“They wax the thread before they weave the cloth.”
All four of the Diamond Grade Brownings had been brought along in a rack that looked as if it had been made for precisely that purpose. Clete saw the priest take the 28-bore rather than the 16.
Ah, we’re going to play King of the Mountain!
He took the other 28-bore from its rack.
“The way your father and I shot,” the priest said, “was by turns. You shoot until you miss, and then the other chap.”
“After you, Padre,” Clete said, grandly waving Welner ahead of him onto the grass of the plain.
The Llewellyns were both very good hunters and superbly trained. They picked up a scent within two minutes, found birds not quite a minute after that, and held the point perfectly until the birds took flight and the priest had fired.
Two perdices fell to the ground.
“Good shooting,” Clete said politely.
“Lucky,” the priest said politely.
He was lucky six times in a row before he missed.
“Tough luck,” Clete said politely as he fed two shells to his over-and-under shotgun.
“I think it was badly loaded shells,” the priest said. “You might take that into consideration should you have any difficulty.”
The eyes of Texas are upon you, Cletus, he thought as he started after the Llewellyns.
As well as those of the smug Jesuit.
And, of course, the eyes of the members of your private army, who are probably praying the Good Father makes a monkey of el patrón.
Don’t fuck up!
He dropped nineteen birds—eight of them in doubles—before missing. When he finally missed, he turned to Father Welner and said, “You must be right about the faulty shells. I usually shoot much better than this.”
By then it was quarter past ten, and they stopped the hunt for a break.
And to get down to the business of the day. Which was getting Frogger to trust Hans-Peter von Wachtstein and Karl Boltitz and vice versa.
As far as he was concerned regarding Frogger, Allen Dulles apparently knew enough about him to trust him. Clete had had no choice but to go along with that. Moreover, unprofessionally, he had the gut feeling that Frogger was one of the good guys.
And he, of course, knew that Boltitz and von Wachtstein could be trusted.
The problem was that they didn’t trust Frogger—they didn’t know him, or that he was what he said he was. And the reverse was true. Clete thought that if he were in any of their shoes, he would have felt the same way.
That had to be changed.
If their conversation—mutual interrogation—went sour, as it very possibly would, Clete had a hole card in his chest pocket. It was a letter from General von Wachtstein that Captain Dieter von und zu Aschenburg, at considerable personal risk, had carried to Hans-Peter von Wachtstein shortly after von Wachtstein had arrived in Argentina.
In the letter, General von Wachtstein told his son that he had belatedly realized it was his duty to do whatever he could to rid Germany of Adolf Hitler.
He had begun the letter: The greatest violation of the code of chivalry by which I, and you, and your brothers, and so many of the von Wachtsteins before us, have tried to live is, of course, regicide. I want you to know that before I decided that honor demands I contribute what I can to such a course of action, I considered all of the ramifications, both spiritual and worldly, and that I am at peace with my decision.
Clete’s father had read the letter. It had caused the tough old cavalryman to weep.
If things did not go the way Frade hoped they would—the way they had to go—Frade was going to show the letter to Frogger, even though this would enrage Peter, would make him feel that Frade had not only betrayed him but had sentenced his father to death by hanging from a butcher’s hook by piano wire.
Frade raised his arm over his head and, fist balled, made the U.S. Marine Corps hand signal for Gather on me by making a pumping motion.