The Honor of Spies

III

[ONE]

Estancia Santa Catalina

Near Pila

Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

2115 13 August 1943

Cletus Frade was well turned out in a tweed suit from London's Savile Row for the "supper" la Senora Claudia de Carzino-Cormano was giving to mark the return of Frade from the United States. "Supper" was a code word. "Dinner" would have meant black-tie. Frade had one of those, too, also from Savile Row. He also had a silk dressing gown and two dozen shirts from Sulka's in Paris.

All of the clothing had been his father's. He was comfortable wearing it, because when he had found it in one of the two wardrobes in the master suite of the big house, it all had been in unopened boxes.

A tailor from Buenos Aires had been summoned to adjust the unused clothing to fit Clete--not much had been required--and to adjust the clothing that his father actually had worn to fit Enrico. His father had been, to use a term from Midland, Texas, where Clete had been raised, something of a clotheshorse.

Frade had observed at the time that he now had all the clothing he would need for his lifetime.

He would not have been mistaken for a Londoner, however, or even for an Argentine who patronized the tailors of Savile Row or the linen shops on the Rue de Castiglione in Paris. Because when he climbed down from the driver's seat of the Horch before the verandah of the big house of Estancia Santa Catalina, not only was he wearing a gray Stetson "Cattleman" hat, but when his trouser legs were pulled up, they revealed not silken hose but the dully gleaming leather calf of Western boots, finely tooled, and bearing his initials in contrasting red leather.

There were a dozen large automobiles already parked at Claudia's big house, including two Rolls-Royces, two Cadillacs, half a dozen Mercedeses, and a pair of Packards, one of them Father Welner's. He didn't see the olive-drab Mercedes that was provided to el Coronel Juan D. Peron as the Argentine secretary of state for labor and welfare.

The Rolls-Royce Wraith Saloon Touring limousine belonged to his uncle, Humberto Valdez Duarte, who was the managing director of the Anglo-Argentine Bank. In Argentina, managing director translated to chairman of the board. Duarte, a tall, slender man of forty-six, was married to Beatriz Frade de Duarte, Clete's father's sister.

The 1939 Rolls-Royce Phantom III James Young-bodied "Drop Head" (convertible) belonged to Clete's father-in-law, Enrico Mallin, managing director of the Sociedad Mercantil de Importacion de Productos Petroliferos (SMIPP). Mallin--a forty-two-year-old Argentine who stood six-foot-two, weighed one hundred ninety-five pounds, and had a full head of dark-brown hair and a massive, immaculately trimmed mustache--didn't like his son-in-law at all. And the feeling was mutual.

As Clete walked onto the verandah with Dorotea, he could see the other guests having a cocktail in the sitting room, the other side of a reception line headed by Dona Claudia de Carzino-Cormano with her daughters, Alicia, Baroness von Wachtstein, and Isabela, a quite beautiful, black-haired, stylishly dressed female whom Clete thought of, and often referred to, as "El Bitcho."

Dorotea led the way down the reception line.

She and Claudia exchanged compliments.

Fischer followed her.

"Claudia, this is Wilhelm Fischer. He's from South Africa, and he's come here to show us how to grow grapes. Willi, this is our hostess, la Senora Carzino-Cormano, known as the Lioness of the Pampas."

"How do you do?" Claudia replied as she flashed Clete an icy look. "Welcome to Estancia Santa Catalina."

"You are very kind to have me, madam," Fischer replied, and--certainly without thinking about it--clicked his heels as he bent over her hand.

"I thought only Germans did that," Cletus said.

"Cletus, my God!" Claudia exclaimed.

"Did I say something wrong again?"

She did not respond directly.

"This is your party, Cletus," Claudia said. "You're supposed to be standing here greeting people. And then you're the last to show up."

Then she kissed his cheek--a real kiss, as opposed to pro forma.

"I don't do standing in line very well," he said.

She shook her head, then said, "Juan Domingo called. He can't be here."

"Oh, God, what a shame!" Frade replied with great insincerity, then moved to Alicia.

"Alicia, this is . . ."

"I heard," she said. "Welcome to our home, Mr. Fischer. I'm Alicia von Wachtstein."

"The baroness von Wachtstein," Clete furnished. "You are required to back out of her presence."

"Oh, God, Clete, don't you ever stop?" she said, giggling.

"You are very kind," Fischer said, and bent over her hand, this time not clicking his heels.

"And this, Willi, is la Senorita Isabela Carzino-Cormano."

Isabela neither smiled nor offered Fischer her hand.

"How do you do?" she said rather icily to Fischer.

"Any friend of mine, right, Izzy baby?" Frade said.

Isabela glowered at Frade, then put out her hand to Fischer, who bent over it and remembered again not to click his heels.

Dorotea and Alicia, now arm in arm, walked into the house.

