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Lieutenant Colonel, USMCR

Frade thought, And more fucking government efficiency!

They shorted me almost four thousand dollars!

Oh, well. Better the bulk of it than nothing at all.

Flowers then extended his fountain pen.

“Please sign that,” he said.

Frade did so, handed pen and paper back, then, nodding at the briefcase, asked, “It all fit in there? Half a million dollars?”

“You may count it if y

ou wish, but I assure you it’s all there.”

Frade nodded, opened the briefcase, and looked into it. It held five bricks of bills, each about the size of a shoe box, wrapped in some sort of oiled paper, which was translucent enough so that he could see stacks of one-hundred-dollar bills.

“Where’d you get it?” Frade said. “The Bank of Boston?”

“It came by diplomatic pouch,” Flowers said.

Frade said nothing.

“You of course may keep the briefcase,” Flowers went on, “until it’s convenient for you to drop it off at the embassy.”

“Thank you,” Frade said, then had an irreverent thought and said it aloud: “It would be really bad form for me to walk out of here carrying all that money in my arms like so much Kleenex.”

“I think I have the right to an explanation, Colonel Frade,” Flowers said. “That’s a great deal of money. What are you going to do with it?”

“Sorry, Colonel, you just don’t have the need to know.”

Did I say that because I didn’t want to get into a long explanation of where and how I’ve been spending the OSS’s money?

Or because I really dislike him?

“Sooner or later, Colonel Frade, you’re simply going to have to accept that as the senior OSS officer down here, I do have the need to know about whatever you’re doing.”

Frade shrugged and in an agreeable tone said, “I hope you understand that I’m just obeying my orders, Colonel. It’s nothing personal.”

Flowers met Frade’s eyes, and Frade thought he could actually see steam coming out of Flowers’s ears.

Then Flowers cleared his throat and changed subjects.

“There is something else I would like to discuss with you, Colonel Frade.”

“Yes, sir?”

“As you know, I wear several hats. I am both the military attaché here as well as the senior OSS officer in Argentina. While that latter role is, of course, known to the assistant chief of staff for intelligence, it is not known by any of the other military attachés in South America. They don’t have, as you like to say, the need to know.”

Why do I think he’s rehearsed this speech?

No. What Colonel Pompous has done is to write it down and then nearly memorize it.

Which makes it important to him.

So where the hell is he going with it?