“Not bad.”
“Okay, we don’t introduce you. When Siggy and I talk to you, it will be as Mister Fischer. Got it?”
“Jawohl, Herr Oberst,” Fischer said.
“Get in, Siggy. We’ll go see the lioness in her cage.”
“I can just ride on the running board,” Stein said.
“Get in,” Frade ordered. “If you fell off and broke your leg, we’d really be screwed.”
Commercial Attaché Wilhelm Frogger got quickly to his feet when Frade walked into the sitting room. Frogger had been in an armchair—my father’s armchair, you sonofabitch!—reading a book.
Frogger was wearing a suit and necktie. His face was cleanly shaved and his mustache trimmed.
A gaucho with a flowing mustache and holding a shotgun in his lap was sitting in a wooden chair tipped against the wall near the door.
He neither said anything nor got out of the chair, but nodded at Frade and the others.
Frade glared at Frogger but didn’t speak to him.
“The woman?” Frade said to the gaucho.
“In her room.”
“Go get her, please.”
The gaucho nodded and left the room.
Fischer walked to Frogger and gestured for him to hand over the book.
Frade examined it, shrugged, then handed it back.
“Goethe, Römishe Elegien,” Wilhelm Frogger announced in German, then translated to English. “Roman Elegy. Love poems.”
“I know,” Frade replied in English. “My father spoke German.”
Then an unpleasant thought occurred to him: Is that bastard holding a book from which my father used to read to Claudia?
Frau Frogger appeared a moment later, trailed by a short, squat female.
That has to be José’s wife, Frade thought, then remembered hearing that among the gauchos the sacrament of marriage was often ignored. Whatever her marital status, she’s formidable.
“Have Frau Frogger comb her hair and otherwise have her make herself presentable, ” Frade ordered the squat female in Spanish. “We are going to take her photograph.”
“I refuse,” Frau Frogger said.
“If necessary, tie her to a chair,” Frade ordered.
Frade motioned for Stein and Fischer to follow him. “Come with me, please, gentlemen,” he said, then quickly added, “And lady.”
“Thank you ever so much,” Dorotea replied icily.
Frade led them through the kitchen to a galley at the rear of the house. And then he went back in the kitchen, coming out a moment later with a bottle of wine and a handful of long-stemmed glasses.
“What, Clete?” Stein asked as Frade worked the corkscrew.
“Two things,” Frade said. “First, I’m sure my lovely bride would like to have witnesses while I grovel in apology for shoving her down on the floor of the Horch—”