Empire and Honor Page 15

  Martín nodded. “And General Ramos phrased it just about that crudely.”

  “Did he believe you? Did he think these officers are angry enough to be serious about assassinating him?”

  “I don’t know,” Martín said.

  “Let me guess what he said when you told him this, Bernardo: ‘Go fuck yourselves, and tell the boys at the Circulo Militar to do the same.’”

  “Actually, he said, ‘Don’t hold your breath.’”

  “And when you reported this to General Farrell, his Irish temper flared, and he said, ‘Arrest the sonofabitch!’”

  “What President Farrell said, very calmly, was that we could not afford to have the officer corps split in two as it would be if there were an attempt—successful or not—on Juan Domingo’s life. Therefore, the obvious thing to do was protect him until the problem of the unhappy officers could be resolved—”

  “And did he say how he was going to do that?” Frade interrupted.

  Martín ignored the question.

  “And since el Coronel Perón would almost certainly not accept any such protection willingly, that left no choice but to arrest him.”

  “And you did? I mean, Farrell gave you that dirty job?”

  “El Coronel was arrested by General Ramos and myself,” Martín said.

  “Where? At the Edificio Libertador? Or did you—I hope—go to his apartment and pull him out of the loving arms of his tootsie?”

  “To spare him the embarrassment of being taken from the Edificio Libertador in arrest, we waited until we knew he was in his office in the Labor Ministry.”

  “And took him where?”

  “I’m not at liberty to tell you that,” Martín said.

  “Why are you telling me any of it?”

  “At the orders of President Farrell. General Farrell also directed me to tell you that this is none of your affair.”

  “What’s that all about?”

  “I think he is concerned that you might try to free el Coronel.”

  “There’s not a chance in hell of that, and you know it. And he should.”

  Father Welner said, “President Farrell is aware that Juan Domingo is not only your godfather—”

  “Ah, so that’s your role in this,” Frade said. “I was wondering where you came in.”

  “—but was your father’s lifelong best friend,” the priest concluded.

  “General Farrell didn’t say this,” Martín said, “but I think he’s concerned that if you tried to free el Coronel Perón, it might trigger an eruption between those who think his personal life is no one’s business.”

  “That would be those who want to shoot him?”

  Martín nodded.

  “You can tell General Farrell that I don’t care if he keeps my Tío Juan locked up from now on. Incidentally, where did you lock him up?”

  “I told you I don’t think that’s any of your concern, Cletus,” Martín said.

  “Well, I guess I’ll just have to turn to my ER,” Frade said. “Curiosity overwhelms me.”

  “To your what?” Father Welner asked.

  “Bernardo has his BIS, Your Holy Eminence, and I have my ER. It stands for Enrico Rodríguez.”

  “I don’t understand,” the priest said.

  “I’ll bet my Horch against your Packard that right now Enrico is patiently waiting for me to come out of here so that he can tell me Juan Domingo has been arrested and say where he’s being held. The Ejército Argentino—like the U.S. Marine Corps—has no secrets safe from its sergeants major.”

  Martín laughed. “He’s right, Father. Cletus, el Coronel is on Martín García Island.”

  “Where the hell is that?”

  “It’s a small island off the coast of Uruguay,” Martín said. “Have I your word you will go nowhere near it?”

  “Right now, I have absolutely no intention of going anywhere near it, much less of springing my Tío Juan from his cell. But this is Argentina, and we never know what’s going to happen next, do we?”

  “Is that really what you want me to tell General Farrell?” Martín asked.

  “I don’t care what you tell him,” Frade said, and then reconsidered. “No. Tell him I understand that whatever he has chosen to do with el Coronel is none of my business.”

  “I will,” Martín said.

  “What I don’t understand is why Farrell is so interested in keeping Juan Domingo alive,” Frade said. “Farrell’s no fool. He has to know Juan Perón has his eye on the Casa Rosada.”

  “You don’t know what happened in Spain, Cletus,” Father Welner said. “A half million people died—”

  “At the risk of sounding callous,” Frade interrupted, “the Germans killed ten times that many Jews, Gypsies, and other so-called undesirables.”

