Enrico Rodríguez had told Clete that Clete’s mother had loved Casa Montagna, and also that it had been her last home in Argentina. It was from Casa Montagna that his parents had left to catch the train in Mendoza for Buenos Aires, and from there the ship that took them to New Orleans, where she had died in childbirth.
El Coronel Frade had never set foot in Casa Montagna again.
Clete Frade led Peter and Alicia von Wachtstein, Karl Boltitz, Beth Howell, and Enrico Rodríguez into the bar.
They found—sitting around tables holding a collection of bottles of various intoxicants and plates of cheese and sausage—Major Madison R. Sawyer III, Master Sergeant Siggie Stein, the Reverend Francisco Silva, S.J., Wilhelm Fischer, Otto Körtig, Ludwig Stoll, and el Subinspector General Pedro Nolasco. Pouring wine at the bar was the estancia’s manager, el Señor Pablo Alvarez.
“I was under the impression that cocktail hour began at seventeen hundred,” Cletus Frade announced sternly, hoping he sounded like an indignant lieutenant colonel who had just caught his subordinates at the sauce when they should have been about their duties.
Except for a few smiles and chuckles, he was ignored.
Sawyer, Stein, and Fischer quickly rose and, their hands extended, went to von Wachtstein and Boltitz. That civilized gesture quickly degenerated into hugs and embraces.
“I now believe it,” Körtig said. “I never thought you’d get away with getting them. Clete, you are truly an amazing man.”
“Please tell that to my wife, Otto,” Clete said.
Frade sat down beside Körtig, offered his hand to Pedro Nolasco and then to Stoll.
“If you would be so good, Ludwig,” he said. “Hand me that bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon before Pedro gets into it again.”
When the hugs and back-patting were over—as if suddenly remembering their manners—Boltitz and von Wachtstein, with their women following them, came to the table where Clete sat with Körtig.
Körtig and Stoll stood up.
“I know who you are, of course,” Körtig said. “But not which is who.”
Peter came to attention, clicked his heels, nodded, and said, “Peter von Wachtstein, Herr Oberstleutnant.”
Pedro Nolasco’s eyebrows rose.
Clete thought: I wonder how long it’s going to take to get Peter to get that Pavlovian reaction out of his system.
Körtig put out his hand. “I was privileged to be a friend of both your father and Claus von Stauffenberg, von Wachtstein. I’m very glad to see you here.” He paused and added, “Where we rarely come to attention and click our heels.”
Otto, Clete thought, you’re reading my mind.
“And where I am known as el Señor Körtig,” Niedermeyer finished.
“That was stupid of me, wasn’t it?” von Wachtstein asked after a moment’s reflection.
After pausing long enough to make it clear that he agreed with von Wachtstein’s assessment of his own behavior, Körtig then gestured at Stoll. “My deputy at Abwehr Ost, the former Hauptmann Ludwig Wertz, now known as el Señor Stoll.” Körtig paused, then asked, “And by what name are you now known?”
God, Clete thought admiringly, you’re a good officer!
“His own,” Clete answered for him. “When he and Boltitz got off the plane from the United States, Father Silva’s boss—the Black Pope’s nuncio to Argentina, otherwise known as Father Welner—”
Subinspector General Nolasco laughed. He had told Clete the head of the Society of Jesus was known as “The Black Pope.”
“—handed them libretas de enrolamiento in their own names, stating they’d immigrated here before the war,” Clete finished.
“How do you do, Señor Körtig?” Boltitz asked.
“And I knew your father, too. I presume this charming young woman is la Señora Boltitz?”
“The charming young woman is the Baroness von Wachtstein,” Clete said, then pointed. “That one is my sister, Beth, who has high hopes that Boltitz will eventually make an honest woman of her.”
“I can’t believe you said that!” Beth said. And then added, “You sonofabitch!”
Nolasco laughed again.
