“A logical place for what?”
“There is a cache of weapons in the basement, Don Cletus.”
“What kind of weapons?”
“Enough to equip four troops of the Húsares de Pueyrredón, Don Cletus. El Coronel was concerned that they would not be available if they were needed; that someone might seize the regimental and troop armories. So he cached enough here . . .”
“You’re talking about rifles, pistols, that sort of thing?”
“And some machine guns, Don Cletus. Even some mortars and hand grenades. And, of course, the ammunition for the weapons. That is really why the old Húsares are here. To keep an eye on the cache, so that it wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands, until I could tell you about it and you could decide what you want to do about it.”
“Enrico, if you weren’t so ugly, I think I would kiss you,” Frade said.
“You should not say things like that, Don Cletus.”
Frade turned to Alvarez. “Did you know about this?”
“I am proud to say, Don Cletus, that your father took me into his confidence.”
“It is so, Don Cletus,” Enrico confirmed. “El Señor Alvarez may be trusted.”
“I’m very glad to hear that,” Clete said, meaning it, and then went on: “Señor Alvarez, it is very important that no one learns that la Señora Fischer is here. Her life would be in danger otherwise.”
Alvarez nodded. “No one, Don Cletus, will know anything beyond that the sisters of Santa María del Pilar are caring for an ill woman.”
“I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop,” Cletus said. “As I’m sure it will. But what I think I’m going to do now is have another glass of this twenty-six-year-old nectar of the gods to give me the courage to face Mother Superior.”
“Cletus, for God’s sake!” Dorotea said. “What is el Señor Alvarez going to think of you?”
“I have already made up my mind, Doña Dorotea,” Alvarez said. “He is his father’s son.”
The Mother Superior of the Mendoza chapter of the Little Sisters of Santa María del Pilar marched into the library four minutes later, trailed by the enormous nun who had been in her office and three others. Father Welner brought up the rear.
I know who the big nun is, Clete decided. She’s the convent version of Enrico.
“Enrico,” Reverend Mother ordered, “you will please make yourself available to me when we finish the business immediately at hand.”
“Yes, Reverend Mother.”
“I will introduce myself to these other gentlemen at that time. For now you have met Sister Carolina.” She pointed to the huge nun. “These sisters are Sister Mónica, Sister Theresa, and Sister Dolores. Sisters, this is Don Cletus Frade and la Señora Frade. Enrico, you know.”
The nuns wordlessly bobbed their heads.
“You will get to meet the others later,” she went on. “For now get yourselves settled. You know where to go. Sister Mónica, you will decide who goes on duty now. When you have done so, and your selection is settled, send her to the apartment. If Father and I are inside, wait for us to come out.” She turned to Father Welner. “Are you ready, Father?”
“Yes, Reverend Mother.”
With that they all marched out of the library.
Clete smiled.
“I’m almost afraid to ask, darling,” Dorotea said. “But what are you thinking?”
He grunted. “When I was in Los Angeles just now, I heard that since February there have been women in the Marine Corps. I was thinking that Mother Superior would make a fine gunnery sergeant.”
“What the hell, Clete,” Sawyer said. “Why not? They’ve had women in the Army and the Navy for a long time.”
Frade began, very cheerfully, to sing to the melody of “Mademoiselle from Armentières”: “‘The WACs and WAVEs will win the war, parlez-vous. The WACs and WAVEs will win the war, parlez-vous. The WACs and WAVEs will win the war, so what the hell are we fighting for? Inky dinky parlez-vous.’ ”
Sawyer laughed. Dorotea glared at him and asked, “How much of that wine have you had?”
“Not as much as I’m going to,” he said, and reached for another bottle of Don Guillermo Cabernet Sauvignon 1917.
Mother Superior returned much sooner than Frade thought she would, this time trailed by Father Welner, Oberstleutnant Frogger, and Herr Wilhelm Frogger. But no nuns.
