The black Buick was the only vehicle on the two-lane macadam road crossing the pampas. There were 300,000 square miles of the pampas—an area roughly half the size of Alaska, a little larger than Texas, and just about twice as big as California—which ran from the Atlantic Ocean just south of Buenos Aires to the foothills of the Andes Mountains. The name came from the Indian word for “level plain.”
The road was straight as an arrow, but as the speedometer hovered between seventy and eighty miles an hour, the headlights illuminated nothing but the road itself and a line of telephone poles marching at hundred-meter intervals beside it.
Enrico Rodríguez was driving. His shotgun was propped between the door and the dashboard. His pistol and the bandolier of shells were on the seat beside him. Cletus Frade sat in the front passenger seat, asleep, his head resting against his window.
Rodríguez took his right hand from the steering wheel, leaned across the front seat, and almost tenderly pushed Frade’s shoulder.
It took several more pushes of growing force before Frade wakened. But when he did so, he was instantly wide awake, looking quickly around as if he expected something to be going wrong.
“We are nearly home, Don Cletus,” Enrico said.
Frade looked out the windows, then said what he was thinking: “How the hell can you tell?”
All that could be seen out the Buick’s windows were the road and the telephone poles. There was nothing whatever to indicate where they were on the more than eight-hundred-square-kilometer Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, or, for that matter, where they had been or were going.
“I know, Don Cletus,” Enrico said. “In ten, eleven minutes, we will be home.”
“Then why didn’t you wake me in ten, eleven minutes?”
“I thought you might wish to use the shaving machine, Don Cletus,” Enrico said. “There should be one in the glove box. Your father believed a gentleman should always be shaved.”
And yet another comparison I have failed with my father, Frade thought as he felt his chin.
And Enrico’s right. I need a shave. I should have shaved when I showered. Maybe I had other things on my mind, like the look on that poor bastard’s face when he took the load of double-aught buck in his chest.
Frade was uncomfortable using the Remington electric shaver; it had been his father’s. But finally, after a moment’s hesitation, he took it out and plugged it into the cigar lighter hole and, as the razor’s blades hummed, started rubbing it against his face.
Two minutes after he started, Enrico slowed the Buick to a crawl, crossed himself, and muttered a prayer.
Now Frade knew where they were and why Enrico was praying—they were passing the spot where Frade’s father had died. He didn’t like to think about that.
Six minutes later, the three-row-thick stand of enormous poplars that surrounded the casa grande—“the big house”—protecting it from the winds of the pampas, appeared on the horizon.
A minute after that, the estancia airfield began to come into focus. A twin-engine Lockheed Lodestar, painted a brilliant red, was sitting in front of the hangar, dwarfing the four Piper Cubs parked beside it. Two peones on horseback sat watching it. When the Buick came closer still, Frade saw that they were cradling rifles in their arms and that a large fire extinguisher on wheels was beside the left engine of the Lodestar.
The plane was, as he had ordered it to be, ready to go at a moment’s notice.
One of the gauchos doffed his flat-brimmed cap.
When the Buick passed through the outer line of poplars, the “big house” was visible beyond the inner two rows of trees. The term was somewhat misleading. There was indeed “a casa grande”—a rambling structure surrounded on three sides by wide porches—but the inner rows of poplars also encircled a complex of buildings. These included the small church La Capilla Nuestra Señora de los Milagros, seven smaller houses for the servants and the senior managers of the estancia, a large stable beside a polo field, the main garage, and “el Coronel’s garage.”
To which the shot-up station wagon will soon be taken—with a little luck, outside the view of Dorotea.
Between the second line of poplars and the line closest to the “Big House” was the English Garden, covering more than a hectare. Today, looking more than a little out of place, three more peones sat on their mounts, rifles cradled in their arms, as the horses helped themselves to whatever carefully cultivated flowers seemed appetizing.
The peones respectfully removed their wide-brimmed hats and sort of bowed when they saw Frade in the Buick. He returned the greeting with a sort of military salute. When he’d first become patrón of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, he had returned their gesture with a wave, as a salute was obviously inappropriate between himself, a Marine major, and Argentine civilians.
