as when they all had gathered for Jorge Howell Frade’s christening and maybe going all the way back to when Beth and Karl met at Clete and Dorotea’s wedding.
“Sure,” Clete said to Beth—but he thought,
The sixth passenger was a burly, middle-aged man wearing a suit. He was now carefully checking a rope ladder he’d tied to the aircraft’s floor at the rear door. Frade had figured it was highly unlikely that Washington National would have a set of steps—or even a ladder—tall enough to reach the fuselage of the new aircraft.
“Ready, Don Cletus,” the man said after he had hung the ladder out the door.
His name was Enrico Rodriguez. He was a retired
Cletus went to the door and knelt to get on the ladder.
“Leave the shotgun, Enrico. And if you have a pistol, leave that, too.”
Enrico looked very unhappy.
“Or stay on the airplane,” Frade finished.
Rodriguez first took a Remington Model 11 twelve-gauge riot shotgun from where he had it suspended under his suit jacket and wrapped it in a woolen blanket on the aircraft floor.
He looked at Frade, who raised his eyebrows in question.
Rodriguez then reached under his jacket and came out with a Ballester Molina .45 ACP semiautomatic pistol, which was a variation of the 1911-A1 Colt pistol, manufactured in Argentina under license from Colt. He carefully added it to the blanket with the Remington and looked at Frade.
Frade’s eyebrows rose higher.
Rodriguez met his eyes for a moment, then shrugged. He raised the right leg of his trousers and took a snub-nosed Colt Police Positive .38 Special revolver from an ankle holster and hid it with the other weapons.
“This is America, Enrico. No one is going to shoot at us here.”
“You are the one, Don Cletus, who says that one never needs a gun until one needs it badly.”
Frade nodded, then quicky went down the rope ladder. Rodriguez followed.
[THREE]
On the tarmac, Frade and the welcoming committee examined each other.
Lieutenant Colonel Cletus H. Frade—one hundred ninety pounds on a trim six-foot frame—carried himself with the elan, some would say the arrogance, of a Marine fighter pilot.
The MPs—a captain, a sergeant, and a private first class—saluted when they saw his silver oak leaves. Frade returned the salute and handed the senior of the MPs a small leather wallet.
The MP captain examined it.
It contained a gold badge on one side and a sealed-in-plastic photo identification card in the other. The photo ID was clearly patterned after the Adjutant General’s Office identification cards issued to commissioned officers. There was space for a photo, a thumbprint, and the individual’s name, rank, and date of birth.
But this was not an AGO card. In its center was the Great Seal of the United States. In two curved lines at the top was the legend THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, and under that, OFFICE OF STRATEGIC SERVICES. A rectangular block at the bottom, with space for the individual’s name and rank, identified Cletus H. Frade as an area commander.
The credentials were not exactly bona fide—although they had been manufactured by the OSS’s Document Section. A Princeton professor of psychology with three doctoral degrees recruited into the OSS thought it would be nice if OSS operators in the field had their own credentials.
Wild Bill Donovan had lost his famous Irish temper when he’d seen them.
He tossed the sample credentials in his Shred and Burn wastebasket and tried to forget about them. But when Colonel A. F. Graham, his deputy director for the Western Hemisphere, showed up at his door, Donovan decided to share them for a laugh.
After inspecting them, Graham said, “May I have these, Bill?”
“You’re serious, Alec?”
“Yeah. It’s no secret in Argentina that Frade and his men are OSS. He may find a use for them. He’s resourceful.”
“He’s a damn dangerous loose cannon,” Donovan had replied, then pushed the credentials to Graham. “Get them out of here. Every time I see them, I get mad all over again.”
Graham had been right. Frade had successfully used them a few times—once to dazzle the stubborn commander of the Army Air Corps base in Brazil. When he saw Frade identified as an OSS area commander, the chickenshit had become the poster child for cooperation and goodwill. That experience had made Frade think they just might work at Washington National now.
“How may I help you, Colonel?” the MP captain, looking appropriately impressed, said.
“Presumably, Captain, you’re in charge of security?” Frade asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“I will be here no more than three hours,” Frade said. “I’ll be loading five passengers. Three of them may already be here. I’ll get the ones who are not. I don’t want anyone to get near my aircraft.”
“Yes, sir,” the captain said. “I understand.”
Frade gestured toward Enrico. “Sergeant Major Rodriguez here is under strict orders to keep the aircraft secure.”
Clete noticed that Enrico read between the lines—that he was going to stay with the airplane and not accompany Clete—and was both surprised and glad that Enrico did not protest being left behind.
“Yes, sir,” the captain repeated. “There won’t be any problem.”
“We didn’t get any heads-up about this,” one of the civilians, a starchy heavyset man in a cheap suit, charged in an officious tone.
“Of course you didn’t,” Frade said. “You’re from the airport, right?”
“Yes, I am.”
“We’ll require fuel, of course. And enough food for a dozen people for a ten-hour flight. In Marmite cans. You can bill that to the OSS, right?”
“I’d have to have authorization.”
“From whom?”
“From the OSS.”
“Then you just got that authorization,” Frade said. “Now, has anybody seen a chauffeur-driven 1940 Cadillac?”
“As a matter of fact,” the MP captain said, “there’s a car like that in the parking lot.”
Frade turned to the civilian from the airport.
“See what you can do about a real ladder or stairs to get up there,” he said, pointing to the Constellation’s rear door. “I’m not sure my passengers will want to climb a rope ladder.”
“I’m sure I can come up with something,” the man said.
