Empire and Honor Page 10

  “Forgive me, General Martín,” Perón said sarcastically.

  Martín ignored him again.

  “And to do that,” Martín went on, “under Option Two, my car, the staff car containing the two officers senior to you, and the truck with the mountain troops will follow, at a discreet distance, General Ramos’s staff car to our destination. It is my intention to put Montenegro in my car, and I will ride with General Ramos and you.”

  “Very well,” Perón said, his tone suggesting he was granting, rather than receiving, a favor.

  “As I said, Colonel,” Martín said calmly, “I will require your parole, under the Code of Honor of the officer corps of the Ejército Argentino.”

  “Very well,” Perón said. “You have it.”

  —

  The cars and trucks trying to follow General Ramos’s staff car in the heavy traffic lost it before they reached the Colón Opera House, which was about halfway down Avenida 9 Julio.

  “Pull over and wait until they catch up with us,” Martín ordered.

  That maneuver was repeated when the trailing vehicles again lost Ramos’s car near the end of Avenida 9 Julio, by the French embassy.

  “Turn left on Libertador,” Martín ordered this time. “And stop there to wait for them.”

  “I gather my mysterious place of confinement is not to be the Circulo Militar,” el Coronel Perón said.

  The central officers’ club of the Ejército Argentino, which overlooked the Plaza San Martín, was the former mansion of the Paz family, which owned La Prensa newspaper. It was one of the most beautiful buildings in Argentina.

  If they had been going there, they had just missed the turn.

  “I’m afraid not, el Coronel,” Martín said.

  When the trailing vehicles finally caught up, Ramos’s staff car led the convoy all the way down Avenida Libertador, past the polo fields and racetrack, and out of the City of Buenos Aires proper, into the Province of Buenos Aires.

  “Now I’m really curious where you’re taking me,” Perón said.

  No one replied.

  They eventually arrived in Tigre, often described as Venice without the buildings. It was a large area of small islands in the Parana River Delta. The center had been developed around the turn of the century, and ornate Victorian mansions—some of them housing the English, French, Italian, and Swiss rowing clubs—lined branches of the Parana River.

  There was also a commercial area, where boats plying the Parana brought fruits, vegetables, and firewood from upriver.

  The Ramos convoy headed for the wharfs of the fruit market and disappeared into one of the warehouses.

  “Now I demand to know where I’m being taken!” Perón announced.

  “You’ll soon find out, el Coronel,” Martín said.

  When Perón got out of the Mercedes, he saw that the soldiers of the First Infantry Regiment—the Patricios—were lined up in two facing rows.

  “That way, if you will, el Coronel,” Martín said, gesturing that Perón should walk between the lines of soldiers.

  When he had done so, he found himself outside the warehouse, standing on a wharf. A fifty-foot-long boat was tied up to the wharf. Highly varnished and brightly painted, it was one of perhaps thirty such boats used to take people on cruises—luncheon included—through the islands of Tigre and out onto the River Plate.

  “What are you going to do, General?” Perón snapped. “Take me out onto the Plate and throw me overboard?”

  Martín ignored the question. He motioned for Perón to cross the gangway onto the boat.

  When he had done so, the soldiers followed him. Ramos and Montenegro and finally Martín boarded the boat, which immediately began to move away from the wharf.

  They entered the cabin of the boat, which was furnished with tables and chairs and, at stern end, a bar.

  “Stand if you like, el Coronel,” Martín said. “But it’s about an hour’s ride, and you’d probably be more comfortable sitting.”

  Perón glared between Ramos and Martín.

  “You’re taking me to Isla Martín García?” he asked, but it was more of a statement—an accusation—than it was a question.

  Isla Martín García was a small island—little more than half a square mile—off the Río de la Plata coast of Uruguay. In the 1820s it had been fortified by the Ejército Argentino to deny the Brazilian navy access to the Uruguay River.

  This time Martín replied. “The president, el Coronel, told me I was to remind you that you would be marching in the steps of President Hipólito Yrigoyen.”