  “—and he is determined there will be no civil war here,” Welner finished.

  “And so am I,” Martín said. “Which brings us to something else. At dawn yesterday, the U-405 appeared off our naval—”

  “The U-405?” von Wachtstein interrupted.

  Martín nodded.

  “—our naval base at Puerto Belgrano flying a black flag and surrendered.”

  “You’re sure it was the U-405?” von Wachtstein asked.

  Martín nodded again.

  “The U-boat skipper told Vicealmirante Crater that he came directly to Puerto Belgrano from Denmark—that is, without making a stop somewhere else to off-load a cargo in secret—but the admiral and I think he’s lying.”

  “You don’t have the U-boat captain’s name by any chance?” von Wachtstein asked.

  “I heard his name,” Martín said. “Let me see if I can remember it.”

  “Hansel, he’s pulling your chain,” Frade said. “Where did you take Hansel’s pal, Bernardo?”

  “As we speak, he and el Jefe are swapping sea stories on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo,” Martín said.

  “I gave up on Willi von Dattenberg,” von Wachtstein said. “After all this time, I was sure he was gone.”

  “Why are he and Schultz swapping sea stories, Bernardo?” Frade asked.

  “What I would like to happen is to hear from Fregattenkapitän von Dattenberg who and what he put ashore and where, and then get him back to Puerto Belgrano before he is interrogated by anyone else. I think we’d be better off if the people he put ashore, and the people who were waiting for him, don’t know we know.”

  “Well, let’s go talk to him,” von Wachtstein said. “Fly down there right now. He’ll tell me anything we want to know.”

  “There’s a small problem with that, Hansel,” Frade said, and held up his glass.

  “I haven’t been drinking,” Martín said. “I can fly.”

  “The problem with that, mi General,” Frade said, “is the only airplane you know how to fly—using that term very loosely—is at the estancia.”

  “I took the liberty of borrowing the Storch to fly to Puerto Belgrano,” Martín said, “and then from there to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo with von Dattenberg.”

  Frade shook his head. “And then, flushed with success, and with the complete confidence of pilots with maybe thirty hours’ total time usually have, you flew it here?”

  Martín nodded.

  “You are a devious and dangerous man, mi General,” Frade said. “I say that with the greatest admiration.”

  Frade set his glass down.

  “Let’s go before the wives come back. It’s always easier to beg forgiveness after doing something than it is to ask for permission that’ll probably be denied to do it.”

  IV

  [ONE]

  Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo

  Near Pila

  Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

  1315 10 October 1945

  Lieutenant Oscar Schultz, USNR, at the wheel of a wood-paneled 1937 Ford station wagon, pulled up in front of the Big House of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo. Fregattenkapitän Wilhelm von Dattenberg, in the front passenger seat, noted that the eight-year-ol
d vehicle, with its steering wheel on the right, was unbelievably well maintained—it looked as if it had left the showroom last week.

  Schultz then motioned for his passenger to get out.

  —

  Von Dattenberg no longer believed he was having a dream, but that did not mean he had any idea what was going on, or even where he was. Everything seemed surreal.

  Schultz had driven him from the airstrip out onto the Pampas to a small cluster of buildings.

  There he had introduced him to a man who rode up to them on a really beautiful horse. He was wearing boots, riding breeches, and a polo shirt. A polo mallet rested on his right shoulder.

  “Kapitän, this is Technical Sergeant Jerry O’Sullivan, U.S. Army,” Schultz said. “And this, Sergeant, is Fregattenkapitän von Dattenberg. He is our prisoner. I have told him there’s little point in trying to escape as he can’t possibly know where to try to escape to. But he may not believe me. Get the Winchester .22, and if he tries to run, shoot him in the leg. We want him alive.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And when you’re in the house, tell my Dorotea to start lunch and to bring us a bottle of the ’41 Estancia Don Guillermo Cabernet Sauvignon. We’ll be on the veranda.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Fully aware that he should not allow himself to become besotted in the situation in which he found himself, von Dattenberg nevertheless accepted a glass of wine. It had been a long time since he had had anything alcoholic to drink; he had finished his “emergency bottle” of cognac more than a month before.

