Out of Mecklenburg

by James Remmer

  ‘That will do fine.’

  ‘How many nights, señor?’

  ‘One.’

  ‘Do you require dinner?’

  ‘A cold supper, served in my room – sandwiches, canapés and two bottles of Dom Pérignon, on ice. Instruct the waiter to deliver everything at exactly five past nine. And since I’ll be leaving early in the morning, I’ll settle my account now.’

  ‘Very good, señor. I’ll arrange for someone to take your bags upstairs.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ hastened von Menen. ‘I’ve only the one small suitcase.’ He peeled off a handful of notes to settle the bill, then headed for the elevator.

  Leaving nothing to chance, von Menen worked out his plan with meticulous care. Except for a brown paper bag, two envelopes and a knife, which Jorge Rosas had honed to razor-edge sharpness, his overnight suitcase was empty.

  Soon, all that remained of the suitcase was a heap of leather, two hinges, two locks and a handle. Von Menen stuffed the pieces into the brown paper bag, took the elevator to the ground floor and returned to the Hotel Plaza.

  Standing forlornly by his bedroom window, the weight of deceit bearing down on him like a foundry press, he gazed out across the wintry form of Plaza San Martin, eyes reaching for the Clínicas Hospital. Maria was just a heart-stopping ten-minute taxi ride away, yet completely unreachable. An impossible dream, stolen by lies and deceit, the questionable aspirations of the ruthless Vidal and – he muttered aloud – ‘that damned war in Europe’.

  At eight forty-five, von Menen took a taxi from the Hotel Plaza and headed for Avenida de Mayo, instructing the driver to park just west of Calle Piedras. He waited, his Walther in one pocket, two envelopes in the other — one addressed to Vidal, the other left blank.

  A black Packard pulled up on the opposite side of the carriageway, thirty yards ahead of the taxi. Vidal stepped out, glanced furtively along the sidewalk then hurried into Café Tortoni. Von Menen leapt from the cab, dashed across the road and made for the newspaper vendor pitched at the junction. Handing him the blank envelope, he hastened back along the sidewalk to meet the doorman standing by the entrance to the Café Tortoni. Money changed hands and the second envelope was soon on its way to Vidal.

  A minute later, Vidal emerged from the Tortoni, collected the second envelope from the newspaper vendor and read it beneath the light of a street lamp, his face a web of confusion.

  I can see you quite clearly.

  Do not speak further to the newspaper vendor and do not re-enter the Tortoni.

  Proceed directly to the vehicle with the flashing headlights.

  Von Menen ordered the driver to flash his lights. Vidal looked up, walked quickly towards the taxi and climbed into the back.

  ‘Carl?’

  ‘Yes, it is me, Filipe.’

  ‘What a transformation. I do believe it suits you. The beard, I mean.’ He beckoned von Menen’s ear. ‘Why the clandestine bit?’ he whispered.

  ‘These days one can never be too careful.’

  Vidal smiled, sank back into his seat and slapped his hands on his knees. ‘So, you decided to stay after all.’

  ‘Looks that way, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Yes. And I don’t mind admitting that I’m very grateful. Sorry you’ve had to wait all these months, but there were certain matters I had to be absolutely certain about. Anyway, where are we going?’ he asked, wiping the condensation from the taxi window with his gloved hand.

  ‘To your favourite hotel, but first, I’d like to know how Maria is.’

  ‘Oh, she’s fine, still at the Clínicas and still talking about you. She’s in Córdoba, by the way, so there’s no fear of you bumping into her tonight, which is just as well, really, since she thinks you’re in Germany. Everyone does.’

  ‘Given the circumstances, I didn’t have much of a choice. I told you I didn’t want her implicated’ – he looked suspiciously at Vidal – ‘or endangered. And her father?’

  ‘Much better. He’s finally learned the art of relaxation.’

  It was exactly nine-ten when the driver dropped them at Callao & Posadas. They walked around the block and entered the Alvear Palace via the entrance in Ayacucho.

  By the time they had reached the suite, the waiter had been and gone. The scene was set.

