Out of Mecklenburg

by James Remmer

  ‘Yes, but…’

  ‘But nothing, von Menen, that’s the end of it. I’m perfectly satisfied with your explanation.’

  Tormented by the horrifying thought that perhaps von Moltke had not been the only one to have lost his freedom at the hands of the Gestapo, von Menen took his leave.

  Von Menen headed immediately for the Banco de la Nación, closed his account and opened another at the Banco de Boston, using the name Carlos Menendez. With the money hidden beneath the floorboards at the cottage added to that in the safe at his apartment, he had the equivalent of over $30,000 USD, a fortune by anyone’s standards.

  By late afternoon, he’d packed his trunk and two suitcases and removed all evidence of his German origins from his clothing. The next phase of his duplicitous life was about to begin. He penned a short letter to Maria, shook off the sentiments of gloom, stuffed the envelope in his pocket and headed for her apartment.

  Maria had left a note on the dining room table.

  Sorry, Carl, but I’ve been called to the Clínicas. Hope to be with you by seven. There’s a cold drink in the icebox.

  See you soon.

  Love, Maria.

  He was sitting next to the balcony window when the taxi pulled up in the street below. Maria rushed into the building and sprinted up the ten flights of stairs to the fifth floor.

  Von Menen looked at his watch. One, two, three, four, five… twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two… A key went into the lock. As the door flew open, he checked his watch one final time. ‘Twenty-eight seconds, darling. Your best time ever!’ he joked.

  Breathing heavily, she fell into his arms. ‘I’m sorry,’ she gasped; ‘thought I could beat the lift. Anyway, I’m not too late, am I?’

  ‘No, it’s only just turned seven.’

  She billowed out the top of her dress. ‘Phew, I’m so hot… Can’t wait to get under a cold shower.’ She headed for the bathroom.

  ‘I’ve booked a table for eight-thirty,’ he called, as she stepped into the shower.

  ‘I can’t hear you… Open the door.’

  He did, and saw her hazy image behind the screen, a stirring reminder of what he was walking away from. ‘I’ve booked a table for eight-thirty at El Tropezón. It’s a little early, but seeing as you’ve got to be back at the Clínicas by seven in the morning…’

  ‘That’s fine,’ she replied.

  A few minutes later, Maria paraded into the sitting room, did a quick twirl and halted beside the coffee table. ‘Do you like it?’ she asked.

  ‘Very much. The colour suits you.’

  She stepped forward, took hold of the pale blue material and flared out the hem. ‘I bought it in Córdoba… Thought I’d treat myself. It’s not very showy, but it’s nice and cool and seeing as the weather has been so hot and sticky…’

  ‘It’s very nice.’

  Dinner was a silent, sombre affair, von Menen’s mood deeply morose, his mind full of turmoil. How to tell her… When to tell her?

  In a perverse kind of way, her presence served merely to heighten his anguish – the touch of her hand and smell of her perfume constant reminders of the daunting, awful moment of truth. Yet von Menen’s main worry was the lie: deception and sheer dishonesty. In Maria’s eyes, he would be back in Germany, when, in truth, he would be a mere three hundred kilometres from Buenos Aires.

  He now questioned the value of Vidal’s shadowy scheme, wondering if it was worth all the anxiety. He was minded to tell Maria there and then, spurt it out and get it over with, but he decided to wait until they were back at her apartment.

  Two hours later, Maria was standing by the drawing room window. Holding her snug around her waist, her hands clasped on top of his, the moment of truth had arrived.

  ‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ he whispered. Von Menen was perfectly still. All he could feel was the beat of her heart.

  ‘I think I can guess what it is,’ she murmured. ‘I wanted to ask you about it earlier, but I thought it might spoil the evening.’

  ‘You know, then?’

  She turned and faced him, her eyes full of tears. ‘I think so. You only have to read the newspapers — the rumours, the innuendoes… You’re leaving, aren’t you?’ Her voice trembled, her eyes almost inside his head.

