Death and Honor

by W. E. B Griffin

  “And what was his reaction to that?”

  “He asked—he’s actually very clever, Cletus, something you should keep in mind—if your grandfather was involved, to which I replied, I didn’t know, but I thought it was likely, because of his relationship with Howard Hughes. To which Colonel Perón replied, ‘I thought it was probably something like that.’ Does Mr. Howell know Mr. Hughes, Cletus?”

  “Very well, as a matter of fact. Hughes’s father was in the oil business. He invented a tool that goes on the end of the string.”

  “Explain that, please.”

  “When you put down a hole—that is, drill an oil well—there’s a string of pipes screwed together—‘the string’—that goes into the ground. At the end of the string, there’s a cutting tool.”

  He held his hands, fingers extended, about eight inches apart, indicating the size of the ball-shaped tool, then went on, “Some really tough steel cutters— they look like meshing gears—chew up the dirt and rock, which gets washed out of the way. Hughes’s father came up with a hell of an improvement of the tool and, more important, was smart enough to bury it with patents. He started the Hughes Tool Company, and the Hughes Tool Company made him a very rich man. And Howard inherited the whole thing. That’s where he got the money to go into the movie business and to buy Lockheed.”

  “ ‘Howard’? You know him, Cletus?”

  Frade nodded.

  “Even better,” Humberto said.

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “The first thing suspicious people—like Colonel Martín and Colonel Perón—would think when they heard that you—whom they suspect of having ties with the OSS—could get your hands on airplanes in the middle of the war was that you were getting them from the OSS.”

  “You just finished saying Tío Juan Domingo has figured out I’m getting them from my grandfather’s pal, Howard Hughes.”

  “I told him that the reason I told you getting permission would be impossible was because of the suspicions people like Colonel Martín would have that it was somehow connected with the OSS. To which, after thinking this over for perhaps two seconds, he replied, ‘There are ways to put such suspicions to rest.’ ”

  “And did he tell you what they would be?”

  “Having someone like himself on the board of directors, and making sure all the pilots, from the chief pilot downward, are Argentines. He even mentioned a Major Delgano for that position.”

  “Well, Delgano does know how to fly a Lodestar,” Clete said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “I taught him.”

  “Isn’t that the fellow who was your father’s pilot?”

  Frade nodded.

  “Maybe Tío Juan is smarter than I’m giving him credit for being,” he said.

  “I would say that’s a given,” Duarte said.

  “All the time that Capitán Delgano quote retired unquote was my father’s pilot he actually was working for Martín—the BIS. It was only when Martín decided that the coup was going to work, and enlisted in that noble enterprise, that that came out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When my father wrote Operation Blue, he made plans to avoid the firing squad in case they couldn’t pull it off. Delgano was to take his Beechcraft Staggerwing to Campo de Mayo and have it ready to fly my father, Rawson, and Ramírez to Paraguay. By the time they were ready to start Operation Blue, my father had been assassinated, and the Staggerwing was on the bottom of Samborombón Bay.

  “Delgano came to me three days before they were to go, told me that he had been working for Martín all along, and that Martín wanted to use the Lodestar to get people out of the country. So I spent two days teaching him how to fly it, and then decided if my father had wanted to get rid of Castillo and his government so badly, I was obliged to put my two cents in. So I flew the Lodestar to Campo de Mayo.”

  “I never heard any of this before.”

  “My role in the coup became something like a state secret. Nobody, maybe especially me, wanted it to come out.”

  “You sound as if you did more than fly the Lodestar to Campo de Mayo.”

  “I flew General Rawson around in one of their Piper Cubs when the two rebel columns were headed for the Casa Rosada. They had lost their communication and were about to start shooting at each other.”

  “And you kept that from happening?”

  Clete nodded.

  “Ramírez knows this?”

  Clete nodded.

  “Wouldn’t that tend to make him think you’re a patriotic Argentine, instead of an American OSS agent?”

  “Well, maybe if Delgano hadn’t been in Santo Tomé when I flew the Lodestar in from Brazil, with an OSS team on it.”