  Vidal poured himself a glass of champagne and settled into a deep leather chair, watching the condensation trickle down the side of the ice bucket. ‘So, where’ve you been hiding?’ he teased. ‘Córdoba?’ But he shook his head at his own suggestion. ‘No, couldn’t be. That would have been very foolish. Rosario? Mendoza?’

  Von Menen remained expressionless.

  ‘Not Buenos Aires, surely?’

  ‘You must be joking. There are more Federal Police crawling these streets than you could get inside the Boca Juniors’ football stadium.’

  ‘That’s because we need the Federal Police on the streets… They help to keep the walrus academics of the military in check.’

  ‘They keep the public in check, too,’ said von Menen sharply.

  ‘If you’re referring to the events of the past few days… yes, some of us did find it a bit depressing, but freedom must be limited for the sake of the cause. Too much liberty brings chaos and disorder.’

  ‘Is that what Perón thinks?’

  The question alarmed Vidal.

  ‘Well?’ pressed von Menen.

  ‘Best ask that woman,’ Vidal mumbled.

  ‘I see… Well, since your eminent Vice President isn’t on the agenda, maybe you should tell me why you made contact with me.’

  Vidal fumbled with his monogrammed silver cigarette case, pulled out a chunky Saratoga and lit it, the smoke leaving his lips in a long, grey plume. He took another long draw and then, as if inspired by the intake of nicotine, jerked forward.

  ‘Carl, about last January… Ramírez was a little hasty, I’m sure you know that.’

  ‘Certainly. It was a foolhardy gesture, even for a President.’ The joke was lost on Vidal. ‘In his efforts to outwit Perón, his actions recoiled on him. Now he’s joined the ranks of the other failures… but the situation would never have arisen if your meddling Colonel Sanchez hadn’t poked his nose into the arms deal.’

  Vidal raised his brow. ‘How did you know it was Sanchez?’

  ‘Easy. La Nación said his wife had reported him missing, so I put two and two together, arriving at the only logical conclusion – murder!’

  Vidal picked up his glass. ‘Come, come, Carl… the man went missing.’

  ‘Well, whatever happened to Sanchez, I’m still here. So, let’s try again. What is it you want to speak to me about?’

  ‘I’m getting there,’ said Vidal. ‘Ramírez’s backers had the misguided notion that, having severed diplomatic relations with Germany, America would supply us with arms.’

  ‘Enough to have put you on a par with Brazil, appease the more militant element of the army and silence Perón?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘But it didn’t turn out like that?’

  ‘No, because the Americans have the ridiculous notion that we’re still hell-bent on subverting our neighbours, especially Chile.’

  ‘Filipe!’ snapped von Menen. ‘You did ask for a submarine, and that would have given the Americans a great deal to be anxious about. I mean, I can almost hear Roosevelt’s thinking – They’ll coerce the Chileans to give up the area south of the fiftieth parallel. They want control of the Cape. Forget the Americans; threatening the Falklands would have brought the whole of the Royal Navy’s South Atlantic fleet to your doorstep!’ He shook his head. ‘But that’s all academic. What are you really trying to tell me?’

  Vidal reached for his handkerchief, dabbed an unwanted segment of tobacco from his tongue and pulled himself forward,
his manicured fingernails digging into the arms of his chair. ‘Carl, there’s a lot of talk in the media about Germany being finished. I do not share those sentiments. Germany is unconquerable! Victory is just around the corner.’

  Suddenly, Vidal’s voice was brimming with conviction; his cheeks, normally smooth and pale, flushed red, the veins at the side of his face looking like lengths of purple spaghetti, his eyes glazed with excitement.

  He actually believes it, thought von Menen. He really believes that Germany will prevail.

  ‘Hitler is a soldier of providence,’ said Vidal, ‘manifested by a power the likes of which Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin do not understand. He’s an invincible genius. Believe me, Germany will win the war.’

  Such sentiments were cold comfort for von Menen. ‘If what I’ve read in the Argentine press is true, Filipe, Germany’s cause looks pretty damn bleak to me. The Allies have a firm foothold in France, our westerly counter-attack has failed and the German army is in retreat. The Russians have already reached the East Prussian border, and at Kishinev we are completely surrounded. Considering all that, I’m heartened to know that you’re still so confident.’

