Ninety seconds ago, he reminded himself, I was asking myself whether I had the balls to shoot both of those goddamn Nazis rather than see them freed, and decided that I did.
“You have some place to take them?” Stein pursued.
“I will tell the driver where to take you,” Rodríguez said. “And then later meet you there.”
“You’re not going to take them?”
“I am going to stay here and see what these bastards are up to,” Rodríguez said.
“And so will I,” Stein said, somewhat astonished to hear himself say it.
Rodríguez was visibly unhappy to hear this.
“Do you have a saying in the U.S. Army that there can only be one commander?”
“Sergeant Major, I recognize that your experience in matters like these is much greater than mine.” Which is practically nonexistent. “I am at your orders.”
&n
bsp; “We will send six of the men, plus the driver, with the Froggers,” Rodríguez ordered as he assumed command. “You tell The Other Dorotea to prepare the Nazis to be moved. Tell her I said I want them tied and blindfolded.”
Stein managed to keep himself from saying, Yes, sir.
“Got it,” he said.
“And while you’re doing that, I will have the Ford car and your vehicles moved over there,” he said, pointing to a line of hills that began a quarter of a mile the other side of the road. “There’s a dirt road. I want nothing in the house when they get here.”
Why? What’s that all about?
“Good idea.”
“And I will set up my command post there,” Rodríguez said, pointing. “Just below the military crest of the hill.”
What the hell is “the military crest of the hill”?
Stein nodded.
“And you have the little German camera Don Cletus brought from Brazil?”
“The Leica,” Stein said. “It’s in the house.”
“We will need photos of everything that happens here to show Don Cletus when he returns. You would be useful doing that.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll send two men with you down there,” Rodríguez said, pointing to a roof-less, windowless old building on the edge of the road about a hundred meters from the gate. “I think you will be able to see both the house and the approaches, as well as the road, from the upper story.” He paused and chuckled. “If there still is a second story. If not, you’ll have to do as best you can from the ground floor.”
“Understood.”
While I am trying to take their pictures from the ground floor of a decrepit old building in the middle of Argentina, I am going to be shot to death by the SS.
Jesus Christ!
Thirty minutes later, on the second floor of the old building, Staff Sergeant Stein sat patiently while one of the two old Húsares with him carefully painted his face, his hands, and whatever shiny parts of the Leica Ic camera with a mixture of dust from the building and axle grease. They took extra care with the camera so as not to render it useless.
When they had finished that, they draped Stein in a sort of shroud made from burlap potato bags, which covered his head and his body to his ankles. Then, very carefully, they stuck a great deal of dead leafy vegetable matter into the burlap shroud.
While he had been undergoing the transformation, the other old Húsar took apart an Argentine copy of a U.S. Army EE-8 field telephone, disconnected the bells that would ring when another EE-8 was cranked, and then carefully put the phone back together.