  Choking on his own sentiment, von Menen could feel the pain that had been threatening to overwhelm him for days. ‘Yes, it’s inevitable,’ he stuttered.

  A look of forlorn hopelessness reached across her face, tears flooding from her eyes and trickling down her cheeks. As he brushed his fingers soothingly across her face, she stared at him, her eyes pained and embellished with redness.

  ‘Take me with you, please!’ she pleaded.

  ‘I can’t, Maria, you know I can’t.’

  ‘But why? I’m a doctor… Germany needs doctors,’ she said hurriedly.

  ‘You’re also Argentinian, and Argentina needs doctors, too – good doctors like you. In any event, I want you here, where it’s safe. I’m coming back, I promise.’

  ‘Coming back?’ A glimmer of hope sprang into her eyes.

  ‘Yes, by any means possible. I give you my word.’ He kissed her tenderly on the forehead. ‘There’s something else I have to say to you, something I want to ask you, really.’ There was a look of seriousness about him, a look she had never seen before. She listened intently, searching his eyes for the words she had been aching to hear for so long. ‘I don’t just want you to wait for me,’ he said, ‘I want you to be my wife. Will you do me that honour?’

  Charged by a sudden torrent of joyfulness, she gazed deep into his eyes, wrapped herself about him and shouted, ‘YES! The answer is YES!’

  In the few precious hours that remained, not a hair’s breadth or a whisper of warm night air came between them.

  Maria woke as the first light of dawn filtered through the curtains. She slithered her feet over the edge of the bed and crept from beneath the sheets.

  Wiping the sleep from his eyes, von Menen motioned to join her, but she shook her head. As he lay there, in a muddled half-sleep, she leaned over him, smiled and kissed him softly on the lips. He pulled her close and wrapped her in his arms, but said nothing. The message was in his warm embrace. He would not be there when she returned and she knew it.

  ‘No need to get up,’ she whispered.

  The door closed shut and as he lay there, gazing silently at the ceiling, he could hear the faint noise of her footsteps as she made her way along the corridor.

  The alarm went off at seven thirty. Von Menen sprang out of bed, called out her name and then remembered… she was gone.

  He found the letter on the bedside cabinet, alongside a photograph and a pretty white handkerchief, embroidered in pink. It carried the unmistakable fragrance of her perfume and the imprint of a fresh, red kiss.

  My Dearest Carl,

  Knowing how much you hate doorstep goodbyes, my heart told me instinctively that you will not be here when I return. I give you my undying and deepest love. Please take it with you. All I ask in return is that you PLEASE, PLEASE come back. Wherever you are, whatever you do, my love will be with you, always.

  Your loving and affectionate Maria.

  In a moment of panic, he reached for the telephone, then thought better of it and replaced the receiver. He picked up the handkerchief, replaced it with his own and exchanged his letter for hers.

  After depositing his apartment keys with Jose, von Menen snatched a late breakfast at the Hotel Plaza, telephoned the Embassy and left a message with the receptionist: ‘The package for Fräulein Hein is waiting for collection.’

  The next day, Buenos Aires was a cauldron of intrigue, the city buzzing with rumours that Ramírez was not only preparing to sever diplomatic relations with Germany, but he was about to declare war against her, too! The pressure was e
scalating.

  10

  Von Menen hurried along the quay, the smell of paint and varnish rising as he neared Margarita.

  ‘Mind the wheelhouse door,’ said Rivera. ‘The paint’s still wet.’

  Von Menen glanced around the deck. ‘It’s unbelievable,’ he said. ‘You must have been here—’

  ‘From eight in the morning ’til six at night, except Sundays.’ Ushering von Menen to the back of the wheelhouse, he gestured to the engine. ‘Had someone down from the local garage to look her over.’

  ‘And?’

  Rivera swung the handle, the engine coughing into life, puffs of grey smoke billowing from the exhaust. ‘As sweet as the day I bought her.’