"Now that the ladies have gone to powder their noses, or whatever, Willi, why don't we go to Switzerland?"

"Excuse me?"

"Over there," Clete said, nodding at a corner of the room where Father Welner, Karl Boltitz, Peter von Wachtstein, and Humberto Duarte stood talking.

He took Fischer's arm and propelled him across the room. It was an opportunity he didn't think he would have.

The men, all holding drinks, stopped talking when Frade and Fischer walked up.

"I was just telling Willi, here," Frade said, "that this is Switzerland, a neutral corner of the property where, under the benevolent eye of Father Welner, we're all noncombatants. Willi, you know Father Welner, of course, and my Uncle Humberto."

Humberto Duarte smiled and said, "Of course," although he had never seen Fischer before.

"These gentlemen, Willi, are Major Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein, whose wife you just met, and Kapitan zur See Karl Boltitz, of the German Embassy. Gentlemen, this is Wilhelm Fischer, whom Humberto prevailed upon to come all the way here from South Africa to teach me how to grow better grapes."

In turn, von Wachtstein and Boltitz clicked their heels as they offered Fischer their hands. And again Fischer remembered not to click his.

A maid walked up with drinks on a tray, interrupting the conversation. When Frade had taken a bourbon and water and Fischer a glass of red wine, and she left, Boltitz asked: "If I may ask, Mr. Fischer, is Afrikaans anything like German?"

"If you're politely asking if Willi speaks German, Karl," Frade said. "Yes, he does."

"Then we can chat in German," Boltitz said.

"He got his the same way Hansel and El Jefe got their Spanish," Frade said.

"How is that?" Boltitz asked a little uneasily.

"He had a sleeping dictionary," Frade said. "And even more interesting, you have a mutual friend. Claus something. What was your friend's last name, Willi?"

Fischer met his eyes for a moment.

"Von Stauffenberg," Fischer said. "Claus, Graf von Stauffenberg."

"I don't place the name," Boltitz said.

"Nor I," von Wachtstein said.

"Sure you do, Hansel," Frade said. "You told me you visited him in the hospital."

Von Wachtstein looked at Frade as if Frade had lost his mind.

"I was with Claus the day before he was . . . injured," Fischer said.

"Cletus, what the hell is going on here?" von Wachtstein snapped.

"Just remember that this is Wilhelm Fischer, of Durban, South Africa, whom Humberto arranged to come here to teach me how to grow better grapes," Frade said. "None of us can afford to have anyone--especially El Bitcho--looking at him suspiciously."

"Cletus," Boltitz said very seriously, "Delgano is paid to be suspicious, he's very good at being suspicious, and it looks as if he's about to walk over here."

"Not a problem. He already knows who Willi really is."

"And who might that be?" von Wachtstein asked more than a little sarcastically.

"Oberstleutnant Wilhelm Frogger, late of the Afrikakorps, Herr Major," Fischer said. "And more recently of the Senior German Officer Prisoner of War Detention Facility at Camp Clinton, Mississippi."

He let that sink in a moment.

"I saw it as my duty as a German officer to give my parole to Major Frade in order to assist him in dealing with my parents. And to assist however I can in that other project you and our friend Claus are involved in."

Neither von Wachtstein nor Boltitz could keep their surprise--even shock--off their faces.

"We'll all have to get together, and soon, to have a little chat," Frade said, then turned to face a short, muscular man of about forty with large dark eyes.

"Ah, Gonzalo!" he said. "Willi, this is Gonzalo Delgano, chief pilot of South American Airways. Gonzo, this is Mr. Wilhelm Fischer, who has come all the way from South Africa to teach me how to grow grapes."

"How do you do, Mr. Fischer?" Delgano asked. "Welcome to Argentina."

[TWO]

Estancia Santa Catalina

Near Pila

Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

2320 13 August 1943

Cletus Frade was already annoyed when Father Welner came up to him in the library, where, over postdinner brandy and cigars, he was talking business with Humberto Duarte, Gonzalo Delgano, and Guillermo de Filippi, SAA's chief of maintenance. Frade, at Delgano's suggestion, had hired de Filippi away from Aeropostal, the Argentine airline, to work for SAA.

Like Delgano, de Filippi was a former officer of the Argentine army air service. According to Delgano, he had gone to Aeropostal after he had failed a flight physical and could medically retire. Frade wasn't sure how true this story was. It was entirely possible that de Filippi, like Delgano, was actually working for the Bureau of Internal Security and that el Coronel Alejandro Bernardo Martin had ordered Delgano to get SAA to hire him as another means of keeping an eye on SAA.

But it wasn't this that bothered Frade, who knew that Martin and BIS were going to watch SAA as a hawk watches a prairie dog. It was de Filippi himself. Behind his back, when talking to Delgano, he called de Filippi "Senor Manana," which made reference to de Filippi's standard reply when asked when something he had been told to do would be done. Manana was the Spanish word for "tomorrow."

