pocket.
“Welcome to the OSS, Mr. Frade,” Graham said. “And I bring greetings from your grandfather. If you’re a good boy, I’ll try to get you a couple of days with him before we put you on the Panagra flight to Buenos Aires.”
“You know my grandfather?”
“He doesn’t like your father very much, does he?” He did not wait for a reply, and nodded toward the bedroom. “Now, you’d better pack.”
“That will be all, Amelia,” el Colonel Perón said. “No calls, no visitors.”
“Sí, señor.”
Cranz waited until the maid had closed the double doors to the library.