  ‘What say we give her a run out in the morning?’ suggested von Menen. ‘If there’s enough wind, we can put her under sail.’

  A light crept into Rivera’s eyes. ‘Fine by me. There’ll be some rain, mind, but there’s a spare set of oilskins in the hut.’

  ‘Gasoline?’

  Rivera lifted his beret, scratched his head. ‘Only a guess, but I reckon the tank’s about two-thirds full; should take another fifty litres. We won’t need coupons, though; fishing boats are exempt. We’ll leave just after six… High tide is at seven. By the time we reach the confluence, there’ll be enough water under the boat to clear the sandbanks. We’ll make north-east across the bay, skirt the lighthouse and head out into the Atlantic. By then, we’ll have enough wind to stretch the canvas.’

  *

  In Buenos Aires, Ramirez had failed to get rid of Perón and now Ramirez was gone, replaced by another GOU marionette, General Edelmiro Farrell. Perón’s political star was rising. It was rising in his private life, too: a dazzling lady, young enough to be his daughter, tall, slim and attractive, with unnaturally blonde hair and a passion for fame and prominence, had stepped into his life. Her name was Eva Duarte.

  *

  Von Menen explained his lingering stay at the cottage by the simple expediency ‘I’m writing a book’, which everyone seemed to accept. He went unshaven, wore simple clothes, spent much of his time aboard Margarita and became a willing hand at the estancia.

  Keen to add the rudiments of English and German to his new-found literacy in Spanish, Jorge Rosas became a frequent visitor and often joined von Menen on his sailing trips.

  But von Menen was far from content. The constraints of his prolonged seclusion, lack of news about his family and enforced separation from the outspoken Maria were a constant reminder of his bizarre and precarious circumstances. His anxiety for Maria’s safety deepened with every snippet of information arriving from Buenos Aires, where a full-blown dictatorship was burgeoning, fuelled by the growing stature of the infant Federal Police.

  Von Menen continued to make his weekly transmissions to Germany, but the only information they contained was that which he’d read in the press, and he received only a customary acknowledgement by way of reply. But it was more than he ever heard from the dormant Vidal who, for all his insistence that von Menen should remain in Argentina, was as noticeable as a solitary grain of sand on the beach at Mar del Plata. Had it not been for the weekly pile of La Nación newsprint, which he burned in the garden of the cottage each Friday, von Menen might well have forgotten all about him.

  *

  Hitler’s grip on the war was weakening: the Allies had landed in Normandy and the German army was now on the defensive in France, Italy and Russia.

  Meanwhile, in Buenos Aires, Perón was getting busy. His sweeping reforms of the Labour Movement were apace, trade unionists forced to accept them. Those who refused joined their like-minded friends in Villa Devoto Prison or found themselves shoved aboard the “last train” to the infamous Neuquén concentration camp. The sale of one-way tickets across the River Plate increased dramatically, while the less fortunate simply “disappeared”.

  *

  Thursday 20th July 1944

  Half a dozen people were gathered in the hotel bar, von Menen drinking his afternoon coffee.

  ‘Quiet!’ shouted Luis, turning up the radio.

  ‘I repeat,’ said the announcer, ‘we are interrupting this broadcast with an important news bulletin… Adolf Hitler is dead. Unconfirmed reports say that the German leader was killed during a bomb attack at his military headquarters in East Prussia earlier today. A further bulletin will be issued later.’

  A maid, wide-eyed and confused, rushed in from the kitchen and straight into a wall of silence. Transfixed and dumbfounded, von Menen looked like an alabaster figure cemented to the floor, the news slowly sinking in.

  Suddenly, the bar erupted. Luis turned down the radio. Rivera looked at the ceiling, crossed his chest and said, ‘Mary, Mother of Jesus, a miracle.’

  ‘Did… I… hear… correctly?’ von Menen asked, stretching out the words. ‘Is… Adolf Hitler… dead?’

  ‘Seems like it,’ said the barman.

