by Blood
"Yes, Sir," Quinn said.
"I think you had better message Brazil to have the team prepared to infiltrate from Brazil across the Uruguay River into Corrientes Province," Graham said.
"Yes, Sir."
"You work, Clete, on getting the airplane into Argentina, and I'll work on it at this end."
"Yes, Sir," Clete said.
"And also, until Delojo has time to get his feet on the ground, you be think-ing about infiltration across the Ri¢ Uruguay."
"Yes, Sir."
"Anything else, Clete, that we should talk about here and now?"
"Colonel, the priorities," Clete said. "What's more important, me getting close to the Grupo de Oficiales Unidos or taking out the replenishment vessel?"
"That decision is going to have to come from the President," Graham said. "There has been enormous diplomatic pressure about the Reine de la Mer. And what he might decide today might very well change tomorrow."
"Great!" Clete said.
Graham stood up and put out his hand.
"Good luck, Clete. We'll be in touch."
[TWO]
Centro Naval
Avenida Florida y Avenida Cordoba
Buenos Aires
2110 5 April 1943
A dark-blue 1939 Dodge four-door sedan pulled to the curb and a man stepped out of the backseat. The man-tall, fair-haired, light-skinned, in his mid-thirties, and wearing a light-brown gabardine suit-leaned down and put his head in the open passenger-side front-door window.
"Come back for me in an hour and a half," he ordered the driver, a some-what younger man in a nearly identical suit.
"S¡, mi Coronel," the driver said.
The man then turned and quickly mounted the shallow flight of stairs on the corner of the building and pushed his way through the revolving door of the Centro Naval.
"Buenos tardes, mi Coronel," the porter manning the guest-book table said, and then, when el Teniente Coronel Alejandro Bernardo Mart¡n had finished signing in, reached into a table drawer and handed him a small envelope.
"Muchas gracias," Mart¡n said.
He turned his back to the porter and quickly checked the flaps for signs of tampering. Finding none, he tore the envelope open. It contained a single sheet of paper. It was blank. He turned it over, and the other side was blank too.
He jammed the sheet of paper and the envelope into his trousers pocket and turned back to the porter.
"Marching orders," he said with a smile. "If Se¤ora Mart¡n should tele-phone, please tell her I am in compliance with her orders."
"S¡, mi Coronel," the porter said, exchanging a knowing smile with the doorman. Another wife-mandated shopping mission. It happened all the time. The Avenida Florida, between Avenida Cordoba and the Plaza San Martin, holds a number of department stores, ranging downward in size and prestige from the Buenos Aires branch of London's Harrod's to tiny one-man closet-size vendors.
Martin, shaking his head as if in resignation, passed back through the re-volving door, turned onto Avenida Florida, and started toward Plaza San Martin. He turned into Harrod's and quickly bought a pair of socks. Though he didn't need them, they came packed in a readily identifiable Harrod's paper bag. He then left, turning right again onto Florida and walking briskly toward Plaza San Martin. After one other stop, to buy a copy of La Nation, he walked to the end of Florida, crossed the street that circles the Plaza San Martin, and went into the park.
He ambled down the curving paths between (and sometimes under) the massive, ancient Gomero trees-some said to be four hundred years old-and then sat down on one side of a double bench. A tall, good-looking man in his twenties, who was wearing both the uniform of a Capitan of Cavalry and the de rigueur cavalry officer's mustache, sat on the other side of the bench, facing away from the Circulo Militar toward the River Plate.
Mart¡n took a quick look at the Circulo Militar. The magnificent Italian-style building had been built in the late nineteen century as a private residence by the owners of La Prensa, the second of Argentina's major newspapers. They had subsequently given it to the Army, as a small token, some said, of the fam-ily's admiration for that body. Others snickered knowingly when this explana-tion for the donors' multi-million-dollar generosity was offered.
Mart¡n picked up La Nation and opened it.
"Nothing," he said softly. "It is not in either the house on D¡az, or in the guest house on Libertador."
The Capitan, whose name was Roberto Lauffer, could not resist shrugging, but he looked the other way and covered his mouth with his handkerchief be-fore he replied.
"Then it has to be at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo," he said.
"I can't get anybody in there," Mart¡n said. "And even if I could, I don't have the combination to the safe. And it's a Himpell, German, built like a battleship. The only way to open it without a combination would be with a blow-torch. Or explosives."
"The dealer?" Capitan Lauffer asked.
"Don't you think I tried that?" Mart¡n said icily. "One of the many advan-tages of a Himpell safe is the ease with which the combination can be changed by its owner."
"You don't think anyone else has the combination? Suboficial Mayor Ro-driguez?"
"I think el Coronel Frade had the only combination, and in his mind, not written down somewhere." Mart¡n said.
"I will relay this to General Rawson," Capitan Lauffer said.
"I'll give you something else to ruin his dinner," Mart¡n said. "Humberto Duarte got a cable an hour ago from el Coronel Frade's son, asking that the fu-neral be delayed until he gets here."
