Death and Honor

[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.”

Dorotea made an It’s not important gesture.

“Call me Len,” Fischer said idly, then went on. “Well, neither one of them is what I expected. He looks like a librarian, and she looks like . . . well, ‘grandma’ fits. Not at all what I expected.”

“That’s probably because you expected them to look like the evil men in the black uniforms in Hollywood Nazi movies,” Stein said.

“Probably,” Fischer admitted, chuckling.

“Most of the Nazis you see in movies are Jews, Len, I hope you know.”

“Are they really?” Fischer asked, smiling.

“So my father tells me,” Stein went on. “He tells me that when he goes on the Sabbath to Temple Israel on Hollywood Boulevard, he sees so many familiar Nazi faces that if it wasn’t for the yarmulkes he’d think he was in the Reichstag.”

“You’re teasing, right?” Dorotea asked.

“No, I’m not,” Stein said.

“Let’s talk about the Nazi librarian,” Frade said. “Did you get anything out of him, Siggy?”

“I don’t know how good it is, but I got a lot out of him,” Stein said. “That’s one of the reasons Grandma is pissed at him. But I don’t know if that’s an act, too.”

“What did you get?”

“All sorts of lists and organizational charts about the German embassy. You know, boxes and arrows, saying who’s responsible for what, and who takes orders from whom. Phone numbers. Addresses. Things like that. Shall I get it?”

“What would I do with it now? We’ll have to have von Wachtstein look at it”—he saw the look on Stein’s face, stopped, then went on—“to see if he’s telling us the truth.”

Then he stopped again, and formed his thoughts before going on.

“Fischer, you now know who we have in the German embassy. If the wrong people learn that name, he—and a lot of other good people—are going to die as painfully as the Krauts can kill them.”

“How do you know you can trust . . . Who did you say, von Wachtstein?”

“Major Hans-Peter Baron von Wachtstein, of the Luftwaffe,” Frade said. “Onetime fighter pilot. Awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross by Hitler himself.”

“And you trust him?”

Frade nodded solemnly. “He saved my life. And there’s more, but I just decided you don’t need to know more.”

“You mind telling me why?”

“There’s a very strong possibility that the wrong people will be asking you questions. And you obviously can’t tell them something you don’t know.”

“Do I get an explanation of that?” Stein asked.

Frade looked at Stein a moment.

“Yeah, sure,” he said. “If this operation of ours blows up the way I think it might—probably will—you, Siggy, are going to be the Lone Ranger out here.”

“Blows up?” Stein said.

“Just before we came out here, I told Chief—sorry—Lieutenant Schultz to rig thermite grenades on the radar, the radios, and the new code machine Fischer brought down here with him. His orders are that the moment he hears the Argentines have come onto the estancia to arrest me, he’s to torch everything and try to find some place on the estancia for everybody to hide until something can be done to get everybody out of Argentina, probably to Uruguay.”

“Jesus!”

“You’re stuck here with the Froggers.”

“You’re sure this is going to happen?” Stein said.

“I’m not, and neither is Schultz,” Dorotea said.

Frade glanced at her, then looked back to Stein.

“I’ll tell you what I told my wife and Schultz: I can’t afford to be an optimist.”

Stein shrugged in understanding.

“So I’ll take it from the top, Siggy. You can decide for yourself whether I’m right.”

Stein nodded.

Frade began: “When we—Delgano and I—went to Pôrto Alegre to pick up the Lodestar, the radios, the SIGABA, and Fischer, there was a man waiting for me . . .”

“So you came here to take Grandma’s picture,” Stein said after Frade was finished. “Because you think it’s important to this Mr. Dulles?”

It was more of a statement than a question.

Frade nodded. “And because I thought I might be able to salvage at least the pictures of her for him from the smoldering ruins of our operation.”

“You don’t know that, Cletus!” Dorotea said, and when he looked to her, she repeated, “ ‘The smoldering ruins.’ ”

“Baby, you don’t know how much I hope you’re right and I’m wrong, but I can’t go with crossed fingers and wishful thinking.”

“For the sake of argument, Clete,” Stein said, “say you’re right. What do I do with the Froggers if I hear they’ve arrested you?”

“They know too much, Siggy,” Frade said.

“I was afraid of that,” Stein said. He shrugged. “What the hell.”

“You can have Enrico do it, or Gómez, if it comes to that,” Clete said.

“If it comes to that, I’ll do it,” Stein said. He looked at Fischer. “What are a couple of nice Jewish boys like us doing here, doing things like this?”

