“I’m going with you,” she insisted.
“No,” he said flatly.
“What about the pictures Mr. Dulles wants of me and the Nazis?” Fischer asked.
“Oh, Jesus!” Frade said.
“What pictures?” Dorotea asked. “What Nazis? Who’s Mr. Dulles?”
“I had the feeling he thought that was pretty important,” Fischer said.
“Yeah, so did I, God damn it,” Clete said.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on, please?” Dorotea asked.
He looked at her, then suddenly turned and walked toward the hangar door.
“What are you doing?” she called after him. “Where are you going?”
When Clete left the hangar, Dorotea started after him.
Chief Schultz caught her arm. She looked at him in surprise.
“Sometimes, when you have to make a decision, it’s better if you’re alone,” Schultz said. “And he has to make the decisions here by himself.”
She continued looking at Schultz for a long moment, then nodded her understanding.
She turned to Fischer.
“The Nazis you were asking about? Did you mean the Froggers?”
“That’s the name—I think—he used. Mr. Dulles—”
“And who is Mr. Dulles?”
“I don’t really know. I mean, he’s OSS. I know that. But he’s more than that. He’s somebody important.”
“How do you know that?” Schultz asked.
“Well, when we landed at Pôrto Alegre, he was there with the commanding general, an Air Forces brigadier named Wallace. They met the plane, I mean. And Mr. Dulles shakes my hand and says, ‘What brings you to Pôrto Alegre, Lieutenant?’ and I say, ‘I’m looking for a man named Frade,’ and the general says, ‘That makes two of us.’
“The way he said it made it pretty clear that he wasn’t going to hang a Hawaiian lei around this Major Frade’s neck. So Mr. Dulles says, ‘You think you know Major Frade, do you, General?’
“And General Wallace says—I don’t remember exactly, but something like— ‘Yes, I do. The last time he was here he took off without permission, defied my orders to return to the field, and got me in all sorts of difficulties with the Brazilian authorities. I’ve really been hoping to see that young man again, and soon.’
“And then Mr. Dulles says, very soft, ‘I’m afraid you’re mistaken, General. You have never seen Señor Frade before.’
“And the general says, ‘Oh, yes, I have. And I look forward to taking that young man down a peg or two.’
“And Mr. Dulles says, ‘General, I’m afraid you’re not listening. I just told you that you never before saw the Señor Frade who’s coming here to pick up the Lodestar aircraft. You won’t recognize him today or at any other time he might be back here. Is that clear, or is it going to be necessary for me to call General Arnold and have him tell you that personally?’ ”
“Who’s General Arnold?” Dorotea asked.
“ ‘Hap’ Arnold, commanding general of the Army Air Forces,” Schultz furnished. “The whole goddamn AAF.”
“Yeah,” Fischer went on. “So this General Wallace looks like he’s going to sh . . . explode. But then he says, ‘Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir. It will not be necessary for you to call General Arnold.’
“And Mr. Dulles says, ‘Thank you.’
“And then—later, not when the general was there—he told Major Frade that I had been given a Lindbergh clearance, and that I was going to find out who Galahad is . . .”
“Jesus!” Schultz said.
“. . . because I’ll be handling all the traffic from here when I get back to Vint Hill Farms.”
“That makes sense,” Schultz said. “We can’t have everybody at Vint Hill doing the decryption.”
“What about the Froggers?” Dorotea asked. “Did he know about them, too?”
“I guess Major Frade told him, because just before he left, he gave him a German camera—something with an l—”
“Leica?” Dorotea offered.
Fischer nodded. “And told him to take pictures of me with these people. Holding a copy of that day’s newspaper.”
“To do what with?” Schultz asked.
Fischer shrugged. “All I know is that I’m going to take the film with me when I go to the States. Mr. Dulles wanted to send a second copy through some Navy officer in our embassy—Delojo?—but Major Frade said he didn’t trust him—”
“What Major Frade said earlier,” Frade’s voice suddenly announced, startling everyone, “Lieutenant Fischer—and it was an order, Fischer—was to stop using ranks.”