  “He saw them?”

  “He saw them, and he knows that I flew them to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo. And since the day after the coup Delgano was back in uniform—a newly promoted major working for BIS—I have to assume Colonel Martín has got a pretty good idea what everybody looks like.”

  “Are you saying you don’t want this man looking over your shoulder in your airline?”

  “Not at all. Let him look. I’m not going to be doing anything, now, that I don’t want him to see or Martín or anyone else to know about.”

  “And later?”

  “We’ll see about later. Why does Perón want to be on the board of directors? To keep an eye on me?”

  “That, too, probably, but there would be an honorarium.”

  “A generous one?”

  “Since you are going to be the majority stockholder, that would be up to you. I would recommend a generous one.”

  “And he does what to earn it?”

  “He gets permission for you to have the airline.”

  “In other words, I’m bribing him.”

  “We lawyers don’t use terms like this here, Cletus. We recognize things for being the way they are.”

  “Okay. What’s the next step?”

  “We form the S.A.—Sociedad Anónima, literally translated, ‘Anonymous Society,’ like an American corporation—and everybody signs it, and then you come up with, say, two million two hundred thousand dollars.”

  “What did you say? Two million two hundred thousand? Why do I think you just made that figure up?”

  “The aircraft are in the neighborhood of a hundred twenty-three thousand dollars U.S. each,” Humberto said. “And you’re going to need at least a dozen to get started, and fourteen would be better. . . .”

  Is he making that up, too? Where did he get all that?

  “Fourteen of them comes to about one and three-quarter million. Doubling that—to provide for spares, salaries, operating capital, et cetera, in our preliminary planning—comes to a little less than three and a half million. Sixty percent of that, to ensure your control, comes to the two-million-two figure I mentioned.”

  “Why fourteen airplanes?”

  “Aeropostal has a dozen,” Duarte said.

  “Where’s the other forty percent coming from?”

  “Claudia and I will take twelve-point-five each, and the bank the remaining fifteen percent. As I said, my board of directors feels it’s a sound investment.”

  “When did they decide that?”

  “I should have said, ‘The board will feel that it’s a sound investment after I have a chance to tell them about it.’ ”

  “And when is this all going to take place?”

  “Claudia’s going to give a small, sort of family-only dinner tomorrow night, if Colonel Perón can find the time. If not, the next night. We can sign everything at the dinner.”

  “I don’t know how long it’ll take me to come up with that kind of money.”

  “The bank regards you as a good credit risk.”

  “You’re amazing, Humberto.”

  “How kind of you to say so. Shall we walk over to the Jockey Club?’

  [THREE]

  El Palomar Airfield Buenos Aires, Argentina 1605 12 July 1943


  “El Palomar, Lufthansa Six Zero Two,” came over the speakers in the El Palomar tower.

  The call was faint, and in German. The latter posed no problems—just about all the tower operators spoke German—but the faintness of the call did.

  The operators hurriedly put on headsets. One of them went to the radio rack to see if he could better tune in the caller. Another leaned over a shelf and spoke—in German—into a microphone.

  “Lufthansa Six Zero Two, this is El Palomar.”

  There was no answer, so the operator tried again, and again got no answer.

  There was another call to the tower.

  “El Palomar, Lufthansa Six Zero Two. El Palomar, Lufthansa Six Zero Two.”

  Everybody knew what was happening; it had happened several times before. The Siemens radio transmitters aboard the Lufthansa airplane had greater range than did the radios in the tower. It wasn’t supposed to be that way, but that’s the way it was.

  It produced mixed feelings in both of them, embarrassment that their tower had terribly mediocre communications equipment, and vicarious pride as Germano-Argentines in the really superb German equipment aboard the Lufthansa aircraft.

  One of the operators picked up a telephone and dialed a number from memory.

  It was answered, in Spanish, on the third ring.

  “Embassy of the German Reich.”

  “Let me speak to the duty officer, please,” the tower operator said in Spanish.

