Von Wachtstein knew that his father would have welcomed that option.
And von Wachtstein thought the stories about as many as thirty submarines leaving Germany for South America were, as Frade had succinctly put it, bullshit. And he thought Karl should know better than to waste his time looking for something that never was.
He and Karl had been in the Fort Hunt Senior Enemy Officer POW Interrogation Facility outside Washington, D.C., during the last six weeks of the war. They followed the progress of the war on radio station WJSV, the owner of which, they were told, was presently serving as Eisenhower’s naval aide-de-camp. There were almost daily reports of the concern at Eisenhower’s headquarters over the Werwolf.
These were supposed to be fanatic SS troopers who would stay behind as the Allies advanced through Germany and then attack from the rear. They were going to do this in the Black Forest and elsewhere and ultimately at Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s mountaintop retreat in Bavaria, where they would fight until the last of them was dead, killing as many Allied soldiers as possible.
Eisenhower’s Supreme Headquarters seemed to know a great deal about UNTERNEHMEN WERWOLF—OPERATION WEREWOLF—including the name of its commanding officer, SS-Obergruppenführer Hans-Adolf Prützmann. It was said that after Berlin fell, General George S. Patton was prepared to use three armored divisions to deal with WERWOLF.
It turned out to be bullshit. WERWOLF didn’t show up in the Black Forest—or anywhere else—and a platoon of paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division captured Berchtesgaden without firing a shot.
It had been one last—and highly successful—act of psychological warfare concocted by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, and von Wachtstein thought the fleet of submarines supposed to be headed for South America was much the same thing. And had been about as successful for the Nazis as had the WERWOLF deception.
The Allies had launched a massive search for the submarines, primarily involving aircraft in Europe and B-24 bombers modified to be submarine hunters flying out of USAF bases in Brazil and North Africa, but also including naval vessels all over the North and South Atlantic oceans.
Aside from several U-boats sunk in or near the English Channel, none of the twenty—or thirty, or sixty, depending on which scenario one used—submarines supposed to be en route to South America was ever found.
The arrival of U-405 seemed to finally settle the question. Willi von Dattenberg, her master, was arguably the best and most experienced of all U-boat skippers when it came to sailing to Argentina to secretly put ashore whatever cargo and people senior Nazi officers wanted to smuggle into Argentina.
When Willi told Clete he thought Clete could stop worrying about U-234—which implied stop worrying about any other submarines as well—that seemed to be the final word.
So poor Karl had been on one wild-goose chase.
When von Wachtstein now saw Mattingly looking at him, he waved and then turned to Captain Lopez.
“The people I have to see are on the tarmac,” von Wachtstein said. “I’m going to have to get out of here as soon as I can. The SAA people and representatives from the Argentine embassy are waiting for our flight. With them, you can handle the shut-down, off-loading, and paperwork. It shouldn’t be a problem. There’s a restaurant in the airport hotel. The U.S. Army runs it, but we can eat there. After you’ve eaten and seen to the refueling, tell the SAA station manager to give the crew a tour of Berlin—better yet, tell them Señor Frade told you to tell the station manager to get you a tour.”
“You’ll be where?” Lopez asked.
“When I know what’s going on, I’ll be in touch.”
“How will I get in touch with you if I need you?”
“This is Berlin, Captain Lopez, not Buenos Aires. If you take the tour what you’ll see is hundreds of hectares of rubble. I can’t give you a phone number that I don’t know. I’ll be in touch.”
Von Wachtstein unfastened his shoulder belt and got out of the pilot’s seat.
[FOUR]
357 Roonstrasse, Zehlendorf
Berlin, Germany
1035 18 October 1945
When Colonel Robert Mattingly had seen von Wachtstein waving cheerfully at him from the cockpit window of La Ciudad de Mar del Plata he had been mildly surprised that Cletus Frade had not been flying the Constellation.
He walked to the foot of the stairway that the ground handlers had moved to the cockpit door. He stood there, wearing a smile, his hand extended, when von Wachtstein came nimbly down the stairs.
