“And what is your suggestion in that regard, Cletus?” Rawson asked.
“Send the general over there with me to commandeer those airplanes.”
“And what would you suggest regarding el Coronel Perón?”
“I agree with the general, sir. Don’t arrest my beloved Tío Juan until we know more than we do.”
“All right,” Rawson said. “Here’s what we are going to do: Subinspector General Nolasco, get back on the airplane. Find and keep your eye on el Coronel Perón in San Martín, but take no action until you hear from either General Nervo or me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Capitán Lauffer, you, General Nervo, Coronel Martín, and I are going to walk over there with Don Cletus to select which of those airplanes are to be commandeered into the service of the Argentine Republic.”
“Yes, sir.”
[NINE]
Estancia Don Guillermo
Km 40.4, Provincial Route 60
Mendoza Province, Argentina
1525 16 October 1943
Hauptsturmführer Sepp Schäfer—on detached service from the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler—had his Schmeisser at the ready as he moved as rapidly and as quietly as he could down the area between long rows of grapevines.
He and the five men following him were wearing brown coveralls over their black SS uniforms. It was Hauptsturmführer Schäfer’s intention, should anything go wrong—and it looked at this moment as if that had happened—to shed the coveralls, which would permit him and his men to claim the protection of the Geneva Convention and POW status.
He wasn’t sure if that was the case.
How did the Geneva Convention feel about armed soldiers of a belligerent power being discovered—possibly after having taken some lives—roaming around a neutral country?
At the very least, Schäfer had decided, it would buy them some time until SS-Brigadeführer von Deitzberg and the Argentine oberst, Schmidt, found out they had been arrested and could start working on getting them freed.
He could now see the end of the row of grapevines. There was nothing in it. He held up his hand for the men behind him to stop, then gestured for them to move to the left and right, into the spaces between adjacent rows of vines.
A minute later, he heard the soft chirp of a whistle, telling him that one of his men had found something.
Reminding himself that stealth was still of great importance, he moved quietly through two rows to the left.
One of his troopers pointed to the end of that row.
Another of his men was standing there holding what looked like an American Thompson submachine gun. His legs straddled a body on the ground.
Schäfer ran down the path to him.
The man came to attention when Schäfer got close.
“Report!” Schäfer snapped.
“I had no choice, sir. He was coming through the vines toward me. When he came into this one, I shot him.”
Something will have to be done with the body. I can’t just leave it here.
It will fit in the trunk of one of the cars.
But what if one of the gendarmes at one of their checkpoints doesn’t just wave us through in the belief that a sedan belonging to the 10th Mountain Regiment poses no threat to anything?
How the hell would I explain a body?
He pointed to one of his men. “In the back of one of the cars is a shovel,” Schäfer ordered. “Go to it, get the shovel, and come back here. The rest of you move the body farther away from the road. Move quickly!”
“That’s deep enough,” Schäfer announced. “It only has to serve for a short time. Put him in it, and then start spreading the earth around.”
“Tamp it down. I don’t want anybody looking down the row and wondering why it’s not level.”
Schäfer handed the Thompson, which he had decided was not nearly as good a submachine gun as the Schmeisser, to one of his men and then stepped gingerly onto the tamped-down dirt on the grave.
“Hände hoch!” a voice barked.
This was immediately followed by a very loud burst of automatic weapons fire. The man holding the Thompson fell backward, still holding the Thompson.
Schäfer now saw that a very large man was pointing a Thompson at him.
And then a smaller man who appeared to be wearing an American uniform—there were chevrons on the sleeve of his shirt that looked American—pushed down the barrel of the larger man’s submachine gun.
“Enrico,” the smaller man flared, “you stupid sonofabitch!”
Then he turned to Schäfer and repeated, “Hände hoch!” and then added, in fluent German, “My friend would like nothing better than to shoot all of you.”
Schäfer now saw there were half a dozen men, in addition to the big one who had fired the Thompson and the little one, the sergeant obviously in charge, in the passage between the rows of vines, three on each side of the grave.
They were all in civilian clothing. Three of them held Thompsons and the rest had Mauser cavalry carbines.
Schäfer raised his hands over his shoulders.
“I surrender. I am an officer of the Waffen-SS—” Schäfer began, then paused when he saw that the large man had trained the muzzle of the Thompson back at him.
“Enrico, we need to question them,” Staff Sergeant Stein said in Spanish.
The big man nodded. “I was wrong,” he said.
Schäfer went on: “—under the protection of Oberst Sch—”
“Shut your mouth, you sonofabitch, before I shoot you,” Stein barked in perfect German. He pointed to one of the SS troopers. “Start digging him out of there.”
Then Enrico gave an order of his own. “Rafael, send someone for the horses.”
“Sí, Suboficial Mayor,” one of the natives said.
[TEN]
El Plumerillo Airfield
Mendoza, Mendoza Province, Argentina
1635 16 October 1943
Clete had just finished his inspection of the fourth Piper Cub in the hangar when he heard the familiar sound that the Continental A-65-8 flathead, four-cylinder, 65-horsepower engine made.
