The first vehicle to appear was a gendarmerie Ford pickup truck carrying a half-dozen heavily armed gendarmes. Second in line was General Nervo’s Buick Roadmaster.
I guess they met on Route 60, Frade thought, and Nervo reclaimed it.
The third vehicle in line was another gendarmerie pickup. Strapped to a chair in the bed was Captain Guillermo O’Reilley. Three more gendarmerie pickups followed it.
“What’s that all about?” Father Welner said. “I don’t care what that fellow has done, he should not be humiliated that way.”
“I think his humiliation is what General Nervo wants, Father,” General Martín said.
The convoy stopped with the pickup carrying Captain O’Reilley directly in front of the steps to the Casa Montagna veranda, and the Buick just in front of it.
Captain O’Reilley, who could move nothing but his head, quickly examined the two dozen or so people on the veranda, and then looked straight ahead.
Nervo’s driver opened the rear door of the Buick. Nervo and Nolasco got out. They walked onto the veranda, greeting first Father Welner, then moving to the women, then everybody else and finally Clete, Jimmy, Martín, and Garcia.
The two gendarmerie officers greeted each of them effusively.
The entire process took perhaps three minutes but it seemed longer.
Finally, Nervo pointed to Captain O’Reilley.
“That’s one of yours, General,” he said to Martín. “He said that as an army officer he’s not required to answer questions posed by the gendarmerie.”
“That’s the chap you caught spying on us?”
“That’s him.”
“Get him out of there,” Martín ordered. “Perhaps he’ll tell me what you want to know.”
Nervo gestured to two gendarmes, who then jumped into the bed of the truck, unstrapped O’Reilley, and walked him to the end of the bed and lowered him onto the ground.
Martín gestured for him to approach.
He began to do so, in tiny steps.
“Why are you walking that way?” Martín asked.
“They’ve tied my boot laces together,” O’Reilley proclaimed indignantly.
“Standard gendarmerie procedure, General,” Nolasco said. “You can’t run very fast when your boot laces are tied together.”
“I suppose that’s so,” Martín said.
O’Reilley finally came close to Martín and came to attention.
“You’ve forgotten how to report, Captain?” Martín asked.
O’Reilley saluted.
“Captain O’Reilley, Guillermo, Tenth Mountain, mi General.”
“You recognize me, then?” Martín asked. “I’m not in uniform. Who do you think I am?”
“Mi General, you are General de Brigada Bernardo Martín.”
“And my assignment?”
“Mi General, you are chief of the Bureau of Internal Security.”