“But you didn’t say anything to Doña Dorotea?”
“Of course not. She is in the family way, thanks be to God, and I didn’t want to worry her with this. I knew how to handle it.”
That explains why she didn’t know!
Frade discreetly looked back toward Delgano and Martín. They were deep in discussion. Frade turned to Enrico.
“And how did you handle it, Enrico?”
“Well, we drew the blinds and left the lights on, and the radio, and then we went and hid down by the road. That’s where I saw El Coronel Perón. It was late in the afternoon . . .”
“And took his picture?”
“Yes. Him with the colonel of mountain troops and the Nazis in black uniforms.”
“And?”
“What surprised me, Don Cletus, what shamed me and broke my heart, was that the mountain troops set up two machine guns, one behind the house and one in front, and fired maybe five hundred rounds, maybe a little more than that, at the house. They didn’t try to arrest anybody. They just tried to kill whoever was in the house.
“Then the Nazis went in the house. And of course no one was there.
“So they went and told Colonel Perón and the colonel of mountain troops, and Colonel Perón told them they should stay—not in the house, but around it—in case somebody came back, and that he would send a truck back for them in the morning. So then he and the mountain troops left and the Nazis stayed.”
“And then?”
I shouldn’t be smiling; getting this story out of him is like pulling teeth.
“And then we waited until the trucks had gone far enough so that they couldn’t hear the shots, and we killed the Nazi bastards. I personally killed two of them myself.”
“What did you do with the bodies?”
“Left them there. I also took pictures of them, and took their identification papers and one of the hats with the skull on it.”
“You think the photos came out?”
“I had them processed in Pilar the next morning—that would be yesterday morning. They came out very well.”
“Why didn’t you tell Doña Dorotea about any of this? Or at least El Jefe?”
“I tried. But when I came up to the house, I saw her and El Jefe had just driven off in the Horch. I couldn’t catch them, as much as I would have liked to, to spare Doña Dorotea, in her delicate condition, what she would see when she got to Casa Chica. I was too late, I am sorry to say.”
“Then why didn’t you tell her when she came back?”
Sergeant Major Enrico Rodríguez, Cavalry, Retired, looked uncomfortable at being put on the spot. He broke eye contact, looked at his feet a long moment as he gathered his thoughts, then looked back at Clete.
“You know, Don Cletus, that I love you as if you were my own son,” he began cautiously. “So I will tell you the truth: I was afraid she would not understand what I had done and would say something that she would later regret.”
Clete forced back a smile.
“You can bet on that, Enrico.”
“And then there was word that you would be coming back, so I thought I would come here and wait and tell you what had happened.”
Now Clete did smile.
“Fess up, Enrico. You’re afraid of Doña Dorotea.”
“Do not be silly. She’s a woman. A wonderful one, to be sure. . . . You will explain to her when we get back to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, Don Cletus?”
“I’ll try, Enrico. I will try.”
“We are going there now?”
"No, first I have to see El Coronel Perón. I’ll be riding with Martín. You follow.”
[FIVE]
4730 Avenida Libertador Buenos Aires, Argentina 1515 12 August 1943
“Leave us, please, Colonel Martín,” Colonel Juan Domingo Perón said.
“Would you like me to wait, sir?”
“That probably won’t be necessary. But, yes, it might be a good idea.”
They were in the library. Perón was seated in one of the red leather-upholstered chairs.
A clear memory came to Clete Frade of Hans-Peter von Wachtstein sitting in that chair, half in the bag and listening to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the night they first had met.
Seeing Perón in the chair angered him.
“How was the flight, Cletus?”
“Long and tiring, but everybody’s going to get their airline transport ratings. That, however, is not what this is about, is it, Tío Juan?”
“No, it’s not. Have you been to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo? Talked to anyone there?”
“Is that any of your business?”
Perón’s face tightened.
“To put a point on it, have you heard what happened in Tandil?”
“I heard you led some mountain troops there, along with the half-dozen SS troops who got off the U-405, and they shot up the house pretty badly.”
“I have no idea where you got that. It’s preposterous!”
“You were looking for the Froggers, Tío Juan. But you were a little late. Right about now they should be boarding a British cruiser in Rio de Janeiro. The Brits seem to think Frogger knows something about Operation Phoenix.”
