Empire and Honor Page 20
“Needs me? I’m a twenty-one-year-old second lieutenant.”
“Charged with protecting what is probably the number one secret project going. Maybe somebody could do that better, but you have the job. You and me, Lieutenant. This is for real.”
“So, what should I do?”
“Close that dossier and give it back to Hessinger and forget it and her.”
“And then what?”
“Pull your necktie back up and we’ll go back to the whorehouse and tie one on. We don’t have to leave first thing in the morning. Wallace won’t be back until late tomorrow, if then.”
When Cronley didn’t reply, Dunwiddie said, “Drink your cognac.”
Cronley stood. He picked up the cognac snifter and drained it.
Then he bent over the dossier, opened the metal fastener over the photos, and removed the picture of Elsa in her bathing suit.
“That’s not smart, Jimmy,” Dunwiddie said as Cronley closed the metal clasp.
“She’s gone. Nobody’s going to open this and count pictures.”
“I meant for you. Are you going to get all wet-eyed every time you look at it?”
“I don’t know. I hope not. We’ll just have to see.”
He pulled his necktie in place.
“I have another confession to make.”
“Oh, Christ, now what?”
“That was the first time I was ever in a whorehouse.”
“I would not have suspected that, judging by your behavior. You seem to have a natural talent for that sort of recreation.”
[TWO]
Kloster Grünau
Schollbrunn, Bavaria, Germany
0950 11 October 1945
“Well, let’s see if it works,” Dunwiddie said.
“How do we do that?” Cronley asked.
“Pray, and then try this.”
He typed rapidly on the SIGABA keyboard. A strip of paper came out of the machine. Dunwiddie ripped it off and showed it to Cronley.
FROM TANKER TWO TO VINT HILL SPECIAL SIGNING ON NET ACKNOWLEDGE
Dunwiddie then fed the strip into the SIGABA, which swallowed it.
“Now what?”
“This is where we pray again.”
Thirty seconds later, a paper strip began to come out of the SIGABA. After thirty seconds, it stopped. Dunwiddie tore it off, read it, and handed it to Cronley.
“Thank you, God,” Dunwiddie said.
That didn’t sound sarcastic, Cronley thought.
As he began to read the strip—FROM VINT HILL TO TANKER TWO WELCOME TO THE NET MESSAGES FOLLOWING HAVE NOT REPEAT NOT BEEN ACKNOWLEDGED BY TANKER OR FLAGS PLEASE RELAY IF POSSIBLE AND ACKNOWLEDGE RECEIPT OR FAILURE—tape began to stream from the machine again.
This took about five minutes, and this time Dunwiddie didn’t even try to read it, instead feeding it back in the SIGABA machine. The teletypewriter-like keyboard began to clatter, as if invisible hands were pushing the keys.
What this produced on the teletypewriter were the two messages—TEX-0013 and TEX-0014—Frade had sent from Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo just after noon the day before.
After Dunwiddie had explained the code names and the general meaning of the message, which took more than enough time for Cronley to decide he was in way over his head with whatever this was, Dunwiddie made it worse.
“Well,” Tiny announced, “here’s where you start earning your keep, even if you are a twenty-one-year-old wet-behind-the-ears second john who can find only—and with difficulty—one cheek of his ass with both hands.”
“When you are finished with kissing said ass, First Sergeant Dunwiddie, you are going to explain that, right?”
“Well, the reason the colonel didn’t get these is because he can’t hang a Collins antenna out his office window in the Farben building—people might ask questions—any more than Major Wallace can hang one out his bedroom window in the Vier Jahreszeiten. Which means, since this is obviously important, I have to get it to them.
“The problem there is that the landlines are not secure, which means I can’t get on the telephone. The ASA—”
“The what?”
“The Army Security Agency, which not only listens to Russian radio traffic but is also charged with providing secure communications to people like us.”
“Okay.”
“The ASA is right now installing such secure communications for the South German Industrial Development Organization in Pullach.”
