Frade considered that a moment.
Damn it, he’s right.
If I were Delgano, after all he’s done already, and got the idea I was hiding something from him, I’d be insulted.
“What I think we should do, Don Cletus, is drive into Buenos Aires to his home. . . .”
“I don’t know where he lives.”
“I do. And you tell him what you need. The worst thing that can happen is that he will tell you he doesn’t want to do it. But he would not betray you. I told you. He is now one of us.”
“You’re right, Enrico. Thank you, my friend.”
“Or—I just thought of this—you could telephone him and tell him that there is something he needs to look at on your airplane. And then go to Buenos Aires in one of the Pipers and bring him here. If the clowns are listening, there is nothing suspicious about that.”
“You would let me fly into Buenos Aires all by myself?”
The gentle sarcasm was lost on Enrico.
“If you give me your word of honor you will not leave the airfield when you are there and are very careful while you are there.”
Frade, knowing he could not trust his voice, clapped the old soldier on both arms. He went back into the house, picked up the telephone, and, when the estancia operator came on the line, told her to get Chief Pilot Gonzalo Delgano in Buenos Aires for him.
IV
[ONE]
Approaching El Plumerillo Airfield
Mendoza, Mendoza Province, Argentina
1745 14 August 1943
“I have been in here before,” Gonzalo Delgano’s voice came over the earphones.
“Chief Pilot,” Frade ordered sternly, “take command of the aircraft.”
Frade took his hands off the yoke and raised them much higher than was necessary to signal he was no longer flying the Lodestar.
Delgano smiled at him.
“Sometimes there’s a little crosswind coming off the mountains,” Delgano said, nodding toward the Andes. “You can tell when the wind-sock pole is bent more than forty-five degrees.”
He demonstrated a bent wind-sock pole with his index finger.
Frade smiled at him.
Delgano shoved the yoke forward so that he could make a low-level pass over the field to have a look at the wind sock.
They were not in communication with the El Plumerillo tower. Delgano was not surprised; he told Clete that there was only one Aeropostal flight into Mendoza every day at about noon—and sometimes not that often—and as soon as it took off again, the tower closed down. There was some other use of the field by the military, and even some private aviation traffic, but not enough to justify a dawn-to-dusk tower. The runway was not lighted, which made a tower useless at night.
Delgano had told Frade just after they had taken off that at this time of year they should not be surprised if the field was closed due to weather or—flying dead-reckoning navigation due to no reliable radio navigation aids—they could not even find the field before dark. Winds aloft could knock them as much as fifty or a hundred miles off course.
They were in no danger. There was more than enough fuel to take them back to Buenos Aires, where runway and taxi lights had been installed at Aerodromo Jorge Frade in Morón while they had been in the United States. Nor would they have trouble finding Jorge Frade, as there was both a radio beacon and an around-the-clock tower operation using a Collins Model 7.2 transceiver, which was just about the latest thing in the States.
And the radio direction finder would be working, awaiting the six Lodestars en route from the United States. No one knew when they would leave or arrive, but Jorge Frade had to be ready to guide them in.
The primitive conditions at El Plumerillo would soon change. While they were in the United States, Guillermo de Filippi—“Señor Mañana,” SAA’s chief of maintenance—had finally managed to get contracts for the construction of a combined hangar/passenger terminal/tower, as well as landing lights.