Martín pointed toward one of the hangars. Frade looked and saw Suboficial Mayor Enrico Rodríguez standing beside one of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo’s Ford station wagons.
On the way to the house on Libertador, Enrico had told Frade what had happened at Casa Chica, told him that the Froggers were safe and well protected in one of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo’s casas, and shown him a thick stack of photographs that Sergeant Stein had taken at Casa Chica.
The meeting was brief. Afterward when Frade came down the stairs into the basement garage of the mansion, both very tired and upset, he was annoyed but not surprised to find Martín still waiting for him.
“Alejandro, what a pleasant surprise,” Frade said sarcastically. “We’re going to have to stop meeting this way; people will talk.”
Enrico was with him, his riot shotgun held vertically against his leg. Martín was not amused by Frade’s wit.
“That didn’t take long,” Martín said.
“Well, we didn’t have much to talk about,” Frade said.
“What did he have to say?”
“Very little after I told him I knew he was there when my Casa Chica was machine-gunned.”
“Excuse me?”
Frade took the sheaf of pictures from the pocket of his leather jacket and handed them to Martín.
Martín tried very hard and almost succeeded in suppressing his surprise at the photographs.
“I didn’t hear about any bodies,” Martín blurted. “Where are they now?”
“God only knows,” Frade said. “Why did you insist I come here, Alejandro?”
Martín took a moment to consider his reply, then said, “I thought perhaps el Coronel Perón could make the point that either kidnapping—or aiding and abetting the desertion of—German diplomats was a very dangerous thing to do.”
“You thought what happened at Casa Chica was in the nature of a warning?” Frade asked.
“I didn’t know it was anything like this,” he said. “It happened while you were in the United States?”
Frade nodded. “Yesterday. You really didn’t know?”
Martín shook his head.
“Did they get the Froggers?” he asked.
“The who? Next question.”
Martín looked at him for a long moment, then asked: “Anything else of interest to me happen upstairs?”
“Well, I told him I wanted him out of this house by tomorrow. That was about it.”
While many people knew the mansion to be el Coronel Perón’s residence, and many even thought he owned it, the fact was that it belonged to Cletus Frade, and Perón had been using it as a sort of tolerated unwelcome guest.
Martín, who knew who owned the house, shook his head in disbelief.
“Actually, what I said was, ‘Tío Juan, you degenerate sonofabitch. You’re going to have to find someplace else for your little girls. I want you out of here by tomorrow.’ That was after he waved his pistol at me.”
“He did what?” Martín asked incredulously.
“For a moment I thought he was going to shoot me. But then Enrico chambered a round in the riot gun and he thought better of it. Now that I’ve had a couple of minutes to think it over, I almost wish he had tried. The tragic death of Juan Domingo in his godson’s library because poor old Enrico didn’t know his shotgun was loaded would have solved a lot of my problems.”
“And now?”
“Now, nothing. I told him that if I even suspect an attempt is made on my life, my wife’s life, or the life of anybody close to me, the photographs—and some other material I have—will be made public. The only people who know what happened upstairs just now are Enrico and me. And now you.”