by James Remmer
‘Remember the meeting we had in the library, just before you left? I mentioned that another electro boat was being fitted out at Lübeck-Siems… polished oak and all that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, surprise, surprise… I’ve been ordered to reconnoitre the north coast of the Gulf of San Matias, just west of the River Negro, which means I won’t have enough fuel to get back to Bergen. It’s a foregone conclusion that I’ll have to take fuel from another U-boat in the North Atlantic.’
‘Seems you have a problem.’
‘Indeed… but our immediate task is to get those ammunition cases off my boat and on to this old girl, which begs the question, how much weight will she take?’
‘A tonne, maximum, but by the time I get back, I’ll have dumped everything over the side… everything except the gold, that is. If I’m to clear the sandbanks at the mouth of the River Ajo, I must leave here by one o’clock at the latest.’
Lanze looked around the deck. ‘Talking of cargo, what’s all this we’re sitting on?’
‘A little something for you and the crew – wine, cigarettes, tobacco, fresh meat, fruit, vegetables, chocolate and bread. Some of it I brought down from Buenos Aires, some of it I picked up at Dolores yesterday.’
‘In that case, my dear thoughtful brother-in-law, let’s get to work. Got that torch handy?’
‘Yes, right here.’
‘Well, since you know how to use it, you’d best signal the boat and tell them we’re coming alongside. And remember, Carl, when we get there, no familiarity – I call you “señor”, you call me “Captain”. Understood?’
‘Understood, Captain… Just as well I’ve never met any of your crew before, isn’t it?’
When Margarita tied up forward of Andromeda’s tower, men were already feverishly at work on the for’ard deck. Stripped to their waists, two ratings dropped down from a rope ladder, and with wide smiles began passing up cases of wine, fresh fruit and vegetables.
A while later, the flow of cargo reversed, as cases of “ammunition” were hauled up on rope harnesses through the torpedo hatch and lowered cautiously on to the deck of Margarita, von Menen checking each case carefully, ensuring that the twenty with his father’s special identity mark were kept separate from the rest.
Thirty minutes after midnight, the transfer was complete.
Lanze glanced up at the bridge, turned to von Menen and said quietly, ‘With luck, you’ll see me before the year is out, hopefully with Hans and Greta.’
‘I sincerely hope so, Jürgen.’
As they were about to part, Lanze dipped hurriedly into his jacket pocket and pulled out a very thick package. ‘Nearly forgot,’ he smiled. ‘For you. Your salary, I imagine.’
‘Make sure the three of you get here, Jürgen,’ said von Menen. ‘I’m relying on it.’
From the bridge of Andromeda, Lanze watched wistfully as Margarita pulled away. At 200 metres, Andromeda’s Aldis lamp began to blink: FROM THE CREW. WHOEVER YOU ARE, THANKS.
Von Menen smiled, picked up his torch and flashed back. A PLEASURE. GOD SPEED.
By the time Margarita had reached the sandbanks, the seabed had played host to half a tonne of nine-millimetre ammunition. All that remained on deck now, hidden beneath a pile of ropes and canvas sheets, was forty bars of gold bullion.
Sunday 11th March 1945
At 03h00 local time, an erroneous message of duress was received at the German Foreign Office’s wireless headquarters.
INITIAL STAGE COMPLETE.
NEXT RENDEZVOUS 21:00 LOCAL 11 MARCH.
The security code was missing!
Tuesday 13th March 1945
Von Menen took Margarita to a position just beyond the mouth of the Ria Ajo and dumped the radio and the rest of the paraphernalia over the side. The unceremonious act of defiance marked the end of his association with the German Foreign Office for good.
The radio and its accoutrements had gone, the spare battery was in the back of the car and the one-time pads had been burned. At the cottage, the floorboards in the “study” had been screwed down for the last time. All that was left of von Menen’s clandestine life now was the money and the blank identity cards.