Waving had made him feel like he was pretending to be the King of LaLa-Land, condescendingly acknowledging the homage of his loyal subjects. Enrico had solved that problem by telling him that not only was there universal military service in Argentina, but el Coronel, and before him, el Coronel’s father, Don Cletus’s grandfather, also el Coronel Frade, had encouraged the “young men of the estancia” to enlist in the Húsares de Pueyrredón Cavalry Regiment for four years, rather than just doing a year’s conscript service.
The result was that just about most of the more than one thousand male peones of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo had been soldiers at one time. Frade thought, but did not say, that the real result was that he had, if not a private army, then a private battalion at his command. And lately he had cause to think he might have to use it.
So now Frade tossed a salute when el Patrón was saluted or otherwise acknowledged.
They passed through the inner line of poplars and rolled up to the big house. There were three more peones on horseback. And three people sitting bundled up against the winter chill in wicker chairs on the verandah. One was a tall muscular man in white riding britches, glistening boots, and a thick yellow woolen sweater. A beautiful sorrel mare tied to a hitching rail showed how he had come to the big house. Next to him was a large man in full gaucho regalia. A Ford Model A pickup truck parked nose-in against the verandah was his mode of transportation. Beside the gaucho, Doña Dorotea Mallín de Frade sat in a wicker armchair.
Frade did not see, however, whom he expected to see, and the moment he stepped out of the car, he asked, “Where’s ‘Wilhelm Fischer’?”
“Hello, my darling,” the blonde said in British-accented English. “I’m so happy to be home. And how is every little thing with my beloved mother-to-be wife?”
“Hello, my darling,” Frade said, “I’m so happy to be home. And how is every little thing with my beloved mother-to-be wife? And where the hell is ‘Wilhelm Fischer’?”
She pointed to La Capilla Nuestra Señora de los Milagros, and when Frade looked at it, he saw there were two more peones on horseback, one in front of the chapel, the other to one side.
“He’s not going anywhere he shouldn’t, Major,” the gaucho sitting on the porch said. “He asked if he could go to the church, and I figured, why not?”
The gaucho—despite his calf-high soft black leather boots, with billowing black bombachas tucked into them, loose white shirt with billowing sleeves, broad-brimmed black hat, wide silver-studded and buckled leather belt, wicked-looking fourteen-inch knife in a silver scabbard, and faultless command of the Spanish language—was not actually a gaucho.
For one thing, the last time he had been on a horse, it had been a pony at a Coney Island amusement park in Brooklyn. He had been six at the time, had fallen off, had his foot stepped on, and had since kept the vow he had made then to never again get on the back of a horse. He had acquired his Spanish from what he perhaps indelicately referred to as his “sleeping dictionary”—which was to say when he had been serving as a chief radioman at the U.S. Navy’s Subic Bay facility in the Philippines. He was Lieutenant Oscar J. Schultz, USNR, and known as “El Jefe,” which was Spanish for
“The Chief.”
“I need to talk to him,” Frade said, and started to walk toward the church.
“Why don’t you leave him alone?” Dorotea Mallín de Frade asked, on the edge of plaintively.
When her husband ignored her, she shook her head, got out of her wicker chair, and walked off the verandah to follow him.
Oberstleutnant Wilhelm Frogger, wearing a business suit, was on his knees at the communion rail of the chapel when Frade walked in.
In his pocket was a passport identifying him as Wilhelm Fischer, a vineyard owner and vintner, of Durban, South Africa.
Frade had carefully opened and then closed the heavy door behind him when he entered the church. He didn’t think Frogger sensed that he was no longer alone.
Dorotea Frade tried to do the same, but a sudden burst of wind was too much for her and the door slammed noisily shut.
Frogger’s head snapped to see what was happening, and then he returned to his prayers. Twenty seconds later, he stood up and walked down the aisle between the pews to Frade.
“You have learned what has happened to my parents?” he asked.