Perón’s eyes bulged.
He blurted, “Do you have any idea what a dangerous position you’re in, you damned fool?”
“Well, your Nazi friends tried to kill me once—in this very house—and that didn’t work.”
“That could happen again . . .”
“Oh, I don’t think so. Now I’ve got you to protect me.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that if anything should happen to me—or anyone around me— the photographs showing you on the road in Tandil with the colonel of mountain troops will surface. And the photos of the dead SS bleeding all over my verandah. That would be a little hard to explain.”
Perón reached in his trousers pocket and came out with a small snub-nosed revolver.
Then suddenly there was the sound of the bolt slamming into place in a Remington Model 11 self-loading 12-gauge shotgun.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Rodríguez?” Perón snapped. “How dare you aim a weapon at me, at an officer?”
You sonofabitch! Frade thought. You’re so drunk with power that you think you could get away with intimidating me—even killing me—in front of Enrico?
You arrogant bastard. You’ll never know such loyalty. . . .
“I suggest you put the pistol on the floor very carefully, Tío Juan,” Frade said evenly. “I think Enrico would really like to shoot you. It would be a tragic accident, of course, witnessed by the son of your best friend in his library. Poor old Enrico didn’t know it was loaded.”
Perón complied.
“What’s going to happen now, Tío Juan, is that we are going to forget we ever had this conversation—except, of course, for the part about you telling your Nazi pals that if anything happens to me, I’ll make sure that not only are you exposed, but also that map of South America after the Anschluss.”
He paused to let that sink in, then added: “And when we see each other again, we’ll be pals.”
Perón didn’t respond.
“You understand me?” Frade demanded.
Perón nodded.
Frade turned and walked to the library door. There he stopped and turned. “One more thing, Tío Juan, you degenerate sonofabitch. You’re going to have to find someplace else for your little girls. I want you out of here by tomorrow.”
He turned again and walked into the foyer.
Sergeant Major (Retired) Enrico Rodríguez spit on the floor, then followed.
AUTHOR NOTE
On 7 October 2004, the following story appeared in The Buenos Aires Herald:
PERÓN, THE NAZI EMPEROR?
Retired Brazilian Diplomat’s Book Claims Perón Planned to
Annex Neighboring Countries Had Hitler Won
A retired Brazilian diplomat who during the forties was a spy in Arge
ntina claims that former three-term president Juan Domingo Perón was planning to annex several neighboring countries if the Nazis had won the Second World War, reports the Brazilian magazine Veja in its latest edition.
Sérgio Corrêa da Costa, who was the Brazilian ambassador in Washington and London, will reveal details of the plot in his upcoming book, Chronicle of a Secret War, scheduled to be launched in Brazil next week.
According to Veja, the book has all the ingredients “to become a solid reference for Nazi ideology dissemination research in South America during that period. ”
Apparently, Corrêa da Costa provides new information which helps to explain the Perónist regime’s loyalty toward Adolf Hitler and concludes that this option followed the Argentine populist leader’s intention to dominate South America in the event of an Axis victory.
The theory is based on a map which was found among the belongings of a German spy killed by British secret agents in 1941 in the city of Rio de Janeiro.
The map, “drawn by the German high command,” showed South America split into five countries, half the current number.
According to the report, Argentina was shown annexing Uruguay, Paraguay, and, sharing with Brazil, other countries such as Peru and Bolivia.
Another document included in Corrêa da Costa’s book is a manifesto from the Group of United Officers (GOU), a group of young Argentine army officers to which then-Colonel Perón belonged, who admired the achievements of fascism in Europe and who eventually supported the military coup which jump-started Perón in politics in June 1943.
Uruguay joined the Allies soon after the sinking in the River Plate of the Graf Spee in December 1939, and Brazil, under President Getúlio Vargas, following an agreement with U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, joined the war effort, sending ground troops and air support to fight in Europe, mainly in the Italian theater of war.
Perón, who died in July 1974 while serving his third term, was the elected president of Argentina between 1946 and 1955. Argentina only declared war on Germany in the last days of the conflict, when it was evident the Axis would lose. (Mercopress)
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