De Filippi had just told Frade that it would not be the day after manana, but the day after the day after manana before the Lodestar that Clete and Delgano had flown from Burbank would be ready to fly to Rosario, Cordoba, and Mendoza.

"May I see you a moment, Don Cletus?" the priest asked.

Frade held up a finger to ask Welner to wait, then turned to de Filippi.

"Tell you what we're going to do, Guillermo," Frade said. "Two things. One: It is now standard company policy that the absolute maximum turnaround time for any of our aircraft not requiring scheduled maintenance--like, for example, a one-hundred-hour overhaul--is twelve hours. Two: The day after manana, since Gonzo and I are trying to get this airline off the ground sometime this year, SAA will rent my Lodestar for our trip. Any problem with that, Guillermo?"

He didn't wait to hear Senor Manana's reply, if any, instead pushing himself somewhat awkwardly out of his chair--he had a large cigar in one hand and a large brandy snifter in the other--and motioned with his head toward a relatively unoccupied corner of the library.

When the priest had followed him there, Frade said unctuously, "Tell me how I may help you, my son."

Welner, smiling, shook his head in resignation.

"I don't suppose it has occurred to you that the way you jumped all over de Filippi might be counterproductive?"

"On the other hand, it might not. Manana is not a good way to do business."

"This is Argentina, Cletus. Not the U.S. Corps of Marines."

"I've noticed. Your nickel, Padre."

"Excuse me?"

"An Americanism. Since you dropped a nickel in the telephone to talk to me, the presumption is that you had something to say."

"I never heard that before. What I wanted to ask, Cletus, is if I might stay at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo tonight."

"Why would you want to do that?"

"I presumed I was invited on the bird shoot tomorrow."

Oh, shit. I thought I'd gotten rid of him.

"If you would be so kind as to put me up," Welner went on, "I wouldn't have to get up in the wee hours to drive over there. And if I left here, some other of Claudia's guests could spend the night."

"You're a bird shooter?"

"Does that surprise you?"

"Yeah, it does."

"Did you notice the four Browning over-and-under shotguns in the gun cabinet to the left?"

"Yeah, I did. Two identical Diamond Grade .16s and two .28s. It made me curious."

"One of each, thanks to your father's generosity to a poor priest, are mine."

Frade exhaled audibly.

"You know you're always welcome in my house," he said. "But tomorrow's not such a good idea."

"I thought you might have something in mind for tomorrow in addition to slaughtering innocent perdices, or maybe even instead of slaughtering them."

"Not admitting anything, but would your feelings be hurt if I told you I don't think you'd want to know what that might be?"

"You can't hurt my feelings, Cletus. I would have thought you would know that by now. And you're wrong. I do want to know. I can't help you if I don't know what you're up to."

Frade didn't reply.

After a moment, the priest said, "Maybe I can help in some way to keep Mr. Fischer's parents alive. I would like to try."

Frade met Welner's eyes for a long moment.

"Tell you what, Padre," he said. "Why don't you spend the night at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo? That way you won't have to get up in the middle of the night to drive over there."

"What an excellent idea," the priest said. "I should have thought of that myself."

"Changing the subject: Are you familiar with that old English saying 'In for a penny, in for a pound'?"

"Oh, yes," Welner said.

Frade raised his brandy snifter.

"Mud in your eye, Padre."

[THREE]

Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo

Near Pila

Buenos Aires Province,

Argentina

0630 14 August 1943

While it was assumed that the peones of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo were completely trustworthy, Enrico pointed out that money talked, and that it was unlikely but possible that some of the technicians working on the place might be on the payroll of someone else.

They knew, for example, that Carlos Aguirre, the airframe and power plant mechanic el Coronel had hired to maintain his Beechcraft Staggerwing and the Piper Cubs, was an agent of the Bureau of Internal Security. They knew because Gonzalo Delgano told them. Delgano knew because, when he had been on the estancia's payroll as the Beechcraft's pilot and as el Coronel's instructor pilot, he had all the time been an army officer attached to the BIS, charged with reporting on el Coronel Frade's activities.

Against the remote--but nevertheless real--possibility that someone besides Carlos Aguirre was in the employ of BIS, or, for that matter, someone in the employ of the German Embassy, would report that when the group came to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo before sunrise, von Wachtstein, Boltitz, Father Welner, and Humberto Duarte had not gone bird hunting as announced, Clete Frade decided that they would in fact go bird hunting.

A fairly complicated hunting expedition was organized. A wrangler had horses waiting for all the men when they came out of the big house after a breakfast buffet. So was a horse-drawn wagon carrying shotguns, ammunition, and the makings of a midmorning snack break. A second horse-drawn wagon carried the dogs--eight Llewellyn setters--and three handlers for them.