“God must have been listening,” Frade said. “They’re alive and well.”
“Cletus! What a terrible thing to say!” Dorotea exclaimed.
“What, that his father and mother are alive?” Frade responded. “And I have something else to say, Colonel, that will probably upset my wife.”
Frogger waited for him to go on, but didn’t say anything.
“Your mother, sir, apparently believes that Hitler is a great man and that National Socialism is the hope of the world; she would, I am sure, do whatever she can to make her way back to the German Embassy. You’ll understand I couldn’t permit that to happen before you came here. Now that you are here, I must presume that she will know or learn—or guess—something of your relationship with Colonel von Stauffenberg, Major von Wachtstein, and Kapitän zur See Boltitz. Something, in other words, about Operation Valkyrie. I think your father shares your opinion of Hitler, but I’m not sure of that, and I can’t take any chances. I absolutely cannot take the risk that your mother or father ever find themselves talking to any Germans under any circumstances. You take my meaning?”
Frogger met his eyes, then nodded. “I understand, Major.”
Dorotea asked, obviously surprised, “He knows Peter? And Karl? And what’s Operation Valkyrie?”
“I’ll explain later,” Frade said.
Her face showed she didn’t like the response, but she didn’t challenge it.
“I have to be absolutely sure we understand each other, Colonel,” Frade said.
“I know the rules of the game we’re playing, Major.”
“That’s a poor choice of words. It isn’t a game.”
“We understand each other, Major,” Frogger said. “When will I be permitted to see my parents?”
“They’re about three kilometers from here. But it’s late, and I think it would be better if we went there first thing in the morning.”
Frogger nodded but did not reply.
“Can you ride?” Frade asked.
“Of course.”
“All right, then. I’ll have Rodríguez have horses brought here at first light. Too early?”
“First light will be fine with me.”
“Rodríguez and I’ll go with you. I think that you should know that if it wasn’t for Rodríguez, your parents would be dead, at the hands of some SS troops who came ashore from the U-405. He saved your parents’ lives at no small risk to his own.”
“Then I am, of course, grateful beyond—”
Frade silenced him by raising his hand.
“Rodríguez is a retired Argentine sergeant major who is not very fond of Germans. This is largely—but not entirely—because he was seriously wounded in the successful assassination attempt on my father, with whom he served all of his adult life. The assassination was ordered by either Himmler himself or someone close to him. Argentines carry grudges a long time.”
What the hell, I’m going to have to tell her sooner or later—why not now?
Get it over with. . . .
“But while we’re on the subject, Colonel, the Germans have twice attempted to assassinate me, most recently a couple of hours ago.”
“Cletus, my God!” Dorotea exclaimed.
Frade looked at her and said, “All they managed to do was shoot up the Ford station wagon pretty badly.”
He turned back to Oberstleutnant Frogger.
“I’ve just jumped on you, Colonel, for using the word ‘game.’ This is why; this isn’t a game.”
“Where did they try to kill you?” Dorotea asked softly.
“In front of the house on Avenida Coronel Díaz. I went there to take a shower. Three guys in a stolen Peugeot. Now deceased.” He paused, looked between them, and went on: “In a massive understatement, I’ve had a busy day. What I want to do now is get a sandwich or something, then go to bed. We can talk some more in the morning, if you’d like.”
“Fine,” Frogger said.
“Rude question: How well do you ride? We have gentle mounts and the other kind; mostly the other kind.”
“I think one of the gentle mounts, please. I really would prefer to wait for a Valkyrie maiden to carry me to Valhalla than get there—after having come all this way—by breaking my neck falling off a horse here.”
He smiled shyly at Frade, and a hint of a smile crossed Frade’s lips.
[SIX]
The Embassy of the German Reich
Avenida Córdoba
Buenos Aires, Argentina
0845 13 August 1943
Kapitän zur See Karl Boltitz had been told by Fräulein Hässell that the meeting had been called by Manfred Alois Graf von Lutzenberger. Lutzenberger was a small, very thin, slight, balding—he wore what was left of his hair plastered to his skull—fifty-three-year-old who served as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the German Reich to the Republic of Argentina. But the moment Boltitz walked into the ambassador’s elegantly furnished office and saw “Commercial Attaché” Karl Cranz, he knew the meeting had been called by Cranz.
