Empire and Honor Read online

  ALSO BY W.E.B. GRIFFIN

  HONOR BOUND

  HONOR BOUND

  BLOOD AND HONOR

  SECRET HONOR

  DEATH AND HONOR

  (and William E. Butterworth IV)

  THE HONOR OF SPIES

  (and William E. Butterworth IV)

  VICTORY AND HONOR

  (and William E. Butterworth IV)

  BROTHERHOOD OF WAR

  BOOK I: THE LIEUTENANTS

  BOOK II: THE CAPTAINS

  BOOK III: THE MAJORS

  BOOK IV: THE COLONELS

  BOOK V: THE BERETS

  BOOK VI: THE GENERALS

  BOOK VII: THE NEW BREED

  BOOK VIII: THE AVIATORS

  BOOK IX: SPECIAL OPS

  THE CORPS

  BOOK I: SEMPER FI

  BOOK II: CALL TO ARMS

  BOOK III: COUNTERATTACK

  BOOK IV: BATTLEGROUND

  BOOK V: LINE OF FIRE

  BOOK VI: CLOSE COMBAT

  BOOK VII: BEHIND THE LINES

  BOOK VIII: IN DANGER’S PATH

  BOOK IX: UNDER FIRE

  BOOK X: RETREAT, HELL!

  BADGE OF HONOR

  BOOK I: MEN IN BLUE

  BOOK II: SPECIAL OPERATIONS

  BOOK III: THE VICTIM

  BOOK IV: THE WITNESS

  BOOK V: THE ASSASSIN

  BOOK VI: THE MURDERERS

  BOOK VII: THE INVESTIGATORS

  BOOK VIII: FINAL JUSTICE

  BOOK IX: THE TRAFFICKERS

  (and William E. Butterworth IV)

  BOOK X: THE VIGILANTES

  (and William E. Butterworth IV)

  MEN AT WAR

  BOOK I: THE LAST HEROES

  BOOK II: THE SECRET WARRIORS

  BOOK III: THE SOLDIER SPIES

  BOOK IV: THE FIGHTING AGENTS

  BOOK V: THE SABOTEURS

  (and William E. Butterworth IV)

  BOOK VI: THE DOUBLE AGENTS

  (and William E. Butterworth IV)

  BOOK VII: THE SPYMASTERS

  (and William E. Butterworth IV)

  PRESIDENTIAL AGENT

  BOOK I: BY ORDER OF THE PRESIDENT

  BOOK II: THE HOSTAGE

  BOOK III: THE HUNTERS

  BOOK IV: THE SHOOTERS

  BOOK V: BLACK OPS

  BOOK VI: THE OUTLAWS

  (and William E. Butterworth IV)

  BOOK VII: COVERT WARRIORS

  (and William E. Butterworth IV)

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa), Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North 2193, South Africa • Penguin China, B7 Jiaming Center, 27 East Third Ring Road North, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100020, China

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Copyright © 2012 by W.E.B. Griffin

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors’ rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Published simultaneously in Canada

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Griffin, W. E. B.

  Empire and honor / W.E.B. Griffin and William E. Butterworth IV.

  p. cm.—(Honor bound series; 7)

  ISBN 978-1-101-60217-1

  1. United States. Office of Strategic Services—Fiction. 2. Intelligence officers—United States—Fiction. 3. World War, 1939–1945—Fiction. 4. Spy stories. 5. Suspense fiction. 6. Historical fiction. I. Butterworth, William E. (William Edmund). II. Title.

  PS3557.R489137E47 2012 2012037747

  813'.54—dc23

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  IN LOVING MEMORY OF

  Colonel José Manuel Menéndez

  Cavalry, Argentine Army, Retired.

  He spent his life fighting Communism and Juan Domingo Perón

  CONTENTS

  ALSO BY W.E.B. GRIFFIN

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  PROLOGUE

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  PROLOGUE

  When the Edificio Libertador was built (1935–38) to house the headquarters of the Argentine army, known as the “Ejército Argentino,” the twenty-story structure was the largest building ever constructed in Argentina. It had been commissioned by President Agustín Justo, a retired general who had been minister of War before moving into the Casa Rosada, Argentina’s pink equivalent of the United States’ White House.

  Justo’s directions to architect Carlos Pibernat had been essentially to “do it properly”—which Pibernat interpreted to mean that cost was not to be a consideration. Argentina was prosperous; it had the world’s largest gold reserves and liked to think of itself as a world power.

  Argentines took a smug pride when they heard the phrase “As rich as an Argentine.”

  This was not a new state of mind. For example, when at the turn of the century Argentina decided it needed a new opera house, the government’s instructions to the architects were essentially “make it bigger, better, and more grandiose than the Paris Opera, the Vienna Opera, and any other opera house in the world.”

  When the Edificio Libertador was completed on an eight-acre plot east of the Casa Rosada, it was what today would be called state of the art. It had high-speed Siemens elevators, and a communications system installed by Siemens and other German firms to the high standards of the German army.

