Page 6

TEX

END

TOP SECRET–LINDBERGH

“I wonder if we’re about to be let out of jail,” Cronley said.

“Either that or be flown in chains to Vienna to face the wrath of the Angry Austrians,” Ostrowski replied.

“Wallace would love that.”

“Yes, he would. What happens now?”

“We finish the last chucker, Max, and then it’s off to Uncle Willy’s guesthouse.”

Cronley nimbly mounted the Arabian and returned to the field.

[THREE]

Ministro Pistarini Airport

Buenos Aires, Argentina

1115 10 April 1946

The Lockheed Constellation came in low over the passenger terminal, and the hangars beside it, touching down smoothly on Pistarini’s north-south runway. When the Connie finished rolling to the end of the runway, it turned and started taxiing toward the terminal, where two other Constellations were parked on the tarmac.

The Model L-049, featuring a sleek fuselage and distinctive triple-tail vertical stabilizers, was the finest transport aircraft in the world. It was capable of flying forty passengers in its pressurized cabin higher (at an altitude of 35,000 feet) and faster (cruising at better than 300 knots) and for a longer distance (up to 4,300 miles) than any other transport aircraft in the world.

The Constellations at the terminal bore the insignia of South American Airways, Argentina’s national airline. The one that had just landed read HOWELL PETROLEUM INTERNATIONAL along its fuselage. On both sides of its nose, there was lettered DOROTEA.

That referred to Doña Dorotea Mallin de Frade, who was the granddaughter-in-law of Cletus Marcus Howell, president and chairman of the board of Howell Petroleum International and by far its largest stockholder.

Howell had ordered DOROTEA lettered on the aircraft the day after Doña Dorotea had given birth to Cletus Howell Frade Jr., his first great-grandson.

* * *

—

Doña Dorotea came out of the terminal as the aircraft approached and then stopped. She was a tall, long-legged, blond twenty-five-year-old, with blue eyes and a marvelous milky complexion. She was what came to mind when one heard the phrase “classic English beauty.”

She saw frenzied activity around a pair of half-ton trucks mounted with stairways. While the stairs would permit the Dorotea’s passengers to deplane, she saw, however, that no one seemed to have the keys to the vehicles.

Oh, bloody hell! she thought. Without keys, the stairs cannot be driven to the aircraft’s door.

Then, in Spanish, she exploded: “If you can’t find the goddamn keys, get the old goddamn stairs out of the goddamn hangar!”

Those who knew Doña Dorotea knew that she got her Buckingham Palace accent and profane vocabulary from her mother, an English aristocrat who had met and married an Italo-Argentine oligarch while both were studying at the London School of Economics. And Doña Dorotea had acquired her ferocious temper and profane Spanish vocabulary from her father. That vocabulary—in both tongues—had been augmented by her marriage to Cletus Frade, who not only cursed like the U.S. Marine that he was but could and often did curse fluently in the Spanish-based patois known as Texican.

The workers a minute or so later came out of one of the hangars pushing an old set of metal stairs. It was a fragile-looking contraption, one mounted on small wheels that rattled and squeaked with such volume that it appeared one or more would fall off at any moment. The stairs themselves were steep, quite narrow, and, instead of a substantial handrail, had a flimsy rope.

While this was happening, other members of the welcoming party came out of the terminal. The crowd, led by Jim Cronley, included those who had flown up from Mendoza, plus a very beautiful, stylishly dressed brunette with dark eyes in her twenties who, like Doña Dorotea, also had marvelously long legs. This was Alicia Carzino-Cormano de von Wachtstein.

She was followed out of the terminal by two nannies, one of whom held the hands of Alicia’s two children, and the other the hands of Doña Dorotea’s two children.

The passenger door of the Dorotea opened, and Cletus Frade started quickly down the dangerous-looking stairs.

Cronley looked over and saw the disappointment in Alicia’s eyes.