Boltitz, a tall, rather good-looking blond man of thirty-two, was the embassy’s naval attaché.
“I am so glad that you could find time in your busy schedule for us, Herr Kapitän zur See,” Cranz greeted him, smiling.
“Am I the last to arrive?”
“Rather obviously, wouldn’t you say?” a man’s voice asked just on the edge of nastily.
Boltitz turned toward the voice and saw Anton von Gradny-Sawz. A tall, almost handsome, somewhat overweight forty-five-year-old with a full head of luxuriant reddish-brown hair, von Gradny-Sawz was the embassy’s first secretary. Boltitz considered him the typical Austrian: charming to superiors, condescendingly arrogant to those lower on the ladder. Boltitz also privately thought of him as “Die Grosse Wienerwurst.”
“Mr. Ambassador,” Boltitz said, looking back at Lutzenberger, “I am truly sorry to be late. I didn’t know of the meeting until I came in, on time for my nine o’clock appointment with you.”
Lutzenberger smiled—barely—but said nothing directly in reply.
“This meeting has been called at the request of our commercial attaché,” von Lutzenberger said, and gestured toward Cranz.
“This is going to be one of those meetings that never happened,” Cranz said with a smile.
This got the expected and dutiful polite laughter.
“Everyone is, of course, aware that our distinguished co-worker, Foreign Service Officer Grade 15 Wilhelm Frogger, and the charming Frau Frogger are among the missing,” Cranz began. “There are a number of theories about this, to which we will turn in a moment, but before that, I’m afraid that I must inform you that we must add Obersturmführer Wilhelm Heitz and five of his fine men to the list of the missing.”
“What happened to them?” von Gradny-Sawz asked in great surprise.
“The good news is they were
not guarding those things placed into their hands when they went missing, and that those things are, as of—as of when, Raschner?”
“Oh eight fifteen, Mein Herr,” Erich Raschner, a short, squat, phlegmatic Hessian, replied.
Boltitz thought that Raschner, at forty-five, was the second-oldest and second-most-dangerous man in the room—second in longevity to Ambassador von Lutzenberger and second in capacity for ruthless cruelty and cold-blooded murder only to Cranz.
And between those two, it’s almost a tie.
“The special shipment was safe as of quarter past eight this morning,” Cranz continued.
“I don’t understand,” von Gradny-Sawz said.
“That’s the purpose of this meeting, Anton,” Cranz said softly. “To, as well as I am able to do so, make you understand. May I continue?”
Von Gradny-Sawz flushed but didn’t reply.
“This situation involves our good friend Oberst Juan Domingo Perón,” Cranz went on. “To whom I went to see if he could be of some help in locating Herr and Frau Frogger for us.
“You will recall that when they went missing, several theories were floated about. One held that they didn’t wish to be returned to Germany, that they suspected there were those who believed they were the traitors here in the embassy. Another was that they were in fact the traitors. I frankly never gave the latter much credence.
“Still another theory was that they had sold out to Herr Milton Leibermann, the ‘legal attaché’ of the American Embassy. Although we have nothing concrete to support this theory, I haven’t completely discounted it. That obscene Hebrew is not nearly as stupid as he appears, and God only knows what he has been able to learn about our Uruguayan operation from the local Jews.
“And, of course, the name of Don Cletus Frade came up. I think we should all be prepared to admit that in judging this enemy of the Third Reich we all erred. That flamboyant cowboy act of his fooled us all. He is a very skilled and dangerous intelligence officer, and worse, very well connected with the president of Argentina and many of its senior army officers. In that regard, I think we must be objective and admit that the elimination of Oberst Frade was ill-advised; all it did was antagonize the Argentine officer corps and permit young Frade to ingratiate himself with them.”
The Honor of Spies Page 7