All the Germans—especially Boltitz—looked uncomfortable.
“She loves me unconditionally, as you may have just heard,” Clete said. “Beth, see if you can say ‘hello’ nicely to the gentlemen.”
“Before we get down to serious drinking,” Frade announced when the handshaking was over, “I think we have to get into how the surrender in Europe is going to affect things here. There have been some interesting developments, some concerning U-boats that may or may not be headed here. Karl and Peter have already heard all this; there’s no reason for them to hear it again. Enrico, why don’t you give them a tour of the place and show them what’s changed while they were in Fort Hunt? Give us two hours or so.”
Frade exchanged glances with Boltitz.
That should be enough time for you and Beth to figure out how to be alone.
[TWO]
Casa Montagna Estancia Don Guillermo Mendoza Province, Argentina 1810 14 May 1945
It had taken all of the two hours that Frade had guessed it would, but the conclusion drawn by all was essentially that nothing, for the moment, was really changed by the unconditional surrender of the Thousand-Year Reich. Until they heard from Colonel Gehlen and learned what was going to happen to what they now called the “Gehlen organization,” they would have to wait and see what happened next. And the U-boats were a wild card that they could do nothing about—even if they did exist—until more intel could be collected.
For now at Casa Montagna, the Gehlen Nazis would remain in their comfortable imprisonment. Father Silva would continue his efforts to see that the wives and their children who didn’t wish to be eventually returned to Germany were absorbed into the society of Argentina. And Subinspector General Nolasco would continue to ensure that the Gehlen Nazis didn’t try to vanish into Argentine society.
Clete found himself at the bar with a glass of Don Guillermo Cabernet Sauvignon in hand, wondering about the moral implications of his having arranged for Beth to finally jump into bed with Karl Boltitz. And wondering what was going to happen to them.
It’s a given that they will get married, probably as soon as Cletus Marcus Howell can get down here from the States.
But then what?
Unlike Peter von Wachtstein, who had a marketable skill—he would go to work for SAA as a pilot—and had successfully moved to Argentina most of his family’s portable assets, Karl Boltitz had neither marketable skills nor a nest egg. Karl was a naval intelligence officer, and not only were the vessels of the Kriegsmarine—what was left of them—almost certainly going to be scuttled, but the Kriegsmarine no longer would need an intelligence officer.
Clete knew that, while Boltitz didn’t have a dime, money itself wasn’t a problem. Beth was independently wealthy, although he didn’t think her mother had told her just how wealthy.
The problem was Karl’s honor. He was a proud man. It had never entered Clete’s mind that Karl had considered Beth’s finances when making his first pass at her—or, perhaps more correctly, when she, which seemed entirely likely, had made her first pass at him. But he was entirely capable of being able to refuse to enter a marriage in his penniless status. And even if Beth could get him to the altar, Karl would feel ashamed.
While Boltitz was a very good intelligence officer, the only places where he could use those skills now would be in something like the Gehlen organization or the OSS. But the OSS was going down the toilet, very possibly taking the Gehlen organization with it.
Especially if Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau hears about the Gehlen organization.
Frade had just decided that about the only thing that could be done was for him to talk to Otto Körtig and see if he had any ideas when he became aware that Siggie Stein had joined him at the bar.
Stein came right to the point.
“Colonel, can I go to Germany with you?”
“Why the hell would you want to do that?” Frade said.
“I’ll tell you, sir. But it doesn’t make much sense, even to me.”
“Give it a shot, Siggie.”
“I started to think about Germany a couple of weeks ago, after I saw that picture of General Patton taking a leak in the Rhine.”
And now you want to take a piss in the Rhine?
Well, why the hell not?
You’re certainly entitled to a little revenge.
“And then Mother Superior told me a story about Nazis in Chile,” Stein said.
“Go over that again, Siggie?”
“Truth being stranger than fiction, we’ve become pretty close. She comes up here a couple of nights a week and we kill a couple of bottles of wine.”