“Enrico,” she said, “I didn’t know about Marianna until Cletus told me. I am so very sorry.”
“Marianna and El Coronel are now at peace with all the angels, Mother,” Enrico said. “I have avenged their murder.”
“ ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,’ ” Welner quoted.
“I have avenged them,” Enrico repeated.
Mother Superior changed the subject: “Frau Frogger—”
“Frau Fischer,” Cletus interrupted her. “Fischer. There’s nobody named Frogger here.”
Mother Superior looked at him very coldly.
He met her eyes. “The name is Fischer. And make sure your nuns don’t fo rget that.”
“Cletus!” Dorotea started to protest.
Mother Superior stopped her with an upraised hand, then went on: “La Señora Fischer, in addition to what else might be troubling her, is not only exhausted but has apparently been beaten.”
“That was after she tried to kill a woman with a fireplace poker,” Clete said. “The woman she tried to kill didn’t like it much.”
“So Father Welner told me,” Mother Superior said calmly. “She’s lost a tooth and may require dental attention. We can deal with that if it becomes a problem. What she needs now is rest. Sister Mónica will be with her overnight. If she awakens, I have prescribed—given Sister Mónica—a sedative to give her. I’ll try to talk to her tomorrow afternoon.”
Staff Sergeant Sigfried Stein came into the library. When no one said anything to him, he announced cheerfully, “I bring greetings from Vint Hill Farms. We’re up. And to the estancia.”
“Good man,” Frade said.
“You must be Major Stein,” Mother Superior said.
Stein looked at Frade, who nodded.
“Yes, ma’am,” Stein said.
“Both la Señora Fischer’s husband and her son have told me that the very sight of you triggers feelings—uncontrollable feelings, irrational feelings—of rage in la Señora Fischer.”
“I don’t think she likes Jews very much,” Stein said.
“And you are a Jew?”
“Guilty,” Stein said.
“What is your first—I almost said ‘Christian’—name?”
Stein looked at Frade again, and Frade nodded again.
“Sigfried,” he said, not very pleasantly. “Jewish first name Sigfried.”
“May I call you ‘Sigfried’? Or would you prefer ‘Major Stein’?”
“Siggie is what people call me,” he said finally.
“Forgive me, Siggie,” Mother Superior said. “I have to ask you this: Have you even done anything to her—said something cruel, or struck her, restrained her, anything like that?”
“No, ma’am,” Stein said. “Never. Not that I haven’t been tempted.” He heard what he had blurted and quickly added: “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”
Mother Superior made an It doesn’t matter gesture with both hands.
She said: “I thought I knew that when I looked into your eyes. You have very kind eyes. Siggie, if you’re willing, you can be very important in bringing la Señora Fischer back to good health.”
“Excuse me?”
“We don’t have to get into the details now. I just need to know if you’d be willing to help.”
Stein looked at Frade, whose face showed nothing.
“If it’s all right with the major,” Stein said finally, “then okay. I’ll do what I can.”
“It would help, Siggie,” Frade said. “Having her craz . . . like she is now isn’t doing us any good.”
“Okay. Just tell me what you want me to do.”
She turned to Delgano and Sawyer.
“And you are?”
They introduced themselves.
“What is that you’re drinking, Cletus?” Mother Superior asked.
“Wine,” Frade said. “They make it from grapes.”
“You’ve obviously had more of it than you should,” she said.
“You’re right, Clete,” Sawyer said. “Mother Superior would make a fine gunnery sergeant.”
“May I offer you a glass?” Clete said.
“What is it?” she asked, and went to the bar, picked up the bottle, and examined the label.
“This has to be vinegar,” she said.
Clete shook his head. He poured wine an inch deep in a glass and offered it to her.
Surprising him, she took it, smelled it, took a small sip, swirled it around in her mouth, then swallowed. She pushed the glass to him.
He poured three inches of wine into the glass.