Everyone mounted up. Then Clete--to the amusement of the dozen mounted peones who would go with them--had his usual difficulty with Julius Caesar. The large, high-spirited black stallion had never been ridden by anyone but el Coronel and manifested its resentment of its new master by trying very hard to throw Clete. When Frade finally got control of his mount, the party walked their horses through the formal gardens and out onto the pampas, with the wagons following.

Four kilometers or so from the big house, they dismounted and collected their weapons from the wagon. Clete's father's hunting equipment included something he had never seen before: a leather shell bag, which looked to him like a woman's purse on an extra-long strap.

And he was again wearing more of his father's clothing, in this instance boots and a Barbour jacket. He had never seen one of these before, and as Father Welner had seen him suspiciously eyeing and feeling the material, the priest said, "Not to worry, my son, the Queen has one just like it."

"It looks greasy," Clete said.

"They wax the thread before they weave the cloth."

All four of the Diamond Grade Brownings had been brought along in a rack that looked as if it had been made for precisely that purpose. Clete saw the priest take the 28-bore rather than the 16.

Ah, we're going to play King of the Mountain!

He took the other 28-bore from its rack.

"The way your father and I shot," the priest said, "was by turns. You shoot until you miss, and then the other chap."

"After you, Padre," Clete said, grandly waving Welner ahead of him onto the grass of the plain.

The Llewellyns were both very good hunters and superbly trained. They picked up a scent within two minutes, found birds not quite a minute after that, and held the point perfectly until the birds took flight and the priest had fired.

Two perdices fell to the ground.

"Good shooting," Clete said politely.

"Lucky," the priest said politely.

He was lucky six times in a row before he missed.

"Tough luck," Clete said politely as he fed two shells to his over-and-under shotgun.

"I think it was badly loaded shells," the priest said. "You might take that into consideration should you have any difficulty."

The eyes of Texas are upon you, Cletus, he thought as he started after the Llewellyns.

As well as those of the smug Jesuit.

And, of course, the eyes of the members of your private army, who are probably praying the Good Father makes a monkey of el patron.

Don't fuck up!

He dropped nineteen birds--eight of them in doubles--before missing. When he finally missed, he turned to Father Welner and said, "You must be right about the faulty shells. I usually shoot much better than this."

By then it was quarter past ten, and they stopped the hunt for a break.

And to get down to the business of the day. Which was getting Frogger to trust Hans-Peter von Wachtstein and Karl Boltitz and vice versa.

As far as he was concerned regarding Frogger, Allen Dulles apparently knew enough about him to trust him. Clete had had no choice but to go along with that. Moreover, unprofessionally, he had the gut feeling that Frogger was one of the good guys.

And he, of course, knew that Boltitz and von Wachtstein could be trusted.

The problem was that they didn't trust Frogger--they didn't know him, or that he was what he said he was. And the reverse was true. Clete thought that if he were in any of their shoes, he would have felt the same way.

That had to be changed.

If their conversation--mutual interrogation--went sour, as it very possibly would, Clete had a hole card in his chest pocket. It was a letter from General von Wachtstein that Captain Dieter von und zu Aschenburg, at considerable personal risk, had carried to Hans-Peter von Wachtstein shortly after von Wachtstein had arrived in Argentina.

In the letter, General von Wachtstein told his son that he had belatedly realized it was his duty to do whatever he could to rid Germany of Adolf Hitler.

He had begun the letter: The greatest violation of the code of chivalry by which I, and you, and your brothers, and so many of the von Wachtsteins before us, have tried to live is, of course, regicide. I want you to know that before I decided that honor demands I contribute what I can to such a course of action, I considered all of the ramifications, both spiritual and worldly, and that I am at peace with my decision.

Clete's father had read the letter. It had caused the tough old cavalryman to weep.

If things did not go the way Frade hoped they would--the way they had to go--Frade was going to show the letter to Frogger, even though this would enrage Peter, would make him feel that Frade had not only betrayed him but had sentenced his father to death by hanging from a butcher's hook by piano wire.

Frade raised his arm over his head and, fist balled, made the U.S. Marine Corps hand signal for Gather on me by making a pumping motion.

Whether that was also a hand signal of the Husares de Pueyrredon or not, Enrico Rodriguez, whom Clete was starting to think of as the wagon master leading the pioneers across the prairie, understood it. He and the wagons and horsemen, who had followed the hunters across the pampas, now headed for them.

"Leave the lunch wagon," Clete ordered when Enrico rode up, "and then take everybody far enough away so they won't be able to hear us talking."

"Si, senor."

Frade turned to Welner and said, "Father, I have no problem with you hearing this, but it's up to them, not me."

Frogger, von Wachtstein, and Boltitz looked at them.

"For what it's worth, I trust Father Welner with my life," Clete said. "And he already knows a hell of a lot; just about everything."

The three Germans looked among themselves.

"Father," Boltitz finally said, "are you sure you want to know about this?"