*
Thursday 15th March 1945
Von Menen returned to Buenos Aires, taking with him the cash Lanze had delivered and the money he’d retrieved from beneath the floor of the cottage. It amounted to the equivalent of over $40,000 USD, enough to provide for a comfortable long-term existence, even without the gold.
Maria responded to his long-term absence with the same degree of tolerance and indifference as she had done previously. Outside the bounds of contented domesticity, their relationship continued under a cloak of intrigue and expedient silence – he said nothing and she asked no awkward questions.
Meanwhile, his visits to the cottage continued. He checked regularly on Margarita and continued his tuition with Rosas, relishing the few days of freedom from the confines of his apartment in Buenos Aires, where he remained hostage to his own circumstances.
On the political front, the Farrell-Perón administration was still clinging to its mollifying promise of renewed democratisation. As the gap between Argentina and the Axis partnership widened further, they began currying favour with the near-victorious Allies. For von Menen, their wooing of Roosevelt proved too untimely by far, when, on 27th March, Argentina declared war against Germany!
Defunct spy or otherwise, von Menen now saw his life in Argentina in an entirely different perspective. Using one of the blank identity documents Vidal had given him, he concocted another pseudonym, drove down to the cottage, replenished the tanks of Margarita and stored several cans of gasoline in the hut alongside the quay.
For the moment, he would take his chances in Argentina, but if things went horribly wrong, he would strike out across the River Plate and head for Uruguay.
In Europe, Germany’s demise was approaching fast. The Red Army was about to kick down the door to Berlin, and the US and British armies were advancing rapidly towards the River Elbe, the line which would form the boundary between the Western and Russian zones of occupation.
On 16th April, seven days after the execution by the SS of Canaris, Oster and Dietrich Bonhoeffer at Flossenbürg, the Red Army began its final assault on the capital. Completely surrounded, Berlin was all but dead, her life-blood ebbing away beneath a relentless barrage of Russian artillery, the streets full of the killed and injured. At one o’clock on the afternoon of Monday 30th April, Soviet troops sprang from their positions around the Kroll Opera House and stormed the Reichstag. It was the moment the Russians had been waiting for.
Deep in his bunker below the Reich Chancellery, Adolf Hitler, a physical and mental wreck, retired to his private quarters and shot himself. Two days later, the German garrison in Berlin surrendered. On 7th May, Germany capitulated.
The futility of Hitler’s war had left millions dead, maimed and missing, the survivors struggling beyond the margins of existence. Germany’s cities were buried beneath enough rubble to fill a hole 1.5 kilometres square, deeper than the height of the Eiffel Tower. Much of it was in Berlin, a city of unparalleled destruction, the toil of centuries laid to waste.
The world had responded to Hitler’s crackpot vision of a totalitarian 1,000-year Reich with a resounding ‘No!’ The fearsome and fiery zeal of Nazi ideology had been beaten and the most evil and wicked form of social engineering had been brought to an end. Those who had refused to believe it, shunned it, or denied it, now saw the truth for themselves, as a ghostly procession of emaciated humans, men, women and children, emerged from the liberated Nazi death camps, eyes sunk deep into their skulls, free to begin a lifetime of mental trauma.
Something else was beginning, too. On the east side of the River Elbe, millions of Germans were faced with the daunting realisation of life under
a new totalitarian regime.
General von Menen had been right. The Russians had gobbled up half of Germany, and with it, the whole of Mecklenburg, including the von Menen estate. East of the Elbe, one tyrant had been exchanged for another. His name was Josef Stalin. In his Wagnerian exit from the world, Hitler had left the German nation a legacy of abhorrence and division.
For Maria, the end of the war in Europe brought a renewed, albeit cautious, approach to her future. She wanted to get married. She wanted children. But von Menen did not quite see it that way. ‘Another few months won’t make that much difference,’ he kept telling her.
He revealed nothing about his parents and nothing about his sister; in fact, he said nothing about anything or anybody. She knew something was wrong, yet she stayed silent.