“‘Take a little wine for thy stomach’s sake,’” he said. “That’s from Saint Timothy.”
“Yes, I know,” she said. “You took that from there?”
She indicated the wine rack.
He nodded.
“It’s hard to believe, but that wine must have been there the last time I was in this room. The last time you and I were in this room.”
“I’ve never been in this room before in my life,” Clete said.
“Yes, you have. Your mother put you on that couch”—she pointed—“and then put two of those chairs”—she pointed again—“up against it so you wouldn’t roll over and fall on the floor. You were a very active baby.”
Frade didn’t say anything.
“It was the night your mother and father took the train to Buenos Aires to take the Panagra flight to Miami. The train left at eight, so we had an early supper in here. That was the last time I saw you until you came to the convent today.”
Clete didn’t reply.
Mother Superior didn’t quite gulp the wine, but the glass was nearly empty much sooner than Clete expected it to be. Clete picked up the bottle, but she put her hand over the glass.
“I have to drive,” she said.
“Why don’t you take a couple of bottles—hell, a dozen bottles—with you?”
She didn’t reply to that. Instead, she said, “I was just thinking that despite what you think, rather than coming here for the first time, you are really coming home. And that Casa Montagna, after waiting so long for that to happen, has really been expecting you, is prepared for you.”
What the hell is she talking about?
Mother Superior turned to Dorotea.
“How far are you along?”
“Six months,” Dorotea said.
“I’ll have a look at you tomorrow. Everything, so far as you know, is going well?”
Dorotea nodded.
Mother Superior went behind the bar, took two bottles of the Cabernet Sauvignon from the rack, and put them into her medical bag.
“Sister Caroline is not impressed with the wisdom of Saint Timothy,” Mother Superior said. “And I don’t like to upset her.”
Clete chuckled.
“Enrico,” Mother Superior said, “if you were to somehow wrap or box or whatever a half-dozen bottles of the wine so that it doesn’t look like half a dozen bottles of wine, and put them in the van when I come here tomorrow, I would be grateful to you.”
“Sí, Reverend Mother. I will do it.”
There was half an inch of wine left in Mother Superior’s glass. She drained it and walked out of the room.
“That is a very nice woman,” Dorotea said.
“That is a very tough woman,” Frade said admiringly.
He turned to Sawyer.
“Do they teach Army officers how to lay in a machine gun? Fields of fire, that sort of thing?”
“Only the brighter ones,” Sawyer said. “Parachute officers, for example.”
“First thing in the morning, get with Enrico, see what’s available, reconnoiter the area, and let me know what you think should be done.”
“Yes, sir,” Sawyer said.
“I have already done that, Don Cletus,” Enrico said.
“Okay, then show Captain Sawyer how things are done by the Húsares de Pueyrredón.”
Enrico nodded.
“When do we eat?” Frade asked.
“Half an hour, Don Cletus.”
“Which I will spend writing the after-action report for Colonel Graham.”
“Do you have to do that tonight?” Dorotea asked.
“Yeah, baby, I do.”
Sending the report was a three-stage process. First, Clete wrote it on a typewriter. Then he edited what he had written, using a pencil. Dorotea then took this and re typed it on the keyboard of the SIGABA device. This caused a strip of perforated paper, which now held the encrypted report, to stream out of the SIGABA. Siggie Stein, after making sure that the SIGABA device at Vint Hill Farms Station was ready to receive, fed the strip of paper to the Collins transceiver.
Not quite a minute later, Stein reported that the message had been received in Virginia.
Frade nodded. “Good. Now, let’s eat.”
Clete had the same uncomfortable feeling—one of intrusion—as he entered the master suite—now his—of Casa Montagna that he had felt the first time he had moved into his father’s bedroom in the big house on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.
But now it was worse.
There had been nothing of his mother’s in the master suite at the estancia.
Here, before a mirrored dressing table, were vials of perfume, jars of cosmetics, a comb, and a hairbrush with blond hair still on it.