Everyone turned to see Frade coming back inside the hangar.
“Sorry,” Fischer said as he noticed the pronounced change in Frade’s body language.
“I’m going to tell it like it is, Fischer,” Frade said with some force. “If my stupidity blows this operation—for allowing you to run with that line to Martín and Perón while not recognizing Delgano, a pilot, knew it was bullshit—there’s going to be real problems. And that’s the great understatement of the day. If— probably when—we get caught, I don’t think much will happen to me. I’ll be kicked out of country, but they’re not going to shoot me.”
He glanced at the others. “You, however, you’re something else. And so are the rest of the people on the estancia. I don’t think they’ll shoot everyone. But you will be tried as spies, sentenced to death, and thrown in a cell. Unless we can do something to get you out, and I don’t think we can—‘we’ meaning me and the U.S. government—you’ll be in that cell for the duration of the war and—what is it they say?—‘plus six months.’ ”
“Yes, sir,” Fischer said meekly.
“And that means, of course, that we won’t have the radar to make sure the Germans haven’t brought another submarine-replenishment vessel into Samborombón Bay . . .”
“Shit,” Schultz said.
"... And that while you’re all in some cell—before and after your courtmartial—the Germans will probably try to have you killed.”
“They can do that?” Fischer blurted.
Frade exhaled audibly. “Yeah, Fischer, they can do that. My Uncle Juan Domingo is not the only Argentine officer who thinks Hitler’s a good guy and that the Germans and Japs and Italians—The Axis—are going to win the war.”
“Oh, boy!” Fischer said.
“And to answer your specific question: The organized crime down here is very much like ours in the States. When the Germans wanted my father dead— and, for that matter, me whacked—they didn’t try to do it themselves. They hired professional killers from whatever they call the Mafia down here. They took out my father but didn’t get me. That was dumb luck; somebody told me they were coming, and I was waiting for them. They’re not nice people. They found my housekeeper, a really nice lady, in the kitchen and slit her throat, just because she was there—”
“Jesus!”
“Yeah, Jesus. Now pay attention, Fischer: I can get you out of the country, into Uruguay, right now. And have you in Brazil tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The Froggers are at Casa Chica, a small farm I own near Tandil, in the hills between La Pampas and Mar del Plata—”
“I don’t know where any of those places are,” Fischer interrupted.
“Let me finish, Fischer,” Frade said coldly.
“Yes, sir.”
“It’s about a two-hour drive from here,” Frade went on.
“Yes, sir.”
“And every twenty miles or so, I expect there will be a checkpoint. Either army or police.”
“Yes . . . I understand.”
“I think those pictures are more important than I understand—”
Fischer, nodding, interrupted: “Mr. Dulles made that pretty clear without coming right out and saying so, or saying why.”
After a long silence, Frade said, “I am not going to order you to go out there, Fischer.”
Fischer met his eyes for a moment, then shrugge
d. “When do I go? Right now?”
“If we’re going to go, yeah, right now. You’re willing to take the chance?”
Fischer nodded again.
Frade raised his eyebrows. “The first thing I learned when I went into the Marine Corps was never to volunteer for anything.”
“Yeah, well, what the hell, I’ve never seen a real Nazi,” Fischer said.
“Taking into consideration that that goddamned Carlos may have sneaked back onto the estancia—”
“I don’t think so, Clete,” Schultz said. “Those gauchos of yours know if a damn rabbit comes on the place.”
Frade ignored the comment. “—and is watching us through binoculars to see what we’re doing before they come to arrest me. So, what we now are going to do is get in the Horch. Fischer gets in the backseat and lies on the floor until we’re a couple of miles from here. And we go to Casa Chica.”
“A couple problems with that, sweetheart,” Dorotea said.
Clete turned quickly to look at her.
“You don’t know how to get there,” she explained reasonably. “The only time you’ve been there, you flew the Piper Cub. And . . . when I am sitting with you in the front seat, and if Carlos is watching us, he will decide that you and I have gone off for a romantic interlude. If I’m not with you, that would be suspicious. Most Marines would not think of leaving their bride the same night they came home.”
