“One of each, thanks to your father’s generosity to a poor priest, are mine.”
Frade exhaled audibly.
“You know you’re always welcome in my house,” he said. “But tomorrow’s not such a good idea.”
“I thought you might have something in mind for tomorrow in addition to slaughtering innocent perdices, or maybe even instead of slaughtering them.”
“Not admitting anything, but would your feelings be hurt if I told you I don’t think you’d want to know what that might be?”
“You can’t hurt my feelings, Cletus. I would have thought you would know that by now. And you’re wrong. I do want to know. I can’t help you if I don’t know what you’re up to.”
Frade didn’t reply.
After a moment, the priest said, “Maybe I can help in some way to keep Mr. Fischer’s parents alive. I would like to try.”
Frade met Welner’s eyes for a long moment.
“Tell you what, Padre,” he said. “Why don’t you spend the night at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo? That way you won’t have to get up in the middle of the night to drive over there.”
“What an excellent idea,” the priest said. “I should have thought of
that myself.”
“Changing the subject: Are you familiar with that old English saying ‘In for a penny, in for a pound’?”
“Oh, yes,” Welner said.
Frade raised his brandy snifter.
“Mud in your eye, Padre.”
[THREE]
Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo
Near Pila
Buenos Aires Province,
Argentina
0630 14 August 1943
While it was assumed that the peones of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo were completely trustworthy, Enrico pointed out that money talked, and that it was unlikely but possible that some of the technicians working on the place might be on the payroll of someone else.
They knew, for example, that Carlos Aguirre, the airframe and power plant mechanic el Coronel had hired to maintain his Beechcraft Staggerwing and the Piper Cubs, was an agent of the Bureau of Internal Security. They knew because Gonzalo Delgano told them. Delgano knew because, when he had been on the estancia’s payroll as the Beechcraft’s pilot and as el Coronel’s instructor pilot, he had all the time been an army officer attached to the BIS, charged with reporting on el Coronel Frade’s activities.
Against the remote—but nevertheless real—possibility that someone besides Carlos Aguirre was in the employ of BIS, or, for that matter, someone in the employ of the German Embassy, would report that when the group came to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo before sunrise, von Wachtstein, Boltitz, Father Welner, and Humberto Duarte had not gone bird hunting as announced, Clete Frade decided that they would in fact go bird hunting.
A fairly complicated hunting expedition was organized. A wrangler had horses waiting for all the men when they came out of the big house after a breakfast buffet. So was a horse-drawn wagon carrying shotguns, ammunition, and the makings of a midmorning snack break. A second horse-drawn wagon carried the dogs—eight Llewellyn setters—and three handlers for them.
Everyone mounted up. Then Clete—to the amusement of the dozen mounted peones who would go with them—had his usual difficulty with Julius Caesar. The large, high-spirited black stallion had never been ridden by anyone but el Coronel and manifested its resentment of its new master by trying very hard to throw Clete. When Frade finally got control of his mount, the party walked their horses through the formal gardens and out onto the pampas, with the wagons following.
Four kilometers or so from the big house, they dismounted and collected their weapons from the wagon. Clete’s father’s hunting equipment included something he had never seen before: a leather shell bag, which looked to him like a woman’s purse on an extra-long strap.
And he was again wearing more of his father’s clothing, in this instance boots and a Barbour jacket. He had never seen one of these before, and as Father Welner had seen him suspiciously eyeing and feeling the material, the priest said, “Not to worry, my son, the Queen has one just like it.”
“It looks greasy,” Clete said.