“Inge. She is not homosexual. That’s what they call an understatement. She was sort of a high-class hooker in Berlin after her first husband was killed in Russia. She was given the choice between marrying this guy and keeping an eye on him, or going to work in a factory. Inge is feathering her own nest with what she can skim from the unnamed operation money.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think someone—Galahad probably—also knows Señora von Tresmarck and has been gossiping about her to you.”
“I don’t know anybody named Galahad. I thought I told you that.”
Martín smiled. He was silent for a long moment. Then, quietly, he said, “If I understand you, Cletus, until I told you about this kidnapping of the Mallíns, you thought you had sort of an arrangement, an armistice, with the Germans.”
“An uneasy armistice, but yeah. They would be very unpopular in Berlin if they got themselves declared persona non grata and got kicked out of Argentina. So—I thought—they’d be willing to just let things stand as they are while they’re waiting for their ultimate victory.”
“Then what’s this kidnapping about?”
“Now you sound as if you believe it’s serious.”
“I’m not prepared to ignore it. Are you?”
“So if you’re not prepared to ignore it, what are you doing about it?”
Martín, obviously considering his answer, took a long moment before re plying.
“I’ve got people on them,” he said finally. “All of them. Including your fa ther-in-law.”
“Which might tip our German friends that you know of the plan, and wonder where you got your information,” Frade said.
Martín did not reply, but after a moment shrugged his agreement.
“How about this?” Frade suggested. “Tomorrow morning, I take my mother-in-law and the boy to Mendoza . . .”
“I heard you had Doña Dorotea at Casa Montagna,” Martín said. “What’s that all about?”
“Next question? And how come you know about Casa Montagna?”
“Next question?”
“As I was saying, I’ll put some people from the estancia on my father-in-law,” Frade said. “Conspicuously. Four guys—all ex-Húsares—in a station wagon with ‘Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo’ painted on the doors. He won’t like it, but I don’t think he wants to go to Mendoza, and I’m sure he doesn’t want to be kidnapped.”
“Is he going to be at Doña Claudia’s little party?”
“Reluctantly, I think.”
“This is none of my business, but why doesn’t he like you?”
“You mean, what prompted him to tell his wife—he didn’t know I was in the house, of course—‘I curse the day that depraved gringo sonofabitch walked through our door!’?”
“He actually said that?”
“It may have something to do with me going to be the father of his first grandchild.”
“But why ‘depraved’?”
“That probably has something to do with me marrying his daughter.”
“His opinion of you doesn’t seem to bother you much.”
“It bothers me a lot, even when I think that a married man—married to a really great woman like Dorotea’s mother—who had a mistress doesn’t have a hell of a lot of right to ride up on the high horse of righteousness.”
“You know the mistress? Ex-mistress?”
“Why does that make me think you know her?”