In a way, von Menen wanted to rid himself of the lies, tell her everything, but he lacked the courage. Where will I start? he kept asking himself – Vidal and his quest to overthrow Perón, Information Department Three, the cottage, the boat, the car, a half-tonne of gold, or the fact that when she had so desperately needed him, he had been in Argentina all along?
In the end, he convinced himself that it wasn’t worth the trouble.
On 6th and 9th August, the Americans dropped nuclear devices on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, forcing the Japanese into unconditional surrender. After nearly six years, the greatest military conflict in the history of mankind had finally come to an end.
In Argentina, it seemed that Perón’s hollow, lifeless gesture of democracy had come to an end, too. In Perón’s eyes, Argentina wasn’t quite worthy of democracy yet.
The moderates took to the streets again. Student unrest and public disorder was widespread. Mass demonstrations and protests turned into ugly, violent scenes and street battles were commonplace. Amid signs that the country was slipping into chaos, factions of the ruling military began to falter. Perón tightened his grip on the capital and filled the streets of Buenos Aires with soldiers, Federal Police and shady characters with unrestricted “stop and search” powers.
For von Menen, venturing out became an even riskier business. Whenever he visited the cottage, he invariably set out before dawn and returned late at night. As his shadowy existence continued, his relationship with Maria weakened. They were drifting apart and von Menen knew it.
The war in Europe had been over for almost five months, but still there was no news of Lanze or the Steigers. In a curious kind of way, von Menen thought there never would be. As the reality closed in on him, his gloom deepened, fuelled by another pain that would not let him go – the haunting memory of Sigi Bredow.
With the advent of autumn, Perón seemed at last to be losing his grip on power. Everyone wanted his head. In the weeks that followed, Buenos Aires bore witness to a spate of fast-moving events that left most newspaper editors feeling like children in a toy shop, bank-rolled by Rockefeller himself. Gilbert and Sullivan could not have scripted it better.
The commonly held view was that Perón had resigned and gone undercover. But those with scores to settle were determined to find him and eventually they did, snug with his partner at a hideaway down by the Tigre. Perón was arrested, but not so the attractive Eva. While the pretenders jousted for the presidency, she set to work.
Within days, Argentina saw its first real glimpse of the charismatic and glamorous Eva Duarte in all her powerful glory. Tens of thousands of Perón’s “shirtless” supporters, summoned by the zestful Eva, swarmed across the Riachuelo River and headed en masse to the Casa Rosada. If the wind had been blowing in the right direction, the deafening, frenzied chant for Perón’s immediate release might easily have been heard in Uruguay.
In no time at all, Perón was free, standing victorious on the balcony of the Presidential Palace, lauding the cheering multitudes.
Von Menen played with the notion that the dapper Filipe Vidal would never have realised his dream, and perhaps Juan Domingo Perón would never have realised his, either, without the help of the scheming, charismatic and go-getting Eva.
The next day, at a private civil ceremony in Buenos Aires, the glamorous Eva Duarte became the dazzling phenomenon that was Eva Perón.
A new chapter in Argentina’s history was just beginning.
Wednesday 24th October 1945
Von Menen was quite unwell. He had a headache, a temperature, a painfully sore throat and eyes that felt as though they were being pulled into the back of his skull.
When he returned to the apartment with his daily copy of La Prensa, Maria was in a contemplative mood, her thoughts buried in a pile of medical papers. Several times, she had advised him to go to bed and rest, but in his misery, he chose to ignore her. Eventually, she gave up, leaving him to a carton of tablets and a bottle of medicine.
He walked into the lounge and kissed her on the forehead. Unmoved by the gesture, she said nothing, but moments later, her silence cracked.
‘Someone called while you were out, a woman,’ she said, nodding, almost imperceptibly, towards the telephone.
He threw the newspaper to the floor and hastened across the room as fast as his aching legs would carry him. ‘Who… When?’ His throat was so painful he could scarcely talk.
‘I told you, a woman… She didn’t give her name.’ Again, Maria nodded towards the telephone. ‘I wrote down the message, if you can call it a message.’
Von Menen hurried to the sideboard, picked up the piece of paper, his heavy, aching eyes falling upon the scribbled note.
