Empire and Honor

by W. E. B Griffin

“May I volunteer for this operation?” von und zu Aschenburg asked.

  “Yeah,” Frade answered, “but we old men are going to have to fly the transports and miss out on the fun.” He turned to Martín. “When do we start?”

  “This is your area of expertise, but I would suggest that getting the Storch down to Estancia Condor should head the list of priorities. It’s going to be at least a three-day drive to get it there. And where are we going to get a flatbed truck on short notice?”

  “There’s several at the airport,” Frade offered. “The contractor building the second runway brought his earthmovers on them. No reason one or more can’t be pressed into the service of the Argentine Republic.”

  “Next important question,” Martín said. “Maybe the most important of all. How do we keep people—in particular, el Coronel Perón—from learning what we’re doing?”

  “Why don’t we ask Dorotea?” Frade asked. “She seems to have an answer for everything.”

  “And more often than not it’s the right one,” Dorotea said, smiling. “Now, that’s the last of your sarcasm, agreed?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  XI

  [ONE]

  Apartment 4-C

  1044 Calle Talcahuano

  Buenos Aires, Argentina

  2125 20 October 1945

  Former SS-Brigadeführer Gerhard Körtig, a fifty-year-old, short, plump, ruddy-faced Bavarian, wheezed as he got out of the taxi in front of the Colón Opera House. He was wearing a well-tailored suit and carrying a shiny leather briefcase.

  He walked to a news kiosk just across an alley from the opera house and picked up a copy of La Nacíon. He dropped coins on the stack of newspapers, then opened his copy to the classified advertisements section.

  Looking over it, he saw Konrad Fassbinder puffing on a cigar as he leaned on the wall of the opera house. He knew that Fassbinder had seen him, too, but there was no indication of this—not even a discreet nod—by either of them.

  Körtig returned his attention to the newspaper for perhaps thirty seconds. Then he folded it and stuck it under his arm.

  A bus pulled to the curb where he stood. The third passenger to get off was former SS-Oberführer Horst Lang, a tall, slim, fair-skinned Prussian. He was also wearing a well-tailored suit and carrying a briefcase.

  The two exchanged no sign of recognition.

  Lang started down the alley and was soon out of sight. Körtig could see no indication of any kind that Lang had been followed. Körtig started down the alley. If anyone was following him, Fassbinder would see.

  When the wheezing Körtig reached the end of the alley, he saw that Lang was halfway down the path through the park across the street and almost on Calle Talcahuano.

  Körtig thought, The bastard should have walked slower.

  Körtig waited for the traffic light to change, then crossed the street and entered the small park. At the far side of it, there was opportunity for him to glance over his shoulder. Fassbinder was crossing the street between the opera house and the park.

  Körtig sat on a bench along the path through the park. He opened his La Nacíon. Fassbinder walked past him a minute or so later. As far as Körtig could see, no one was following, or watching, Fassbinder.

  Lang was now on Calle Talcahuano approaching number 1044. Fassbinder walked past him, then entered 1044. Lang followed.

  Körtig waited until he had time to really make sure that he was neither being followed nor under observation, then stood up, tucked La Nacíon under his arm again, and walked quickly out of the park, crossed Calle Talcahuano, and entered 1044.

  Neither Fassbinder nor Lang was in sight, and the door from the foyer was closed.

  Körtig took a penknife from his vest pocket, slipped it into the lock, depressed the spring-loaded stop, and pushed the door open. The interior corridor was empty. He could hear the whine of the elevator, and as he walked up to its door, it came down to the foyer.

  He slid the accordion door open, got on the elevator, and rode it to the fourth floor.

  When he stepped into the foyer there, the door to 4-C opened, and he walked to it and entered.

  As soon as the door closed behind him, former SS-Brigadeführer Ludwig Hoffmann offered Körtig his hand.

  “This had better be important, Ludwig,” Körtig said.

  —

  Mannhoffer led everyone to the dining room table. He picked up the thick envelope of photograph proofs.

  “I think you both should take a careful look at these,” he said.

  “What are they?” Gerhard Körtig said.

  “Pictures of people getting off the SAA flight from Berlin this morning.”

