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 Führer.’ ”
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 Número 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 Patrón 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 Señora 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 María 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.”
The Honor of Spies Page 11