“That’s what we’re going to call Operation Ost, right?”
“You get a gold star to take home to Mommy for remembering that. But since that’s not yet up, and anyway we’re here, not at Pullach, that’s not a solution to our problem.
“Which means I’m going to have to go back to Munich. Maybe Wallace will be able to solve our problem. But maybe Wallace won’t be there.
“Which means I probably will have to go to Frankfurt.
“Which means you will be here dealing with the dossiers. When I’m at the Vier Jahreszeiten, I will tell Sergeant Hessinger to send his blonde back to the village and get these dossiers from wherever he got the one about your girlfriend. But as I suspect Gehlen’s people have better dossiers than G-2 does, you will get the dossiers from them while I’m gone. Got all that?”
“How am I supposed to get Gehlen’s dossiers?”
“Well, off the top of my head, asking General Gehlen might work.”
“General Gehlen personally?”
“If you ask anyone else, Herr—former Oberst—Mannberg, for example, I think ol’ Ludwig would go ask the general if he should give that Wet Behind the Ears Ami Leutnant the time of day, much less any dossiers from their files. If you ask General Gehlen first, it’ll save time.”
“And if General Gehlen says, in effect, go fuck yourself, Herr Leutnant Cronley, then what do I do?”
“Be firm.”
“Tiny, you can’t leave me alone to handle this.”
“Say ‘Post,’” Dunwiddie said.
“What?”
“Say ‘Post.’”
“Post.”
“Yes, sir!” Dunwiddie bellowed, then popped to attention, saluted crisply, performed a perfect about-face movement, and marched out of the room.
“I’ll be a sonofabitch!” Cronley said aloud, although he was now alone.
After sitting deep in thought for at least a minute, he got out of his chair and went to the building entrance.
Technical Sergeant Abraham L. (for Lincoln) Tedworth, who was nearly as large and almost as black as First Sergeant Dunwiddie, sat in an armchair with a Thompson submachine gun in his lap.
He stood as Cronley approached.
“Sir?”
“I need to see General Gehlen.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll give the general your compliments, sir.”
—
Five minutes later, Herr (formerly Oberst) Ludwig Mannberg walked into the office.
Mannberg, who had ranked high in the Abwehr Ost hierarchy, was wearing a finely tailored uniform from which the insignia had been removed. His breeches still bore the red stripe identifying members of the General Staff Corps.
He didn’t salute but he came to attention and clicked his heels.
“Herr Gehlen is not available,” he said, in perfect, British-accented English. “May I be of some assistance?”
I’m not going to let you get away with that, Herr Oberst.
“I need to know what information, perhaps the dossiers, Abwehr Ost has on these people,” Cronley said in German. He handed him TEX-0014.
“You speak German like a Strasbourger,” Mannberg said.
“My mother is a Strasbourger.”
“So is mine,” Mannberg said.
He examined the list of names.
“At least half of the people on this list learned from us,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“They managed to have themselves reported as having been killed,” Mannberg said. “This fellow, SS-Brigadeführ
er Ludwig Hoffmann, is a particularly nasty bastard. May I ask where you got this list?”
Among the many things Good Ol’ Tiny didn’t tell me was what, if anything, I could tell Gehlen’s officers.
Fuck it! If this has been dumped on me, I’ll deal with it my way.
“They are reported to have been landed in Argentina from a submarine. U-405.”
“That U-boat used to be commanded by a friend of mine—actually a family friend, our fathers were friends and my younger brother was with him at university, Philipps, in Marburg. That’s presuming we’re talking about Fregattenkapitän Wilhelm von Dattenberg.”
“That’s the guy,” Cronley said.
Should I have admitted that?
He’s a very bright, very senior intelligence officer. One easily capable of taking advantage of a wet-behind-the-ears second lieutenant who has no idea what the fuck he’s doing.
Once again, fuck it. Go for broke.
