“Absolutely,” Dorotéa said without hesitation.
“I accept with great pleasure.”
“The invitations will go out on Monday,” Dorotéa said. “It will be at El Capilla Nuestra Señora de los Milagros on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.”
“So I understand,” Martín said.
“Your sister-in-law told you that too?” Clete asked. “Just out of personal curiosity, Bernardo, who does she work for, you or the Archbishop?”
“I think she is what people in the intelligence business refer to as an informal but usually reliable source of information,” Martín said.
“I suppose people like that can be very useful,” Clete said, “to someone in the intelligence business.”
“Oh, yes, indeed.”
“Mi Coronel,” the customs officer interrupted hesitantly. “With your permission, Señor, may we proceed with the inspection of the aircraft and the luggage?”
“Oh, I don’t think that will be necessary,” Martín said. “Señor Frade and Señor Duarte are prominent citizens of our country. I can’t image that they would try to smuggle anything into Argentina. Or, for that matter, out of Argentina. You may have your records indicate that I waived the customs inspection. If you will have someone stamp their passports, they can be on their way.”
“Sí, Señor.”
“That’s very good of you, Bernardo.”
“It’s nothing, Cletus. What are friends for?”
“But you would like a tour of the airplane?”
“I would very much like to see the inside.”
Clete waved him onto the Lodestar.
Twenty minutes later, Martín watched the Lodestar lift off, genuinely impressed both with the technology it represented—four hundred kilometers in one hour! And it isn’t a fighter plane, which you expect to be very fast, but a transport, with leather-upholstered seats for fourteen people!—and with the pilot—Gonzalo Delgano says that two highly skilled pilots are needed to operate it, and here Frade is casually flying it by himself.
He considered leaving instructions with the airport commander that the Lodestar was never again to be cleared for departure without his being notified beforehand, but decided against it.
It would be a waste of time and effort.
Cletus Frade would expect him to do something like that, and if he decided in the future to use the aircraft for anything illegal, he wouldn’t bother to clear customs and immigration beforehand.
[FOUR]
Estancia Santo Catalina
Near Pila
Buenos Aires Province, Argentina
1645 2 May 1943
I am not buzzing Estancia Santo Catalina with this great big sonofabitch, Cletus Frade told himself. All I am doing is making a very low, very slow approach to my airstrip.
It wasn’t very low, actually, about 500 feet over the roof of the main house, but it wasn’t very slow, either. The Dash One said the Lodestar would stall at about 75 knots. Since he hadn’t had the opportunity to stall the Lodestar yet, the safe thing to do was perform a maneuver like this at three times stall speed, which translated to approximately 230 knots.
Only two people sitting in the gazebo near the main house smiled when the Lodestar flashed overhead with a deafening roar and even perhaps a little propeller wash.
Claudia Carzino-Cormano wasn’t sure later whether the tall flower vase had been knocked over by wind from the airplane, or whether Señor Enrico Mallín had jarred the heavy table as he jumped to his feet and cried, “Holy Mother of Christ!”
Major Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein, who was at the gazebo to make his manners to his hostess for her weekend hospitality, smiled. Buzzing unsuspecting natives is something that fighter pilots do, although rarely in a twin-engine transport.