“Santiago?” Ashton said. “Why Chile?”
“Are you also going to put a SIGABA in here?” Stein asked.
Frade ignored Ashton’s question and responded to Stein by asking, “How many do we have left?”
“There’s one here—plus a spare—and another at the airport. I hope you brought it.”
“Dammit! It slipped my mind,” Clete said bitterly, then added sarcastically, “I must have had other things on my mind.”
“Which our beloved commander, Sergeant Stein,” Ashton said, “will tell us all about soon. Won’t you, Colonel?”
Clete looked at him but didn’t respond.
“What the hell is going on, Clete?” Ashton pursued.
“We think we found where U-234, the sub with the uranium oxide, made landfall here,” Frade said.
“No fooling?” Ashton said, his surprise showing.
“Way down south,” Frade said. “Near the mouth of the Strait of Magellan.”
“And you’re going to try to grab it?” Ashton asked. “The uranium oxide?”
“That’s the idea.”
“How the hell did you find U-234?” Stein asked.
“Okay, that’s the last question until we get to the estancia,” Frade said. “Von Dattenberg had the landfall coordinates all the time in his safe on U-405. He didn’t know he had them, and they were of course in the Kriegsmarine code. Boltitz learned about that in Germany.”
“And Karl got his hands on the Kriegsmarine code?” Ashton asked.
Frade looked at Cronley.
“No,” Frade said.
“Then Karl must have broken it.”
“No,” Frade said. “Karl didn’t have a clue how to break the code.”
“Then what?”
Frade pointed at Cronley and, smiling, said, “Sometimes second lieutenants aren’t as dumb as legend has it. As hard as it is to believe, Jimmy broke it. And now—I meant it about that being the last question until we get to the estancia and I can bring everybody up to speed at once—let’s get everybody off the plane and up to Casa Montagna.”
If I didn’t know better, Cronley thought, I might think Clete just said something nice to me.
And with a smile.
[TWO]
Estancia Don Guillermo
Km 40.4, Provincial Route 60
Mendoza Province, Argentina
0510 21 October 1945
Jimmy carefully watched as the station wagon in which he, three armed men, and his luggage had ridden from the airport came to a stop in front of a large house on the mountaintop. Floodlights lit the immediate area. Jimmy saw one of the other station wagons in their caravan now pulling away and several muscular servants, of both genders, carrying luggage into the house.