“What I was thinking was: How good is your source?”
“It came from someone in a position to know,” Martín said.
“That’s not the same thing as saying ‘reliable’ or ‘very reliable,’ is it? Where’d you get that, Alejandro?”
“Next question?”
“You’ve got somebody in the German Embassy?” Frade said, but before Martín could respond, he went on: “I don’t understand why they would tell you that. Or, if this is true, why they haven’t already done it. It’s probably bullshit, which brings me back to: Why did they tell you?”
“It may very well be, to use your word, bullshit. But, on the other hand, they just might be getting ready to kidnap your in-laws.”
“You’ve said ‘may be planning’ and ‘just might be getting ready.’ Which suggests to me that you don’t have much faith in your source.”
Martín didn’t reply for a long moment, then asked: “You’re hearing this for the first time?”
Frade nodded. “I never even thought of something like this as a possibility.”
“I’m surprised. You generally think of just about everything. Unless, of course, you have a reason for believing the Germans won’t do anything to get the Froggers back.”
“Short of causing harm to me or anyone close to me, they’re capable and probably willing to do anything to get the Froggers back.” He stopped and smiled at Martín. “ ‘The Froggers.’ There’s that name again. Who are the Froggers, incidentally? I never heard of them.”
Martín shook his head in resignation. “Tell me,” he said, “why won’t they cause harm to you or people close to you?”
“I thought I told you that.”
“Tell me again.”
“I told my beloved Tío Juan—and you were there, Alejandro, when I called him from my house on Coronel Díaz, right after they tried to kill Enrico and me—that I was giving him the benefit of the doubt that he didn’t have time to call off his German friends, but that he’d better get right on the phone.”
“I remember that. But I don’t remember hearing what it was that el Coronel Perón was supposed to tell the Germans that would make them reluctant to harm you.”
“Well, for one thing, there’s photographs of my Tío Juan with the SS just before they shot up my house in Tandil. I don’t think the Germans would like to see them plastered all over the front pages of La Nación, La Prensa, et cetera.”
Martín’s eyebrows rose.
“Uh-huh,” Frade said, nodding. “And then there are photographs of boats trying to smuggle crates from the Spanish-registered merchantman Comerciante del Océano Pacífico onto the beach at Samborombón Bay. Taken from up close with one of those marvelous German Leica cameras. Some of those pictures show the German assistant military attaché for air . . . What’s his name?”
“Galahad, maybe?”
Frade, looking forward and showing no reaction, said, “‘Galahad’ ? Never heard that name, either. Now I remember: von Wachtstein. The photos—remarkably clear photographs, as I said—show von Wachtstein loading the bodies of the German military attaché, Oberst Grüner, and his assistant, Standartenführer Goltz, onto the Océano Pacífico’s boats. Very graphic photographs. Both men had been shot in the head. Blood and brain tissue all over them. And von Wachtstein.”
Martín exhaled audibly. He said, “Well, I suppose keeping those photographs out of the newspapers would tend to make the Germans reluctant to really make you angry.”
“And there are more.”
“If you have these photographs . . .”
“I have them, and there’s more.”
Martín raised his hand to interrupt him.
“I can’t help but wonder why you just don’t give them to the press.”
“Next question?”
Martín shrugged his acceptance of the rules.
“I’ve changed my mind,” Frade said thoughtfully a moment later. “But this is really off the record, Alejandro.”