The White Vixen (13 page)

Jo was thinking of a photo she’d seen in a recent Newsweek article about Chamberlain, showing the congresswoman sharing a table at a fundraiser with a prominent actress who’d made a name for herself with her open support of the Viet Cong during the war. That name, among the military, wasn’t very complimentary. Jo would have to be very careful during this private sit-down. “I understand, sir. When do I leave?”

“Next Monday morning. Congress isn’t in session till after New Year’s, but you’ll be meeting with Chamberlain at her district office in St. Charles on Tuesday. Your Pentagon appointments are Wednesday, and you’ll take an evening flight out of Andrews back here.”

“Very well, sir.”

“I’ll have your orders cut this afternoon. I understand you’re off-duty this weekend?”

“Yes, sir. Lieutenant Simmons and I were planning on going down to the Beach for a couple days.”

“Well, I see no reason why that shouldn’t happen. You’re on duty Christmas Day, but it should be pretty quiet. A good day for you to hit the base library to get some background on Congresswoman Chamberlain. Pick up your orders for the D.C. trip here tomorrow morning.” He set the letter aside and stood up. “That’ll be all, Captain.”

Jo stood, came to attention, and saluted. “Thank you, sir.”

Reese returned the salute crisply. “Oh, by the way, don’t your parents live near D.C.? You’ll have the rest of Monday to visit.”

“Yes, sir.”

CHAPTER NINE

Buenos Aires

Christmas Eve 1981

“Merry Christmas, my love,” the woman said. She placed the brightly-wrapped box on the table in front of her husband.

“What have we here?” Antonio Gasparini said in mock surprise. “Theresa, I hope you did not spend too much money.” He was not convincing in his tone, and the beautiful dark-haired woman laughed. Gasparini untied the bow, gently placed the ribbon aside, and lifted the cover. His eyes went wide when he saw the book. Reverently, he reached inside and lifted it up, turning its leather cover toward the candlelight. “
Santa Maria
,” he whispered.

Theresa’s eyes filled with tears. “You are happy?”

Antonio’s hands almost shook as he opened the book. “It is in Italian!” he said. He looked up at her, his eyes shining. “I have not seen a Bible in Italian since I left…I left…” His lower lip began to tremble.

She reached across the small table and covered one of his hands with hers. “I know, my love. Since Livorno.” Antonio Gasparini had left his native Tuscany nearly twenty years ago, at the age of ten. After his parents were killed in an auto accident, leaving four
bambinos
, relatives in Livorno were able to take in three, but Antonio, the oldest, came here to Argentina, to live with his Uncle Humberto. In the La Boca barrio, with its heavily Italian population, Antonio grew to manhood, not too far from this very house. At eighteen he met Theresa, a daughter of immigrants from Naples. They had two children now.

Antonio placed the Bible delicately on the table. “Thank you, my love. I am afraid that my gift to you does not measure up.”

“Oh, nonsense, husband,” she said, reaching to the chair next to her. The briefcase was beautiful, hand-crafted by a man in the village near Antonio’s post. “If I am to be taken seriously as a student, the professors must see me with something besides a common backpack to carry my books.” She would have preferred jewelry, of course—she was a woman, after all—but men were men. Antonio was a fine one, devoted to her and the children. She had watched him tenderly tuck them into their beds a half-hour before. What more could a wife ask? Well, perhaps to have a husband who was around more than once a month.

“Your studies, they go well?”

“Yes,” she said proudly. “In a year, you will have a wife with a degree in economics, from the University of Buenos Aires. Then I will get a job, and soon after that we will be able to afford to move.”

Antonio’s eyes glazed over a bit. “Yes, perhaps to Recoleta,” he mused. Many residents of working-class barrios, like La Boca, dreamed of living one day in the fashionable Recoleta, with its upper-class homes and beautiful parks. He and Theresa occasionally took a Sunday afternoon drive to its Plaza Francia, strolling through the craft fair, the largest in the city.

“Eduardo wants to live there and be a
pasaperro
,” she said with a laugh. She remembered how the children had marveled at the professional dog-walkers, who sometimes had as many as a dozen canines at the ends of their leashes.

“Well, we shall see,” Antonio said. “My tour is up in six months. Then I should be posted somewhere much closer.”

Theresa’s eyes softened. “Oh, I hope so, my husband. Pilcaniyeu is so far away…”

“Too far,” he agreed. Once a month, he was allowed a weekend leave to visit his family. Fortunately, he was almost always able to hitch a ride on an Air Force transport, so the thousand-kilometer journey went fairly quickly. The ride back, though, was always long. “
Coronel
Reinke likes me, I think, which is unusual. They’re almost all Germans, you know, at least among the officers.”

“As you’ve said before, Antonio,” she said. There was a definite social pecking order in Argentina, and the Italians, despite being more numerous, tended to be under the Germans. “But you are a good officer. Reinke knows that.”

“I hope so,” he said. He paused, thinking, then said, “I have not told you, but now I will: there is a good chance I am to be promoted, perhaps as soon as next month.”

“Promoted! To
mayor
?”

“Yes,” he said with a grin. “Major Schaaf is being transferred to a combat unit. I am next in line.”

Theresa was excited now. “A promotion! To major, and second-in-command?”

“Hopefully,” he said, trying to curb his own excitement. He’d intended to hold off telling Theresa until it was official. No point in getting her worked up over something that might not happen. But, well, it was Christmas…

“My husband, second in command of the security force at such an important place. Perhaps then, commander one day?” In her excitement, she had forgotten about the distance. Of course, if Antonio were given command, they would have to move…

He shook his head. “I think not, my dear. The Germans are in firm control of the facility. They would never have an Italian in charge of security. A legacy of the war, I’m afraid.”