‘Tell Carl, Dolores.’
‘Did she say anything else?’ he croaked.
‘No!’ Maria looked at his grey, pained face. ‘You should be in bed. You should never have gone out.’
‘There was no mention of the name “Frederick”?’ he asked, wracked by the pain in his throat.
‘No, there was no mention of “Frederick”. I’ve told you all I know. For heaven’s sake, Carl, why don’t you go to bed? You look awful. You can hardly talk! My God, I give up.’
She picked up a folder and he followed her into the dining room.
‘Her accent, then?’ he asked painfully.
‘I couldn’t say. She spoke in Spanish, but the line was so bad it kept breaking up. I could hardly hear her.’
Von Menen was mystified. If it was Greta, then why didn’t she say so? For that matter, why didn’t she mention Hans? Possibly it wasn’t the Steigers at all. Perhaps it was Sigi Bredow. Maybe Sigi had gone to Flensburg, met with the Steigers and somehow found her way to Argentina. But why no mention of Frederick? And, most baffling of all, why no message from Cortes? He was thinking wildly now.
‘You’re sure she didn’t have an accent?’ he persisted, holding his throat.
Maria shook her head, disinterested. ‘I’ve told you, the line was very bad.’
‘Maria, it’s important,’ he said, barely able to get the words out.
‘Carl, if you’re asking me if she was German, the answer is, I don’t know, the line was very bad. I’ve told you a dozen times, I could hardly hear a thing.’
‘Maria,’ he pleaded, his throat burning wildly, ‘are you sure you haven’t forgotten something?’
She scowled at him, said nothing, but beneath her veil of silence, she was fuming. Finally, she snapped.
‘Frankly, Carl, I’m fed up with all of this secrecy!’ She threw her pen on the floor, jumped to her feet and made towards the door, collecting her coat in the process.
‘Maria, please! Where…?’ His throat was so bad he could scarcely get the words out.
‘I’m going out!’ she cried, tossing her head in the air. ‘And I don’t know when I’ll be back.’ She closed the door sharply behind her.
Maria found the note when she returned an hour later.
Dearest Maria,
It isn’t what you think.
POSTSCRIPT
Helmuth-James Graf von Moltke, arguably the leading figure behind the formation of the anti-Nazi group, the Kreisau Circle, was executed at Berlin’s Plötzensee Prison on 23rd January 1945. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris met a similar fate at Flossenbürg Concentration Camp on 9th April 1945, as did Dietrich Bonhoeffer and many others.
With Germany close to defeat, Joachim von Ribbentrop fled to Hamburg, Himmler took flight to Flensburg, Kaltenbrunner headed for Austria and Schellenberg ensconced himself in Denmark. All four were subsequently arrested by the Allies: Himmler committed suicide in captivity before he could be indicted, while Ribbentrop and Kaltenbrunner were tried for war crimes, found guilty, sentenced to death and hanged on 16th October 1946.
In 1949, Schellenberg was sentenced to a token six years in prison. He was released in 1951 on grounds of ill health and died in Italy shortly afterwards. He was still only forty-one years of age.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
When I decided to write this book I had no idea how many people and organisations would become involved. For their generous and unstinting help, I am truly grateful to the following:
Rudi Gross, for the many translations he did for me; Bodo Wulfert, a legend at Berlin’s Hotel Savoy, and his lovely wife, Eva-Maria. They showed me much kindness during my many visits to Berlin – and still do! – and opened my eyes to the wonderful Hotel Savoy; Peter Geissler, for his help on German historical matters, and Henning Redlich and the late Barbara Redlich for their invaluable information on all matters relating to Mecklenburg.
For information concerning Germany’s WWII Type XXI submarine, I owe thanks to Walter Cloots, and similarly to Gus Britton and Christopher Lowe for their enlightening information on Germany’s U-boat service. My thanks, also, to Anthony Ward, who guided Andromeda safely from Lübeck-Siems to the mouth of the River Plate. Without his help I would have been totally lost.