Fischer raised his eyebrows in an expression that said Hell if I know.

Frade went on: “We’ll spend the night here, and leave for the estancia at first light. Gauchos will meet us as soon as we come onto the estancia. If—and I don’t think this is likely to happen—they say the cops or whatever haven’t come yet, then I’ll fire up the Lodestar and fly Fischer to Uruguay. That will at least get him and one roll of the film out of here.”

“And if you’re right,” Dorotea said, “and the police or whatever are looking for you, then what?”

“Then you will drive to the house—taking one of the rolls of film with you; which you will somehow manage to get to the embassy—and tell the cops you have no idea where your crazy husband is. Enrico will go with you. Fischer and I will get on horses and ride off into the sunset and hope we can hide until I figure out how to get him and me and everybody else out of the country.”

“I’ve never been on a horse,” Fischer said.

“Then that should be interesting,” Frade said.

“Well, let’s go take the goddamn pictures,” Stein said.

“New problem,” Frade said. “It’s dark. You can’t take pictures in the dark, can you? Maybe we’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning.”

“That depends on the camera,” Stein said.

Dorothy took the camera from her purse and handed it to him.

"My God,” Stein said. “A Leica I-C. Looks brand-new.”

“Is it a good camera?” Frade said. “More to the point, can we take pictures with it tonight?”

“Is it a good camera? Yeah. About as good as they come. You have film?”

Dorotea handed him four film cassettes, which he examined quickly.

“Jesus, this is hard to come by, too. ASA 200. Very fast. No problem with this. We just take the shades off the lamp.”

“You know about photography, Siggy?”

“My father’s in the camera business—motion and still—in Los Angeles.”

They watched as he loaded film into the camera with a practiced skill.

“Okay, let’s go,” Stein said when he’d finished.

Frau Frogger was sitting stiffly in a wooden chair, her hands folded in her lap.

Fischer and Stein were rearranging the light fixtures in the room to Stein’s satisfaction.

“Just her, or the librarian, too?” Stein asked when they finished with the lighting.

“How many pictures can you take?”

“These are thirty-six-exposure rolls; there’s two of them.”

“Priority one is her with Fischer and La Nación,” Frade said. “When you’re sure you have her, then we can take more with him. And what the hell, with me, too.”

“I protest,” Frau Frogger said in Spanish, then repeated it in German.

“One more word out of you, señora,” Dorotea said coldly, “and we will take photographs of you without clothing.”

Frau Frogger snorted.

Dorotea slapped her face very hard.

“Hey!” Clete protested without thinking.

“You tell me that I can, Cletus, and when we finish taking her picture, I’ll take her out onto the pampas myself.”

Frade’s first reaction, of course, was surprise that Dorotea had slapped the woman. That was really out of character for Dorotea.

His second reaction was husbandly pride.

God, what a wife! She understands we have to keep this woman afraid, and is doing whatever is necessary to do it.

His third reaction, somewhat slow in coming, was far less pleasant.

Jesus Christ! That was no act. She slapped that woman with hate!

Confirmation of this came from the looks on the faces of Fischer and Stein and Enrico. Stein and Fischer had seen what Frade had seen—and were shocked and repelled. Enrico’s face showed approval.

Did she mean what she said about taking them out herself and killing them?

Of course not.

You’re pissing in the wind, Cletus.

The no-longer Virgin Princess, the angel walking the earth carrying your child, meant every word of what she said!

Confirmation of this came from the terrified faces of the Froggers.

Jesus H. Christ!

Then another thought he had heard somewhere—and had promptly dismissed as probably bullshit—now popped into his mind: The female of the species is always the more deadly.

I will be goddamned!

Well, you’re a Marine officer. You know the tactic to be applied here. When you’ve broken through the enemy’s defenses, don’t stop, continue the attack!

“Fischer, stand her up, hand Grandma La Nación, and smile for the birdie.”

Don Cletus Frade did not discuss with Doña Dorotea Mallín de Frade what had happened, not even after he had had more than his fair share of several bottles of merlot.

The reason was simple. He didn’t know what to say.

And he had thoughts later, after they had retired and shared conjugal relations, that he knew he didn’t dare share with his wife.

From their very first coupling, Dorotea—and she then really had been the Virgin Princess—had always been an enthusiastic partner.

But tonight was different!

Not a complaint, certainly, but tonight she really wanted to mate, and her response was nothing like any previous responses.

She literally couldn’t get enough.

And it had nothing to do with her being pregnant.