"He's coming back?"
"He will leave Miami tomorrow on the Panagra flight"-Pan-American Airways-Grace Airlines.
"And Duarte will delay the funeral?"
"Of course he will."
Capitan Lauffer exhaled audibly.
"I will so inform General Rawson," he said.
"The room has been inspected for listening devices, but..."
"I understand," Lauffer said.
"I think that's everything for now," Mart¡n said.
"Yes, Sir," Lauffer said, rising. He then walked through the park toward the Circulo Militar.
When Teniente Coronel Mart¡n assumed his duties with the Ministry of De-fense's Bureau of Internal Security as "Chief, Ethical Standards Office," he was given responsibility for keeping an eye on the Grupo de Oficiales Unidos. For the G.O.U., it was correctly suspected, were planning a coup d'‚tat against the regime of President Ramon S. Castillo.
In the meantime, Coronel Martin's relationship with the G.O.U. had changed. A new set of circumstances had forced him to choose sides. On the one hand, he now accepted that his hope to remain apolitical and perform his services for whoever was constitutionally in office was wishful and naive. And on the other hand, he realized that he had chosen the right side, at least morally. Whether right would prevail was entirely another question.
In this light, he saw that his duty now was to prevent those with ties to Pres-ident Castillo from learning more than was absolutely necessary about the ac-tivities of the G.O.U.
The worst possible contingency was that Outline Blue would fall into the hands of President Castillo's supporters. For Outline Blue was the detailed plan for the coup d'‚tat, complete in every detail, including the names of the of-ficers involved and the roles they would play; everything except for the date and time of execution.
In view of the danger, only one complete copy of Outline Blue was as-sembled. This was entrusted to el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade. who had written most of it and was el Presidente of G.O.U. Frade was now dead, assas-sinated, Mart¡n believed, at the orders of the German Military Attach‚, acting on orders from Germany. His assassination served two German purposes-to keep Frade from becoming President, and to remind other senior Argentine of-ficers that Germany could punish its enemies as well as reward its friends.
But preventing Frade from becoming the next President of the Argentine Republic, Mart¡n believed, was the p
rimary cause of the assassination. For if the coup d'‚tat succeeded, that would have happened. The Germans did not want the President of Argentina to lead the nation away from its current status, which was Neutral, leaning heavily toward the Axis, to Neutral, leaning toward the Allies. Or worse: leading Argentina to a declaration of war against the Axis.
Six months before, the Germans, with reason, considered el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade a friend. He was a graduate of the German Kriegsschule-lit-erally, "War School." It was, roughly, the German military staff college, com-bining the American Command & General Staff College and the War College, and he was known to hate the United States in most of its aspects.
That changed within a matter of weeks, when the norteamericanos, in a brilliant ploy, dispatched to Argentina an Office of Strategic Services agent, who was, among other things, a Marine Corps aviation officer who had fought in the Pacific. More important, he was the son, estranged from infancy, of el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade.
The Germans then made the tactical blunder of attempting to assassinate the son. The attempt failed, and the son went on to carry out his mission, the sinking of the Reine de la Mer.
For Frade, blood proved stronger than the political belief that the Germans were fighting a near holy war against godless communism. He not only assisted his son in the sinking of the Reine de la Mer--by making his airplane available to find the ship-he also used his influence to ensure their escape from the country if they were caught trying to destroy the Reine de la Mer-by obtain-ing, for instance, Argentine passports for the OSS team.
Probably as bad, from the German point of view: el Coronel Frade was quoted in both La Nation and La Prensa as believing the Allied statement- which the Germans of course denied-that Germans had imprisoned several hundred thousand Jews for use as slave laborers. In fact, he went on to state he was convinced that the number of Jews in concentration camps was well over a million.
When el Coronel Frade's sudden, unexpected, and well-known change of sides became apparent to the Germans, Mart¡n believed, the decision was made to assassinate him.
The death of Frade not only saddened Coronel Martin-he genuinely liked him-it brought with it serious problems. If, in the course of normal post-mortem activities-which would include going into el Coronel Frade's safe-deposit boxes and personal safes-the Operations Order fell into the wrong hands, the coup d'‚tat would fail and those involved would be exposed. People involved in a coup d'‚tat are either saviors of their country or traitors.
Mart¡n didn't think Castillo would actually stand all those involved against a wall, or even see that all of them would be tried by court-martial and sen-tenced to long prison terms. Just perhaps the dozen or so people of the inner cir-cle. But however short the list of the inner circle, one of the names there would certainly be Teniente Coronel Alejandro Bernardo Martin's.
Mart¡n forced this uncomfortable line of thought from his mind and turned to the business immediately at hand. He was too deeply involved now to get out, even if he went directly to Castillo and exposed everyone. And he knew he was simply incapable of doing that. It was a question of honor. He had made his choice, and he would have to live with it.
