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Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo
Near Pila, Buenos Aires Province
Republic of Argentina
The concentration el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade was devoting to the inch-thick document on his desk was interrupted by what sounded like the death agony of a water buffalo being stomped by an elephant.
Frade, a six-foot-one, 195-pound, fifty-one-year-old, still had all of his hair (including the full mustache he had worn since he was commissioned Sub-Teniente—Second Lieutenant—of Cavalry) and all of his teeth; but in the past five years he had found it necessary to wear corrective glasses when reading. He removed his horn-rimmed spectacles, sighed audibly, and looked across his study at the source of the noise.
It came from the open mouth of a heavyset man in his late forties who was sitting sprawled in a leather armchair, sound asleep. He, too, wore a cavalryman’s mustache.
He was Enrico Rodriguez, who had left Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo to enlist in the Cavalry to serve as Sub-Teniente Frade’s batman. They had retired together twenty-five years later as Colonel Commanding and Suboficial Mayor (Sergeant Major) of Argentina’s most prestigious cavalry regiment, the Husares de Pueyrredón.
During their long service together, el Coronel Frade had grown familiar with Suboficial Mayor Rodriguez’s snoring. Tonight’s was spectacular, which meant that Rodriguez had
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