“Colonel Frade wasn’t flying?” he asked.
“Colonel Frade’s not on the airplane,” von Wachtstein told him.
“Where the hell is he?” Mattingly snapped.
He heard the tone in his voice and realized his temper had been triggered.
And he knew why. The one thing he didn’t need now was trouble with Lieutenant Colonel Cletus Frade, USMCR. He absolutely had had enough unexpected trouble in the last forty-eight hours and didn’t need any more.
“I really don’t know where Colonel Frade is, Colonel,” von Wachtstein said. “Probably at Estancia Don Guillermo.”
Mattingly saw on von Wachtstein’s face that he had picked up on the tone of his voice and was both curious and displeased.
“What the hell is that?” Mattingly then said. “What’s he doing there?”
And I just made it worse. What the hell is the matter with me?
“It’s a vineyard he owns in Mendoza,” von Wachtstein said, somewhat coldly. “And what he’s doing is trying to keep Juan Domingo Perón alive.”
And what the hell is that all about?
Get your temper under control, you damned fool!
He forced a smile.
“Well, that sounds interesting. You can tell me all about that at the house. I suspect you could use some breakfast and a shower.”
“Yes, I could,” von Wachtstein said, and turned to Karl Boltitz. “Wie geht’s, Karl?”
Boltitz gave him a fond hug.
“How’s Willi, Hansel?” he asked.
Without thinking, von Wachtstein said, “The last time I saw him he was in the Jockey Club looking soulfully over a stem of champagne into the eyes of my sister-in-law.”
He heard what he had just said.
Mein Gott, where did that come from?
“Your wife’s sister?” Boltitz asked.
“No. Elsa. Karl’s widow,” von Wachtstein corrected him.
“Karl’s widow?” Boltitz parroted, surprised.
Von Wachtstein nodded and repeated, “Elsa. Karl’s widow.”
“Well, isn’t that interesting!” Boltitz said.
“I thought so,” von Wachtstein said.
I thought so when I first noticed it, just before Father Welner came into the Jockey Club and took me away from the table.
Whereupon I apparently promptly forgot it.
I can’t imagine it slipped my mind just because Welner and Martín told me that unless Cletus could fly the Storch—right then—to that island and get Perón off it to keep him from getting shot, Argentina was going to find itself in a civil war.
I can’t imagine why a little thing like that would take my mind off Willi’s sex life with my sister-in-law, except maybe watching Clete taking off—without a co-pilot—from Jorge Frade in that Lodestar while three machine guns were firing at him.
I’m just going to have to learn to concentrate on the important things.
And what, if anything, am I expected to tell Colonel Mattingly about any of this?
They walked to the Horch and got in the backseat. The sergeants got in the front. They drove through the rubble surrounding Tempelhof and finally came to Zehlendorf, the suburb that somehow had escaped massive damage, and finally to what had been Admiral Canaris’s home.
An American flag now flew where Canaris’s admiral’s flag once had flown, and a U.S. Army M-8 armored car and three jeeps carrying the markings of the Second Armored Division sat in front. The soldiers in the M-8
saluted, and von Wachtstein, in a Pavlovian reflex, returned it when Mattingly did.
Try to remember, Señor von Wachtstein, that you are now a civilian.
—
In the ten minutes it took von Wachtstein to shower, Mattingly went over again and again in his mind the problems he had faced before he learned that Frade was still in Argentina, and the additional problems both Frade being there and what was happening there posed for OPERATION OST.
His biggest problem, Mattingly recognized, was himself.
Colonel Robert Mattingly seemed to have proved beyond any reasonable doubt he was not the calm, competent, and unshakable senior intelligence officer that he previously fancied himself to be.
It was absolutely inexcusable that he had not foreseen that someone from the European Command CIC Inspector General’s office—or someone from the staff of the EUCOM Inspector General—would stumble across Kloster Grünau and insist on having a look at what was inside the concertina wire. He should have planned for something like that to happen, and he hadn’t.
