She smiled at him.
What the hell, Amelia Earhart was a pretty good pilot, and women are ferrying everything up to B-17s from the factories. There’s no reason she can’t be taught to fly.
XX
[ONE]
Estancia Santo Catalina
Near Pila, Buenos Aires Province
1530 12 June 1943
The wedding of Señorita Alicia Carzino-Cormano to Major Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein posed many of the same problems as the wedding of Señorita Dorotéa Mallín to Señor Cletus Howell Frade…and also some additional ones.
For one thing, the thatch roof was in bad shape on La Capilla de Santo Catalina, which (like La Capilla Nuestra Señora de los Milagros on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo) served as the parish church for its estancia. The roof had been up for twenty-five years, and was leaking. Though Doña Claudia Carzino-Cormano had directed its replacement, until that was completed, a tent was used as a chapel to serve the workers.
When the need for the chapel for the wedding became known, that process was one-third completed—the old roof and its rotting supports had been removed. There was no way the repairs could be completed in less than a month, which was of course out of the question. As was a marriage ceremony in Buenos Aires. There was no time for that, either. A six-weeks-premature baby would be credible, while a three-months-premature baby would not.
As was to be expected, Señora Dorotéa Mallín de Frade offered Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo’s La Capilla Nuestra Señora de los Milagros for the wedding, as well as whatever else Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo had to offer.
Doña Claudia accepted the offer of the chapel but not the Casa Grande. Her daughter would have her wedding reception in her own home. That was only fitting. Furthermore, a reception in Dorotéa’s Casa Grande would be awkward. Clete might agree to entertaining the Germans, but he would not like it; and Clete, like his father, was unpredictable when forced to do anything he didn’t want to do.
It was in fact not at all easy for Claudia herself to be charming to the Germans, for she agreed with Cletus that they had been responsible for the murder of Jorge Guillermo Frade. Cletus was a North American and could get away with not bothering to conceal his contempt for the Germans, but Cletus was not the mother of a girl about to bear a half-German baby. And perhaps, she tried to tell herself, the time had come to put that awful tragedy behind.
Claudia arranged for six Mercedes buses to be brought from Buenos Aires to transport the wedding guests and the Estancia Santo Catalina workers to La Capilla Nuestra Señora de los Milagros, on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, and back. The trucks of both estancias would be put to the same use.
Peter, thank God, did not get on his high horse about having a Protestant clergyman participate in the ceremony; and Father Kurt dealt with the Right Reverend Manuel de Parto, bishop of the Diocese of Pila, who waived the usual routine for wedding banns and was pleased to be the celebrant, assisted by Father Welner.
Another set of problems for Claudia came in the person of Juan Domingo Perón. On one hand, he had arranged to have Peter returned from Germany. The baby would have a father. A good father, from everything Claudia had seen of Peter.
On the other hand, Perón was close to the Nazis who had ordered Jorge’s murder.
Not to mention his disgusting behavior. His sick interest in very young girls was at least private. But he had now focused his public interest on that dreadful Radio Belgrano “actress,” Eva Duarte, whom he had taken as a mistress.
Worse, the sale of Radio Belgrano had come through. Eva Duarte and her sleeping partners were no longer Cletus’s problem, but Claudia’s. And the little tramp had already been making noises about being grossly underpaid.
Doña Claudia was a nervous wreck by the time it was over, but the wedding went off without a hitch.
As it turned out, Don Cletus Frade managed to avoid the whole thing, claiming a serious problem at one of his vineyards, San Bosco, in Córdoba Province. He telephoned his profound regret that he would be unable to attend the wedding or the reception.
Claudia saw him, however, peering through the slats of the cloakroom blinds at La Casa Grande, as Major and Señora Hans-Peter von Wachtstein left La Capilla Nuestra Señora de los Milagros between an honor guard of dress-uniformed officers, Army, Navy, and Diplomatic, of the German Embassy.
The only thing that went wrong after that was that the wedding trip didn’t go as planned…and that wasn’t really such a problem. Claudia had arranged for a suite in the Provincial Hotel in Mar del Plata, but the newlyweds never went there.
Instead, they flew in one of the Piper Cubs to God Only Knew Where. Someone, either Peter or Clete, had left it on the pampas for a getaway after they left the reception at Estancia Santo Catalina.
Alicia left her a note: They would be back in seven days.
[TWO]
Avenida Pueyrredón 1706
Piso 10
Buenos Aires
1605 20 June 1943