  The smile on Martín’s face showed that he had no trouble at all obeying that order.

  General Ramos chuckled.

  Juan Hipólito del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús Yrigoyen Alem had twice been president of the Argentine Republic. In 1930, a cabal of officers who had briefly seized power held him prisoner for a short time on Isla Martín García. A young major named Juan Domingo Perón had been appointed private secretary to the minister of War as a reward for his role in the coup.

  Perón glared at both of them.

  “You will pardon me for not being able to share in the joke,” he snapped.

  “He also said, el Coronel,” Martín went on, “to tell you that it was the safest place he could think of to keep you in this situation.”

  “One day, Juan Domingo,” Ramos said, “there will no doubt be another bronze plaque, one with your name on it, affixed to the wall of the schoolhouse beside the one that now states, ‘President Yrigoyen was held captive in this building in 1930.’”

  Perón, his face red, glared at him.

  “Capitan Montenegro will stay with you, el Coronel,” Martín said, “and see to your comfort. He and the troops from the Patricios will guarantee your safety.”

  “Sit down, Juan Domingo,” General Ramos ordered, impatient, his tone making it clear he had tired of Perón’s combativeness. “Try to get it through your head that the president, Martín, and I are doing our very best to keep you alive.”

  [SEVEN]

  Base Naval Puerto Belgrano

  Punta Alta, Bahía Blanca

  Bahía Blanca Province, Argentina

  1305 9 October 1945

  Vicealmirante Guillermo Crater was immediately notified by telephone that a Storch aircraft carrying General de Brigada Bernardo Martín had just landed unannounced.

  Where the hell did Bernardo get an airplane?

  “What kind of an aircraft did you say?” the admiral inquired.

  “A Fieseler Storch, mi Almirante, a Fi 156.”

  The Storch was what the Wehrmacht had called a Ground Cooperation Aircraft. The small, high-wing airplane, used for liaison and artillery direction, could carry a pilot and two passengers and was capable of landing and taking off within remarkably short distances.

  Where the hell did he get a Storch?

  Why am I still surprised at anything he does?

  “My compliments to el General,” Crater said. “Tell him I will be there directly.”

  “Sí, mi Almirante.”

  “And put the aircraft out of sight in a hangar. And do not record that it’s been here. This is a matter of national security.”

  “Sí, mi Almirante.”

  —

  Vicealmirante Crater did not see a Storch anywhere on the field when his gray 1942 Buick staff car took him and his aide-de-camp, Capitán de Fregata Roberto Otero, there.

  “Which hangar?” he wondered aloud.

  “I would suggest the far one, mi Almirante,” Otero said, having overheard the conversation announcing the arrival of the Storch and Crater’s orders to get it out of sight.

  “Drive there,” Crater ordered.

  General Martín was standing by the Storch. He had just about finished changing into his uniform.

  “I like your new horse, Bernardo,” the vicealmirante said. “Where’d you get it?”

  Martín smiled and chuckled, and the two officers patted one another’s backs.

  �
�I drove to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo and commandeered it,” Martín said. “You said this was important.”

  “That’s Cletus Frade’s airplane?”

  “It is now,” Martín said. “It used to belong to the German embassy. I thought you knew that story.”

  Crater shook his head.

  “The day after the bomb didn’t kill Hitler at his headquarters, Himmler ordered the arrest of those he suspected were involved. And their families. That included Major Hans-Peter von Wachtstein of the German embassy here. Von Wachtstein and Boltitz were way ahead of them. They got in the embassy’s Storch, filed a flight plan to Montevideo, took off—and disappeared.

  “Everyone thought they had gone out over the River Plate and dove into it, to escape the tender ministrations of the SS. What they really did was fly out to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, where they put this”—he patted the Storch fuselage—“into Frade’s hangar. Frade then flew them to the American airbase at Porto Alegre, Brazil, in his Lodestar, from which they were flown to the United States. Nobody was any wiser—”

  “Including you?” Vicealmirante Crater interrupted.