  ‘A brandy, please, Luis, a large one.’

  Von Menen swallowed the measure in one, euphoria threatening to consume him. He placed the empty glass on the counter and walked calmly out of the bar.

  The shooting brake had barely reached the end of the road when von Menen let out a loud, joyous cry. ‘It’s over!’ he bellowed, as if the whole world was listening. ‘No more Hitler, no more Himmler, Goebbels, Göring; no more von Ribbentrop!’ And if there was no more von Ribbentrop, it followed that there’d be no more Information Department Three and no more Vidal! The scent of triumph was in the air.

  Already, he imagined himself back in Buenos Aires, collecting Maria, explaining everything, whisking her away to the theatre, a late-night dinner at La Cabaña and… freedom.

  Back at the cottage he sat glued to the radio, ceaselessly tuning in the aerial, never daring to venture out of the room. ‘I must emphasise that these reports are still unconfirmed,’ the newscaster kept repeating.

  Later that afternoon, Radio Belgrano issued a further news bulletin.

  ‘German radio station Deutschlandsender has broadcast an announcement throughout Europe that Adolf Hitler is alive. I repeat, Adolf Hitler is still alive. A plot to kill him at his headquarters in East Prussia failed. Several people are understood to have been arrested.’

  Von Menen collapsed into a chair, face flushed with torment, his body numb with disbelief. Suddenly the collective madness of Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels and the rest had returned, bringing with it a question of torturous magnitude – who had been arrested? It was answered at eleven o’clock that evening, in a final bulletin from Buenos Aires.

  ‘In a broadcast at nine o’clock local time, Adolf Hitler confirmed to the German nation that he was still alive. The Führer blamed today’s events on “a tiny clique of ambitious, irresponsible and at the same time, stupid and criminal officers.” A number of senior officers are reported to have been shot, amongst them, General Ludwig Beck, former Chief of the Army General Staff, and Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, the officer who is alleged to have planted the bomb—’

  Grim-faced, von Menen switched off the radio. He paced the full length of the room, out into the hall, through to the kitchen and back again, all the while agonising over the repercussions that were sure to follow.

  In the ensuing two weeks, the names of eight others who had fallen from the scaffold at Plötzensee Prison spilled from the radio like an excerpt from a military Who’s Who; among them, Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben and Lieutenant Peter Yorck von Wartenburg.

  Von Wartenburg’s name stoked pains of anguish in von Menen’s stomach. A cousin of von Stauffenberg, he had been von Moltke’s closest Kreisau Circle conspirator.

  In Argentina, von Menen was safe, at least from the clutches of the Gestapo, but in Germany, the net would be closing in. He prayed that it would not close in on his family.

  In Europe, the Nazis were in deep crisis, but in Argentina, a n
ew political will was blossoming. The imminent liberation of Paris and the uprising of the French Resistance sent a tidal wave of strong sentiment sweeping across Buenos Aires, the city wrapped in red, white and blue, the French tricolour hanging from every window. Few had ever seen so much of France in their entire lives. Stirred by the events in Paris, the people of Argentina joined in a spontaneous display of civil disobedience.

  Perón responded. Thousands of paramilitary Federal Police, supported by thuggish elements of Peronist nationalists, swept into action with brutal efficiency.

  Meanwhile, the message von Menen had been waiting almost seven months for appeared in consecutive editions of La Nación:

  DI FRANCO Rodolfo, husband of Carmela Anna Margarita, died peacefully in his sleep…

  11

  Monday 28th August 1944

  Buenos Aires

  Impeccably dressed in a dark chalk-stripe suit, von Menen checked in at the Hotel Plaza, drove to Retiro Station, parked the shooting brake and headed straight for the Alvear Palace Hotel, taking a small overnight suitcase with him.

  ‘I’d like a suite,’ he announced at the reception desk. ‘The best you have.’

  The man in full morning dress fingered through a large blue ledger. ‘I can offer you the Presidential suite, señor?’