  Körtig sat and took them from the envelope. He examined the first one carefully but without expression, then handed it to Horst Lang.

  “I was hoping that von und zu Aschenburg had died in the East,” Lang said, after examining it. “I heard that he had been shot down.”

  “We should have eliminated him in 1944, when his relationship with Canaris became known,” Mannhoffer said.

  “Became suspected, Ludwig,” Körtig said. “There was never any proof, was there? And in 1944, Canaris wasn’t suspected of anything, was he? No one dreamed he would betray the Führer.”

  “I would say we have it now. The both of them betrayed their oath,” Lang said.

  “And Canaris was hung as a traitor. Von und zu Aschenburg apparently escaped punishment,” Körtig said. He paused and waved one of the proofs. “Who is this? He looks familiar.”

  “Kapitän Wilhelm Grüner,” Mannhoffer said.

  “Karl-Heinz’s son?”

  “That’s him.”

  “What’s he doing on that plane? And with von und zu Aschenburg?”

  “That’s one of the things we have to talk about.”

  “Ah, von Wachtstein,” Körtig said, turning to another proof. “We know how seriously he took his oath to the Führer, don’t we? He and his despicable father.”

  He turned to the next proof.

  “And yet another. Kapitän zur See Karl Boltitz. What is this, Ludwig, a convention of traitors?”

  “I think it’s more than that,” Mannhoffer said.

  “And who is this man? This young American officer?”

  “I don’t have his name. I think he’s an officer courier.”

  “Carrying what, from whom, and to whom?” Körtig asked.

  “I should have more information shortly, but right now I don’t know. I would hazard the guess that he’s bringing material from General Gehlen to Oberstleutnant Frade. And that would mean to General Martín as well.”

  “You haven’t told me why this—how should I say?—gaggle of traitors has alarmed you to the point that you called this meeting.”

  “Indulge me a moment, Gerhard,” Mannhoffer said. “Tell me the latest on U-234.”

  “There is, I am happy to say, not much to report.”

  “I went down there last week with the supply truck,” Lang offered, “and the sailors taking their turn on the boat. We are actually increasing the fuel aboard—not by much, to be sure—but we no longer have to worry about them running out of fuel, as we were originally. Morale is surprisingly high. Boredom of course is a problem. The chief of the boat actually asked me if I could bring two or three ladies of the evening with me on the next trip.”

  “Was he serious?” Mannhoffer asked.

  “Perfectly. He said that he had never been so far from a Dirnenviertel in his life. Or for so long.”

  Everybody laughed at the mental picture of the sexually frustrated sailor desperate for a red-light district.

  “If Kapitän Schneider wasn’t such a prude, I’d consider it,” Körtig said.

  “He is a prude, isn’t he?” Mannhoffer asked rhetorically.

  “A devout Evangelische prude. The worst kind,” Lang said.

  “Maybe we should be grateful for that,” Körtig said. “Alois Schneider takes his vow of personal loyalty to the Führer very seriously.
He’s not going to wind up on Oberstleutnant Frade’s payroll.”

  “He’s still in Villa General Belgrano?” Mannhoffer asked.

  “With his brother,” Lang said, “who was one of Langsdorf’s protégés on the Graf Spee. He was second gunnery officer.”

  “I think you told me that,” Mannhoffer said.

  “I don’t think I told you the brother has now decided he wants to be a farmer,” Lang said.

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning, Ludwig, that he’s married to an Argentine woman, has a son, and another in the oven, and has decided that raising cattle with her father offers a more promising future than being repatriated to the fatherland.”

  “He doesn’t have any choice about that, does he?”

  “I would not be surprised if he disappeared before they can load him on a ship, and that the Argentines wouldn’t look very hard for him.”

  “How could he get a libreta de enrolamiento?” Mannhoffer asked.

  “If we have one, I wouldn’t be surprised if he already has one,” Lang said simply. “Nor would I be surprised if he hasn’t been working on his brother to make a new life for himself here.”

  “That’s a problem down the road, possibly,” Mannhoffer said. “We have more immediate problems to deal with.”

