Estancia Don Guillermo
Km 40.4, Provincial Route 60
Mendoza Province, Argentina
0935 21 October 1945
Just before walking out of the officers’ mess, Clete had solved Jimmy Cronley’s immediate problem—I really don’t want to see the Squirt right now, Jimmy had thought, not until I do better at figuring that situation out than I have so far—by pointing to the stacks of paper on the table and ordering, “You better stay here and try to help straighten that mess out.”
“That mess” was the stacks of files Colonel Manning had stuffed into the bags at Kloster Grünau, Manning’s selection criteria being, If it could possibly compromise Operation Ost, send it to Argentina.
The bags had been carried into the officers’ mess while Cronley was having breakfast. Niedermeyer, Strübel, and Frogger had gone into—pawed through—the documents looking for dossiers. They had stopped doing that when the meeting had begun, but had gone back to it as soon as the meeting was over.
Jimmy realized he had not been very useful—the documents were, after all, Abwehr Ost files, and they knew more about them than he did—but being there kept him from having to see Marjie, and that was the priority.
The only solution to the Marjie problem he could think of was to get Clete to send him back to Bavaria, dodging Marjie until he could get on the plane. But that had been blown out of the water when Mr. Howell had seen him appointed as Official Seizer of Uranium Oxide in the Name of the United States Government.
The only honorable solution he could think of now was to allow himself to freeze to death at the mouth of the Strait of Magellan. Freezing to death was supposed to be painless.
There was the sound of an aircraft engine. A familiar sound.
That’s a Franklin! So that has to be a Piper Cub.
A single sixty-five-horsepower Franklin 4AC-176-B2 four-cylinder engine powered the Piper J-3 aircraft.
What’s going on?
“That must be the puddle jumpers from the Húsares de Pueyrredón,” Strübel said. “You ought to take a look at that, Cronley. It’s something to see.”
Cronley went outside in time to see the first of two Piper Cubs in Ejército Argentino markings making a slow approach to the mountaintop.
It touched down and ended its landing roll about fifty yards from where Cronley stood. Clete was waiting there with Enrico and Captain Garcia, whose uniform now carried the insignia of a lieutenant colonel. Garcia quickly got into the Cub, which then turned around, taxied to the end of the “runway”—which also served as the front lawn of the big house—and took off.
The second Piper began its approach.
Cronley now saw, standing in front of the big house, Martha Howell, Beth Howell, and Empress Elsa the Great von Wachtstein. They also apparently had been told that watching the Pipers land and take off was something they should see. Reasoning that if Beth and her mother were there, Marjie would not be far away, Cronley quickly retreated to the safety of the BOQ.
He took one step inside the building when someone grabbed his arm.
“We’re going to have to stop meeting this way,” Marjie said. “People will talk.”
She raised her face to be kissed.
Jimmy grabbed her arms and held her away.
“What we’re going to have to do, Squirt, is stop this nonsense.”
“What?”
“I’m not a nice guy.”
“I guess I’ve known that for—what?—sixteen, seventeen years.”
“I mean, really not nice. If you knew, you wouldn’t be—”
“Knew what?”
He looked over her shoulder and out the door where Martha, Beth, and Elsa were watching Enrico Rodríguez get into the second Piper Cub.