“I advise you, Cletus,” Perón said evenly, wagging his right index finger in Frade’s face, “to be very careful what you say. There is a limit to my patience.”
“And I have passed my limit,” Frade snapped. “The lady—and I use the term loosely—and Nulder have been in the slums organizing the workers—she calls them ‘the shirtless ones.’ They are going to march—have begun to march—on Buenos Aires, up Avenida 9 Julio to the Ministry of Labor Building, and then over to the Casa Rosada, to protest your arrest.”
“How in the world did you hear about that?” Father Welner blurted.
“I didn’t tell him,” Martín said, directing the comment to Perón.
Frade glared at Martín. “But you are the one who’s always making those unsupported allegations that I’m an intelligence officer, right, Bernardo?” He turned to Perón. “Are you really going to deny any knowledge of this?”
“I’ve heard some rumors,” Perón said.
“Jesus! You’re unbelievable, Tío Juan.”
Perón glared at him.
“Even if the rumors are true,” he pronounced, “a peaceable demonstration of the shirtless ones to protest the wholly unjustified arrest of the Labor minister—whom they know to be a friend—is not the sort of thing that would start a civil war.”
“It’s enough to get your old friend el Coronel Lopez and the other malcontents off their asses and on the road to kill you. And when everybody hears what’s probably going to happen here, a civil war seems to me to be a sure thing.”
“And what do you think is going to happen here?”
“What I would like to see happen here is what Father Welner and General Martín—and now that I think about it, what General Farrell—want to happen here, which is that nothing happens. Not a shot is fired by anybody.
“Just as soon as you and I and General Martín take off, the Patricios get back on their boats and go back where they came from . . .”
“Tigre,” Father Welner furnished.
“. . . taking the Good Father with them, as he won’t fit in the airplane,” Clete continued, ignoring him.
The priest was not going to be ignored.
“I thought the plan was that I would meet the Horse Rifles when they arrived and reason with them.”
“That was your plan, Padre. Mine’s better. Think about it. When the Horse Rifles get here and find nobody here but the officer—what is he, a captain?—normally in charge . . .”
“He’s a major,” Martín finished, nodding toward one of the officers standing beside Perón.
“. . . of this bucolic outpost to greet them—in other words, no Patricios and most important, no el Coronel Perón, to stand against a wall—they are going to feel—especially if they conduct a thorough search of the island and don’t find him—more than just a little foolish. They will then do one of two things.”
“What?” Martín asked.
“They will get back on their boats and go back where they came from, or they will stay here thinking that el Coronel Perón may come back. In either event, no shooting, no dead people, no starting a civil war.”
“Cletus is right, Father,” General Martín said. “It would be best if the Horse Rifles saw for themselves that there’s nothing on this island that shouldn’t be.”
“And what, if I may be so bold as to inquire,” Perón asked, thickly sarcastic, “do my captors plan to do with me?”
“We fly you to Jorge Frade,” Martín said. “I have arranged for a platoon of the Patricios to be there. They will provide all the protection you’ll need as we take you to the Military Hospital.”
Now he sounds like a general.
But where has that confident tone of command been up to now?
“No matter how anxious they are to shoot you,” Frade said, “none of the malcontents is going to try to get at you in the Military Hospital. The barracks of the Patricios is right next door.”
“I can see no reason that I have to fly off the island,” Perón said. “I can return to the mainland the way I came. By boat.”
“Jesus Christ!” Clete exploded. “Are you really that stupid? How did you get to be a colonel?”