And he should have foreseen that General Greene had been looking for something to hang on him from the moment General Seidel had told Greene (a) that he was getting a new deputy named Mattingly and (b) that Mattingly was going to have duties that were none of Greene’s business.
Instead of being prepared for someone stumbling on Kloster Grünau, he had been angry. So angry that when Greene had sarcastically asked if he was going to call General Eisenhower, he had dialed Eisenhower’s number like a petulant child.
If Greene hadn’t slammed his hand on the phone base, Eisenhower would have taken the call and more than likely told Greene he didn’t have the need to know about Kloster Grünau and/or OPERATION OST and to release Mattingly from arrest.
But there would have been an awful price to pay for that.
For one thing, Eisenhower would have justifiably concluded that Colonel Robert Mattingly was incompetent and shouldn’t be in charge of a project that, should it be compromised and become public, would greatly embarrass not only Eisenhower but President Truman as well.
Even worse, Eisenhower, who had a well-deserved reputation for his ability to both quickly analyze the depth and nuances of a problem and as quickly decide what to do about it, could have quietly ordered, “Shut it down, Colonel Mattingly, before it can hurt the President.”
That had been planned for.
If OPERATION OST was compromised, the members of what had been OSS Team Turtle would disappear. To a man, they had agreed to do so. Hiding them in Argentina would be no more difficult than integrating the “Good Germans” had proved to be.
But there was a price they would have to pay for that: They would be charged with being absent without leave and refusing the lawful order to return to the United States. After ninety days, the AWOL charge would automatically convert to one of desertion.
So that meant that they could not return to the United States in the foreseeable future, even, conceivably, ever. It was a price they were willing to pay. They would not turn the “Good Germans” and their families over to the Russians, after the deal had been made. And somehow they would see that intelligence produced by Gehlen’s people would reach the appropriate intelligence agencies in Washington.
Whereupon, Mattingly thought, more than a little bitterly, the FBI, the G-2, the ONI, and the State Department would probably dismiss it out of hand as propaganda trying to be foisted on them by ex-Nazis hiding out in Argentina.
Frade obviously couldn’t disappear in Argentina. But that hadn’t seemed to be a problem until Mattingly heard about the attempted assassination of Colonel Juan Domingo Perón and the very real threat of a civil war that posed.
If that had not happened, Frade would not have to try disappearing within Argentina. He was an Argentine citizen and could have thumbed his nose at a summons to return to the United States to tell a Congressional Committee, under oath, everything he knew about smuggling Nazis out of Germany and into Argentina. His status would have changed from being a highly decorated—Frade had been awarded the Navy Cross—Marine Corps lieutenant colonel to deserter.
But he could have, would have, kept the secrets of OPERATION OST.
For that reason, ever since his confrontation with General Greene, against the near certainty that Greene would overtly or covertly try to find out what he was doing, Mattingly had been removing from his office safe the most damaging material regarding OPERATION OST. This included the names both of all the “Gehlen people” who had been sent to Argentina and the Russians whom Gehlen’s agents in the Kremlin had learned the Soviets were sending to Argentina.
If there was a raid—by whatever name—on either his files or Kloster Grünau, there was nothing in either place that would expose Gehlen’s people in Argentina. He was going to turn the files over to Frade for safekeeping.
More precisely, he intended to personally hand them to Frade, when Frade was next in Berlin, and at the same time deliver a little speech about how sensitive the material was. In the meantime, until Frade arrived, Mattingly had put the files into the safest place he could think of to put them: two canvas suitcases that he hid in the trunk of the Horch.
He polished this scenario, first by telephoning First Sergeant Dunwiddie and telling him to send Technical Sergeant Abraham L. “Honest Abe” Tedworth and one other responsible senior non-com to the I.G. Farben Building for about a week’s special, unspecified, duty. One or the other, and usually both, kept an eye on the Horch around the clock.
