He kissed her forehead, then walked to the wardrobe, took out his bathrobe and put it on, and walked to the elevator.
“Cletus, if you’re wearing that, what am I to wear? My clothing is soaked!” the no-longer-Virgin Princess demanded indignantly from the bed.
“Take one of my shirts,” Clete said. “They’re in the wardrobe.”
He stepped into the elevator beside Enrico. As it started to descend, she was walking naked to the wardrobe.
When he opened the elevator door, he saw the Norteamericano coronel sitting in one of the armchairs in the foyer. He was in civilian clothing. He rose and smiled at Clete.
“Merry Christmas, Tex,” Colonel A. F. Graham said, then asked, “Did you really threaten to punch Nestor into next week?”
“What are you doing here?” Clete asked coldly.
“Right now, I’m hoping that you will tell your friend to point that shotgun in another direction.”
“I should tell him to blow your ass away with it,” Clete said. “You sent me down here hoping that I’d be killed.”
Graham stopped smiling.
“That was one of the scenarios, Clete,” he said. “But it wasn’t mine.”
“Bullshit!”
“If were I in your shoes, I suppose I wouldn’t believe me either.”
“Why the hell should I?”
“Because it happens to be the truth, Clete,” Graham said.
Why do I believe him?
“What are you doing down here?” Clete asked.
“Despite the reports to the contrary I’ve been getting, when I heard the Germans tried to kill you, I decided you must be doing something right, so I decided to come see for myself what’s going on down here. I mentioned this at lunch to Newton-Haddle, and he somewhat—”
“Newton-Haddle?” Clete interrupted.
“Colonel Baxter F. Newton-Haddle. That’s right. You never met him, did you? He’s the Army Colonel who ran the Country Club.”
“I don’t know him,” Clete said coldly.
“Anyway, when I told Newton-Haddle I was coming down here, he told me, in the strictest confidence, that that would interfere with the scenario he and General Donovan were running. And he more or less politely told me to butt out. I went to Donovan to find out what that scenario was. And he had never heard of it, Clete. It was a solo operation cooked up by Newton-Haddle and Nestor.”
“You expect me to swallow that whole?”
Graham did not respond directly. “I have my own most likely scenario about how this happened,” he said.
“I’ll bet you do.”
“Nestor got close to Newton-Haddle when he went through the Country Club.”
“Nestor went through the Country Club?” Clete interrupted incredulously. It was difficult to imagine the banker running around the woods of Virginia with his face painted black, learning fine points of hand-to-hand combat and throat cutting.
Graham nodded. “And the two Brahmins of course found each other,” he said. “Nestor saw in Newton-Haddle a powerful spymaster with access to Donovan—an obvious avenue to enhancing his own career. Newton-Haddle saw in Nestor a chance to prove he could do something more worthy of his talents than teaching people how to stab each other with daggers. When Nestor discovered that your father had an American son, he thought he hit his payload. He would be the man responsible for getting Argentina into the war. So he went to Newton-Haddle with his scenario; and Newton-Haddle thought it was a splendid idea. It wasn’t difficult for him to find out where you were, and he managed to bring that information to my attention.”
“We’re back to question one,” Clete said. “Why should I believe that?”
“We’re back to answer one,” Graham said. “Because it’s the truth. If it makes you feel any better, Newton-Haddle is now at Fort Benning, Georgia, teaching knife fighting to parachutists; and Jasper Nestor has by now received a radiogram from the Bank of Boston ordering him home by the first ship. Donovan recruited him from the Bank of Boston. I don’t think he’ll send him back with a glowing letter of recommendation and appreciation. He—both of them—violated the First and Great Commandment of the OSS: Thou Shalt Not Deceive the Director.”