“That makes sense,” Mannberg said. “Von Dattenberg was one of the better U-boat skippers. Himmler would order the best to get them out of Germany. I will undertake this task with pleasure, Herr Leutnant. These are the people who brought Germany to what and where it is today. They should not be allowed to escape the wrath of decent Germans. I presume you want this information quickly?”
“The sooner the better.”
“I’ll get right on it. Is there anything else?”
“Not right now.”
“Then with your permission, Herr Leutnant,” Mannberg said, popped to attention, clicked his heels, and walked out of the office.
[THREE]
Office of the President
Casa Rosada
Plaza de Mayo, Buenos Aires, Argentina
1215 12 October 1945
General de Brigada Bernardo Martín marched into the president’s office, stopped in front of the presidential desk, and saluted.
General Edelmiro Julián Farrell, the twenty-eighth president of Argentina, who was slightly built and whose pale skin reflected his Irish ancestry, returned the salute. He then rose and came around the desk, offered his hand, and patted Martín’s back.
“We don’t often see you in uniform, Bernardo,” Farrell said. “What’s the occasion?”
“Sir, I was in Puerto Belgrano, at the naval base arranging the movement of the U-405 crew to General Villa Belgrano. Dealing with the navy, I thought being in uniform . . .”
Farrell nodded his understanding.
“Did you manage to get that submarine captain to say anything?”
“He finally admitted to have put sixteen SS officers and five heavy wooden crates ashore on the San Matias Gulf. He said he didn’t know what was in the crates, sir, but almost certainly it was currency and other valuables.”
“And where are they, and these crates, now?”
“I don’t know, sir. My fault. A week before this happened, I pulled my coast watchers off the job. I thought we’d seen the last of the German submarines, and I needed my people to deal with our other problem.”
“But you have suspicions?”
“Only suspicions, sir. Nothing I can prove.”
“If you had to guess?”
“In Patagonia, sir.”
“You think el Coronel Klausberger was involved with smuggling these people into Argentina?”
“Sir, you asked me to guess.”
“When I became president, el Coronel Perón made the point to me that el General Rawson had gone much too far when he charged Klausberger with treason.”
Martín did not reply.
“You didn’t,” Farrell said. It was both a question and a statement, and again Martín did not reply.
“Bernardo, the last thing I want—and the last thing you want—is a Spanish Civil War here. Court-martialing Klausberger—or even bringing him before a court of honor—might well have triggered such a war. So I accepted Juan Domingo’s suggestion that I assign Klausberger to duty in the Edificio Libertador. And then, more than a year later, I accepted Perón’s suggestion that he be given command of the Tenth Mountain Regiment. And there was no civil war during that year.”
Martín remained mute.
“And you think I made a mistake,” Farrell said, and again it was both a question and a statement.
“Mi Presidente, I serve you. I never have and never will question your decisions.”
“I know. And I hope you know how much I appreciate that.” He paused and then went on: “Is my returning Klausberger to the Tenth Mountain Regiment one of the reasons half of my officer corps talks of assassinating Perón? They think he has too much influence on me?”
“Sir, I believe that to be the case. And then there is Señorita Duarte.”
“Who, as we speak, is mobilizing the—what does she call them? ‘The Shirtless Ones’?—to protest Perón’s arrest?”
Again it was both a question and a statement, and again Martín did not reply.
“How difficult a situation is that going to be?” Farrell asked.
“I don’t know, sir. I do know that Señor Rodolfo Nulder is assisting Señorita Duarte’s efforts with the shirtless ones. And I believe, sir, that el Coronel Perón’s association with Nulder is another reason some in the officer corps are annoyed with him.”
“They’re not just annoyed with him, Bernardo. They want to kill him.”
“I’m afraid that’s true, sir.”
“How safe is he for the moment?”
“As far as I know, sir, no one in that group of officers knows we have him on Isla Martín García. But it’s only a matter of time until they find out.”