He looked at his hands, which were covered with grease.
“Why am I not surprised?” he asked.
“Is that them, Cletus?” General Rawson asked.
“It’s either them,” Clete said as he walked to the hangar door, “or somebody else has two Cubs.”
A Piper painted in Ejército Argentino olive drab touched down on the runway. A second was a thousand meters behind it.
Clete ran across the tarmac and made the appropriate arm signals, telling the pilot to come to where he was standing. The pilot ignored him and taxied toward the passenger terminal. And so did the pilot of the second Cub when he landed.
The president of the Argentine Republic, the senior officer of the Gendarmería Nacional, the chief of the Ethical Standards Office, and the aide-de-camp to the president followed Don Cletus Frade as he walked across the airfield toward the passenger terminal, trailed by six gendarmes.
By the time they got there, Father Kurt Welner, S.J., who had been left with the cars and trucks, had told the pilots who was who, and the pilots—both young tenientes—were now standing, visibly uncomfortable, waiting for the sword of presidential wrath to fall.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Rawson said courteously, returning their salute. “Please stand at ease.”
“Where the hell have you been?” General Nervo inquired, far less courteously.
“Mi general, we had to stop at Córdoba to refuel,” one of the pilots said.
A civilian wearing a bloody bandage on his forehead and in a grease-stained polo shirt and khaki trousers, went to one of the Cubs and with grease-stained hands opened the engine compartment. Neither pilot thought this was the appropriate time to ask questions.
The civilian turned from the engine.
“I don’t think I have ever seen such a clean engine,” he said.
“Gentlemen, may I introduce Don Clet
us Frade, who is an experienced Piper pilot. He is the son of the late Coronel Jorge Frade, whose last active duty command was of the Húsares de Pueyrredón.”
Neither lieutenant seemed to know quite how to deal with that revelation. An indelicate sophistry from Major Frade’s own military experience popped into his mind: Those poor bastards don’t know whether to shit or go blind.
He took pity on them.
“Tenientes,” he said, “are these aircraft in as good shape as they appear to be?”
One of them found his voice.
“Sir, so far as I know, they are in perfect shape.”
“May I ask how much experience you have in short-field landing?”
“Sir, we practice that technique regularly.”
“In other words, you would have no trouble with putting one of these down on a field a little longer than a polo field?”
After a moment’s thought, one of the lieutenants said, “No, sir.”
Clete unkindly suspected that their practice had been trying to put a Piper down as close to the end of a runway as they could, then trying to see how short they could make the landing roll.
Well, there’s nothing that can be done about that.
“What we’re going to do now is: I am going to take one of these and fly it to my house. One of you will take the other one and follow me. All I can tell you is to suggest you make your approach as slowly and carefully as you know how.”
“Yes, sir.”
Frade turned to Rawson.
“Well, sir, I’ll see everybody at Casa Montagna,” he said, and then made a little joke. “Unless, of course, you want to ride up there with me and save yourself an hour’s drive.”
“I’ll go with you,” Rawson announced. “General Nervo can go in the other airplane.”
“Sir, I was kidding.”
“I wasn’t,” President Rawson said. “Father Kurt tells me you have a radio there capable of talking to Buenos Aires.”
“To Jorge Frade, sir. The airfield and Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo. Only.”
“Whatever its limitations, we’ll have more communication than we have now standing around here. How soon can we leave?”
“Just as soon as I top off the fuel tanks,” Clete said, and motioned for General Nervo to get into one of the Cubs. “I’m sure you will find this interesting, Simple Policeman. In Texas, they use these airplanes to catch speeders on the highways.”
[ELEVEN]
Edelweiss Hotel
San Martín 202
San Carlos de Bariloche
1635 16 October 1943
Although Señor Jorge Schenck and Señor Otto Körtig arrived at the Edelweiss within minutes of each other, they didn’t see each other for some time.
When Schenck, his wife, el Coronel Juan D. Perón, and Señorita Evita Duarte returned from their visit to Estancia Puesta de Sol Schenck, they had parked the Ford station wagon in front of the hotel on Calle San Martín. Then they had gone to the bar via the lobby.
As they were being shown to a table, Schenck saw Señor Suarez, the real-estate man, sitting with another man he correctly guessed to be the bureaucrat who was going to be necessary to witness Perón’s signature on the deed. Schenck made a simple series of gestures telling Señor Suarez not to recognize him and to stay where he was until summoned.
Then he followed the others to a table, where he announced he needed a drink, a real drink.
Señorita Duarte thought that was a splendid idea, and said so. El Coronel Perón said that he would have a little taste of Johnnie Walker Black himself. When the waiter came, Señor Schenck ordered Johnnie Walker Black, doubles, all around.
Two or three rounds like that and Casanova, if encouraged by Señorita Evita, will happily sign the menu or anything else she puts in front of him.
When Señor Pablo Alvarez, the Reverend Francisco Silva, S.J., and Señor Otto Körtig arrived at the hotel about fifteen minutes later, after a full and exhausting day of examining the Hotel Lago Vista in detail, they parked the 1940 Ford Fordor from Casa Montagna in the parking lot behind the hotel, as they would have no further need for it until the morning.