  “We’re finally getting to that, are we?” Körtig said.

  “How are negotiations going with the new Russian?”

  “The new Russian?” Lang parroted.

  “Gerhard, why am I getting the idea that you two are not sharing everything with me?” Mannhoffer said. “That would be unwise.”

  “What do you think I’m not telling you?” Körtig asked.

  “The answer to what I just asked: how negotiations are going with the new Russian.”

  “Oh, you mean Pavel Egorov,” Lang offered.

  “If that’s his name. The one the Kremlin sent here from Mexico City.”

  “Well, for obvious reasons,” Körtig said, “neither Lang nor I have met him personally. I don’t think he even knows our names.”

  “Never underestimate the NKVD. He probably knows everybody’s name. He just doesn’t know, for the moment, where to find us.”

  “You asked how the negotiations are going,” Körtig said, a bit impatiently. “Moreno, of the Banco Suisse Creditanstalt, tells me that they are willing to meet our price—”

  “One hundred million U.S. dollars?”

  Körtig nodded. “Deposited in the Banco Suisse Creditanstalt in Johannesburg. But with certain conditions. First, that we provide them with a fifty-kilogram sample of the uranium oxide so they can test it to make sure of what they’re getting.”

  “All they would need to make sure it is what we say is a cupful, not fifty kilograms.”

  “I raised that objection through Moreno. They replied that if we have fifty kilos of the stuff, that would tend to suggest we have, and will give them, the rest—the other five hundred and ten kilos.”

  “And how will the transfer be accomplished?” Mannhoffer asked.

  “The U-234 will rendezvous with a Russian freighter at a to-be-determined point in the South Atlantic, somewhere south of the Falkland Islands—”

  “Whereupon,” Mannhoffer interrupted, “fifty NKVD agents, or that many Marines, will board U-234, kill every German aboard, take the uranium oxide, and then sink the U-234.”

  “Now, Ludwig, you’re beginning to annoy me. Did you really think I wouldn’t think of that?”

  “And?”

  “When U-234 sails for the rendezvous point, Pavel Egorov will be aboard. If anything goes wrong, your favorite new Russian will be eliminated. He will remain on U-234 until she comes back to Argentina. When Moreno tells us the money is safely in our account in South Africa, Egorov will be freed.”

  “How do you know you can trust Moreno?”

  “Because I have told him if he betrays us in any way, we will kill him and all members of his family.”

  Mannhoffer considered everything he had been told, but said nothing.

  “Does that answer your concerns, Ludwig?”

  “I have a few others,” Mannhoffer said.

  “Let’s have them.”

  “How much time do the Russians want to test the uranium oxide we give them for that purpose?”

  “I’ve looked carefully into that, too. What they told Moreno they intend to do is break the fifty kilos down into small packets. They will then be taken in luggage to Rio de Janeiro. There is a Soviet embassy there. The uranium oxide will then be sent via diplomatic pouch to Moscow. The Americans are now offering flying boat service between London and Rio.”

  “The entire fifty kilos?”

  “I don’t think they’re going to send it all. You were right, Ludwig, that they only need a cupful or whatever to test it.”

  “And did they say how long it would take to get a report back?”

  “Three weeks to a month.”

  “During which time they can look for and probably find U-234,” Mannhoffer said. “And once they find it . . .”

  “I don’t think we have to worry about that.”

  “. . . if they can send a freighter to a rendezvous point near the Falkland Islands, they can send it—with those fifty NKVD agents or Marines aboard—”

  “You’re not listening to me, Ludwig,” Körtig interrupted. “There’s no way they could find U-234.”

  “Gerhard, the landfall coordinates were in the safe of U-405 when that gottverdammt von Dattenberg surrendered it to the Argentines.”

  “Encoded,” Körtig said. “The coordinates were encoded among other coordinates. Von Dattenberg didn’t even know he had them. And even if they suspected U-234 made it to Argentina—and I don’t think they do—but even if they knew she was down there somewhere, they could never find her.”

  “Ludwig,” Lang offered, “I have trouble finding the damn U-boat when I go down there. And I know exactly where she is. She blends into the landscape—seascape?—because she’s painted white—a sort of grayish white—and she’s covered with white camouflage nets. You can’t see her, you have no suggestion there’s anything there until you get within a couple of hundred meters.”

