Page 104

“To which I replied, ‘Why don’t you start by telling me what you’re doing sitting in my father’s chair, drinking his cognac?’

“That got his attention. He said, ‘Herr Leutnant, please permit me to extend my condolences on the loss of your loved one, the late Hauptman Jorge Frade Duarte, whose remains I had the honor of escorting from Germany.’

“I suavely replied, ‘Before we get into that, Major, is there any more of that cognac? I’ve had a trying day.’”

“So that’s how you met Hansel!” Jimmy said, laughing.

Clete nodded. “An hour and a bottle and a half of cognac later, we were pals. What had happened was that my loony tune Aunt Beatrice, either not knowing or not caring that I was in the family guesthouse, sent Hansel there after he delivered Cousin Jorge’s lead-lined casket.”

“What was that all about? Sending the body home to Argentina?”

“Hansel told me the idea came from Josef Goebbels himself. Pure propaganda. The son of a prominent—very prominent—Argentine family gets killed in the holy war against the godless Communists. Germany and Argentina fight the holy war together.”

“And how did Hansel get involved?”

“He’s a legitimate German hero. He got the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross from Hitler himself. And—an important ‘and’—his father, one of the German generals in from the beginning of the plot to assassinate Adolf, wanted to get the last of the von Wachtstein line out of Germany alive. Hansel’s two brothers had already died in the war.”

“And he told you all this the night you met him?”

“No, of course

not. It came out later. That first night we just got smashed and agreed on a couple of things. For example, that fighter pilots are superior human beings and, unkindly, that Cousin Jorge not only didn’t deserve the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross Hansel was going to pin on his casket but was a goddamned fool for going to a war he didn’t have to go to.

“The next morning, they sent people from the German embassy to get Hansel out of the house. We had decided we wouldn’t mention to anyone that we’d met.

“The next time I saw him was the day of the funeral. He came to me at the Alvear hotel and told me to watch my back—the SS guy in the embassy had told him they were going to whack me.”

“What?”

Clete nodded and went on, “And sure enough the next night, three Paraguayan hit men showed up at Uncle Guillermo’s house and tried to do just that.”

“Tried to assassinate you?”

“Obviously they failed. But they slit the throat of Enrico’s sister before they came upstairs after me. Miserable bastards. She was a really good woman. She had known my mother—and me, too, when I was an infant—and told me a hell of a lot about my mother that nobody had ever told me before.”

“‘They failed’?”

“I was waiting for them,” Clete said simply. “I shot them.”

“I never heard any of this.”

“What was I supposed to do, Jimmy, write home? ‘Dear Mom: Well, the news from the Paris of Latin America is that Nazis sent some Paraguayan assassins to my house last night. I had to kill all three. There’s blood and brains all over my bedroom. PS—Tell Jimmy’?”

“Jesus!”

“They do a lot of that, assassinations or attempted assassinations, down here. Just before they shot at Tío Juan, somebody showed up at Martín’s house to take him out. He had to kill three, too—and they were Argentine officers.”

Cronley was silent for a moment, then asked, “You didn’t get hurt? What did you do with the bodies? Did the cops come?”

“There was a water pitcher by my bedside. It got hit, exploded, and I had fifty or so crystal fragments in my face and neck. It wasn’t serious but at the time I thought I was going to bleed to death right there.

“Yeah, the cops came. But so did Bernardo Martín. He got rid of the cops, then put me in an ambulance and hid me in the military hospital. A dozen BIS agents stood watch as they patched me up.

“The next day, Enrico showed up at the hospital with that shotgun you’ve seen him with. The newspapers reported a robbery in the Frade mansion and the police had been forced to shoot the robbers.

“Then my father showed up. Thoroughly pissed. Enrico would stay with me, he announced, until I could be loaded on the Panagra Clipper to Miami. I told him thanks but no thanks. I had been sent to Argentina to blow up a ship, and that’s what I intended to do—it was my duty as an officer.

“He gave me a funny look, then he wrapped his arms around me. ‘I should have known better. The blood of Pueyrredón flows in your veins as it flows in mine! You must do your duty! And it is clearly my duty to help you.’