Clete saw out of the corner of his eye that Schultz and Fischer were trying very hard not to smile.
Clete nodded. “Okay, okay, sweetheart, you can go.”
“Oh, you’re just so good to me!”
He shook his head—but he was smiling.
“Chief,” Frade then said, “take the SIGABA device out to the radar site. Make sure it and the radio and the code machine and everything else is rigged with thermite grenades.”
“And the Collins radios?”
“Leave them here. If Carlos is watching, taking them out of the hangar would be suspicious.”
Schultz nodded.
“If they come after me,” Frade went on, “torch everything, then go hide on the estancia.”
“I know just the place. Places,” Schultz said. “We’ll just lay low until we see what happens. Not that I think anything will.”
Frade raised his eyebrows, not convinced. He said, “When we get to Casa Chica, we’ll take the pictures of the Froggers—we’ll need a copy of La Nación . . .”
“There’s one in the sitting,” Dorotea said.
“. . . And then we’ll spend the night. We’ll leave there at seven, seven-thirty in the morning. Which should put us back here, or onto the estancia, at about half past nine. Have a gaucho meet us somewhere if everything’s okay. If there’s no gaucho . . . then we’ll play it by ear.”
[TWO]
Estancia Casa Chica Near Tandil Buenos Aires Province, Argentina 2015 19 July 1943
Dorotea had to tell Clete where to turn off the macadam-paved highway onto Estancia Casa Chica. There was no sign visible from the highway, but one hundred meters down a road paved with small, smooth riverbed stones, the powerful headlights of the Horch lit up two short pillars formed from fieldstone. A sturdy rusty chain was suspended between them, and hanging from the center of the chain was a small sign that read: CASA CHICA.
“Oh, damn!” Dorotea Frade said. “I don’t have a key.”
“Great!” Clete said.
Enrico Rodríguez got nimbly from the car the moment it stopped, found in the shadows the padlock fastening the chain to the left pillar, tugged at it a moment, then matter-of-factly pulled from his shoulder holster his .45-caliber pistol—an Argentine copy of a Colt Model 1911 semiautomatic—took aim, and fired.
Clete noticed that Enrico had not first worked the action, which meant he had been carrying the pistol with a round in the chamber.
The first shot dented the massive brass padlock, but it still securely held the chain. Enrico fired again, then again. The lock then dropped off the chain and the chain dropped to the road.
“Did he have to do that?” Dorotea asked, seemingly taking the abuse of the lock somewhat personally.
“Well, since unnamed persons didn’t have the key . . .”
Enrico came back to the Horch, stopping to stand in the beam of the headlights. Clete could see that the hammer still was back and locked. Enrico replaced the magazine in the pistol with a fresh one, then put the pistol back in the shoulder holster.
That means he’s back to eight available shots, Clete thought, seven in the magazine and the one he left in the throat.
Now what the hell is he doing?
What Enrico was doing was recharging the magazine he’d taken from the pistol. When he’d finished, he slipped it into the left front pocket of his pants and got nimbly back into the car.
He didn’t say one word, Clete thought, smiling as he put the Horch in gear.
Three hundred meters down the road, just past a curve, a two-wheeled horse cart was blocking the road.
Clete slammed on the brakes, pushed Dorotea down onto the floor, and got out, grabbing a Remington Model 11 12-bore self-loading shotgun from under the seat as he did so.
“It’s all right, Don Cletus!” a familiar voice quickly called from the darkness. “It’s Sargento Gómez here.”
A moment later, Sargento Rodolfo Gómez, Argentine Cavalry, Retired, stepped into the light of the headlights. He had a 7mm Mauser carbine cradled in his arms like a hunter.
And, a moment after that, Staff Sergeant Sigfried Stein, Signal Corps, U.S. Army, came running down the road carrying a Thompson .45-caliber submachine gun. Before he reached them, two gauchos on horseback, both carrying shotguns, came onto the road.
“I heard shots,” Stein said, but made it more a question.
“Enrico had to shoot the padlock off the chain,” Frade said.