  And then luncheon was served. It consisted of the largest filet mignon he had ever seen, a baked potato, a tomato and onion salad, and some freshly baked hard-crusted bread. There was a bowl holding at least a half kilo of butter and another holding that much thick cream. It had been a long time since he’d seen either.

  When the polo-playing sergeant extended to him the bottle of the great Cabernet Sauvignon to refill his glass, he accepted.

  He was eating dessert—a pear soaked in wine—when a flaming red Fieseler Storch flashed over the house at no more than fifty meters off the ground.

  “That has to be the colonel,” Schultz announced. “I don’t think the general would try to fly that low—he just learned how to fly. As soon as we kill the rest of the Cabernet, we’d better get up to the Big House.”

  —

  The red-tile-roofed building had looked large when von Dattenberg had gotten a quick look at it when they first flew over it. Now it looked huge.

  Six gauchos on horseback appeared, and von Dattenberg now noticed the gauchos were heavily armed. Two of them held what looked like Mauser rifles, their butts resting on their legs. The other four held American-manufactured Thompson submachine guns.

  There was an assortment of cars parked in front of the house, two late-model Ford station wagons, and two Buicks, a four-door sedan and a convertible coupe.

  Three men clearly waiting for them were standing on the veranda of the house. One of them was General Martín. The other two were wearing blue uniforms heavy with gold braid. Von Dattenberg could not at first remember ever having seen them, but after a moment he recognized one of them.

  The last time that Fregattenkapitän Wilhelm von Dattenberg had seen Hans-Peter von Wachtstein had been in Berlin, and the latter had then been wearing his Luftwaffe major’s uniform, to which that morning the Führer himself had pinned the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross.

  “Wie geht’s, Willi?” von Wachtstein called cheerfully from the veranda. “Welcome to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.”

  Von Dattenberg walked onto the veranda.

  “It’s been a long time,” von Wachtstein said emotionally, as he grasped von Dattenberg’s shoulders. And then he blurted: “Mein Gott, you’re skinny!”

  “Peter, what is that uniform you’re wearing?” von Dattenberg asked.

  “South American Airways. We just came back from Germany, and there hasn’t been time to change.”

  “You just came back from Germany?” von Dattenberg asked incredulously.

  “This morning,” von Wachtstein said. “And guess who we had aboard?”

  “Let’s go into the house,” Frade said impatiently.

  Von Wachtstein gave him a look of annoyance.

  “We’re really pressed for time, Peter,” Martín said.

  “My name is Frade, Kapitän—”

  “Cletus is my best friend, Willi,” von Wachtstein interrupted. “He’s the godfather of my son, and Karl Boltitz and I are godfathers to both of his.”

  “—I’m a lieutenant colonel, U.S. Marine Corps, and have been in charge of the OSS in Argentina. What we have to do is get some answers from you, and then get you back to Puerto Belgrano before the wrong people know you’ve been gone.”

  Von Dattenberg clicked his heels and shook the offered hand, but his face showed that he had no idea what was going on and that he didn’t like it.

  “Come on in the house, Willi,” von Wachtstein said. “We’ll get you something to eat and we can talk while you’re eating.”

  “I just ate,” von Dattenberg said.

  “Then this way, if you please, Kapitän,” Frade said.

  Von Dattenberg allowed himself to be led into the house and through a large foyer to a large room, the walls of which were lined with books.

  “Right over there, please,” Frade said, indicating a chair at a table.

  A middle-aged woman wearing a starched white maid’s apron and cap entered. She pushed a wheeled cart to them and placed coffee cups on the table as the others arranged themselves at it.

  Frade and Martín put briefcases on the table and took from them several folders, legal pads, and writing instruments.

  My God, von Dattenberg thought, I expected to be interrogated by my captors again, but I never dreamed that Peter would clearly be one of them.