Although he had been in the intelligence and counterintelligence business long enough to know that nothing should surprise him, he was nevertheless sur-prised that the sweep for listening devices of the room where Minister of War Teniente General Pedro P. Ramirez was about to take dinner with el General Arturo Rawson had found nothing. That was the meaning of the blank sheet of pa-per in the envelope at the Centro Naval. And he was equally surprised that the Federal Police were showing no interest in the meeting itself-at least none he could detect. For it was Ramirez's responsibility to order the coup; and if the coup succeeded-now that Frade was dead-Rawson was likely to be the next Presidente of the Argentine republic.
It occurred to Mart¡n that perhaps the meeting had been called off, and for some reason this had not been brought to his attention. Or it could be that the Federal Police had not been able to place a microphone in the building. Getting caught doing so would have been very embarrassing. If he were the Federal Po-lice official charged with watching General Ramirez he would be very careful not to anger him: the coup d'‚tat might succeed.
With all that in mind, he decided to wait until Ramirez and Rawson actu-ally appeared. And so he read La Nation, and glanced frequently across the street at the Circulo Militar.
At 2130, Teniente General Pedro P. Ramirez arrived in his official car be-fore the ornate gates of the Circulo Militar, seconds after the private 1940 Packard 220 sedan of General Rawson.
General Ramirez, seated in the rear of the Mercedes with his aide-de-camp, Mayor Pedro V. Querro, graciously signaled Rawson's chauffeur to precede him through the gates of the imposing mansion. This caused General Ramirez's chauffeur-who was not used to giving way to other vehicles-to suddenly and heavily apply his brakes.
Mart¡n almost laughed out loud as Mayor Querro, a tiny, immaculate, in-tense man with a pencil-line mustache, a look of outrage on his face, abruptly slid off the slippery dark red leather seat onto the floor. General Ramirez fared better; he managed to keep his seat by bracing himself against the back of the front seat. Shaking his head in amused disbelief, Mart¡n neatly refolded his La Nation and, carrying the Harrod's paper sack containing the unneeded socks, started back for Avenida Florida and the Centro Naval.
[THREE]
Neither General Rawson nor his chauffeur was aware of General Ramirez's and Mayor Querro's difficulty retaining their seats and their dignity. The chauffeur dropped Rawson off at the entrance, then drove into the mansion's interior courtyard to park the Packard.
Rawson, a good-looking, silver-haired man in his fifties, with a precisely trimmed mustache, was wearing a well-cut, somewhat somber dark-blue busi-ness suit. He stood beside the entrance and waited for Ramirez and Querro, who were in uniform-green tunics with Sam Browne belts, pink riding breeches and highly polished riding boots. Except for their leather-brimmed caps, with their stiff, gilt-encrusted oversize crowns, Ramirez and Querro looked not un-like U.S. Army cavalry officers.
"Arturo," General Ramirez greeted him, touching his arm affectionately.
"Mi General," Rawson replied, nodding at Mayor Querro.
"You are getting a little chubby," Ramirez said. "We will have to find some-thing useful for you to do, take some of that off."
"I am, with a long list of exceptions, entirely at the General's service," Rawson said.
Ramirez laughed, and the three passed through doors held open for them by neatly uniformed porters.
Inside the building, at the foot of a curving flight of marble stairs, another porter (like most of the Circulo Militar's employees, a retired Army sergeant) stood by the Register in which members of the Circulo Militar were supposed to sign their names on their arrival.
Aware that neither General Ramirez nor General Rawson ever complied with that regulation-or with any other they found inconvenient-and that the Membership Committee would not say anything about their breach of that rule-or of any other rule-the porter inscribed their names in the Register.
"Where have you put el General?" Mayor Querro asked, somewhat arro-gantly, as Ramirez started up the stairs.
"In Two-B, mi Mayor," the porter said.
"With a little bit of luck, there will not be a gaggle of women next to us," Rawson said.
"With a little bit of luck, perhaps there will be," Ramirez said. "Women in groups not only don't listen to each other, but to anyone else, either."
Rawson laughed, as he was expected to, and wondered if Ramirez was get-ting a little nervous.
Why not? When one is plotting a coup d'‚tat, and the details of that opera-tion may soon be on the desk of the man you hope to depose, one may be ex-cused for being a little nervous.
Two-B, on the second floor of the mansion, was a small private dining room, with a table capable of comfortably seating ten guests. Four places had been set,
with an impressive display of silver and crystal, at opposite ends of the table. A sideboard was loaded with bottles of whiskey, half a dozen kinds of wine, two silver wine coolers, and appropriate glasses.
Capitan Lauffer, who had been inspecting the wine, came to attention when the two general officers entered the room, as did two waiters in brief white jackets.
"Here you are, Roberto," Rawson said. "I think that when it's my time to pass through the pearly gates, you'll have gotten ahead of me there, too, and will be holding them open for me."
"Mi General," Lauffer said, and bowed his head toward General Ramirez.
"How are you, Lauffer?" he asked, smiling. He then turned to one of the waiters and pointed: "And put everyone at one end of the table," he ordered. "I don't want to have to shout at my guests."