Death and Honor

“God, I forgot about them. We went to my Granduncle Guillermo’s house to pick up a picture of my mother that my grandfather wants. Perón is staying there. He wasn’t there when we were, but Dorotea saw an Argentine army map case and took the maps from it. One shows the coastline south of Mar del Plata where U-405 ...” He looked at Hughes. “You know about that, too, Howard?”

“I know everything,” Hughes said.

“Of course,” Clete said, then picked up where he’d left off: “. . . where U-405 landed the special shipment, which means that Perón knew all about it.”

“That surprised you?” Graham asked.

“Yeah, a little. Even after I’ve had time to think about it.”

“Dorotea said ‘maps,’ plural.”

“The other one was from the Oberkommando of the Wehrmacht. It shows South America ‘after the annexation.’ Paraguay and Uruguay are shown as provinces of Argentina.”

“Zimmerman,” Graham said thoughtfully. “That’s interesting.”

“What?” Clete asked.

“Stranger things have happened,” Graham said, as if to himself. Then he asked, “Where’s the film?”

“In my toilet kit.”

Graham said, “You have some place where it can be developed right now, Howard?”

Hughes rose gracefully from his armchair, walked to a closet, unlocked it, reached inside, came out with a telephone, and, putting the phone to his ear, leaned on the doorjamb.

“We need a little room service,” he announced into the telephone, then put it back, closed the door, and locked it.

He saw the look on Frade’s face.

“We couldn’t take the chance that one of your pals would catch you trying to get Alex on the phone,” Hughes explained. “And Alex was worried what kind of a hooker you’d get if you tried that.”

Frade gave him the finger.

A moment later, there was a knock at the door and someone called, “Room service.”

Hughes opened the door to a stocky man wearing a white cotton waiter’s jacket, and motioned him into the room.

The man looked expressionless but carefully at Frade.

“Get your film, Clete,” Hughes ordered.

“Is this guy room service or not?” Clete asked.

“You’re hungry?” Graham asked.

Frade nodded.

“Tell them to start serving dinner,” Hughes ordered the man. “Bring three here. And then take a film cassette the gentleman in the towel is about to give you out to the studio. Have it souped. I want prints large enough to read. And I want them yesterday. Bring the film back with you. Got it?”

“Yes, Mr. Hughes,” the man said, and turned and looked at Frade again.

Clete went to the bathroom, took the film cassette from his toilet kit, and started to return but changed his mind. He got dressed first, then went back to the living room. The “waiter” still stood where he had been standing.

Clete handed him the film cassette.

“And when you bring my dinner . . .” he began, then looked at Hughes. “Do I have any choices?”

“The usual jailhouse fare,” Hughes said.

Frade turned back to the waiter. “Bring a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a good bottle of merlot or pinot noir.”

The man looked at Hughes for direction.

“That,” Hughes added, “and a bottle of gin and some ice and a martini mixer, or shaker, or whatever they call it. Serve wine with the others’ meals, but no hard stuff. I don’t want anybody finding the liquid courage to start a jailbreak.”

“Yes, Mr. Hughes.”

“You heard me say I want those prints yesterday?”

“Yes, Mr. Hughes.”

The man turned and left the room.

“What did you say before?” Clete asked Graham. “ ‘Zimmerman’?”

Graham shook his head in exaggerated disappointment. “You were apparently asleep during Modern American History 101 at our alma mater. You really don’t know?”

“No, I really don’t know.”

“Neither do I, Alex,” Hughes said. “And I very nearly finished high school. What the hell are you talking about?”

“In 1917, the British had a cryptographic operation they called ‘Room 40.’ Big secret, because they had broken the Imperial German diplomatic code—”

Hughes interrupted: “Like the Navy has broken the Imperial Jap Navy Code?”

“You didn’t hear that, Clete,” Graham said furiously. “My God, Howard!”

“Well, you said we were going to tell him about Lindbergh and Yamamoto; he’d have heard that then,” Hughes said unrepentant.

Frade looked from Hughes to Graham and back again.

Lindbergh? Lucky Lindy?

And who? Yamamoto, the Jap admiral?

Graham shook his head and went on: “And one day in January 1917, Room 40 broke a message that Zimmerman, the German foreign minister, had sent to Count von Bernstorff, the German ambassador in Washington, with orders to forward it to the German ambassador in Mexico, a man named von Eckhardt.”

“What was in the message?” Frade asked.

“Two things. That Germany was going to resume unrestricted submarine warfare as of the first of the month. And that Eckhardt was to tell the president of Mexico that if Mexico declared war on the United States, after the war— which Germany would win, of course—Mexico could have Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.”

“You’re pulling my leg,” Hughes said.

“No, I’m not. You really never heard this before?”