  The Ejército Argentino had a close, admiring relationship with the German Wehrmacht and the leader of the German people, Adolf Hitler, who was in the process—nearly finished in 1938—of bringing Germany out of the disaster caused by the Weimar Republic and the Versailles Treaty. Argentine officers were sent to the Kriegsschule in Germany, and the Wehrmacht sent officers to train the Ejército, whose uniforms closely resembled those of the Wehrmacht.

  There was also a great admiration among Ejército Argentino officers for “Il Duce,” Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator and founder of Fascism, who, it was said, made the trains run on time. Argentina, like the United States, was a nation of immigrants. There were more Argentines of Italian ancestry than of Spanish or any other nationality.

  —

  In 1938, Fascism and its cousin, Nazism, were clearly on the rise, and war was as clearly on the horizon. Nevertheless, it took five years, until 1943, to settle the differences between various factors of
the Ejército vis-à-vis who got which wings and floors of the Edificio Libertador.

  By then, it appeared almost certain that Fascism was to be the New World Order. The Wehrmacht, using a new tactic of fast-moving armored formations called “Blitzkrieg,” had brought France—and the rest of Continental Europe—to its knees in just over a month, May 10 to June 14, 1940. Britain was isolated.

  On June 22, 1941, Germany launched OPERATION BARBAROSSA against Russia, and by August 20 the Wehrmacht was on the outskirts of Leningrad.

  On December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, sinking most of the U.S. Pacific fleet, and quickly turned their attention to the Philippine Islands. Germany declared war on the United States, and the conflict became the Allies—Britain and the U.S.—versus the Axis—Germany, Japan, and Italy.

  The British bastion in the Far East, Singapore, fell to the Japanese on February 15, 1942, the largest capitulation in British history.

  And on May 6, 1942, Lieutenant General Jonathan M. Wainwright unconditionally surrendered the Philippines to the Japanese. It was the worst defeat in American history.

  Although Argentina was neutral, most of the Ejército Argentino—but not all—cheered the Axis triumphs.

  The Argentine navy, which had been trained by the Royal Navy, was disheartened.

  The British had been in Argentina for a long time in such numbers that they tended to think of it as almost a British colony. The Brits had built—and owned—the Argentine railway system. There was an Argentine branch of Harrods, the famed London department store, in downtown Buenos Aires, and many members of the upper class had been educated and continued to educate their children in Argentine versions—Saint Paul’s, for example—of British “public”—actually private—schools.

  Anglo-Argentines volunteered for service in the British armed forces, as did Germano-Argentines for service to the Third Reich. There were daily English- and German-language newspapers in Buenos Aires. The government permitted them to continue publishing but forbade their reporting of war news.

  Both the Germans and the British, as in the First World War, turned to Argentina for foodstuffs. This was a very profitable business for Argentina.

  One of Argentina’s neighbors to the north, Brazil, had declared war on the Axis shortly after Pearl Harbor. This was to give the United States airbases in Brazil from which specially equipped B-24 bombers could be used against German submarines. The Nazi Unterseeboots—U-boats—had been interdicting British merchant ships carrying Argentine beef and other foodstuffs to England.

  —

  On April 18, 1942, sixteen B-25 bombers took off from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet and bombed Tokyo. Not much physical damage was done, but the raid destroyed the notion of Japanese invincibility.

  On November 8, 1942, American forces staged a successful invasion of North Africa, and many historians consider this the turning point of World War II. Certainly, things went, slowly but inexorably, downhill for the Axis after that date.

  On November 19, 1942, the Russians at Stalingrad were in a position whereby they could launch a counteroffensive—and did so. They quickly surrounded the German Sixth Army, which Hitler had ordered to fight until the last man and the last round.

  On January 31, 1943, Field Marshal von Paulus surrendered the southern sector, and on February 2, 1943, General Schreck surrendered the northern group. Ninety thousand German soldiers became prisoners and perhaps at least that number were in unmarked graves.

  The Russian march to Berlin began.

  On September 3, 1943, Anglo-American forces landed in Italy. The same day, Italy surrendered unconditionally to the Allies.

  On June 6, 1944, the Allies landed in France. The Germans surrendered Paris on August 25.

  On October 20, 1944, MacArthur made good his promise—“I shall return”—by landing his Sixth Army on Leyte Island in the Philippines.

  The U.S. and Royal Air Forces began day-and-night one-thousand-bomber raids on the German homeland, as Allied forces fought their way to Germany.

  On January 16, 1945, the Red Army breached the German front and marched—as much as twenty-five miles a day—through East Prussia, Lower Silesia, East Pomerania, and Upper Silesia, to a line forty miles east of Berlin along the Oder River.

  On March 27, 1945, Argentina, finally realizing that defeat was imminent, declared war on Germany.

  On April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler committed suicide as Russian tanks rolled through the streets of Berlin. A week later, on May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally.