  “Including me. I knew, of course, that Boltitz was Admiral Canaris’s man in the embassy, and that Frade had turned von Wachtstein. But I didn’t know what had happened to either of them until several days after the German surrender, when Frade flew to the United States and brought them back.”

  “And this airplane?”

  “Frade kept it. When Argentina declared war on Germany, Frade—or his man in the American embassy, Major Pelosi—claimed it as captured enemy property. Pelosi then immediately sold it to an Argentine national—Cletus Frade—for ten pesos, and then Frade asked me to help him get it registered here.”

  “And you did.”

  “And I did. I thought it might be useful someday. And so it has proven to be.”

  “I didn’t know you were a pilot.”

  “I don’t advertise it, but yes. Cletus taught me how to fly . . . and did so in this aircraft.”

  “You’re very good at what you do, aren’t you, Bernardo?” the vicealmirante said admiringly.

  “I would say we both are—the proof being we’re still alive.”

  They smiled at each other.

  “What’s so important, Guillermo?” Martín then asked.

  “Those German submarines you’ve been so interested in?” Crater said. “One of them appeared here at first light this morning to surrender. U-405. I hid it between the Rivadavia and Moreno and put her crew aboard the Rivadavia.”

  To counter Brazil’s two Minas Geraes–class battleships, Argentina had built two American-designed battleships. They had seen little service and no combat during World Wars I and II. They were kept manned and ready for service. By 1945, though, they were absolutely obsolete.

  “Her captain,” Crater went on, “denies having put anything, or anyone, ashore. I’m sure he’s lying.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Which is why I called you,” Crater said. “If we can tie him to Perón, that’d solve a great many problems. And you’ll know how to find out if he is or not.”

  “I never asked, Guillermo, because I didn’t want to know until just now. Are you part of the group who wants Perón either out of the government or dead?”

  Crater did not respond directly. Instead, he said, “Perón is not only a disgrace to the officer corps and the government but a danger to the Republic, and you know that as well as I do.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question,” Martín said.

  “I know it doesn’t, Bernardo,” Crater said. “But let sleeping dogs lie. Would you like to talk to this man before I have to report the submarine to Buenos Aires? As I already should have done.”

  Martín was not willing to let go.

  “The president knows about the threats to assassinate el Coronel Perón—”

  “Who told him?”

  “I did. It was my duty.”

  “Did you give him names?”

  “No. But I’m sure he’s figured them out himself.”

  “Would you say I’m one of the suspects?”

  Martín considered that. “I don’t think so.”

  Crater did not reply.

  “Guillermo, yesterday, at the order of President Farrell, General Ramos and I arrested Perón.”

  “And charged him with what?”

  “For his own protection, President Farrell believes that if Perón is assassinated, it will mean civil war, and I’m afraid he’s right,” Martín said. “He doesn’t want, I don’t want, and I don’t think you want, Guillermo, what happened in Spain to happen here.”

  “Of course not. But neither do I want Argentina turned into a South American version of Fascist Italy, or Nazi Germany, under Juan Domingo Perón.”

  “Well, then we’ll both have to try to see that doesn’t happen, won’t we?”

  “Where did you take the sonofabitch? To the Circulo Militar?”

  “You know better than to ask me to answer that question.”

  “You can’t hide him for long.”

  “We can try. And if these people do find him, I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing I didn’t do anything to reveal where he’s being held.”

  Crater met Martín’s eyes for a long moment.

  “Why don’t you see what you can get out of Fregattenkapitän Wilhelm von Dattenberg?”

  “That name rings a bell,” Martín said, almost to himself. “You say you have him on the Rivadavia?”

  Crater nodded. “In her wardroom.”

  “Not alone, I hope?”

  “No, Bernardo, not alone. I didn’t want him to make himself another Langsdorff.”

  Kapitän zur See Hans Wilhelm Langsdorff, captain of the Panzerschiff (pocket battleship) Admiral Graf Spee, had in 1939 refused Hitler’s order to “die fighting” by taking his seriously damaged vessel into combat against three British cruisers waiting for him outside the harbor of Montevideo, Uruguay.