"I wish I didn't know any of it," the priest said. "What I am sure of is that what I would like to do is keep your parents alive. The more I know, the better chance I will have to do that. If I have to say this, I swear before God that nothing I hear here today will go any further."

The Germans looked at each other again. Finally, von Wachtstein and then Frogger nodded.

"Please stay, Father," Boltitz said. "And getting right to the point of this, what Peter and I have to do, with the lives of many people at stake, is determine that Oberstleutnant Frogger is who he and--no offense intended--Major Frade say he is."

"And the reverse is true, Herr Kapitan zur See," Frogger said stiffly. "The only person vouching for you is Major Frade. How do I know you are who you say you are?"

The irony of three traitors standing around a wagon in the middle of nowhere on the pampas drinking coffee and eating pastry while trying to determine that the others were also bona fide traitors was not lost on Frade. It would have been almost funny if so much, and so many lives, were not at stake.

It also made him consider treason and traitors. Until he came to Argentina, it had been simple: Anyone who is a traitor is a no-good sonofabitch. One beneath contempt.

But these three honorable men, these decent officers who actually tried to live by a code of chivalry that Frade thought was ridiculous in these times, were putting their lives on the line to be traitors. He admired them all, and doubted that he would have been able to handle being in their shoes.

Peter and I don't belong in this. We should be at the controls of fighter planes. Philosophical introspection is not needed in a cockpit. You shoot the other guy down, or he shoots you down. Very simple.

The mutual investigation lasted for thirty-five minutes. Frade was impressed with Boltitz's skill as an interrogator, and Frogger was nearly as good.

By comparison, Peter and I seem rank amateurs. Which, of course, we are.

"I pray to God that I am not wrong, Herr Kapitan zur See," Frogger said finally. "But I believe that you are who you say are, personally, and further that you are allied with us in what we have undertaken."

Boltitz gave Frogger his hand.

"Hey, what am I?" Peter asked.

"Claus vouched for you, Herr Major," Frogger said. "He said if it was impossible to keep you out of our enterprise, then I could trust you with my life."

And who the hell am I? Frade wondered. Like it or not, guys, I'm the guy you have to trust with your lives.

"Our immediate problem is my mother," Frogger said.

"How's that?" Welner asked.

"When I saw her yesterday, Father," Frogger said evenly, "and told her that I had come to see that she and my father cooperated with Major Frade in collecting information about Operation Phoenix and on that ransoming operation, she said I was a despicable traitor to Germany and to my family and my late brothers, and that she hoped I was going to burn in hell for breaking my vow of obedience to 'unser Fuhrer.' "

The priest shook his head.

"Perhaps I can reason with her, perhaps pray with her for God's guidance."

"I don't think that would be a solution to the problem, Father," Frogger said. "Especially if she suspects--and I'm afraid she's paranoid enough to do just that--what we plan to do to 'our leader.' "

[FOUR]

Casa Numero Cincuenta y Dos

Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo

Near Pila, Buenos Aires Province

Republic of Argentina

1205 14 August 1943

Frade knew there was something wrong the moment he walked Julius Caesar up to the verandah of the house.

Both Dorotea and El Jefe, who had been sitting on the verandah, stood up the moment they saw him, but neither smiled or waved.

They look like they're waiting for Daddy to give them a whipping, now that he's home from the office.

Or for the Grim Reaper.

The door opened and Staff Sergeant Sigfried Stein came onto the verandah. He didn't look particularly happy either, and when he saw Frade, his look changed to very glum.

What the hell has happened?

There were seventy-odd "casas," each numbered, scattered around the three hundred forty square miles of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo. The use of the Spanish word for "house" was somewhat misleading. There was always more than just a house. Each so-called casa had stables and barns and all the other facilities required to operate what were in effect the seventy-odd farming subdivisions of the estancia. And on each casa there was always more than one house; often there were four or more.

Some of them were permanently occupied by the capataz--supervisor of the surrounding area--and, of course, his family and the peones who worked its land. And some of them were used only where there was a good deal of work to be done in the area, and the workers were too far from their casas or the village near the big house to, so to speak, commute.

House Number 52 was one of the medium-size houses. Built within a double stand of poplars, the casa itself had a verandah on three sides. On either side there were two smaller houses. Inside the larger house there was a great room, a dining room, an office, a kitchen, and two bedrooms. It had a wood-fired par- rilla and a dome-shaped oven. One building housed a MAN diesel generator that powered the lights, the water pumps, the freezers, and the refrigerators. El Patron had taken good care of his workers.

It was reasonably comfortable, secure, and far from prying eyes.

And thus the best place that Enrico and El Jefe could think of to hide the Froggers after the shooting at Casa Chica.

They'd agreed: When Don Cletus returns from the United States, he will know what to do.

