“We can ask Frade to ask him, Allen.”
“Let’s put that on the back burner for the moment.”
Graham nodded.
“Why Renfrew?” Dulles said.
“After the movie.”
Renfrew of the Royal Mounted had been a surprisingly successful B movie of 1937 starring James Newill as Sergeant Renfrew, of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who pursued the evildoers, assisted by his dog, a German shepherd named Lightning.
“Why not Dick Tracy?” Dulles said. “Renfrew must’ve meant something to Frade.”
“Who,” Graham replied, “was (a) still not much more than a boy when that movie came out, and (b) was almost certainly fairly well lubricated when he wrote this message.”
“Is there an Argentine equivalent of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police?” Dulles pursued.
After a moment, Graham said, “Yeah. The Gendarmería Nacional.”
“Would you care to wager a small amount that Renfrew has something to do with the Gendarmería Nacional?”
“If he’s a pal of Cavalry, he probably runs the Gendarmería Nacional,” Graham said. “Don’t let this go to your head
, but for a Princetonian you’re pretty clever.”
“And are you going to reward me with another taste from our Pinch bottle?”
“I thought you would never ask,” Graham said, and rose from his desk and went to the coffee table where he poured scotch whisky in glasses for both of them.
Dulles sat in Graham’s chair and resumed reading.
Graham returned with their drinks, set them on the desk, and then went to take one of the chairs in front of his desk to move it next to Dulles.
“That makes sense,” Dulles said. “On both counts. The one thing Argentina doesn’t need is a Spanish-type civil war, and all the ingredients for one are there, just waiting for someone to strike a match.”
“Yeah. And wouldn’t the Chileans and the Brazilians like that?”
Dulles raised his eyes to Graham’s and answered the unspoken question in them:
“I really didn’t think Frade would find out,” Dulles said.
“But you didn’t tell me.”
“I planned to.”
“He said, lamely.”
“Honest to God, Alex, I forgot.”
“ ‘Tomorrow morning,’ ” Dulles said. “That means this morning, right?”
“Western Union service has been a little slow,” Graham said sarcastically. “If he left Buenos Aires—probably, almost certainly, in his Lodestar—at, say, oh nine hundred, he’s been there for hours. It’s about a four-hour flight.”
“His Lodestar? A prerogative of being managing director of South American Airways? Very nice.”
“No. It is his personal Lodestar. His father had a Staggerwing Beechcraft. Our Cletus borrowed it, then got shot down in it dropping flares out of it to illuminate the Reine de la Mer so the USS Devil-Fish could put a torpedo into her.
“Our commander in chief was so delighted that he made our Cletus a captain, gave him another Distinguished Flying Cross—which he deserved—and then ordered the Air Corps to immediately replace the lost Beechcraft. Not just via some flunky: Roosevelt ordered General Hap Arnold, the Chief of Staff of the Air Corps, to personally see to it.