  Instead, once he had seen to the burial of his dead and the hospitalization of his wounded in Montevideo, and arranged for the internment of the rest of his crew in Argentina, he scuttled his vessel just outside Montevideo harbor.

  He was taken to Buenos Aires. To prove that saving his crew, and not his own life, was the reason he had scuttled the Graf Spee, he then put on his dress uniform, stood over the German navy battle flag on the floor of his hotel room, and blew his brains out.

  —

  When Vicealmirante Crater and General Martín walked into the wardroom of the Rivadavia, Fregattenkapitän Wilhelm von Dattenberg stood and came to attention before his naval escort, Capitán de Corbeta José Keller, could put down his coffee cup.

  “Please keep your seat, Kapitän,” Crater said, in German, adding, “This is General Martín.”

  Von Dattenberg clicked his heels and bobbed his head.

  “I understand you’ve told the admiral, Kapitän,” Martín said, also speaking German, “that you came here directly from Germany, that you did not, in other words, touch somewhere else on our shores to unload either people or cargo before you appeared here.”

  Von Dattenberg did not reply.

  “The trouble one has as an honorable officer, Kapitän von Dattenberg, is that when you’re lying, this is as evident to other honorable officers as a wart on your nose would be. Both Vicealmirante Crater and myself like to think of ourselves as honorable officers. We clearly see the wart on your nose.”

  Von Dattenberg’s face showed his surprise.

  “Didn’t they teach you that in the Kriegsmarine?” Martín pursued. “Or at Philipps University?”

  The second question visibly surprised von Dattenberg.

  Vicealmirante Crater had two questions in his mind:

  Where the hell is Martín going?

  And how the hell did he know where von Dattenberg went to university?

  “We are now going to take a ride in my airplane, Kapitän von Dattenberg,” Martín said.
<
br />   Now what the hell? Crater thought.

  “You may make the trip to my airplane trussed up like a Christmas goose,” Martín went on, “and be loaded aboard by several of the admiral’s more muscular sailors. Or, if you wish, you can give me your parole as an honorable officer, and not be trussed. The truth is that I only recently learned how to fly, and I’m not good enough at it to simultaneously fly and try to dissuade you of any notions you might have to exit this world à la the late Kapitän zur See Langsdorff.”

  Well, if Bernardo’s intention was to really baffle von Dattenberg, he’s succeeded.

  What the hell is he up to?

  “May I ask, Herr General, where I am being taken?” von Dattenberg asked.

  “The way that works here, Herr Kapitän,” Martín replied, “as I’m sure it did in the former Thousand-Year Reich, is that the intelligence officer, not the prisoner, gets to ask the questions.”

  “I protest being separated from my men,” von Dattenberg said.

  “Protest duly noted,” Martín said. “And you may also file a protest to the representative of the International Red Cross as soon as that opportunity presents itself. Now, what is your choice? Trussed or not trussed?”

  “I will not willingly go anywhere with you, sir.”

  “Capitán Keller,” Martín said, switching to Spanish, “would you please round up two or three of your more muscular sailors and, say, three meters of stout twine and bring them in here?”

  Martín saw on von Dattenberg’s face that he understood the order and thus spoke Spanish; he was not surprised.

  “Sí, mi General.”

  Before the sailors and the twine appeared, von Dattenberg said, “You have my parole, Herr General.”

  “As an honorable officer?”

  “As an officer of the Kriegsmarine, Herr General.”

  “Good,” Martín said, and switching to Spanish added, “Mi Almirante, would you be kind enough to take Capitán von Dattenberg and myself to my airplane?”

  —

  Nothing that happened in the next three hours did anything to assuage von Dattenberg’s confusion or bafflement.

  First they drove from the Rivadavia to an airfield on which sat an assortment of naval aircraft that had been obsolete before the war had begun. As they approached one of the hangars, its doors opened and sailors pushed onto the tarmac an aircraft with which von Dattenberg was familiar, a Wehrmacht Fieseler Storch.