Frade had been home two days now and didn't have a clue as to what he should do with the Froggers. Although he was painfully aware that keeping them on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo was not an option. Sooner or later, their presence would be confirmed and someone would come after them, either the Argentine authorities or the Germans.

One of the peones--a boy of about fourteen--ran up to Julius Caesar. Clete tossed him the reins, then slid out of the saddle. He had been carrying his shotgun--adhering to his belief that you never need a gun until you need one badly--but now no longer needed it. Siggy Stein had a Thompson .45 ACP submachine gun hanging from his shoulder.

He walked back to one of the wagons in the column and handed the shotgun to one of the bird-boys. Bird-boys were responsible for taking the birds from the hunters when the pouches were full, and later--now--plucking and gutting the perdices. The bulk of the cleaned birds, save for a few that would be taken by the peones, would be roasted ritually over a fire at lunch.

Frade was surprised to see how many birds there were. A fifty-kilogram burlap potato bag was full, and another nearly so. Several families of peones were about to have a perdiz feast. The hunting had been great, but the afterglow of that had vanished when he saw the faces on Dorotea, El Jefe, and Stein.

As he walked to the verandah, the other hunters dismounted and followed him.

"Okay, what happened?" Clete asked as he walked onto the verandah.

"There's been a small problem," Dorotea said.

"I would never have guessed from your happy faces," Clete said. "What kind of a small problem?"

"Right after we got here, la Senora Frogger asked if she could go for a walk," Dorotea said.

Dorotea and Schultz had carried the makings of lunch from the big house, bringing the food, the wine, the tableware, cooks, and several maids in Schultz's Model A Ford pickup truck. That, too, was in case anyone was watching.

"And you said, 'Okay,' right?"

"I did," Chief Schultz said, more than a little uncomfortably. "I sent Dorotea with her."

He was now speaking of The Other Dorotea, who was euphemistically described as "El Jefe's housekeeper."

"And then what happened?" Clete asked softly.

"Well," Schultz began, and then stopped. He sighed, then went on: "Clete, I sent a couple of guys on horses with them. Told them to stay out of sight but to keep their eyes open. . . ."

"And then what happened?" Clete repeated softly.

"Well, I guess they were half a mile, maybe a kilometer, out in the boonies when Dorotea took a little break. . . ."

"What do you mean, 'a little break'?"

"She went behind a bush, so to speak, is what I mean," Schultz said uncomfortably. "You know?"

That triggered a mental image of the massive "housekeeper" Frade would just as well have not had.

"And then what happened?" Clete asked for a third time.

"Then the Kraut belted her behind the ear with a thing from the fireplace--you know, a poker. She must have had it hidden in her skirt."

Clete looked back to Schultz. "And then?"

"The Kraut took off running," Schultz said. He then remembered that three of the men listening to him were German and might consider that a pejorative term. He tried to justify his lack of tact by saying, "Jesus, she could have killed Dorotea with that goddamn poker."

"Is Dorotea badly injured?" Clete inquired.

"She's got a lump behind her ear the size of a baseball."

"Where did Frau Frogger think she was going?" Frade asked.

Schultz shrugged.

"She didn't get far," Schultz said. "Dorotea went after her."

"And where is she now?" Father Welner asked.

"In the house," Schultz said. "He's taking care of her."

"I presume you mean Herr Frogger?" Clete asked.

Schultz nodded.

"Define 'taking care of her,' " Frade ordered.

Schultz now looked even more uncomfortable.

"When she caught her, Dorotea did a job on her," he said. Then he added: "It took two of the guys to pull her off of her." There was another pause, this one a little longer. "And it took them a little time to get there to pull her off."

"May I see her?" Oberstleutnant Frogger asked softly.

"Perhaps it would be better if I went in to see her first," Father Welner said. When neither Frogger nor Frade replied, the priest added, "You said earlier, Wilhelm, that there was some difficulty between you two when you first saw her."

Frogger nodded. "Thank you, Father."

Welner reached down and unbuttoned several of the buttons on his plaid woolen shirt. Then he reached inside and pulled out a dickey to which was attached a clerical collar. In a few seconds, he had fastened the collar around his neck and rebuttoned the shirt.

He looked at Frade and the others, and asked, "All right?"

They nodded.

Frade said what he was thinking: "In that plaid shirt, she's going to think you're a Presbyterian."

Von Wachtstein chuckled. Everybody else gave him a dirty look.

Welner went back to his horse and retrieved what looked like a small doctor's bag from where he had it tied to the saddle. Then he walked purposely past everyone and onto the verandah. He went in the house without knocking.

"Now that everything's in capable Jesuit hands," Frade said, "I'm going to have a little fermented grape while waiting to see what happens next."

He went onto the verandah, where the luncheon table had been set up, and helped himself to a large glass of red wine. Von Wachtstein joined him almost immediately, and then the others, one by one.