Next, he augmented that protection—frankly feeling rather smug about it—by rigging both suitcases with thermite grenades that could be detonated by pulling on a nylon cord.
As he drove to Berlin, he managed to just about convince himself that he now had things pretty much under control. All he had to do now was put the two canvas suitcases into the hands of Cletus Frade.
—
“Well, that didn’t take long,” Mattingly said when von Wachtstein came into the kitchen. And then he noticed what he was wearing. Von Wachtstein had changed from his SAA uniform into an insignia-less U.S. Army officer’s uniform.
“Why are you wearing that?” Mattingly heard himself demanding.
Von Wachtstein met his eyes for a long moment and then said icily, “Forgive me, Colonel, I was unaware that I needed your permission.”
What the hell is wrong with me?
“Peter, I don’t know why that came out the way it did. Of course you don’t need permission. I was just curious.”
Von Wachtstein considered that for a moment, and then, almost visibly, decided to let it pass.
“I’m going to go over to the Kurfürstendamm,” he said, as he slipped into a chair and helped himself to a cup of coffee, “and I thought I would attract less attention in this than I would in what that lieutenant . . . Cronley . . . ?”
Mattingly smiled and confirmed, “Second Lieutenant James D. Cronley Junior.”
“. . . so aptly described as a Mexican bus driver’s uniform.”
Boltitz laughed.
“Once again,” he said, “unexpected wisdom from the mouth of a leutnant. I probably would have said Hungarian bus driver, but that’s exactly what you look like in that SAA uniform.”
“You can go to hell, Karl,” Peter said.
“Who is this astonishingly wise young officer?”
“That’s right, you didn’t meet him, did you?” Peter said. “Or even hear the story.”
Boltitz shook his head.
“We’ve got him to thank for Elsa. He’s a CIC officer, and pulled her from a line of refugees trying to get to Marburg. Colonel Mattingly had a ‘locate and report’ order out on her, and when Cronley reported he had her, Colonel Mattingly—”
“I wish you would call me Bob,” Mattingly interrupted.
Von Wachtstein looked at him, nodded, and went on. “When Cronley reported to Bob that he had her, Bob arranged for him to take care of her until we could get to Marburg. So we did, and when we walk
ed into the Kurhotel, Cletus looked at him in utter surprise, whereupon Cronley said, ‘Don’t give me a funny look, Cletus, you’re the one wearing that Mexican bus driver’s uniform.’”
“He knows Cletus?”
“They grew up in Texas together. Cletus says he’s the little brother he never had.”
“What a marvelous story!” Boltitz said.
“He now works for me,” Mattingly said.
“I didn’t know that,” von Wachtstein said.
“I put him in charge of the guards around Gehlen’s people at Kloster Grünau. He’s really a bright kid. And he is not burdened with the terrified awe most second lieutenants have for senior officers, which came in handy a couple of days ago.”
Damn it. I don’t need that story getting around.
Change the subject.
“So, what are you going to do on the Kurfürstendamm, Peter?” Mattingly asked, quickly changing the subject.
“I’m looking for a couple friends of mine. Have you been over there? Seen the notes pinned to the wooden fence around the ruins of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche?”
Boltitz nodded.
Mattingly shook his head.
“People looking for people—family, friends—leave notes there,” von Wachtstein explained for Mattingly’s benefit. “You put the name of the person you’re looking for, and your name and address, on a card and pin it to the fence and hope that the other guy sees it. I’ve been doing that since the first time we flew in here. And every time since, I go look, and if necessary put up a new card.”
“Who are you looking for?” Mattingly asked.
“Two Luftwaffe buddies. Actually one buddy and my—our—old commanding officer. Former Oberstleutnant Dieter von und zu Aschenburg and former Hauptmann Wilhelm Johannes Grüner, also known as Wild Willi.”
“There’s an Argentine connection, Bob,” Boltitz said thoughtfully. “Grüner’s father was Oberst Karl-Heinz Grüner, the military attaché—and Sicherheitsdienst man—in the embassy.”
Empire and Honor Page 31