W. IV: Honor Bound 05 - The Honor of Spies

That she had gone to Casa Chica the previous afternoon with provisions for Sergeant Stein and the others and found only a nearly destroyed Casa Chica, large pools of blood on the airstrip, and nothing and nobody else. Stein was gone, and so were Suboficial Mayor Rodriguez, the Froggers, The Other Dorotea, and the dozen ex-Husares de Pueyrredon peones who were supposed to be guarding the place.

There hadn't been time then to do anything about that. The SAA Lodestar was due at Aerodromo Jorge Frade in Moron in an hour--he had sent a telegram from Brazil announcing their Estimated Time of Arrival--and if it didn't land more or less on time, el Coronel Martin, who Frade was sure would be there to meet him, would suspect that the Lodestar had landed somewhere else. For example, at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.

And taking into account what Dorotea had told him had happened at Casa Chica, it was also quite possible that Martin would be waiting at Jorge Frade with a warrant for his arrest as at least a conspirator in the kidnapping, or whatever it might be called, of the Froggers.

Clete Frade did the best with what he had. And what he had was his own Lodestar and someone who could fly it--SAA's chief pilot, Gonzalo Delgano. Delgano would not be suspected by Martin of having anything to do with the Froggers because Delgano was actually a BIS major charged by Martin with keeping an eye on Frade.

Frade had somewhat turned Delgano. The day before, during a fuel stop at La Paz, Bolivia, he had appealed to Delgano. And Delgano had, if not changed sides, then--after praying for guidance and being swayed by his concept of a Christian Officer's Code of Behavior--decided that he was morally obliged to help Frade smuggle Herr Fischer/Oberstleutnant Frogger into Argentina aboard the Lodestar.

If the whole thing had blown up--and it looked as if it had--and everything came out--as it inevitably would--Delgano was in deep trouble. But neither Frade nor Delgano thought el Coronel Martin would be waiting at Jorge Frade with handcuffs for both of them. With a little bit of luck, Delgano could just go home from the airfield.

Or get in a car and drive to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo and fly the Frade Lodestar, with Oberstleutnant Frogger and the others of Frade's OSS team, across the River Plate to sanctuary in Uruguay.

Frade had ordered that everything the OSS owned on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo be prepared for demolition and for all the OSS personnel to be prepared to get on the Lodestar at a moment's notice.

Then he and Delgano had flown the SAA Lodestar to Aerodromo Coronel Jorge Frade in Moron, where neither was surprised to find el Coronel Martin waiting for them.

Not with handcuffs, but with the announcement that el Coronel Peron had some new information regarding the missing Froggers that he wished to discuss with Frade, and he thought that it would be a good idea for Frade to hear what he had to say.

"Not in the next couple of days, Don Cletus. Right now," Martin had said. "I'm afraid I must insist. You can follow me to the house on Libertador and then go home."

"How am I going to follow you?"

Martin pointed toward one of the hangars. Frade looked and saw Suboficial Mayor Enrico Rodriguez standing beside one of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo's Ford station wagons.

On the way to the house on Libertador, Enrico had told Frade what had happened at Casa Chica, told him that the Froggers were safe and well protected in one of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo's casas, and shown him a thick stack of photographs that Sergeant Stein had taken at Casa Chica.

The meeting was brief. Afterward when Frade came down the stairs into the basement garage of the mansion, both very tired and upset, he was annoyed but not surprised to find Martin still waiting for him.

"Alejandro, what a pleasant surprise," Frade said sarcastically. "We're going to have to stop meeting this way; people will talk."

Enrico was with him, his riot shotgun held vertically against his leg. Martin was not amused by Frade's wit.

"That didn't take long," Martin said.

"Well, we didn't have much to talk about," Frade said.

"What did he have to say?"

"Very little after I told him I knew he was there when my Casa Chica was machine-gunned."

"Excuse me?"

Frade took the sheaf of pictures from the pocket of his leather jacket and handed them to Martin.

Martin tried very hard and almost succeeded in suppressing his surprise at the photographs.

"I didn't hear about any bodies," Martin blurted. "Where are they now?"

"God only knows," Frade said. "Why did you insist I come here, Alejandro?"

Martin took a moment to consider his reply, then said, "I thought perhaps el Coronel Peron could make the point that either kidnapping--or aiding and abetting the desertion of--German diplomats was a very dangerous thing to do."

"You thought what happened at Casa Chica was in the nature of a warning?" Frade asked.

"I didn't know it was anything like this," he said. "It happened while you were in the United States?"

Frade nodded. "Yesterday. You really didn't know?"

Martin shook his head.

"Did they get the Froggers?" he asked.

"The who? Next question."

Martin looked at him for a long moment, then asked: "Anything else of interest to me happen upstairs?"

"Well, I told him I wanted him out of this house by tomorrow. That was about it."

While many people knew the mansion to be el Coronel Peron's residence, and many even thought he owned it, the fact was that it belonged to Cletus Frade, and Peron had been using it as a sort of tolerated unwelcome guest.

Martin, who knew who owned the house, shook his head in disbelief.

"Actually, what I said was, 'Tio Juan, you degenerate sonofabitch. You're going to have to find someplace else for your little girls. I want you out of here by tomorrow.' That was after he waved his pistol at me."

"He did what?" Martin asked incredulously.

"For a moment I thought he was going to shoot me. But then Enrico chambered a round in the riot gun and he thought better of it. Now that I've had a couple of minutes to think it over, I almost wish he had tried. The tragic death of Juan Domingo in his godson's library because poor old Enrico didn't know his shotgun was loaded would have solved a lot of my problems."

"And now?"

"Now, nothing. I told him that if I even suspect an attempt is made on my life, my wife's life, or the life of anybody close to me, the photographs--and some other material I have--will be made public. The only people who know what happened upstairs just now are Enrico and me. And now you."

Martin considered that for a long moment.

"I'm sure you understand, my friend, that it isn't a question of if this situation will erupt but when. I really don't see Peron trying to kill you--at least personally--but there are a number of others who would like to see you out of the way."

Karl Cranz, for instance, Martin thought.

Cranz would be very unhappy indeed about the failure of the Tandil operation. Cletus Frade was making enemies left and right.

Frade nodded.

"We did not have this conversation," Martin went on. "What happened tonight was that I insisted you come here, as el Coronel Peron asked me to do, and waited here only until I was sure that you had met with him."

Frade nodded again.

The two shook hands.

"Enrico," Martin said, "I'm very glad there was no accident because you didn't know your shotgun was loaded."

Enrico nodded at Martin but said nothing.

Martin walked across the garage to a 1939 Dodge sedan. The driver saw him coming and had the engine started before he reached the car. Martin got in the front seat and the car drove off.

"We go to the estancia now, Don Cletus?" Enrico asked.