And that got worse.
He pulled open a drawer in a chest of drawers and found himself looking at underwear that had to be his mother’s.
He slammed the drawer closed.
Dorotea came out of the bathroom in a negligee.
“There’s a set of straight razors in there, and a mug of shaving soap,” she announced. “All dried out, of course, but I put water in it. That might make it usable. Who knows?”
Clete didn’t reply.
“It looks as if they expected to come back,” Dorotea said.
“Yeah.”
“I wonder what’s in here?” Dorotea said, pulled open a door, and gasped. “Oh, God! Clete, look at this!”
He went to the door and looked in.
There was a crib, and infant’s toys, and a table—he had no idea what they called it—where an infant could be washed and dried and have diapers changed. And shelves, with stacks of folded cotton diapers and a large can of Johnson’s baby powder.
“Jesus Christ!” he said, almost under his breath.
“I wondered what she was talking about,” Dorotea said.
“What who was talking about?”
“Mother Superior, when she said you were really coming home. That this house has really been expecting you, is prepared for you.”
He looked at her but said nothing.
“She should have said for us,” Dorotea said. “For us and our baby.”
She saw the look on his face.
“I want to have our baby here, darling. I want to wash him in there, where your mother washed you, and change his nappy with your nappies.”
He tried to ask, “How can you be sure the baby’s a him?”
But only three words came out before he lost his voice, and his chest heaved, and he realized he was crying.
Dorotea went to him, held him against her breast, and stroked his hair.
[FOUR]
Office of the Deputy Director for Western
Hemisphere Operations
Office of Strategic Services
National Institutes of Health Building
Washington, D.C.
0720 15 August 1943
A second lieutena
nt of the U.S. Army Signal Corps was sitting in one of the chairs in the outer office when Colonel A. F. Graham, uncommonly in uniform, came to work—as usual, before his secretary had gotten there.
Lieutenant Leonard Fischer stood and more or less came to attention. He was holding a sturdy leather briefcase. Graham saw that he was attached to the briefcase with a handcuff and chain, and that one of the lower pockets of his uniform blouse sagged—as if, for example, it held a Colt Model 1911A1 .45 ACP pistol.
“Good morning, Fischer,” Graham said as he waved the young officer ahead of him into his office. “Dare I hope we have heard from Gaucholand?”
“Yes, sir,” Fischer said, and held up the briefcase.
“And?”
“That Marine has landed, sir, and the situation is well in hand.”
Graham smiled at him, waved him into a chair, and waited for him to detach the briefcase and unlock it. He took from it a manila envelope, stamped TOP SECRET in several places in large red letters, then got up and walked to Graham’s desk and handed it to him.
“I would offer you a cup of coffee, Len, but I don’t think there is any.”
“Not a problem, sir.”
Graham tore open the envelope, took two sheets of paper from it, and started to read from them.
From previous messages, Graham knew that BIS was Gonzalo Delgano, the Bureau of Interior Security man assigned to watch Frade and South American Airways; that Galahad (the courageous knight on the white horse) was Major von Wachtstein; that JohnPaul was Kapitän zur See Boltitz (after naval hero John Paul Jones); and that Tío Hank was Frade’s Uncle Humberto Duarte, managing director of the Banco de Inglaterra y Argentina.
If Tío Hank’s going to confirm Grape history—that Frogger is a South African winegrower—that means Frade probably told him what’s going on. I don’t know if that was smart or not.
But it’s his call. I am sitting behind a desk in Washington.
Why do I think Cletus had more than a little grape when he wrote this? Because that’s the code name he gave Colonel Frogger?
The question was answered in the next several paragraphs.
Graham knew the Tourists were the Froggers, Tío Juan was Juan Domingo Perón, Sidekick was Suboficial Mayor Rodríguez, and Beermug was Staff Sergeant Stein.
The Honor of Spies Page 14
