The Honor of Spies

Among the passengers aboard were three ASA people from Vint Hill Farms Station: Second Lieutenant Len Fischer and two young enlisted men who were both T-3s. T-3 was an Army rank Fischer had to explain to Frade, as there was no such rank in the Marine Corps. Their staff sergeants' chevrons had a "T," meaning "Technician." And staff sergeant was Pay Grade Three, hence T-3.

The ASA people, however, were not in uniform. They all wore civilian clothing and carried passports, draft cards, and other identification saying they were employees of the Collins Radio Corporation, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

There were other civilian technicians aboard, some of them actually civilians. One of the bona fide civilians was an employee of the Curtiss-Wright Aircraft Engine Company. He would stay in Argentina only long enough to ensure that two other "employees of Curtiss-Wright"--actually, two U.S. Army Air Force technical sergeants--both were qualified to care for Curtiss-Wright R-3350-DA 3 18-cylinder supercharged 3,250-horsepower radial engines and were prepared to teach their art to employees of South American Airways. Four of the Curtiss-Wright radials powered the Constellation.

Additionally, there was a bona fide civilian employee of the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation and two more Army Air Force noncoms in mufti, who would both care for the airframe and see to the necessary instruction of South American Airways personnel to function as flight engineers.

At Howard Hughes's suggestion, Chief Pilot Gonzalo Delgano had decreed that the flight engineers would have to be fully qualified pilots.

Six of these pilots were also aboard, getting their training hands-on.

Which meant that three of SAA's Lodestars, which the pilots had flown to Canoas, would have to sit there on the tarmac until Frade and Delgano could figure out how to get them back to Argentina.

That problem being compounded by the delivery to Canoas of the second Constellation and, within the week, the expected arrival of the third Connie.

They would have to be stripped of their U.S. Army Air Force markings, then repainted in the South American Airways scheme--one as the Ciudad de Mendoza and the other as the Ciudad de Cordoba--and then flown to Buenos Aires, that problem compounded by the fact that only two SAA pilots--Frade and Delgano--had as many as fifteen takeoffs and landings, and neither Frade nor Delgano was willing to turn one of the Constellations over to less experienced pilots no matter how high their enthusiasm.

There were also aboard two slightly older bona fide civilians. Both were accountants, and looked like it, but for obvious reasons their identification did not indicate that they in fact practiced their profession as employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The accountants would stay in Argentina--Frade had not decided whether in Buenos Aires or in Mendoza--to keep track of and make sense of whatever the Froggers, father and son, would tell them and what could otherwise be learned from other sources on how the German Operation Phoenix money was being invested--hidden--in the Argentine economy.

The voice of an SAA pilot who had been taking on-the-job training as a flight engineer came over Frade's earphones: "Captain, they're bringing a ladder."

"Thank you," Frade said. "Keep me posted."

He turned to Delgano. "You get off first, Gonzo, that guy next, and you give the impression you're the pilot and he's the number two. I'll get off later."

Delgano made a thumbs-up gesture, unfastened his harness, got out of the copilot's seat, and walked into the passenger compartment.

Where the hell is Humberto? Frade wondered as he carefully looked out a side window.

More important, where the hell is General Rawson?

If Humberto couldn't get him to come out here, this whole thing is going to blow up in my face!

Frade, ten minutes later, looked out the side window again.

The last time he had looked, Peter von Wachtstein had been one of six or eight photographers taking pictures of the Constellation. Now he was alone.

Where the hell are the others?

What's going on?

Then he saw that the photographers were backing toward the airplane, taking pictures of General Rawson, Humberto Duarte, Father Welner, and Claudia de Carzino-Cormano. Their party had just come out of the building and was walking toward the Constellation.

The president of the Argentine nation was smiling broadly.

And with the exception of my beloved father-in-law, so is everybody else out there.

"Captain," Delgano's voice came over the headset. "The ladder they brought is a meter too short."

"Shit! Now what?"