  An interior phone rang three times before it was answered in Spanish.

  “Consular section. Consul Schneider speaking.”

  The tower operator switched to German.

  “Herr Untersturmführer, here is Kurt Schumer at El Palomar.”

  Untersturmführer Johan Schneider also switched to German.

  “How can I help you, Herr Schumer?”

  “We just had a radio call from Lufthansa Six Zero Two, Herr Untersturmführer. ”

  “And?”

  “We can hear him, Herr Untersturmführer, but he cannot hear us, which suggests he is some distance away.”

  “We have had no word of an incoming Condor,” Schneider said.

  Schumer didn’t reply.

  “Which, of course,” Schneider went on, “does not mean that a Condor is not on its way here. Thank you, Herr Schumer. I shall take the necessary steps.”

  “My pleasure, Herr Untersturmführer.”

  “Heil Hitler!” Schneider barked, and broke the connection.

  There was, of course, a protocol spelled out in great detail in the embassy of the German Reich for a situation like this. At the moment, it wasn’t working very well.

  Untersturmführer Schneider, who was listed on the embassy’s manning chart as an assistant consul, was a member of the Sicherheitsdienst (the Security Service, known by its acronym, SD) of the Sicherheitspolizei (the Security Police, known by its acronym, SIPO), which in turn was part of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (the Reich Security Central Office, known by its acronym, RHSA) of the Allgemeine-SS. The SS itself was divided into two parts, the other being the Waffen-SS, which was military in nature.

  Untersturmführer Schneider was very much aware that he was the senior SS officer presently assigned to the embassy of the Reich in Buenos Aires. This was pretty heady stuff for an untersturmführer, which was the SS rank corresponding to second lieutenant.

  In theory, he was answerable only to the ambassador, Manfred Alois Graf von Lutzenberger, but on the day Schneider had reported for duty, von Lutzenberger had told him that the military attaché, Oberst Karl-Heinz Grüner, was the reichssicherheitshauptamt’s man in Buenos Aires. He also told him that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler himself, to facilitate Grüner’s carrying out of those duties, had commissioned Grüner an honorary oberführer-SS. Consequently, Schneider was to consider himself under Grüner’s orders.

  Oberst/Oberführer Grüner had immediately named Untersturmführer Schneider Officer-in-Charge of Security Documents, which meant that he would have responsibility for the reception, care, and transmission of all documents containing secrets of the embassy.

  In carrying out his duties, Grüner told Schneider, he would wear civilian clothing, refer to himself as a consular officer, and not make use of his SS rank, as he himself never made reference to his SS rank. It was better, Grüner had told him, that it not become public knowledge that the SS was in the embassy.

  Furthermore, Grüner had told him, he would serve as his deputy in matters of counterintelligence, which duties he could better carry out if no one was aware he was an officer of the Sicherheitsdienst. He was to make immediate and secret reports to Grüner—and only Grüner—of any activity that he found suspicious.

  There were ancillary duties as well, among them responsibility for the diplomatic pouches. He was to meet every incoming Lufthansa flight and take from its steward the incoming diplomatic pouch, which he would take to the embassy and hand over to Grüner personally. Similarly, he would get the Berlin-bound diplomatic pouch from Grüner and personally hand it to the Condor steward just before the Condor headed home.

  The protocol had become unworkable when Oberst/Oberführer Grüner had given his life for the Fatherland at Samborombón Bay. Untersturmführer Schneider remained subordinate to the military attaché, but the military attaché—the acting military attaché until another could be sent from Berlin— was Major Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein of the Luftwaffe, who, as far as Schneider knew, had no SS connection whatsoever.

  More than that, Schneider on several occasions had been ordered to surveille von Wachtstein by following him around Buenos Aires and by tapping his telephones in the embassy and at his apartment. This at least suggested that either Oberst Grüner or Ambassador von Lutzenberger—or both—were suspicious of him. Schneider himself thought there was something very strange in von Wachtstein’s having come through the gunfire at Samborombón Bay unscathed when Oberführer Grüner and SS-Standartenführer Josef Goltz both had been shot to death.

