“Perhaps you should write it on the palm of your hand, if you have trouble remembering. And to answer another question you shouldn’t be asking: I feel sure that sometime during my visit, I will avail myself of Don Cletus’s famous hospitality.”
“When you see Don Cletus, please express my regards?”
“I’ll be happy to.”
“May I offer you a ride into Buenos Aires, Mr. Secretary?”
“I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you.”
“Not at all. The Alvear is right on my way.”
“Then thank you, Colonel.”
[FIVE]
Suite 407 Alvear Palace Hotel Avenida Alvear 1891 Buenos Aires, Argentina 1645 4 July 1943
Graham just had time to go into his suitcase for a change of linen and his toilet kit when there was a knock at his door.
When he opened the door, Cletus Frade was standing there. Behind him was Suboficial Mayor Enrico Rodríguez, Ejército Argentino, Retired. Graham saw that Rodríguez’s trench coat, worn over his shoulder, did not entirely conceal the self-loading shotgun he carried against his leg.
Graham waved them into the room.
“I wondered when I was going to see you, Major,” Graham said.
“I didn’t want to intrude on your conversation with Martín,” Frade said.
“You have any idea what that was all about?”
“I think he was sending us both a message that he’s watching us.”
“Is there a situation here I don’t know about?”
“That qualifies as a massive understatement,” Frade said.
“What’s with the shotgun?”
“Enrico has sworn an oath to God that what happened to my father will not happen to me,” Frade said.
Graham met Frade’s eyes and saw in them that what he’d said was a statement of fact.
“Unless you really want to stay here, I think you’d be more comfortable at San Pedro y San Pablo,” Frade said. “And we have to go there anyway.”
“Why do we have to go there anyway?”
“Today is the Fourth of July, and you, Colonel Graham, sir, will be the senior officer present as the local OSS detachment celebrates Independence Day.”
Graham met his eyes again and saw that Frade was serious about this, too.
“Won’t Martín know?”
“If we leave right now, we can probably get away from here before Martín can get his people in place to surveil you.”
Graham closed his suitcase.
“Okay,” he said.
Frade’s enormous Horch was parked in the Alvear Palace’s covered, off-the-street driveway, and when Frade, Graham, and Enrico came out of the revolving door, the top-hatted doorman hurried to open the rear door of the car.