Page 3

Frade had no immediate means of getting them even to Brazil without taking unjustifiable risks. So while they were, so to speak, in limbo, he was hiding them on a small farm that his father had used for romantic interludes in the country.

There was a chance that Siggie Stein could break down one of them—or both—and get them to reveal what they knew about Operation Phoenix. Not much of a chance, though, for Stein was a demolitions man turned communications /cryptography expert, not a trained interrogator. Still, on the other hand, he was a refugee from Nazi Germany, and had some relatives who’d not been able to escape and had perished in concentration camps.

The massive Argentine woman, who was known as “The Other Dorotea”—Don Cletus Frade’s Anglo-Argentine wife was Doña Dorotea Mallín de Frade—listened to the telephone and then reported, “It is Suboficial Mayor Rodríguez.”

Stein rose from his chair, picking up the Thompson.

“Watch them,” he said to the peon with the rifle, then turned to Herr Frogger and said, “Keep at it,” and then walked out of the room and onto the verandah to wait for Rodríguez.

The incline in front of Casa Chica was very steep, and between the house and the road and gate, but not visible from either, a landing strip had been carved out of the hillside. Frade had told Stein his father had used it to fly his lady love into the house in one of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo’s fleet of Piper Cubs.

The car and the truck appeared a moment later, moving slowly in low gear, and turned onto the landing strip. When they stopped, Suboficial Mayor Enrico Rodríguez—who had been Cavalry, Ejército Argentino, and had retired with the late Coronel Jorge Frade from the Húsares de Pueyrredón, Argentina’s most prestigious cavalry regiment—got out of the car and started toward the house, going up the stairs carved into the hillside. He carried a Remington Model 11 self-loading twelve-gauge riot shotgun in his hand.

The driver of the refrigerator truck got out from behind the wheel, went to the rear doors, and pulled them open. A dozen peones, all armed with Mauser rifles, began to pile out of the truck and then to unload from it equipment, including ammunition cans, blankets, food containers, and finally a Browning Automatic Rifle.

Rodríguez put his arm around Stein’s shoulders and pounded his back affectionately, but did not speak.

“What’s going on, Sergeant Major?” Stein asked in Spanish.

Their relationship was delicate. Rodríguez had a long service history and had held the senior enlisted rank for ten years of it. He knew that Stein had just been promoted to staff sergeant yet had been in the army not even two years.

On the other hand, Don Cletus Frade had made it clear to Rodríguez that Stein was in charge of the Froggers and Casa Chica.

“I have had a telephone call from an old friend,” Enrico Rodríguez said. “There are two trucks of Mountain Troops on their way here. They have with them a half-dozen Nazi soldiers—the ones who came off the submarine? The ones with the skulls on their caps?”

Stein nodded his understanding.

“What makes you think they’re coming here?”

“My friend, he is also of the Húsares, heard the Nazi officer tell his men they were going after traitors to the Führer.”

He mispronounced the title, and without thinking about it, Stein corrected him and then asked, “How would they know we have the Froggers here?”

Rodríguez shrugged.

“We will defend them,” Rodríguez said seriously.

“That’s what those guys are for?” Stein asked, nodding down the stairs toward the peones now milling around on the landing strip.

“There are twelve, all old Húsares,” Rodríguez said.

“Sergeant Major, with the twelve we have here, that’s two dozen. Against how many soldiers on two trucks?”

“Probably forty, forty-two,” Rodríguez said. “What I have been thinking is that they are coming in such strength thinking we have only the dozen men, and they can make us give them the Froggers without a fight. If they see we are so many, they may decide that there will be a fight, and they know that if there is a fight against us, there would be many casualties. How would they explain the deaths of ten or fifteen Mountain Troops so far from their base?”

“Sergeant Major, I think it would be best if there were no confrontation,” Stein said carefully.

“You mean just turn the Froggers over to them?”

“No. I mean get the Froggers out of here, back to someplace on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.”

“Don Cletus said they were to be kept here in Casa Chica,” Rodríguez said.

“That was before he knew about this,” Stein argued.

After a pause, the old soldier said, “True.”

Stein had to suppress a smile, both at the old soldier and at the Christian scripture that had for some inexplicable reason popped into his Jewish head: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.