For the next ten minutes, everyone on the verandah could hear the sound of an excited female voice inside the house and the murmurs of male voices. The thick walls of the house and drawn draperies kept them from understanding any of it.

Gradually, the sound of the female voice became less audible, and finally it stopped.

Two minutes after that, the door opened and Father Welner pointed first at Oberstleutnant Frogger and then Cletus Frade and motioned them to come inside.

Frade had the unkind thought that the priest's gesture was not unlike the one the headmaster of his boarding school--also a priest, albeit an Episcopalian--had used to summon miscreants into his office to face the bar of ecclesiastic justice.

And then, knowing that he probably should not, he refilled his wineglass before going through the door.

Frau Frogger was half-lying on the couch. After a moment, Frade saw that she was asleep.

Not asleep, stupid. The way she was howling a couple of minutes ago, there's no way she could have just dozed off.

She's been drugged.

Christ, Welner drugged her!

She was an ordinary-looking middle-aged woman, just an inch the far side of plump. Her black, faintly patterned dress was dirt-smudged and torn in several places.

Her face was battered, and Clete had a mental image of the two gauchos trying to pull the massive Dorotea off her as Dorotea's arms flailed beating her.

"Mein Gott!" Oberstleutnant Frogger said softly.

"She'll be sore for a while, and I'm afraid she's going to lose a tooth," the priest said. "But aside from that, she's not seriously injured physically."

"She's sedated?" Oberstleutnant Frogger asked.

The priest nodded. "I gave her something."

"She attacked the Father," Herr Frogger said softly. "She . . . your mother smashed a water pitcher against the table, and then tried to shove what was left of it in the Father's face."

"She's disturbed," Father Welner said, using the calm, considerate tone of a priest.

"That makes trying to shove a broken water pitcher in your face okay?" Frade said sharply.

"We had to wrestle her to the ground," Herr Frogger said. He exhaled. "I had no idea she was that strong."

No one said anything for a moment.

"That's when Father gave her the injection," Herr Frogger said. "If he hadn't done that, I don't know what would have happened."

"How long will she be out?" Clete asked.

"She'll sleep soundly for four or five hours--perhaps longer, because she's physically exhausted as well--and then she will gradually become awake."

Oberstleutnant Frogger asked what Clete was thinking: "And then what?"

"Then we're back to square one," Clete said. "And we can't have that."

"My mother belongs in a hospital. Not for what that woman did to her, but for her . . . that uncontrollable, irrational rage."

"Colonel," Frade said. "You know that's not an option."

"Well, then," Oberstleutnant Frogger replied, "what do we do, put her in chains?"

"That is one option," Clete said.

"Cletus, you can't be serious," Father Welner said.

"I'm perfectly serious," Frade said. "She's made it clear that she will do anything--she could have killed Dorotea--to get away. She has decided that both her husband and her son are the enemy. And, for that matter, that you are. And since putting her in a hospital is out of the question, what other option is there?"

"Actually, I can think of one," the priest said.

"Well, let's have it," Frade said, more sharply than he intended.

"When your Aunt Beatriz became unstable after your cousin Jorge's passing--"

"He didn't pass, Father," Frade said. "You know what happened to him."

Oberstleutnant Frogger looked at Frade.

"He was an Argentine army officer, Colonel," Frade said. "A quote unquote neutral observer at Stalingrad. The damned fool went flying around in a Storch and got himself killed when it was shot down."

"That's a bit cruel, don't you think, Cletus?" the priest asked.

"It's the truth. Cruel? Maybe. We're in a cruel business. Let's hear your possible solution. The other options I can think of start with chaining her to the floor."

"At the risk of Major Frade taking offense at my defense of him, Father," Oberstleutnant Frogger said, "there are things in play here involving many lives."

"Are you going to tell me what they are?" the priest asked.

"No," Frade said. "And 'things in play here' was a very bad choice of words. The one thing we're not doing is playing."

The priest gathered his thoughts for a moment, then said, "All right, speaking bluntly: When your Aunt Beatriz lost control, your Uncle Humberto and your father were agreed that she should not be kept in the hospital any longer than necessary. A 'nervous breakdown' was one thing, perhaps even to be expected under the circumstances. An indefinite period of hospitalization in the psychiatric ward of the German Hospital was something else. 'What would people think? She could never raise her head in society again.' "

"Oh, for Christ's sake!" Frade said disgustedly.

"Unfortunately, may God forgive them, it's true," the priest said. "The solution finally reached was that she would be released from the German Hospital, and as long as she could be controlled by drugs and kept under supervision, she would be allowed to remain at home."

"She doesn't seem to be very controlled to me," Frade said.

"Relatively speaking," the priest said carefully, "she's farther down the road to recovery than any of us thought would be the case. In the beginning, when we took her from the hospital, Cletus, your Aunt Beatriz was much sicker than she is today.

