He didn’t reply.
“He wanted to see her for a few minutes?” Claudia went on. “She spent the night with him! And in the apartment in the Alvear!”
Well, that answers whether or not she knew about the apartment, doesn’t it?
“They’re in love, Claudia. He really loves her.”
She met his eyes. Hers were really sad. “And what if he put her in the family w
ay? Did you think about that?”
“What I thought was they deserved some time together. He thinks he may not come back. I had no idea they were going to spend the night together. I would have tried to talk them out of that.”
“And what does that mean?” Welner asked. “‘He thinks he may not come back’?”
“The Germans need somebody to blame for what happened on the beach. Peter thinks they may blame him.”
“Oh, God!” Claudia said, and then had a second thought: “Then why did he go?”
“If he didn’t go, it would be all the proof they needed that he was involved with what happened. They would have killed his father.”
“Oh, my God,” she said. “Oh, poor Peter.”
“As a general rule of thumb, Claudia, the Nazis are not very nice people.”
“How was Peter involved?” Welner asked.
“You don’t really expect me to answer that, do you?” Clete snapped.
“You should be ashamed of yourself, Cletus, speaking to Father Welner in that way. He’s a friend. My friend, your friend, and he was your father’s best friend.”
“It’s all right, Claudia,” Welner said. “I understand Cletus’s concerns.”
She looked between them for a moment, then asked, “Would they really have killed Peter’s father if he hadn’t gone?”
“Innocence doesn’t count as far as the Nazis are concerned, Claudia. They kill anybody who gets in their way. They killed my father, they killed one of my men, they killed Enrico’s sister, and they would have killed Peter’s father.”
“I’m afraid Cletus is right, Claudia,” Welner said.
Clete’s mouth ran away with him. “Why don’t you tell that to my godfather? El Coronel Perón thinks the Nazis are the salvation of the Christian world.”
“I don’t understand that,” Welner confessed.
“I’ve got a couple of theories I may tell you sometime,” Clete said. “But not in mixed company.”
“That’s enough about Juan Domingo, Cletus,” Claudia said.
“OK. Subject closed.”
“He’ll be at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo for the wedding,” she said. “You are going to behave, right?”
“I will be so good, Claudia, as to be unbelievable.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” she said. “My God, you’re like your father! I even know when you mean something else than what you say.”
“That sounded like a compliment, in which case, thank you. You’re no longer mad at me, I take it?”
“If she’s pregnant, I’ll kill you.”