  On August 6, 1945, the United States obliterated Hiroshima, Japan, with an atomic bomb. Three days later, a second atomic bomb obliterated Nagasaki.

  On September 2, 1945, a formal surrender ceremony was performed in Tokyo Bay, Japan, aboard the battleship USS Missouri.

  World War II was over.

  Not a single Argentine soldier or sailor had died in the war.

  Not one bomb or artillery shell had landed on Argentine soil.

  And, as a result of supplying foodstuffs to both sides, Argentina was richer than ever.

  Argentina’s role in World War II, however, was by no means over.

  When—as early as 1942—the most senior members of the Nazi hierarchy, as high as Martin Bormann, generally regarded as second in power only to Hitler, and Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, realized the Ultimate Victory was not nearly as certain as Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels had been telling the German people, they began in great secrecy to implement OPERATION PHOENIX.

  Should the Thousand-Year Reich have a life shorter than they hoped, by establishing refuges in South America—primarily in Argentina and Paraguay—to which senior Nazis could flee, National Socialism could rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes.

  Vast sums were sent to Argentina, some through normal banking channels but most in great secrecy by submarine. The U-boats also carried crates of currency, gold, and diamonds and other precious stones. Senior SS officers were sent to Argentina—some of them legally, accredited as diplomats, but again most of them secretly infiltrated by submarine—to purchase property where senior Nazis would be safe from Allied retribution.

  The Allies learned of OPERATION PHOENIX and tried, without much success, to stop it. Their concern heightened as the war drew to a close. They learned that when Grand Admiral Doenitz issued the cease hostilities order on May 4, sixty-three U-boats were at sea.

  Five of them were known to have complied with their orders to hoist a black flag and proceed to an Allied port to surrender, or to a neutral port to be interned. There was reliable intelligence that an additional forty-one U-boats had been scuttled by their crews, to prevent the capture of whatever may have been on board.

  That left between seventeen and twenty U-boats unaccounted for. Of particular concern were U-234, U-405, and U-977. They were Type XB U-boats—minelayers, which meant that with no mines aboard they could carry a great deal of cargo and many passengers for great distances.

  There was credible intelligence that when U-234 sailed from Narvik on April 16—two weeks before the German capitulation—she had aboard a varied cargo, some of which was either not listed on the manifest at all or listed under a false description. This included a ton of mail—which of course almost certainly hid currency and diamonds being smuggled. It also included Nazi and Japanese officers and German scientists as passengers. And something even more worrisome: 560 kilograms of uranium oxide from the German not-quite-completed atomic bomb project.

  It was only logical to presume that U-405 and U-977 were carrying similar cargoes.

  A massive search by ship and air for all submarines—but especially for U-234, U-405, and U-977—was launched from France, England, and Africa, and by the specially configured U.S. Army Air Forces B-24 “Liberator” bombers, which had searched for submarines since 1942 from bases in Brazil.

  The searches, of course, were limited by the range of the aircraft involved and, as far as the ships also involved in t
he searches, by the size of the South Atlantic Ocean once the submarines had entered it.

  There were some successes. Submarines were sighted and then attacked with depth charges and/or aircraft bombs. While it was mathematically probable that several of the submarines were sunk, there was no telling which ones.

  The concern that the U-boats that—either certainly or probably—had uranium oxide aboard and were headed for Japan was reduced of course when the Japanese surrendered on September 2, 1945.

  But that left Argentina as a very possible destination.

  I

  [ONE]

  Aboard U-405

  South Latitude 41.205 degrees, West Longitude 65.114 degrees

  In the San Matias Gulf, the Coast of Argentina

  0430 6 October 1945

  “Let me have a look, please,” SS-Brigadeführer Ludwig Hoffmann said to Fregattenkapitän Wilhelm von Dattenberg, captain of U-405, who was looking through the periscope.

  Hoffmann’s tone suggested it was less a request than an order. Hoffmann, a diminutive, intense forty-five-year-old, was superior in rank to von Dattenberg. If they had been in the Kriegsmarine, Hoffmann would have been a vizeadmiral.

  Von Dattenberg, a slim, somewhat hawk-faced thirty-four-year-old, stepped away from the periscope eyepiece and indicated to Hoffmann that it was his.

  Five months earlier, SS-Brigadeführer Hoffmann and fifteen other SS officers—two SS-standartenführers, a rank equivalent to kapitän zur see; six SS-obersturmbannführers, a rank equivalent to von Dattenberg’s; and seven SS-sturmbannführers, a rank equivalent to korvettenkapitän—had come aboard U-405 at Narvik, Denmark, with five heavy wooden crates.

  And at least once a day since then, Fregattenkapitän von Dattenberg had very seriously considered how he might kill all of the Nazis, who carried orders signed by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler himself.

  Right now, he genuinely regretted having missed all of his opportunities to do so because each time he had come up with a plan, he realized that it would have endangered his crew. After all he’d been through with his sailors, he had no intention of doing that.