"But, as I was saying, in the event that she would not show improvement, or grew worse, another means to deal with the situation was put in place. There is a hospital operated by the Little Sisters of Santa Maria del Pilar in Mendoza. It's a nursing order, and the sisters--some of whom, including the Mother Superior, are physicians--have experience in dealing with the mentally ill--"

"Cutting to the chase," Clete interrupted. He saw on everyone's face that no one understood that, but went on anyway. "You're suggesting I put Frau Frogger in a psychiatric hospital in Mendoza? What's the difference between that and putting her in the German Hospital in Buenos Aires? She would either escape--"

"Let me finish, please, Cletus," the priest said, not very patiently.

"Sorry," Clete said, but it was clear he wasn't.

"That wine you're drinking comes from one of your vineyards, Don Guillermo, which is in the foothills of the Andes near Mendoza. On the property is a rather nice house, Casa Montagna, designed by an Italian architect for your Granduncle Guillermo in the Piedmont style. It sits on the side of a mountain overlooking the vineyards and the bodega. No one lives there, not even the Don Guillermo manager, but there is a small staff so that it will be ready on short notice should we need it for Beatriz. I can't remember your father ever going there or even mentioning it. I learned of it--went there--only after he had offered it to Humberto for Beatriz."

"I don't understand," Clete said.

"What Humberto did--actually, what I did for him--was convert one wing into a place where Beatriz could be cared for in comfort. I had the garden walled in, and converted the rooms above her apartment into living quarters suitable for the Little Sisters who would care for her around the clock."

"You arranged for the nuns?" Frade asked.

Welner nodded.

"The Mother Superior came to understand that the greatest good for the greatest number would come from the generous contribution that would be made by Humberto as an expression of his appreciation for the Little Sisters' care of Beatriz. They could use the money to treat the less fortunate."

"How could they have been sure Beatriz would stay there?" Frade asked.

"Well, they were prepared to watch her twenty-four hours a day. Suicide was a potential problem. Thank God that's passed. And as I said, the garden was walled in. There are locks."

"How much is it going to cost me to put Frau Frogger in there?"

"Wouldn't, using your terminology, 'putting Frau Frogger in there' be the decision of her family?"

"No," Frade said simply.

"We are in Major Frade's hands, Father," Oberstleutnant Frogger said.

"I can't be a party to taking her there as a prisoner," the priest said.

"If you can arrange for the nuns to take my wife, Father," Herr Frogger said, "you will be saving her life, mentally and physically."

And Frade had a sudden insight: Welner wouldn't have brought this up unless he knew it was the best solution possible. But he now has convinced Frogger, father and son, to think it's their idea.

Goddamn, he's clever!

"Then the problem becomes: How do we get her there?" Welner said.

Frade walked to the wall-mounted telephone intending to call Gonzalo Delgano, but then changed his mind.

He walked instead to the door.

"Enrico, I need a half-dozen reliable men to go to Mendoza with me right now. Don't tell them where we are going, only that they'll be there several weeks at least."

"We are taking the German woman to Casa Montagna, Don Cletus?"

Enrico knows about Casa Montagna?

"That's right."

"You are going to fly?"

"Just as soon as I can get the Lodestar in the air."

"And who will help you fly?"

"Dona Dorotea."

"What will Delgano say?"

"I think he will be distressed that I allowed Dona Dorotea to fly the airplane from here to Jorge Frade, when it appears there first thing tomorrow morning. It's about six hundred miles to Mendoza."

"He will be even more distressed if you kill yourself and everybody else before tomorrow morning, Don Cletus. Call Major Delgano. Either have him come here or, if time is so important, go to Buenos Aires."

"Then he would learn what I'm doing."

"He would learn anyway, Don Cletus. Don Cletus, you would insult him if you did this without him. He is now one of us."

Frade considered that a moment.

Damn it, he's right.

If I were Delgano, after all he's done already, and got the idea I was hiding something from him, I'd be insulted.

"What I think we should do, Don Cletus, is drive into Buenos Aires to his home. . . ."

"I don't know where he lives."

"I do. And you tell him what you need. The worst thing that can happen is that he will tell you he doesn't want to do it. But he would not betray you. I told you. He is now one of us."

"You're right, Enrico. Thank you, my friend."

"Or--I just thought of this--you could telephone him and tell him that there is something he needs to look at on your airplane. And then go to Buenos Aires in one of the Pipers and bring him here. If the clowns are listening, there is nothing suspicious about that."

"You would let me fly into Buenos Aires all by myself?"

The gentle sarcasm was lost on Enrico.

"If you give me your word of honor you will not leave the airfield when you are there and are very careful while you are there."

Frade, knowing he could not trust his voice, clapped the old soldier on both arms. He went back into the house, picked up the telephone, and, when the estancia operator came on the line, told her to get Chief Pilot Gonzalo Delgano in Buenos Aires for him.