The Honor of Spies

"What are you going to do with it?" Pelosi asked.

"Well, at first I thought I'd organize a lobster race, but now I think I'll eat him. And at least some of his buddies in the tank. If you promise to behave, Tony, you are invited to a clambake this very evening at the museum. You may even bring your abused wife."

Tony knew that the museum was the Frade mansion--which indeed resembled, both internally and externally, a museum--on Avenida Coronel Diaz in Palermo.

"You've got clams?"

"Clams, oysters, and lobster. Santiago is a virtual paradise of seafood."

"Don Cletus thinks we can make money flying it in," Delgano explained.

"Trust me, Gonzo," Frade said. "And now curiosity is about to overwhelm me: What are you doing here, dressed up like some general's dog-robber?"

"Curiosity just overwhelmed me," Delgano said. " 'Dog-robber'?"

"Aides-de-camp, who must be shameless enough to snatch food from the mouths of starving dogs to feed their general, are known as dog-robbers," Frade explained.

Delgano shook his head.

Pelosi said: "I was at a reception for foreign attaches at Campo de Mayo. You had to go in uniform with medals."

"And was Major Baron von Wachtstein there, dazzling everybody with his Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross?"

Pelosi nodded.

"Good. That means he's in town and can come."

"So was el Coronel Peron."

"He can't."

"And there's a package for you."

"Yeah?"

"From Room 1012, National Institutes of Health Building, Washington, D.C. It was in the pouch. My boss said to get it to you, and to get a receipt."

The headquarters of the Office of Strategic Services was in the National Institutes of Health Building.

Pelosi's boss, the military attache of the U.S. Embassy, was not fond of either Pelosi or Frade. He had received a teletype message from the vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army directing him not to assign Lieutenant Pelosi any duties that could possibly interfere in any way with his other duties. The other duties were unspecified. The military attache knew that Pelosi was the OSS man in the embassy and worked for Cletus Frade.

"He didn't happen to open it before he gave it to you to give to me, did he?"

Pelosi shook his head.

"Where is it?"

"In my car."

"You left the report of my Wasserman test in your car where anybody can get at it? Go get it! My God, what if Dorotea should see it?"

Pelosi got quickly off the Lodestar.

"What test is that?" Delgano asked.

"They draw blood. And test it. If you flunk your Wasserman test, you have syphilis. And it has to be that. I can't think of anything else the National Institutes of Health could possibly be sending me. Can you?"

Delgano knew where OSS headquarters was.

"Not really," he said, shaking his head. "Cletus, you are impossible."

Pelosi had to wait to get back on the airplane until half a dozen workmen had unstrapped the aluminum crates and manhandled them into the back of a 1940 Chevrolet pickup truck.

Then he came aboard and handed Frade a large padded envelope.

Frade tore it open.

It contained an inch-thick book. Clete flipped through it, then handed it to Delgano, who read the title aloud: "'Pilot's Operating Manual, Lockheed L-049 Constellation Aircraft.'"

Delgano then looked at Frade, who handed him a small note that had been paper-clipped to the book.

"Constellation? Is that that great big new airplane? The one with three tails?" Pelosi asked.

"It has three vertical stabilizers, Tony," Frade said as he read the note.

When he had finished reading the note, Delgano looked at Frade.

"Again?" he asked.

"I have no idea what this is all about," Frade confessed. "If I figure it out, you'll be the first to know."

[FIVE]

Sidi Slimane U.S. Army Air Force Base

Morocco

1250 4 September 1943

Captain Archer C. Dooley Jr., USAAF, commanding officer of the 94th Fighter Squadron, studied the runway behind him in the rearview mirror of his P-38, saw what he wanted to see, then looked to his left, saw that he had the attention of First Lieutenant William Cole, smiled at him, raised his right hand, and gestured with his index finger extended, first pointing down the runway and then in a circling motion upward.

When Cole had given him a smile and a thumbs-up gesture, Dooley put his hand on the throttle quadrant and pushed both levers forward to take off power.

This caused the twin Allison V-1710 1,475-horsepower engines of his P- 38 "Lightning" to roar impressively and the aircraft to move at first slowly, and then with rapidly increasing velocity, down the runway.

He lifted off--with Cole's Lightning perhaps two seconds behind him--retracted the gear, and retarded the throttles to give him the most efficient burning of fuel as he climbed to altitude and to the rendezvous point over the Atlantic Ocean.

Sixty seconds later, two more P-38s roared down the runway, and sixty seconds after they had become airborne, two more, and sixty seconds after that, two more, for a total of eight.

"Mother Hen, check in," Captain Dooley ordered.