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“According to the story I got from Oberst Perón, Heitz had just about reached the house when someone fired at him. He naturally returned the fire—”

“Who shot at him?” von Gradny-Sawz asked.

Cranz gave him a withering look.

“That was a little theater, Gradny-Sawz,” Cranz said. “His returning the hostile fire was a cue to his men to open fire. Can you grasp that?”

Von Gradny-Sawz did not reply.

“Which they immediately did,” Cranz went on. “At that point, Oberst Perón, apparently having decided discretion was the better part of valor, ordered the Mountain Troops back onto their trucks and called to the men manning the machine guns, the storm troopers, to stop firing. Considering the roar of the guns, it is not surprising that they couldn’t hear him. Or didn’t understand his Spanish. In any event, they continued to fire.

“By the time that was straightened out, they had pretty well shot up the house. In Oberst Perón’s professional military opinion, no one in the house could possibly have lived through the machine-gun fire.

“But Oberst Perón hadn’t counted on the Froggers being killed at the hands of the Mountain Troops.

It would have been embarrassing for the Mountain Troops and for him, personally, if that came out.

“Obersturmführer Heitz heroically volunteered to stay behind with his men when the Mountain Troops drove off. They would make sure that whoever had been in the house was in fact dead, and then deal with the bodies. Then one of the trucks would come back and pick them up.

“The truck returned for Heitz and his men when planned—that is to say, after nightfall. By then the press of his other duties had forced Oberst Perón to return to Buenos Aires, and the Mountain Troops, now all crammed into the other truck, were on their way back to San Martín de los Andes.

“The truck that went back for Heitz was under the command of a lieutenant. He reported to Oberst Perón that they found the bodies of Obersturmführer Heitz and his men in several places on the approaches to Casa Chica.

“Interestingly, there were no bodies in the house, or any blood to suggest that anyone in it had been wounded. It was the lieutenant’s professional opinion that the people in the house had been warned of the coming attack and were prepared for it. In the lieutenant’s opinion, Don Cletus Frade’s gauchos had watched from a distance as the empty house was machine-gunned and as the trucks drove away.

“And then, when Heitz and his men, satisfied there was no one left alive in the house, approached it to make sure the Froggers were among the dead—Heitz’s orders were to bury the Frogger bodies somewhere on the pampas where they would never be found—they were ambushed.”

He paused to let them consider that.

Then finished: “And now the bodies of Obersturmführer Heitz and his men are buried where they will never be found on the pampas. The Mountain Troops lieutenant correctly decided that that was the option preferable to his having to explain at a roadblock what he was doing with the bullet-ridden bodies of half a dozen men in his truck. And so we have another example of what the Scottish poet Robert Burns had in mind when he wrote, ‘The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men Gang aft a-gley.’”

“Our traitor strikes again,” von Gradny-Sawz said solemnly.

“You think so, Gradny-Sawz?” Cranz asked.

Boltitz thought: Wienerwurst, you are about to have that foot that’s in your mouth shoved up your fat ass.

“Herr Cranz, you yourself said the gauchos had been warned.”

“And they probably had,” Cranz agreed. “But by whom? Only Sturmbannführer Raschner and I knew the details of the operation. And trust me, Gradny-Sawz, on my SS officer’s honor, neither of us betrayed the Fatherland.

“One possibility which must be considered, I suggest, is that, in addition to the gauchos tending the milch cows, there were gauchos elsewhere, and when two army trucks bearing the markings of the Mountain Regiment came down the road, they telephoned to Casa Chica. ‘It may be nothing, Pedro,’” Cranz said in a mock Spanish accent, “ ‘but there are two Mountain Regiment trucks headed your way.’ ”

“I didn’t think of that possibility,” von Gradny-Sawz admitted.

“Well, perhaps your talents lie in the diplomatic area, rather than the military,” Cranz said. “Nor in the field of intelligence.”

Cranz gave von Gradny-Sawz a long moment to consider that, then went on: “So where are we now? The black side of the picture is that the Froggers are not only still alive, but by now are far from Casa Chica.

“And since we must presume that if there were gauchos watching the exercise, they saw both the Mountain Troops and Oberst Perón.

“But I would rather doubt that they would bring this matter to the attention of the Argentine government. That would put Don Cletus Frade in the awkward position of explaining what he had at Casa Chica that was of such interest to Oberst Perón and, of course, the SS-SD.

“Now, with regard to Major Frade of the OSS: He landed in one of South American Airways’ new Lockheed Lodestars at the Aerodromo Coronel Jorge G. Frade in Morón at five past one yesterday afternoon. His copilot was SAA Chief Pilot Gonzalo Delgano.

“They were met by el Coronel Alejandro Bernardo Martín, the Chief of the Ethical Standards Office of the Bureau of Internal Security, and by Sergeant Major Enrico Rodríguez, Cavalry, Retired. They went directly from the airfield to Don Cletus’s house across from the Hipódromo on Libertador, which is currently occupied by Oberst Perón. We can presume that the faithful Sergeant Major Rodríguez told Don Cletus what had transpired at Casa Chica as they drove from the airport.

“I was aware that Oberst Perón had asked el Coronel Martín to bring Frade to him, the idea being that Perón would have a friendly, perhaps even fatherly, word with Frade about the foolishness of attempting to harbor the Froggers.