“Come to attention, Major, and stay at attention until I give you further orders,” Graham said coldly.
Clete looked at him for a minute before he saw that he was absolutely serious. There was proof of that in the embarrassed looks on the faces of Milton Leibermann and Maxwell Ashton III. He felt his face flush, as, feeling foolish, he came to attention.
In my own house? What the hell is going on?
“One of the first things I learned as a young lieutenant, Major, was that in ordinary circumstances, when one is reprimanding a subordinate, one does so in private, so the officer being reprimanded won’t be embarrassed or humiliated,” Graham said matter-of-factly, almost conversationally.
“These are not ordinary circumstances,” he went on. “I asked Mr. Leibermann—and ordered Captain Ashton—to be here because I wanted witnesses. If the by-product is that you are embarrassed and humiliated, that’s unfortunate.”
“Sir, may I ask what’s going on?”
“You do not have permission to speak, Major,” Graham said. “Don’t open your mouth again until I give you permission to do so, not even to say ‘Yes, Sir.’”
Clete managed, at the last split second, to overcome his Pavlovian urge to say “Yes, Sir.”
“The reason I wanted witnesses is that, given your demonstrated willingness to disobey orders, I was forced to consider the real possibility that you are entirely capable of deciding—perhaps have already decided—that you no longer have to obey orders.
“So I will begin by explaining to you what will happen the very next time you elect to either disobey orders or take any action on your own which in my judgment violates the spirit of the orders I have given you.
“You will be ordered to return to the United States. You will become a patient at St. Elizabeth’s Mental Hospital in Washington, and you will stay there, your records marked ‘National Security Patient,’ until this war is over. If you behave while in St. Elizabeth’s, you may be allowed, once the war is over, to resign your commission for the good of the service. The other option is a court-martial, on a wide variety of charges, not all of them, frankly, justified.
“Your wife will not be granted a visa to enter the United States, which is probably a moot question, because you will not be allowed visitors while you are in St. Elizabeth’s. Any children born of your marriage will not be considered to have been born to an officer serving outside the United States, and will not, therefore, be American citizens.
“As you have already almost certainly begun to think, ‘Fuck Graham, I’ll just stay here,’ let me touch on that. If you choose to ignore an order to return to the United States, charges will be brought against you for desertion in time of war. Steps will be taken to have you expelled from Argentina. I think they will probably be successful, despite your connections here, because we will give the Argentine government reason to believe you are acting against the best interests of this country.
“Even if that fails, you will remain on the rolls as a deserter-at-large. If you should ever return to the United States, you will be arrested at the port of entry. Law-enforcement officials in Texas and Louisiana will be regularly contacted by the FBI to make sure that you haven’t managed to enter the country without being arrested. I will personally make sure that your photograph—Deserter Wanted By FBI—hangs on the bulletin board of every post office and police station in Texas and Louisiana.”
He paused and looked at Clete with loathing. “Are you getting the picture, Major Frade? You may speak.”
“What orders am I accused of disobeying, Colonel?”
“Oddly enough, I can remember them almost word for word. My last orders to you, Major, when I agreed to keep von Wachtstein’s identity secret, were ‘If something happens to you, Clete, the deal is off. So don’t do anything dangerous—like falling out of your wedding bed—or anything else risky down here. Go on the canapé and small-talk circuit. Keep your ears open. Say a kind word for our side when you get the chance.’ That may not be verbatim, but it’s pretty damned close.”
Graham looked at Leibermann. “You were there, Milton. Did I leave anything out?” Leibermann shook his head “no,” but didn’t speak. “For the record, I just repeated those orders to you, Major Frade. You are advised they are direct orders.”
“Yes, Sir,” Clete said.
“What the hell were you thinking when you flew Ashton to Uruguay in the Lockheed? Who do you think you are, goddamn it, Jack Armstrong, All-American Boy? Commander Don Winslow of the goddamned U.S. Navy?”
“In my judgment, Sir, it was the best way to exfiltrate Ashton,” Clete said.
“Then your judgment is fatally flawed! Goddamn you! Didn’t you consider the risk you were taking?”
Clete didn’t reply.
“Let me explain, since your stupidity is of such monumental proportions that you may not even know: First of all, you arrogant pup, you’re not qualified to fly that airplane. You’re a fighter pilot, not a multiengine transport aircraft pilot.”
“Sir, I flew the Lodestar from Braz—”
“Close your mouth!” Graham interrupted furiously. He paused a moment, as if considering what he wanted to say. “OK. My fault. I should have pulled you up short when that happened. That was a stupid thing for you to do. Really stupid. A combination, I suppose, of Marine Corps fighter pilot arrogance and this Jack Armstrong complex you have. What you should have done was get word to me you had never been inside a Lodestar. I could have had a qualified pilot there in forty-eight hours. Or you could have asked the Marine Corps pilot you got to give you—what, four hours instruction?—to fly it. But you got away with it, you got Ashton and the radar into Argentina, and because I didn’t think you would be so stupid as to go on flying the Lockheed without getting fully checked out in it, and certainly not by yourself, without a copilot, I said nothing. Major error in my judgment.”
He stopped, and collected his thoughts again.
“Did it even occur to you what would happen if you crashed that airplane? And I’m not speaking of killing Ashton, your fiancée, your uncle, and your sisters—”
“Colonel, if I had thought there was any danger—”