  ‘I have every reason to be,’ enthused Vidal. ‘Germany’s so-called “miracle” weapons will lead her to victory: her new jet-propelled aircraft, long-range ballistic rocket missiles and revolutionary electro U-boats!’

  ‘Your analysis of Germany’s situation is very reassuring, Filipe, but I’m sure that you didn’t go to the trouble of keeping me here all these months just to give me a lecture on how Germany is going to win the war. I’ll ask you again, what do you want? Why am I here?’

  Vidal sucked in his breath through clenched teeth, a slight twitch appearing at the corner of his mouth. ‘All right,’ he sighed. ‘I need arms. Two thousand MP-40 sub-machine pistols and 200 light machine guns, MG-42 Spandaus.’

  ‘Is that with or without the ammunition?’ asked von Menen sardonically.

  ‘I’m being earnestly serious, Carl, but since you mentioned it…’ – a faint smile fed into his eyes – ‘a token amount of nine-millimetre wouldn’t go amiss. There’s something else, too.’

  Von Menen listened with heightened awareness.

  ‘We have a couple of submarines laid up with defective periscopes.’ Vidal pulled a notebook from his pocket, flicked open the first page and studied it briefly. ‘By periscopes, I don’t mean the whole periscope mechanism, I mean the prism element. Your people in Germany will know what I’m talking about.’ He glanced at his notebook again. ‘Periscope seals have a limited life span; they rupture, seawater gets into the chamber and the prisms get damaged. When that happens, the whole periscope is rendered ineffectual.’ Vidal leaned over the table, his eyebrows almost touching the ceiling. ‘Without a periscope, a submarine is useless. I need those prisms.’

  ‘Hold it, Filipe,’ said von Menen. ‘I’m not so sure about this. If I’m not careful, I could end up in the same situation as some of my compatriots.’ He fixed Vidal a piercing glance. ‘Are you sure you can’t do this some other way?’

  A devious smile burgeoned across Vidal’s face. ‘There is nobody else. You’re the only one left. If you’ve been reading the newspapers, you’ll know that we’ve rounded up every German agent in Argentina.’

  ‘I read about that, and I couldn’t help thinking how perverse it was, given the relationship some of your colleagues had with certain elements of the German legation.’

  ‘But we had to do something, Carl. There were more German agents in Argentina than you could shake a stick at… and I use the term agent loosely. Some of them might just as well have had their occupations tattooed on their foreheads. But I deliberately gave you free rein. Why else do you think you’re still here?’ Vidal lit up another cigarette. ‘So?’

  ‘What does Germany get in return?’

  ‘Immediately, nothing, but eventually, the same as I offered you before: gold and export credits. And if things do go drastically wrong for Germany, which I doubt, I’m prepared to throw in a little sweetener – some additional benefits, if you like, for anyone who might be interested in, shall we say, relocating.’ Vidal laid a sealed envelope on the table, tapped at it with his finger. ‘That’s the order list.’

  ‘It’s more achievable than tanks and artillery pieces, but there’s still the logistical problem of getting it here.’

  ‘Allow me to enlighten you.’ Vidal glimpsed quickly at his notebook. ‘You have any number of U-boats with the capacity to carry several tonnes of cargo and they’re quite capable of reaching the South Atlantic. Type 1XC cargo carriers, for example; range, nearly 17,000 miles… Type 1XD U-Cruiser; range, over 32,000 miles… Type XB, cargo-carrying minelayer; range, 21,000 miles. And, of course, the electro U-boat; range, 15,000 miles.’

  Vidal had done his homework, or someone had done it for him.

  ‘I can’t argue with those figures, Filipe, because I don’t know. But as for this new electro-submarine, well, it’s probably still on the drawing board.’

  ‘Wrong,’ replied Vidal, with a huge grin. ‘Several have been commissioned already, at Hamburg and Bremen.’

  ‘There’s an additional problem – the Atlantic is bristling with Allied warships.’

