Enrico’s face showed he didn’t like the question; he ignored it.
“Since they didn’t expect us, Don Cletus,” Enrico said, “there was no food, or not enough, but I have sent to Señor Alvarez’s home for a cook and food for tonight and the morning.”
Whose home?
Ah, the resident manager, the guy who was driving the Lincoln.
Where the hell does he fit in here?
“I hope that wasn’t an imposition, Señor Alvarez,” Dorotea said politely.
“How could it be an imposition, señora?” Alvarez asked. “The cook will stay here for as long as necessary. . . .”
He paused, making the statement a question.
“We’ll be here—in and out of here—indefinitely,” Clete said. “Chief Pilot Delgano and I will be in and out on a regular basis in connection with South American Airways business, and Mr. Stein and Mr. Sawyer with the wine business. And I brought six men from Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo with me, who will also be here indefinitely.”
“There is plenty of room, Don Cletus,” Alvarez said. “There are seventeen rooms in Casa Mont
agna, in addition to the . . . special suite. And, depending how you wish them set up, more than a dozen bedrooms in the outbuildings.”
“The men I brought with me can stay in the outbuildings,” Frade said. “And I will probably bring another half-dozen.”
“Don Cletus,” Enrico said. “There are already a half-dozen men here. All from the Húsares. I have spoken to them. . . .”
Alvarez saw the questioning look on Frade’s face, but he mistook it to mean Frade was wondering why there were a half-dozen old soldiers in a house rarely occupied.
Alvarez explained: “There are a number of works of art in Casa Montagna, Don Cletus, that el Coronel wanted to make sure were protected, as the house was so rarely used.”
That, however, wasn’t the question in Clete’s mind. He asked, of Enrico, the one that was: “You knew all about this place, didn’t you?”
Rodríguez nodded.
“But you never mentioned it to me. Why?”
“I knew you would come here eventually. That would be the time to tell you.”
The telephone rang.
Enrico went to a small table. There were two telephones on it; one was an ordinary—if, to Clete, old-fashioned—device and the other apparently the Argentine version of the U.S. Army Signal Corps EE-8 field telephone. Enrico picked up the latter, listened, then pushed the butterfly switch and snarled, sergeantlike, something into it, then put the handset back in its leather case.
“Mother Superior and the nuns are at the lower gate,” he announced.
Clete asked the question that had popped into his mind when he saw the military field telephone.
“What’s that military telephone doing in here?”
“It is connected to the lower and upper gates right now, but there is a field switchboard.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Enrico looked uncomfortable.
“When el Coronel was leading Operation Blue,” he said finally, making reference to the coup d’état that would have, had he not been assassinated, made el Coronel Frade the president of Argentina, “we needed Casa Montagna.”
“And is there anything else you’d like to tell me about that?”
“El Coronel knew this was the logical place for it, but as he did not wish to come here, he sent me to set it up.”