“A couple of bottles of wine? In here?”
“Yeah, Colonel, a couple of bottles of wine. But not here in the bar; we go to the radio room. I moved in there . . .”
The radio room was a small apartment on the upper floor of the Big House.
Frade raised an eyebrow and said, “I didn’t know that you moved out of the BOQ.”
“I think the officers were glad when I did.”
“Polo included?”
Frade sipped his wine and thought, If he’s been looking down his commissioned officer’s nose at Stein, I’ll ream him a new asshole.
“No. Not Major Sawyer. When I moved out of the BOQ, he even asked me if I had a problem. I told him no, that I moved out because I wanted to.”
“Any Kraut officer in particular?”
“It’s not what you’re suggesting, Colonel. Nothing overt. They were just as uncomfortable as officers having me in there as I was at a sergeant being in the BOQ.”
Stein saw the angry look on Frade’s face.
“Let it go, Colonel, please,” he said.
“You were telling me about Mother Superior’s drinking problem,” Frade said.
Stein laughed. “Her problem is that she thinks it sets a bad example for the nuns if they see her having a couple of glasses of wine. So she’s been doing it alone in her room at the convent. Drinking alone is no fun.”
“The officers didn’t like drinking with you, either? Is that where you’re going, Siggie?”
“I didn’t like drinking with the officers, so I did most of my drinking in the radio room. Then, one time she came to see me and I was having a little sip. Nice polite Jewish boy that I am, I offered her one. She took it, then took another one. The next time she came to the radio room, she brought some cheese and salami. We had another couple of belts together. That’s the way it started.”
“You said she said something about Nazis in Chile?”
“According to her, she was working at the Little Sisters’ Hospital in Santiago when this happened.”
“When what happened?”
“They call it the Seguro Obrero Massacre,” Stein said. “That’s the building that houses the health insurance ministry, or something like that.”
“What kind of a massacre?” Frade asked as he pulled the cork from another bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon.
“Nazis.”
“Who did the Nazis massacre?”
“The Nazis got massacred. She said what happened was that a Chilean Nazi—they called themselves ‘Nazistas’—named Jorge González von Marées got a bunch of college kids, and people that age, all fired up about National Socialism and Adolf Hitler, and they tried to stage a putsch.”
“When did this happen?”
“In 1938. Mother Superior was there filling in as a doctor in the emergency room at the Little Sisters’ Hospital in Santiago. Same order of nuns as here.”
Frade nodded as he topped off his glass and then slid the bottle to Stein.
“So,” Siggie said as he poured himself a glass, “what happened when this Nazi zealot did that . . . Wait. ‘Zealot’ is a really bad choice of word. The Zealots were Jewish warriors in Judea trying to throw the Romans out in the first century; they killed a lot of Romans because they just wouldn’t give up.”
They tapped glasses and took sips.
“Really nice wine,” Stein said, and went on: “Anyway, what this Chilean Nazi idiot did was convince about sixty of these young guys that all they had to do was take over a building at the university and the Seguro Obrero building and the people would rush to support them and National Socialism would come to Chile.
“According to Mother Superior, they could have caused real trouble, but while they probably didn’t stand a chance of taking over the country, they would have become heroic martyrs.”
“Exactly what did these Chilean Nazi lunatics do?”
“About half of them took over a building at the university, and the other half took over the health insurance building. The cops—they call them ‘carabineros’; they carry carbines—surrounded both buildings. Then the army sent a couple of cannons to the university building and fired a couple of rounds.
“The lunatics at the university surrendered. The cops—or maybe the army—then told them that what was going to happen now was that the lunatics were going to go to the health insurance building and convince the lunatics there that what they should do is surrender before anybody else got hurt.
“This made sense to the lunatics—they could see themselves being marched off to the slam while people cheered them, where they would be tried, jailed for a couple of months, and then be remembered all their lives as the heroes who brought Nazism to Chile with their bravery.
