El Coronel Alejandro Bernardo Martín of the Bureau of Internal Security slipped into the seat beside him.
Clete raised his glass in salute.
“How much of that have you had?” Martín asked.
“A lot. I try never to fly sober.”
“We have to talk,” Martín said, shaking his head.
“Not now, please, Alejandro. You may not believe this, but I have just flown this great big airplane back and forth across the Atlantic. I have earned this.” He raised the glass again. “Care to join me?”
Martín said: “SS-Brigadeführer Manfred von Deitzberg has just flown across the River Plate to Montevideo. In one of your airplanes.”
Clete looked at him, both eyebrows raised in surprise.
Martín went on: “Carrying the passport of an ethnic German Argentine—Jorge Schenck—who died in a car crash in 1938.”
“I wondered why that sonofabitch came back,” Clete said, “and what he wants.”
“Well,” Martín said, “Adolf Hitler himself has ordered the destruction of your airplanes—the big ones—as well as your elimination. And the elimination of the Froggers. And while von Deitzberg is here, to make sure Operation Phoenix is running smoothly. There’s almost certainly more.”
“Where are you getting all this?” Clete asked, adding incredulously, “Adolf Hitler?”
Martín nodded. Then he asked: “Where are you going from here?”
“First, to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, and then, first thing in the morning, to Mendoza. My Lodestar’s at the estancia.”
“You couldn’t spend the night here? Either at your place on Libertador or the big house on Coronel Díaz? There’s some people I want you to talk to.”
“So far as the house on Coronel Díaz is concerned, the last time that Enrico and I went there”—he nodded toward Rodríguez, who was sitting across the aisle feeding brass-cased shells into his Remington Model 11 riot shotgun—“you might recall that ‘members of the criminal element’ tried to kill us. Dorotea’s here . . .”
“I saw her. With Sargento Gómez and what looks like four of his friends standing with her.”
“. . . and I don’t want some bastard taking a shot at her. And, so far as the house on Libertador is concerned, I’m not sure they’ve had time to finish fu migating.”
“Fumigating? Rats?”
“In a manner of speaking. After my Tío Juan moved out, I had the whole house painted and fumigated.”
“That was necessary?”
“I thought so.”
The house on Libertador had been built by Clete’s late granduncle, Guillermo Jorge Frade, who had the reputation of being very fond of both women and horse racing, not necessarily in that order. The master bedroom, which took up most of the third floor of his mansion, offered a place in which he could entertain his lady guests and watch the races in the Hipódromo across the street, either separately or simultaneously.
When Clete had first come to Argentina and made his peace with his father, his father had turned the mansion over to him. Clete had been in Guillermo Jorge Frade’s enormous bed when the first assassination attempt had been made. The assassins came there after slitting the throat of the housekeeper, la Señora Mariana Maria Dolores Rodríguez de Pellano, Enrico’s sister, in the kitchen.
And three days later, having learned of the attempted assassination, la Señorita Dorotea Mallín, whom Clete had thought of as “The Virgin Princess,” had stormed into the bedroom, angrily berating Cletus for not having called her. In the discussion that followed, la Señorita Mallín had not only lost her virginity but become with child.
The memory of that had caused Clete’s stomach to almost literally turn when his mind filled with images of Juan Domingo Perón and his thirteen-year-old paramour in the same bed. He wasn’t sure that a coat of paint and a thorough fumigation would correct the situation, but it couldn’t hurt.
“Your Tío Juan is one of the things we have to talk about,” Martín said. “This is important, Cletus.”
“You’re asking,” Clete said thoughtfully. “Usually, it’s ‘come with me or get tossed into the back of a BIS car in handcuffs.’ ”
“I’m asking,” Martín said.
After a moment, Clete said, “Okay. I’ll send Enrico to put Dorotea in the Horch. It’s in the hangar. Then, just as soon as that crowd thins out, we’ll drive to the house on Libertador. Under the capable protection of the stalwart men of the Bureau of Internal Security.”