Espinoza took this news like a body blow. He knew his son would never abandon his post, so the odds were that Jorge had been one of the four. “First my wife and now this,” he muttered.

“Your wife?” Jimenez asked too quickly.

Espinoza didn’t pick up on the young Lieutenant’s enthusiasm, and such was his state of mind that he actually explained himself to a subaltern. “She took our children and left me. Worse, she has betrayed me.”

Jimenez had to fight to keep the emotion from his face. Maxine had left him, and he knew she had done it so they could be together. His heart rate went into overdrive. The news was the happiest he had ever heard, so the next words out of the General’s mouth were especially painful.

“I managed to get two agents to meet her plane when it landed in Paris after I was told by customs that she had left the country. She was met by two men and was taken immediately to the head-quarters of the DGSE.”

He knew that was the French spy agency, their version of the CIA.

Espinoza continued. “I don’t know if she was their agent all along or if they turned her, but the truth is unavoidable. She is a spy.”

At that instant, Jimenez understood that she had gotten as much information from him as she had the General. He recalled that last time, along the banks of the stream, when he had told her about abducting the American professor and how she was being kept in the Espinozas’ Buenos Aires apartment. Maxine had relayed that information to their superiors, and they had arranged her rescue.

“And now my Jorge is dead.” He fought to contain his grief and finally managed to compose himself. “Tell me this was the work of the Americans so that I may have my revenge.”

“I have been working closely with Luis Laretta, the director, and Commander Ocampo, who is the first officer aboard the Admiral Brown. Our preliminary conclusion is that the ship’s anchor came loose, which allowed the vessel to drift into the gas plant and cause the explosion. Secondary fires destroyed three other buildings, including a workshop and the dormitory we were using to house the scientists we had taken from other bases.”

“Doesn’t that strike you as too convenient? The two things the Americans want, the base reduced to ashes and the prisoners set free?”