“I forgot the key,” Dorotea said. “For which sin, I was just shoved onto the floor.”
“Don Cletus was protecting you, Doña Dorotea,” Enrico said.
"I’ve been trying to convince myself of that,” Dorotea said without conviction.
“Sorry, baby,” Clete said, then turned. “Sergeant Stein, say hello to Lieutenant Fischer.”
The two shook hands.
Frade looked at Fischer and said, “Around here, we use ranks to dazzle our guests. Siggy is Major Stein and I am El Coronel.” He turned to Stein. “Speaking of our guests?”
“José,” Stein said, and pointed to one of the gauchos, “his wife is with Frau Frogger. Frau Frogger’s not talking to Herr Frogger.”
“Why not?”
“Because he came to me and told me that if we didn’t watch her close, she was going to try to get back to Buenos Aires.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Frade said. “Fischer, you are now another major.” He paused. “Oh, hell! Fischer, how’s your German?”
“Not bad.”
“Okay, we don’t introduce you. When Siggy and I talk to you, it will be as Mister Fischer. Got it?”
“Jawohl, Herr Oberst,” Fischer said.
“Get in, Siggy. We’ll go see the lioness in her cage.”
“I can just ride on the running board,” Stein said.
“Get in,” Frade ordered. “If you fell off and broke your leg, we’d really be screwed.”
Commercial Attaché Wilhelm Frogger got quickly to his feet when Frade walked into the sitting room. Frogger had been in an armchair—my father’s armchair, you sonofabitch!—reading a book.
Frogger was wearing a suit and necktie. His face was cleanly shaved and his mustache trimmed.
A gaucho with a flowing mustache and holding a shotgun in his lap was sitting in a wooden chair tipped against the wall near the door.
He neither said anything nor got out of the chair, but nodded at Frade and the others.
Frade glared at Frogger but didn’t speak to him.
“The woman?” Frade said to the gaucho.
“In her room.”
“Go get her, please.”
The gaucho nodded and left the room.
Fischer walked to Frogger and gestured for him to hand over the book.
Frade examined it, shrugged, then handed it back.
“Goethe, Römishe Elegien,” Wilhelm Frogger announced in German, then translated to English. “Roman Elegy. Love poems.”
“I know,” Frade replied in English. “My father spoke German.”
Then an unpleasant thought occurred to him: Is that bastard holding a book from which my father used to read to Claudia?
Frau Frogger appeared a moment later, trailed by a short, squat female.
That has to be José’s wife, Frade thought, then remembered hearing that among the gauchos the sacrament of marriage was often ignored. Whatever her marital status, she’s formidable.
“Have Frau Frogger comb her hair and otherwise have her make herself presentable, ” Frade ordered the squat female in Spanish. “We are going to take her photograph.”
“I refuse,” Frau Frogger said.
“If necessary, tie her to a chair,” Frade ordered.
Frade motioned for Stein and Fischer to follow him. “Come with me, please, gentlemen,” he said, then quickly added, “And lady.”
“Thank you ever so much,” Dorotea replied icily.
Frade led them through the kitchen to a galley at the rear of the house. And then he went back in the kitchen, coming out a moment later with a bottle of wine and a handful of long-stemmed glasses.
“What, Clete?” Stein asked as Frade worked the corkscrew.
“Two things,” Frade said. “First, I’m sure my lovely bride would like to have witnesses while I grovel in apology for shoving her down on the floor of the Horch—”
“And for almost forgetting your lovely bride in there just now,” Dorotea said.
“I am groveling, my love.”
“Good.”
“And I wanted Stein to tell Fischer—who glared in outrage at me when I told José’s wife to tie Grandma to a chair—who’s the real Nazi in there.”
“Unequivocally, she is, Mr. Fischer,” Stein said. “She thinks Hitler was sent by God to save the world from the likes of you and me.” He saw the look on Fischer’s face and added: “I shit you not, Lieutenant. Grandma not only is a real Nazi—but a three-star bitch to boot. Sorry, Dorotea.”
Death and Honor Page 33