  ‘Maybe, maybe, but that isn’t to say that the Allies could find one of your new electro U-boats.’ Vidal pulled a second envelope from his pocket and dropped it on the table. ‘You may need that. And to convince you that my motives are genuine, I’ve arranged for the all-important page at the front to be left blank. Fill in whatever details you like. If it helps, you can tell von Ribbentrop that, if all goes well, he has my word that diplomatic relations between Argentina and Germany will be restored within weeks.’

  ‘You said that with great conviction, Filipe. What makes you so sure?’

  ‘Trust me.’

  Von Menen thought a while. ‘This will take time,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘and even then, I’m not so sure that…’

  Vidal fixed him with an implacable, threatening gaze, leapt forward and banged his fist loudly on the table, a smoked salmon sandwich rising from the silver salver and dropping to the floor. ‘Time is something you don’t have! You must be sure. You have no choice.’

  Von Menen’s lengthened silence provoked him further, forcing him to reveal his last hand, the flush of aces.

  ‘You ought to be thinking about Maria, you know, the two of you getting married. It’s what you want, isn’t it? I mean, anything could happen to her. Remember Colonel Sanchez?’

  Von Menen reached calmly into his jacket, pulled out the Walther, released the safety catch, drew back the breech and fetched the first round into the chamber.

  Vidal stared brazenly at the muzzle. ‘I should warn you, Carl,’ he said calmly, ‘if I do not make a certain telephone call by midnight, Maria, who is already being watched, will have her name in the obituary columns of La Nación within forty-eight hours.’

  ‘Your own niece? You’d kill your own niece? You’re mad!’

  ‘Caligula killed most of his relatives,’ replied Vidal, cold and expressionless.

  Von Menen reined in his repulsion, reset the safety catch and pocketed the weapon. Reaching across the table, he took hold of Vidal’s wrist and squeezed it. Vidal grimaced as he felt the pressure increase, the same pressure that had crushed the life out of Erhardt Jost.

  ‘Filipe,’ von Menen said quietly, ‘if anything happens to Maria, I promise you, I will kill you, even if I have to circumnavigate the globe ten times to find you.’ He released Vidal but continued to stare coldly into his eyes.

  ‘I get the guns, you get Maria,’ said Vidal, rubbing his wrist. ‘I get what I want, you get what you want… everyone’s happy.’

  ‘And if I don’t?’

  ‘You know the answer to that question.’

  ‘How much time do I ha
ve?’

  ‘Even I realise that you cannot do it in a month, or even two months, but I wouldn’t wish you to think that you have all the time in the world.’

  ‘And if I do put forward your proposals to von Ribbentrop, and von Ribbentrop succeeds in convincing Hitler, then what?’

  ‘You get a message to me through a contact in Germany. You’ll find her address in the envelope. Her name is Grace Martens.’

  ‘Grace Martens!’ Von Menen stifled his laughter. ‘Don’t you mean Graciela Martinez, or maybe Graciela Gonzalez?’

  ‘No need for the cynicism. She’s Argentine, of German origin. Her parents live in Rosario. She used to be a secretary with Deutsche Bank in Berlin.’

  ‘And now she works for you and her only companion is a radio.’

  Vidal restrained his annoyance. ‘I told you when we first met: you have, or did have, people in Argentina; we have people in Germany.’

  ‘So, if and when I have some positive news for you, I get in touch with this Grace Martens, and she does the rest?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking. But you must not impart anything other than a “yes” or “no”. If the answer is “yes”, include an approximate date of delivery, in code.’

  ‘A code of which she, no doubt, is completely unaware, and only you will understand?’

  ‘That’s right,’ smiled Vidal. ‘Take the word MOTHERLAND. “M” equals zero, “O” equals one, and so on. If, for example, you anticipate that delivery will take place approximately fifteen weeks after the date of the signal, the message will read, “YES – O.R.” Only then can I proceed with forward planning at this end.’

  ‘And when I arrive at the address, how do I identify myself to Grace?’

  ‘Give your name as Javier Maria Gomez, a Spanish expatriate.’

  ‘Your permanent reminder to me of why I’m doing this?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ shrugged Vidal. ‘Anyway, you’re to explain that you’re collecting on behalf of wounded members of the Spanish Blue Division serving on the Russian Front.’

  ‘And how will she reply?’

  ‘That her husband was with the same division and that he was killed in June.’