“He wasn’t off the plane from Germany four hours before he started hitting on my little sister.”
“Did I hear that right?” Armstrong asked. “Your little brother hit on your little sister?”
“You’re goddamned right he did,” Clete said indignantly.
“Jimmy Cronley,” the old man clarified, “is not really his little brother, and his little sister Marjie is not really his sister.”
“Well, I must say I’m relieved to hear that,” Armstrong said.
“Marjie is my cousin. We were raised together. I think of her as my baby sister,” Clete said.
“May I ask where this Cronley fellow fits into this fascinating genealogy?” Ford asked.
“He lived next door to me in Midland, Texas.”
“And what’s he doing here? You said he broke the Kriegsmarine code? What code is that?” Armstrong asked.
“The Kriegsmarine furnished U-boat commanders with a list of one hundred rendezvous points. Coded, of course. One of them was the intended landfall of U-234. Just take my word for it, the horny little bastard broke it.”
“He’s a crypto expert?” Ford asked.
“He’s a goddamn second lieutenant. I don’t think he can spell ‘cryptographic,’ much less knows what it means. He was in the CIC solely because he speaks German. Then he found von Wachtstein’s sister-in-law in a line of refugees in Germany. Then the OSS, scraping the bottom of the barrel, got him out of the CIC and into the OSS just before they put us out of business. They made him OIC of the detachment guarding General Gehlen. His qualifications for that job were that he was an officer and they didn’t have any other officers.
“Then the CIC stumbled onto the Gehlen camp, and Jimmy wouldn’t let them in. As a matter of fact, he blew a hole in the engine block of the colonel-who-was-trying-to-get-in’s staff car with a .50 caliber machine gun. That kept the colonel out for the moment, but with a burning desire to come back and get in.
“The guy in charge, a really smart bird colonel, realizing the CIC colonel was going to come back, wisely got my horny little brother and any paperwork that could compromise Operation Ost out of Dodge by loading him on the next SAA Connie leaving Frankfurt. The one that arrived this morning.”
“And since he’s been here,” Ford said, “he broke the Kriegsmarine code and made a pass at your baby sister? I can’t wait to meet this guy. He sounds like Errol Flynn.”
“He’ll be, not counting us, the only non-civilian on the Flying Brothel to Mendoza. I’ll see that he sits as far away from my baby sister as possible. Which brings us back to Mendoza. Karl Boltitz brought us the names of the senior Nazi officers aboard the U-234. General Martín’s experts are going to see if they can find out where they are. If they do, we’ll ask them about U-234.
“An Argentine regiment, the Tenth Mountain, was until recently commanded by an Argentine colonel named Schmidt, who was more of a Nazi than Adolf Hitler.”
“‘Was’ commanded?” Ford asked.
“He met an untimely death,” Frade said. “But while he was alive, the Tenth Mountain helped unload German subs coming here secretly. We’re pretty sure if the U-234 did land here, the Tenth was involved. The officers still with the regiment probably—almost certainly—won’t want to talk about submarines. But Enrico here and the Tenth’s sergeant major are old buddies, and we can probably learn something from him. First thing tomorrow morning, we’ll fly Enrico down to the Tenth’s regimental barracks in San Martín de los Andes in a Húsares de Pueyrredón Piper Cub.”
Ford’s eyebrows went up. “What the hell are the Húsares . . . What did you say?”
“The Húsares de Pueyrredón. My father’s—and Enrico’s—old regiment. We have sort of a special arrangement with them.”
“And what makes you think, Colonel, that the regimental commander . . .”
“El Coronel Hans Klausberger,” Frade furnished.
“. . . who took over when the old one, Schmidt, met his untimely death—and how did that happen, by the way?”
Frade did not answer.
“Don Cletus shot him,” Enrico furnished matter-of-factly.
Ford’s eyebrows rose again. He didn’t respond to that, but went on, paraphrasing his original question, “. . . The new regimental commander’s going to let Enrico snoop around his regiment? That seems unlikely.”
“We’ll get General Martín to send a BIS agent with him,” Frade said. “BIS officers can ask anybody they want anything.”
“Okay.”
Clete nodded. “Now, while everybody is boarding the Flying Brothel, why don’t we go check the weather?”