  “Could she be seen from the air?”

  “Not if the airplane was flying any higher than two or three hundred meters. She is covered with white camouflage netting. I just told you that.”

  “For the sake of argument, Horst—indulge me—could she be seen from a slow, low-flying—say, one-fifty- or two-hundred-meter—aircraft?”

  “If Santa Claus was flying overhead in his sleigh—and looking carefully—maybe.”

  Mannhoffer ignored the sarcasm. “What if the aircraft was a Piper Cub or, say, a Storch? Flown by a pilot with extensive experience in flying in arctic conditions in Russia? Could he see the U-234, camouflage netting or no camouflage netting?”

  “He probably could. But that’s a hell of a stretch, Ludwig.”

  “What if I told you that flatbed trucks carrying a Piper Cub, a Storch, and a bulldozer capable of carving out an airfield, plus a fuel truck with twelve thousand liters of fuel, and two army trucks—one carrying twenty heavily armed soldiers and the other rations, heavy weapons, and ammunition—are about to leave, if they haven’t already left, Aeropuerto Frade for an undisclosed destination in the south of the country?”

  “My God!” Körtig exclaimed.

  “They’ve got a Storch?” Lang asked incredulously. “Where did they get a Storch?”

  “I have no idea,” Mannhoffer said. “But Frade has one. It’s painted bright red. And now he’s got a pilot skilled in arctic operations—former Major Wilhelm Grüner—to fly it.”

  “His father must be spinning in his grave,” Lang said.

  “Let’s not get excited,” Körtig said. “They don’t know where U-234 is. How could they?”

  “They broke the coded rendezvous points?” Mannhoffer said. “There’s a number of possibilities there.”

  “Such as?”


  “One that comes immediately to mind—”

  “Let’s accept, for the sake of argument,” Körtig said, “that they know that U-234 made it here, and have a general idea where she lies. How are they going to find it?”

  “With the Storch, obviously.”

  “All right, let’s go down that path. If the Storch doesn’t make it down there, ergo, they can’t find U-234. How can we arrange that? Get some of the Tenth Mountain people already down there at Estancia Condor to set up a roadblock, something like that?”

  “You’re pissing into the wind, Gerhard. Never underestimate the enemy,” Mannhoffer said.

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning General Martín is way ahead of you. You remember me telling you that for quaint and mysterious resaons of their own, the deputy head of the BIS, Habanzo, usually wears civilian clothing? And that when he does deign to wear a uniform, it is that of a major?”

  “But he’s actually an oberst? So what?”

  “The convoy headed south will be led by a staff car, with Habanzo riding regally in the backseat, wearing his colonel’s uniform. The only people who would dare to question a colonel of the BIS—much less stop or turn around a convoy he is leading—would be either Perón or Farrell. BIS de jure answers only to President Farrell, although just about everybody de facto answers to Oberst Perón.”

  “Well, obviously, we can’t go to Farrell to rein in Martín. And if we go to Perón, we’ll have to tell him what’s going on.”

  “And he would demand a small percentage—possibly fifty percent—of what the Russians will pay us,” Lang said. “Or—and I think he’s perfectly capable of this—he’d send the Armada Argentina to seize U-234 and sell the uranium oxide to the Russians himself.”

  “So what do we do?” Körtig said.

  “I presume I have the floor?” Mannhoffer asked, and when both Lang and Körtig nodded, began: “I have not only given this a good deal of thought, but have discussed it in some detail with Fassbinder and Richter. All of this of course before this current problem presented itself, which of course has changed everything.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Körtig said.

  “At first, the intuitive thing to do—lay low, bide our time, make no waves, et cetera—seemed to make sense. But then I realized that we—the people in this room—are all that’s left of National Socialism. Our superiors are either dead or locked up awaiting trial. There will be no more submarines from Germany, no more funds with which we can cause National Socialism to rise, using Himmler’s phrase, ‘phoenix-like from the ashes.’ Either we do it, or it doesn’t get done.”