“So off they went to the health insurance building, where they talked the other lunatics into surrendering. When the others put down their weapons, the lunatics from the university were marched into the building, chased up the stairways, and then shot and/or bayoneted.”
“All of them?”
“Mother Superior was there with the ambulances from the hospital. She saw officers going around making sure they were all dead.” Stein mimed someone holding a pistol. “Pop. You’re dead.”
“After they surrendered, they were killed?” Frade said.
“Somebody with power—I’d like to think it was a Jew, but there’s no telling—thought, ‘Now, wait a minute. If we just arrest these people, they’ll be back. On the other hand, if they resist and they all die, that would be unfortunate, but that would mean they won’t be causing any more trouble.’”
“Mother Superior agrees with that theory?”
“She knows that’s what happened. What she can’t understand is why I think it was a good idea.”
“Neither can I. That sounds like cold-blooded murder.”
“Colonel, what were you thinking when you turned your Thompson on Colonel—whatsisname? Schmidt?—and his officers?”
“I was thinking if any one of them managed to get their pistols out, they were going to shoot me.”
“That’s all?”
“Look, later, when I was trying to justify to myself shooting Schmidt, I managed to convince myself that I had also saved General Farrell’s life, and Pedro Nolasco’s.”
“And that’s all?” Stein pursued.
It took Frade a moment to reply.
“Okay, Siggie. I’m apparently very good when it comes to justifying what I’ve done that I’m not especially proud of. I told myself that I was responsible for turning the Tenth Mountain Regiment around, which meant they would not get into a firefight with the Húsares de Pueyrredón and that meant a lot of Schmidt’s troops and a lot of Húsares would not get killed. And that—I just said I’m really good at coming up with justifications—there wouldn’t be a civil war where a lot of innocent people would get killed. By the time I was finished, I had just about convinced myself that I was really Saint George and Schmidt was the evil dragon.”
Stein nodded. “Don’t be hard on yourself, Colonel. You did the right thing, and so did whoever ordered that the Chilean Nazis be killed. That stopped the Nazi movement in its tracks in Chile. God knows how many people would have been killed if the Nazis had taken over th
e country.”
“Why does this massacre make you want to go to Germany?”
“I told you, Colonel, I don’t understand it, but it does.”
“You’re not thinking of doing something more than pissing in the Rhine?”
“Say, shooting Nazis so they can’t rise Phoenix-like from the ashes?”
“That thought did run through my mind, Siggie.”
“No, sir,” Stein said, then went on: “Don’t look for some nice explanation why I can’t go with you, Colonel. All you have to say is ‘No way.’”
“Whatever happened to that Leica camera you used at Tandil?”
“I’ve still got it. You want it?”
“I don’t know who Perón is sending to Germany with me, and I don’t know who I’m going to bring back from Germany. And he’s not going to tell me. But if I had photographs I could show Nolasco, Martín, and as far as that goes, Körtig . . .”
“I’ll go get the camera.”
“No. You can just bring it with you when we go to Germany. You’ll go as the radio operator. In an SAA uniform.”
“Yes, sir. And thank you.”
“When we finish this bottle of wine, Sergeant, get on the radio to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo. Tell Schultz what’s going on. Tell him to get blank OSS ID cards out of the safe and have them made out for von Wachtstein and Boltitz by the time we get there tomorrow. You still have yours, right?”
“Yes, sir. But you told me those IDs are not real . . .”
“They’re not. But people don’t know that. And in our business, Sergeant Stein, what people don’t know usually hurts them.”
[THREE]
Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo Near Pila, Buenos Aires Province 1305 15 May 1945
As the Red Lodestar, with Peter von Wachtstein at the controls, made its approach to the airfield, then smoothly touched down, Clete thought, There are some people born to be pilots, and ol’ Hansel is one of them.
Victory and Honor Page 11