“We have to keep Juan Domingo alive. If he is hurt in any way, much less assassinated, we will have civil war. What about Cletus Frade? Is he going to . . . do anything?”
“Señor Frade told me, and I believe him, that he is going to do nothing with regard to el Coronel Perón unless you ask him to.”
“God, I wish his father were alive and in this office!” President Farrell said. “He’d know how to deal with this.”
“I’ve often thought the same thing, sir.”
“Well, he’s not. So I have to deal with what’s going on. And the only thing I’m sure of is that we cannot allow Perón to be assassinated. And the only person I know who can do that, General Martín, is you.”
“I will do my best, mi Presidente.”
“I know,” Farrell said. “But now, if you have nothing else for me?”
“With your permission, mi Presidente, I would like to parole the officers of the U-405, and then see where they go and who they contact.”
“Do what you think has to be done.”
Martín came to attention, saluted, did an about-face movement, and walked out of the room.
[FOUR]
Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo
Near Pila
Buenos Aires Province, Argentina
1620 12 October 1945
There was no airfield in the small mountain village of General Villa Belgrano, just a stretch of road on which a skilled pilot could land a small aircraft such as a Piper Cub or a Fieseler Storch.
Aware of these—and his own—limitations, General Bernardo Martín had driven directly from President Farrell’s office in the Casa Rosada to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo intending to first find Cletus Frade and then, if he was lucky, Hans-Peter von Wachtstein.
He was lucky, really lucky. Both were in one of the hangars at the airstrip, watching as a mechanic did something to the engine of the Storch.
Wordlessly, they shook hands and patted each other’s back. Martín waited for the inevitable needling he was to get over his uniform.
It came immediately.
“Let me guess, mi General,” Frade said. “You’ve just come from posing for a recruiting poster.”
Martín ignored him, instead asking, “Is something wrong with the Storch?”
“Nothing that can’t be fixed in a month,” Frade said. “Why? Do you want another flying lesson?”
Nothing had ever been said, much less written, when Martín had arranged for the Argentine registration of the German embassy Storch that Tony Pelosi had somewhat grandiosely “seized in the name of the United States of America as booty of war” and then sold to Frade for ten pesos. But it was understood that Martín had certain rights in the now-civilian aircraft.
But both Frade and von Wachtstein were really uncomfortable when Martín elected to fly the aircraft himself, although both had taught him the basic—very basic—techniques of flying.
As Frade repeatedly warned him: “Thirty-odd hours in the air does not a Charles Lindbergh make, so to speak.”
So neither had any problem with Hansel flying Bernardo anywhere. Not only was he a good guy, but they were deeply in his debt for many favors.
“You are going to tell us why, right?” Frade said.
“Because I don’t think I can land the airplane on that dirt road,” Martín said.
“Frankly, neither do I,” Frade said, “but my question was: Why do you want Hansel to fly you to Villa General Belgrano?”
“Two reasons,” Martín said. “The obvious, I don’t want to crash trying to land on that road.”
Von Wachtstein had a good deal of experience landing a Storch on the dirt road at Villa General Belgrano.
When the crew of the pocket battleship Graf Spee had been interned after the Battle of the River Plate, it had been decided to put them in Villa General Belgrano. Some said this was simply a decent thing to do. Settled by Germans starting in 1930, the village looked like it belonged in the Bavarian Alps; the internees would be comfortable there.
Others said the internees had been placed there because its location and the sympathies of the German population would facilitate the escape of the internees. Credence to the latter theory came when most of the officers and skilled technicians escaped within a year of their internment.
When Hansel had been Major von Wachtstein, the assistant military attaché for air of the embassy of the German Reich, he had flown to Villa General Belgrano at least twice a month, and sometimes more often, to deliver mail, pay the internees, and handle other administrative matters. He had flown in what was now Frade’s flaming red Storch, then painted in the camouflage pattern of the Wehrmacht, and with a large swastika painted on its vertical stabilizer. The heroic recipient of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross had then been a welcome visitor.