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“I’m sure that will be enough.”

“Then I’ll see you shortly,” Peralta said, saluted, and backed out of the cockpit door.

Clete looked at Dorotea.

“Good man,” he began before being interrupted by the voice of Mother Superior at the cockpit door.

“What in the world are you doing up here and in there?” she asked of Doña Dorotea, then turned to Don Cletus. “You really can be, can’t you, quite as stupid as your father?” She looked at Dorotea. “Well, come on!”

“Where am I going?” Dorotea said.

“To the convent. The original idea was to examine the German women and children. Now I’ll have to see what damage this husband of yours has caused to you.”

Dorotea nodded. “I told him that I didn’t think I should be sitting up here in my delicate condition.”

She waited until Mother Superior was glaring at Cletus and couldn’t see her face. Then, looking very pleased with herself, she smiled warmly at him and stuck out her tongue.

And then, with great difficulty, she started to hoist herself out of the copilot’s seat.

[THREE]

Casa Montagna

Estancia Don Guillermo

Km 40.4, Provincial Route 60

Mendoza Province, Argentina

1525 3 October 1943

Captain Madison R. Sawyer III had been playing polo—sort of—to pass the time when “Frade’s Lodestar,” as Sawyer thought of it, had buzzed the polo field.

He had found eight mallets—one of them broken, all of them old—hanging at various places on the walls of Casa Montagna, which had of course cut the number of players to three on each team, leaving one spare mallet.

Finding players and horses had posed no problem. When he had asked—at the morning formation of the former cavalry troopers of the Húsares de Pueyrredón now guarding Casa Montagna—if anyone happened to know how to play polo, every hand had shot up. The horses were not, of course, the fine polo ponies he had grown used to at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo. But even the worst of them seemed to have some idea what was expected of a polo pony.

The problem of no polo balls had been solved by purchasing at a very generous price three soccer balls—what the Argentines called footballs—from the children of peones who lived in the compound. He also promised to see that they would have replacement footballs just as soon as he could send someone into town to buy them.

The air-filled soccer balls of course behaved quite differently than a regulation solid-wood polo ball would have, but that just made the play more interesting.

One of the soccer balls had lasted about ten minutes in play and a second just a few minutes more. The third soccer ball—and the mallets, which surprised him—had endured the stress of play for two chukkers when the flaming red Lodestar had flashed over the field.

Sawyer had decided there was time for one—possibly two—more chukkers before Frade arrived from the aircraft, and they had played two more.

He had just had time to dismount and reclaim his Thompson submachine gun and his web belt holding his .45 Colt when the nose of the Lincoln Continental appeared at the end of the field.

He had not expected the brown vehicles of the Gendarmería Nacional, and was a little worried until he saw Frade climb out from behind the wheel of the Lincoln.

“Subinspector Navarro, this is my deputy, Capitán Sawyer,” Frade began the in troductions.

Sensing that he was expected to do so, Sawyer saluted.

“I’ll explain this all later,” Frade then said to Sawyer. “But right now, I want you to show Subinspector Navarro the weapons cache and explain the perimeter defense to him—”

“You make it sound as if we’re going to be attacked,” Sawyer interrupted.

“That’s a strong possibility,” Frade said, then went on: “These gentlemen are Señor Körtig and Señor Möller. They will be joined shortly by their wives and children. In the meantime, Enrico’s going to—where’s Stein?”