  “We are really pressed for time, Kapitän von Dattenberg,” Martín said. “And there may not be time for all the details right now. So let’s start with the names of the people who you put ashore and what cargo.”

  I am an officer of the Kriegsmarine and I have given my word.

  “As I told Vicealmirante Crater, Herr Oberstleutnant, I came to Argentina, to Puerto Belgrano, directly from Germany.”

  “You sailed from Narvik, Norway,” Frade said unpleasantly.

  “We know that, Willi,” von Wachtstein said.

  Von Dattenberg began: “Under the Geneva Convention—”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Frade said disgustedly, and then went on: “Cutting to the chase, let me tell you what’s going to happen, Kapitän, if in the next thirty minutes you do not answer fully and honestly any questions we put to you—”

  “Give me a minute, Clete,” von Wachtstein said.

  Frade looked at him for ten seconds.

  “I’ll give you three minutes, Hansel,” Frade said. He raised his left wrist and punched a button on his Marine Corps–issued pilot’s chronometer. “Have at it. The clock is running.”

  “Willi—” von Wachtstein began.

  “Under these circumstances, Major von Wachtstein, please do me the courtesy of addressing me by my rank,” von Dattenberg said.

  “As you wish, Herr Fregattenkapitän,” von Wachtstein said softly, after a moment. “We must never forget for a moment that we are officers and gentlemen in the service of our beloved Germany, correct?”

  “Who both swore a holy oath of loyalty to the Führer,” von Dattenberg said.

  “I’m sure Claus von Stauffenberg, who we both know was always a better Christian than either of us, Herr Fregattenkapitän, had that holy oath in mind when he placed that bomb under the map table at Wolfsschanze. And had it in his mind the next day when he was standing against the wall on Bendlerstrasse waiting for the SS to shoot him for high treason.”

  “Claus was—may God forgive him—a traitor,” von Dattenberg said.

  “And so apparently was my father, and I’m sure he had that hol
y oath in mind when he was hanging naked in the execution hut in the Bendlerblock, being very slowly choked to unconsciousness, and then revived, and then choked again—over and over again, until God, in his mercy, took his life.”

  “Treason is treason,” von Dattenberg said, his voice on the edge of breaking.

  “Get him talking, Hansel, or I’ll kill the sonofabitch right here and now,” Frade said. “To hell with flying him to your beloved fucking Germany for trial—”

  Von Wachtstein held up his hand to silence him.

  “We’ve learned, Willi,” von Wachtstein went on calmly, “that Claus’s last words were ‘May God save our beloved Germany.’ We don’t know what Admiral Canaris was thinking when he was hung, naked, from a gallows at the Flossenbürg Konzentrationslager, of course. . . .”

  “Admiral Canaris was hung?” von Dattenberg asked softly.

  “He was as much a traitor as was Claus and my father—and Karl Boltitz’s father.”

  “Karl? Is Karl alive?”

  Von Wachtstein nodded.

  “He is in Narvik, looking for his father. Unfortunately, it looks as if Admiral Boltitz chose jumping into a Norwegian fjord over facing a People’s Court for treason and being strangled to death.”

  “And Karl was a . . .”

  “Was Karl a traitor? Yes, he was. And, I tell you proudly, my old friend Willi, so am I. Not a traitor to the Code of Honor under which the von Wachtsteins and the von Dattenbergs have lived for hundreds of years. But, yes, a traitor to the Austrian corporal and all the evil men around him who brought to our beloved Germany shame and—”

  “Time’s up, Hansel,” Frade said, tapping his wristwatch crystal.

  Von Wachtstein, ignoring him, went on: “What my honor as an officer demands now, Willi, is that I do whatever is necessary to keep Nazis from finding refuge here in Argentina. I demand that you not only tell us who, where, and what you put ashore from U-405, but that you give me your word as a German officer that you will do whatever General Martín asks you to do.”

  “My cup runneth over,” Frade said. “I have had more of this honor-of-the-officer-corps bullshit—German and Argentine—than I can swallow. See if you can make your pal understand that he’s about sixty seconds from getting shot and being buried in an unmarked grave on the Pampas.”