Then they started to enter the hotel from the parking lot. But as they did, they came to sort of an adjunct of the hotel bar, a glass-roofed area outside the more formal inside bar. It had a dozen or so cast-iron tables with umbrellas, six or seven of which were occupied by people having a drink and munching on cheese and salami.
“Am I the only one who’s tempted?” Señor Alvarez asked.
“How’s the beer in Argentina?” Señor Körtig inquired. “I haven’t had a decent glass of beer in months.”
“I think you will be pleased, Otto,” Father Silva said.
“Are you a beer drinker, Father?”
“On occasion,” the priest confessed.
Three liters of Quilmes lager later, Señor Körtig excused himself to visit the gentlemen’s rest facility.
“It’s right inside the lobby to the right, Otto,” Father Silva said.
“Thank you. Order another liter of the Quilmes while I’m gone, will you?”
“It will be my pleasure,” Señor Alvarez said.
In the main bar, Señor Schenck looked up from stuffing his copy of the just executed change-of-owner documentation for Estancia Puesta de Sol into his briefcase.
That Johnnie Walker is getting to me. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear I just saw Oberstleutnant Otto Niedermeyer walk past.
Ridiculous!
He works for Canaris in Abwehr Ost. What could he possibly be doing here in the Andes mountains of Argentina?
And if you do something foolish, like chase some strange man into a men’s room and . . .
“Excuse me, please,” Schenck said, and got up from the table and followed a strange man toward the men’s room.
Rather than porcelain urinals mounted to a wall, the urinal in the Hotel Edelweiss lobby men’s room was the wall itself. Below waist height, the wall was tiled. A copper pipe just above the tiles fed a never-ending stream of water gently down the white tiles toward a sort of trough at the bottom.
When Señor Schenck entered the men’s room, the strange man was facing the wall.
Schenck waited until the man turned, and he had a chance for a good look.
“Wie geht’s, Otto?” he asked cordially, smiling.
“Ach, Gott!” Oberstleutnant Otto Niedermeyer, visibly surprised, said.
“What in the world are you doing here?”
Niedermeyer put his index finger before his lips and looked quickly at the water closet stalls—all of which were empty.
He threw out his arm in the Nazi salute.
“Heil Hitler!” he said, and then, “May the oberstleutnant respectfully suggest that the SS-brigadeführer attend to his personal business first?”
Von Deitzberg smiled.
“Good idea,” he said.
He stepped to the urinal wall, unzipped his trousers, and started to attend to his personal business.
SS-Brigadeführer Ritter Manfred von Deitzberg turned his head to look at Oberstleutnant Niedermeyer just in time to see the muzzle of the barrel of Niedermeyer’s Ballester-Molina Pistola Automatica Calibre .45 before it fired.
Von Deitzberg slumped to the floor, leaving a tracing of brain tissue and blood on the urinal’s tiles. The stream of water caused first the blood to start sliding down the tiles, and then the smaller pieces of brain tissue.
Niedermeyer quickly examined his clothing to see if he had been splattered with either. He had not been. He looked down at von Deitzberg, said, “God forgive me,” returned the pistol to the small of his back, and calmly walked out of the men’s room.
My ears are ringing from the noise of that gun firing in there. My hearing has been impaired.
I will have to remember to speak softly. Deaf people speak loudly.
He walked to the table and sat down.
“I heard what sounded like a shot,” Alvarez said.
“
Father,” Körtig said softly, “if it looks as if I am about to be arrested, I will have to take my own life; otherwise many good men and their families will die.”
[TWELVE]
Casa Montagna
Estancia Don Guillermo
Km 40.4, Provincial Route 60
Mendoza Province, Argentina
1705 16 October 1943
Clete set the Cub down with landing roll to spare on the first try. The pilot of the Cub following him decided to go around twice before finally coming in for a landing.
“He’s not as skilled as you are,” President Rawson said.
“What he is is smarter than I am,” Clete replied. “He didn’t bring it in until he was sure he could.”
Captain Madison R. Sawyer III walked up to them. He was wearing an olive-drab shirt with the silver railroad tracks of his rank and the crossed sabers of cavalry pinned to the collar points. He had a Thompson slung from his shoulder.
“Well, look what you brought home,” he said, and only then recognized the president of the Argentine Republic. He saluted.
“General Rawson, this is Captain Sawyer,” Clete said.
“How do you do, Capitán?”
“Sir,” Sawyer said, then: “Major, may I have a word in private?”
“Anything you have to say to me, Captain, you may say in the presence of the president.”
“Yes, sir. Sir, maybe you better come with me.”
The body had been laid on and under a blanket outside one of the small outbuildings.
“Please tell me this is not one of ours,” Clete said.
“There is one of ours, sir, but he’s inside on the bed.”
Sawyer pulled off the blanket.
The eyes of the corpse were open. His face showed what could have been surprise. His coveralls had been unbuttoned, exposing the blood-soaked black SS uniform underneath. On his chest were his identity tags and his identity card.
The Honor of Spies Page 56