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What the hell, why not? God knows they deserve it.

And when I get back to Washington, I’ll make it legal if I have to intercept General George Catlett Marshall on his morning canter through Rock Creek Park.

“Paragraph 118,” Graham bellowed. Everyone looked at him in confusion. “The following enlisted men, Detached Enlisted Man’s List, are promoted as follows: Technical Sergeant William Ferris to be Master Sergeant; Staff Sergeant Jerry O’Sullivan to be Technical Sergeant; Sergeant Sigfried Stein to be Staff Sergeant.”

Since I thought of it only sixty seconds ago, those promotions came as a surprise. But their faces show how much they’re pleased.

So what do I do now for the chief?

“This is unofficial,” Graham went on, “but shortly—promotion processes seem to take longer in the Naval Service—I expect there will be a communication from the chief of Naval Operations informing Chief Schultz that he has been commissioned Lieutenant, USN (Reserve) (Limited Duty) with immediate effect, and concurrent call to active duty.”

“I’ll be a sonofabitch!” Chief Schultz said.

And there will be such a message, if I have to go to the commander in chief to get him to personally order the chief of Naval Operations to send it.

“Raise your right hand and repeat after me: ‘I—state your name and rank—’ ”

There was a jumbled muttering of names and ranks.

“ ‘—do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the OSS officers appointed over me; that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter; that I will guard with my life until my death, unless sooner relieved of this obligation by competent authority, all classified material entrusted to me, or which I acquire through the execution of my duties; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion whatsoever; so help me God.’ ”

When he was finished, Graham walked down the line and handed everybody their leather folder that held the gold badge and photo identification card.

Everybody looks pleased.

More than pleased. This fraudulent little exercise of mine is for them a solemn occasion.

I should be ashamed of myself, but I’m not, and not only because I thought it was necessary to make the fraud, but because it’s made these guys feel important and necessary.

And they damn sure are.

Chief Schultz’s Dorotea—a pleasantly plump thirty-five-year-old Argentine who supervised the servants of Casa Número Veintidós and whom he perhaps ungallantly but accurately described as his live-in dictionary—served coffee and croissants that had been baked in the wood-fired outdoor oven. Graham collected letters that he would make sure were mailed in the United States when he got home. Frade collected the credentials and put them into his saddlebag.

Graham shook everybody’s hand, then he and Frade got on their horses and rode back across the pampas to the Big House.

At four-thirty in the afternoon, Graham was back at El Palomar, where he boarded the Lockheed Lodestar that was Varig Flight 107 for Pôrto Alegre, Brazil.

IV

[ONE]

Aboard the Motor Vessel Ciudad de Cádiz 48 Degrees 85 Minutes South Latitude 59 Degrees 45 Minutes West Longitude 1200 7 July 1943

El Capitán José Francisco de Banderano, a tall, slender, hawk-nosed, somewhat swarthy forty-five-year-old wearing a blue woolen, brass-button uniform with the four golden stripes of his rank on the sleeves, stood on the flying bridge of his ship with binoculars to his eyes. He was making a careful scan of as much of the South Atlantic Ocean as he could see.

There’s nothing out there—not even whitecaps. Just a smooth expanse of ocean.

De Banderano over the years had seen his share of action—had damn near been killed—and knew that an enemy man-o’-war quickly could turn a peaceful patch of ocean violent. Thus he was on a high alert, acutely aware—certainly in broad terms, if not in detail—that while elsewhere in the world the war raged more dramatically, it just as easily could literally explode here.

Indeed, the three-day-old Battle of Kursk—it would last till 23 August— was pitting about three thousand Soviet tanks against roughly that many German tanks. It would become the largest tank battle ever, with the Germans and Russians each losing almost all of their tanks.

Meanwhile, on that very day of 7 July, an Allied fleet of 2,760 ships— primarily from Norfolk, Virginia, and Scotland’s River Clyde—was converging on a rendezvous point in the Mediterranean Sea near Malta. Three days hence, American troops under Lieutenant General George S. Patton and British troops under General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery would exec

ute Operation Husky—the invasion of Sicily.

It would be the first Allied assault on German-occupied Europe.

De Banderano went back on the bridge, set the binoculars in their rack by his chair, and rubbed his hands. The high seas of the South Atlantic in July were cold.