  But orders are orders and remain in effect until changed by competent authority—which in this case would be Ambassador von Lutzenberger, who had not even mentioned the protocol, much less any change in his duties, to Schneider since Grüner had been killed. Schneider had no choice but to follow protocol, which required him on being notified of the imminent arrival of a Lufthansa flight to notify the military attaché who, protocol dictated, “would provide further instructions as necessary.”

  He found Major von Wachtstein in his—rather than Oberst Grüner’s— office. He was in civilian clothing, smoking a long thin cigar, and reading an American magazine, Life. The first time Schneider had seen von Wachtstein reading enemy reading material—a copy of the London Times—he had reported him to Grüner, who had told him that von Wachtstein was doing so because he was ordered to do so, to see if there was anything in The Times which would be of interest to the Abwehr.

  When von Wachtstein finally looked up from the magazine and saw Schneider, Schneider threw out his arm in the Nazi salute and barked, “Heil Hitler!”

  Von Wachtstein returned the salute, not very crisply.

  “What is it, Schneider?”

  “Herr Major, I have just learned of the soon arrival of a Condor at El Palomar.”

  “What’s a ‘soon arrival’? When is a ‘soon arrival’? In the next ten minutes? Tomorrow? Friday?”

  “Herr Major, I believe the aircraft is about to land at El Palomar.”

  “I was not aware we were expecting a flight. Were you?”

  “I was not, Herr Major.”

  “You will go downstairs and wake up Günther Loche and tell him to bring a car around, Herr Schneider, while I go by the ambassador’s office to tell him that you and I are on our way to El Palomar.”

  Günther Loche, a muscular twenty-two-year-old with a blond crew cut who von Wachtstein regarded as more zealous a Nazi than the Führer himself, was a civilian employee of the embassy. He had been born in Argentina to German parents who
had immigrated to Argentina after the First World War. He had been Oberst Grüner’s driver, and until a replacement for Grüner was assigned, he was von Wachtstein’s driver.

  “You will be going with me, Herr Major?” Schneider said.

  Oberst Grüner had rarely done that.

  “No. The way that works, Untersturmführer Schneider, is that inasmuch as I am a major and the acting military attaché, you will be going with me.”

  “Jawohl, Herr Major,” Schneider said, then threw out his arm again and barked, “Heil Hitler!”

  Schneider suspected—he had no idea why—that von Wachtstein didn’t like him. But he was not offended by von Wachtstein’s curt—even rude—sarcasm. For one thing, an officer who had received the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross for extraordinary valor in aerial combat was entitled to be a bit arrogant.

  And for another, I was wrong; I should have been more precise than “soon arrival.”

  And I had no right to question his orders.

  After the first call, Lufthansa Six Zero Two had attempted to contact the El Palomar tower once a minute for the next eleven minutes. Finally, the El Palomar tower operators had gotten through: “Lufthansa Six Zero Two, this is El Palomar.”

  The response had been immediate.

  “El Palomar, Lufthansa Six Zero Two has entered Argentine airspace at the mouth of the River Plate. Altitude three thousand five hundred meters, indicated airspeed three eight zero kilometers. Estimate El Palomar in four zero minutes. Request approach and landing permission.”

  “Lufthansa Six Zero Two, El Palomar understands you are approximately one four zero kilometers east of this field at thirty-five hundred meters, estimating El Palomar in forty minutes.”

  “That is correct, El Palomar.”

  “Permission to approach El Palomar is granted. Begin descent to two thousand meters at this time. Contact again when ten minutes out.”

  “Six Zero Two understands descend to two thousand meters and contact when ten minutes out.”

  “Lufthansa Six Zero Two, that is correct.”

  “El Palomar, Lufthansa Six Zero Two.”

  “Go ahead, Six Zero Two.”

  “Six Zero Two is at two thousand meters, indicating three zero zero kilometers. Estimate El Palomar in ten minutes.”