“…to carry on the family, someone who, when the time comes, will take the burden of responsibility from your and Cletus’s shoulders and take it on his own.”
Does he believe this shit? He sounds like a West Texas Baptist preacher at the end of a four-day Come-to-Jesus-in-a-Tent revival.
Clete looked at Claudia. Her face was expressionless. He looked at Pamela. She looked as if she was about to cry. He looked at Dorotéa. Tears were running down both cheeks, and Clete saw her chest jump as she sobbed.
“So I think…” Perón went on, raising his eyes to the fourteen-foot ceiling of the upstairs dining, “…I believe with all my heart…that our beloved Jorge is looking down at this table and smiling. The guard has changed. What is past is past. This is the beginning!” He raised his glass. “Salud, mi amigo!” Perón said.
I’ll be damned, Clete thought as he realized he was on his feet with his glass raised toward the fourteen-foot ceiling.
And I’ll be twice damned—so is Father Welner.
Perón sat down.
Dorotéa came running down the side of the table, knelt beside Perón, threw her arms around him, and kissed his cheek.
I guess that makes me a cynical prick.
He glanced around the table again. Pamela de Mallín was dabbing at her eyes with a napkin. Claudia Carzino-Cormano, her face expressionless, met his eyes. And a moment later, so did the intelligent blue eyes of Father Kurt Welner.
What is that? Two cynical pricks and a cynical lady?
Dorotéa got to her feet and walked back to the foot of the table.
Claudia waited until Dorotéa was sitting down. “While Dorotéa and Pamela are at the doctor’s, Juan Domingo,” she said. “I’m going to take Cletus to Radio Belgrano.”
Is that what they call changing the subject, Claudia?
“Oh, really?”
To judge by the look on his face and the tone of his voice, that’s what Tío Juan thinks it is.
“I know how busy you are these days, but I thought you might like to come with us.”
“As a matter fact, Claudia…”
Thank you very much, but no thanks?
“…I’ve never seen it, and I’d like to. And I need a few minutes alone with Cletus. We could have our little chat as we drove over.”
Claudia couldn’t quite manage to conceal her surprise. “I’m trying to get Cletus to sell it me,” she said.
“Is that so?”
[THREE]
Radio Belgrano
1606 Arribeños
Belgrano, Buenos Aires
1535 11 May 1943
They had driven from the museum in Palermo to Radio Belgrano in three cars. Claudia’s 1940 Buick Roadmaster, carrying her and Father Welner, led the way. Clete followed in the Horch, with Juan Domingo Perón beside him and Enrico in the backseat. Perón’s official Ministry of War car, a 1941 Chevrolet driven by a sergeant, brought up the rear.
The owner of Radio Belgrano was not very impressed with his property the first time he saw it, although he was enormously relieved to get there. From the moment Perón had slid onto the seat beside Clete, he’d delivered a nonstop sales pitch about how happy he was that Clete was going to hear for himself how deeply Generalmajor Manfred von Deitzberg—speaking, of course, for the entire German officer corps—regretted losing control of an SS officer in Wehrmacht uniform, which had resulted in the death of Clete’s beloved father and his own beloved friend.
And how important it was that Clete—for his own personal peace, for the good of Argentina, indeed for the good of the new generation of the Frade family—be willing to put the tragic incident behind him.