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.”