“Your second option is to remain here.”
“Doing what?”
“Ostensibly as Assistant Naval Attaché.”
“And non-ostensibly?”
“Working for us. The Naval Attaché will be advised that his only role in your regard will be to assign you no duties and to ask you no questions.”
“You want me here because of my father,” Clete said bluntly.
“Obviously. Your father thinks he lost his chance to become President. I don’t think so. But whatever his role will be down here, it will be important to us. If nothing else, you’ll have his ear.”
“How are you going to tell whose side I’m on?”
“You proved your loyalty beyond any reasonable doubt a couple of days ago.”
“And the Argentines know how. They’ll know I’m a spy, or whatever.”
“As a general rule of thumb, all military attachés are spies. Some of them are better at it than others. Think it through, Clete. It makes a good deal of sense.”
“What about Pelosi and Ettinger?”
“Ettinger came to me. He wants to stay here. He thinks he can get interesting information from the Jews coming from Europe. I don’t know about Pelosi.”
“Pelosi wants to stay.”
“No problem, we assign him as an assistant to the Army Attaché.”
“Chief Schultz?”
“I thought you might want him. Sure.”
“There’s probably a hook in here somewhere, even if I can’t see it. I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you.”
“Good first rule for an intelligence officer. Trust nobody. Can I take it you’ll stay?”
Clete looked out the window. The No-Longer-Virgin Princess had taken a very quick walk around the park and was now standing outside the café, smiling somewhat nervously.
“Only a fool would leave, Colonel. And I’m not a fool.”
He raised his hand to the No-Longer-Virgin Princess.
Smiling happily, she walked quickly toward him.
*Headquarters, USMC, is located at Eighth and “I” Streets in Washington, D.C.
*Philip’s University, in Marburg an der Lahn, in Hesse. It was to Marburg that the Russian and East European royalty sent their children to be educated, and at Marburg that Roentgen discovered the X ray.
*In January 1942, Brazil broke diplomatic relations with Germany, Italy, and Japan. Within weeks, German submarines began attacking Brazilian shipping. The United States immediately started to equip the one
-year-old Brazilian Air Force with North American B-25 Mitchell bombers, Consolidated Catalinas, Lockheed Hudsons, and PV-1 Venturas for antisubmarine warfare. In August 1942, following a major submarine effort against Brazilian shipping (seventeen ships were lost), Brazil declared war on Germany and Italy.
*The Basilica of Our Lady of Pilar (completed 1732), on Recoleta Square, is considered to be the most beautiful church in Buenos Aires. It is adjacent to the Recoleta Cemetery, which dates to 1822 and contains the remains of the most prominent Argentine families, interred in magnificent marble tombs (many of these tombs have as many as five subterranean levels, each holding three levels of caskets on open shelves, access to which is by stairways leading down from the ground floor).
*The Husares de Pueyrredón trace their heritage to the Pampas horsemen, turned cavalrymen, who rode with General J. M. Pueyrredón, one of the three officers (the others being Manuel Belgrano and José de San Martin) who led the war (1810–1816) for independence from Spain. In 1942, and today, the regimental dress uniform features a bearskin hat and a many-buttoned tunic bedecked with ornate imagery clearly patterned after the Royal and Imperial Hungarian Hussars of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
*The most conservative of Buenos Aires’ daily newspapers.