“No matter,” she said. “You will be an important man. Even more important than now,” she added quickly. Her face was a bit flushed. Was it the wine they had at dinner? She stood up and took his hand. “Come, my husband. The children are asleep now. Come to our bedroom and make love to me.”

He looked at her, and marveled that her body had ripened into robust womanhood, not too much different than when they had married, despite the two children she had carried. “A request like that, how can I refuse?”

CHAPTER TEN

Estancia Valhalla, Argentina

Christmas Day 1981

Dusk was settling over the estancia. Willy Baumann sat on his deck, enjoying the warm weather, his cognac, and the aftereffect of the sumptuous Christmas dinner he’d eaten just an hour before. A few hundred meters away, his
gauchos
were playing a raucous game of
pato
, a combination of basketball and rugby played on horseback. Wearing helmets and kneepads, the competing teams vied for a large leather ball with six handles, passing it among each other until they could throw it through their opponent’s goal, a large hoop. Willy had played the game many times and enjoyed it, but was glad he was far away now. The gauchos were still celebrating
Felice Navidad
and some were a little the worse for wear already.

The estancia was spread over thousands of hectares, supporting hundreds of head of cattle and horses, employing some three hundred people, including a general manager who reported directly to Willy. It was a minor part of his overall responsibilities, but his favorite, doubtless due to his Argentine blood. The other businesses were run by competent managers and occupied a fair amount of his time, but since the advent of CAPRICORN three years earlier, the Bund had required more and more of his attention. Right now, on the table next to his chair, sat a stack of monthly reports from the Bund’s various
gauleiters
, the regional commandants. There were twenty-four of them, one for each of the twenty-three provinces, plus the federal district that encompassed Buenos Aires. They all were directly responsible to the
Bundesobergruppenführer
, the Bund general, a position held by Dieter Baumann since 1974. Number three in the Bund hierarchy behind the Reichsleiter and the Bundesführer, Dieter was in charge of the Bund’s day-to-day operations and its special projects. In the past three years his duties had largely been administered by his executive officer, Oberst Wilhelm Baumann.

It was more than a full-time job, and not for the first time Willy wished it wasn’t his. He glanced at the reports, which had come to the estancia by messenger the day before. They could wait. His eyes returned to the broad vistas stretching to the west.

“No paperwork today, eh, Willy?”

That drew a short laugh. “Not today, Heinz. Come, sit, have a drink with me.”

Heinz Nagel folded his lanky frame into the chair next to Willy’s. He was about two inches taller than Willy, and three months younger. They had been friends since kindergarten; Heinz’s father, Günther Nagel, operated the neighboring estancia, and was a prominent Bund member in his own right. “That was an excellent dinner,” Heinz said, stifling a burp. “Please give my compliments to the chef.”

“You can tell him yourself, when you ask for his daughter’s hand,” Willy said with mock seriousness.

Heinz laughed. “I have no intention of marrying Sophia,” he said, “and you know that.” The estancia’s chef, Luigi, had been brought over from Italy ten years before, after Dieter enjoyed a fabulous meal at a struggling
ristorante
in Genoa. Willy’s father, in need of a chef back home, convinced the owner and chief cook of the establishment to accept his generous offer of a buyout, bring his family to Argentina and go to work on Dieter’s estancia. Luigi brought his wife and ten-year-old daughter, Sophia, who had now grown to voluptuous womanhood, something Heinz had not been hesitant to appreciate.

Both men were still single, and as they neared thirty—coming up next year, in fact—they were starting to feel a little pressure from their fathers to find women, settle down and start producing grandchildren. For Heinz, always the more carefree of the two, it was easy to laugh that off and continue indulging his bachelor whims. For Willy, consumed ever more by the work of running the Baumann business empire, not to mention his growing obligations with the Bund, romance had never really intruded into his life. There were women, of course, both here and abroad; some of them made their intentions quite clear and were willing to do virtually anything to become the next mistress of the estancia. A very few of them caused a spark inside him, but nothing had yet happened to fan that into a flame.

The latest spark had been ignited by his dinner companion for the day, something Heinz was well aware of. “Sophia is a playmate of mine,” he said now. “But your Giselle, now, she is a real woman. You should marry her, you know.”

Willy took a sip from his glass as he contemplated the virtues of Giselle Carmaño. There were many. The daughter of Roberto and Barbara Carmaño, a family of mixed Spanish and German blood, Giselle was twenty-five, bright, educated, and stunningly attractive. Her father’s estancia, Santa Barbara, was some fifty kilometers to the south and was almost as large and prosperous as Valhalla. Even better, from the perspective of a possible son-in-law who might be interested in such things, Señor Carmaño also owned one of the largest import/export firms in Buenos Aires. But unlike many young Argentine men of means, Willy had never been interested in a woman as a means to facilitate a business merger. He had known Giselle since childhood, and had been involved with her for about two years now, since her return from an extended stay in Spain, where she completed her education at the Complutense University of Madrid. She stimulated him physically, to be sure, but more importantly she stimulated him intellectually.

“Yes, I should,” Willy said, “but you know why I haven’t yet.”

“So her father is not a member of the Bund,” Heinz said. “You won’t be marrying her father.”

“I’d be marrying her family,” Willy corrected, “you know that as well as I do. We have to be careful about who knows of our work, Heinz, especially now.” With CAPRICORN near completion, marriage to Giselle was out of the question for at least a year. If everything went according to plan in the upcoming year, perhaps by next Christmas, he could ask Giselle’s father for her hand.

But there were so many ifs.

If the work at Pilcaniyeu proceeded on schedule; if Galtieri didn’t interfere; if the South Georgia operation went forward on time; if the English reacted as they predicted; if the Americans stayed out of it; if CAPRICORN remained a secret...