In front of the car, as far as the headlights permitted him to see, the road was straight and level. On either side of the road there appeared to be swamp, but Clete finally realized these were rice fields.
He made a note of the odometer reading so he could return to this spot. And then they drove down the road. He went exactly a mile and stopped. The road and the rice fields stretched on, apparently to infinity. He looked at his watch, the Hamilton chronograph. It was two forty-five—0245. Even stopping for the brochettes and gas, they’d made much better time than he thought they would. And they weren’t supposed to start flashing the headlights until 0400. They had an hour and fifteen minutes.
He turned the Ford around and headed back toward La Corinilla.
“Where are we going?” Tony asked.
“We have more than an hour. I don’t think it’s a good idea to just sit here. It might make somebody curious.”
Do I mean that, or do I want a beer at that all-night truck stop?
“Shit, there’s nobody out here. We haven’t seen a car—or a light, for that matter—since we left that village.”
“OK. You wait here, and I’ll go back to the truck stop for a beer.”
“The hell I will.”
“I’ve been thinking about those whores,” Tony announced as a plump woman in a dirty apron poured from their second liter bottle of cerveza.
Three minutes after they had put the walkie-talkies away, there was a knock at their door in the casino. Two very attractive, well-dressed women stood outside, in the corridor. The taller of the two—she had luxuriant reddish-brown hair—wondered if they might be interested in some companionship, if they hadn’t lost all their money in the casino. Clete replied that would be a delightful experience, but unfortunately, he was waiting for his wife.
“First of all, they weren’t whores, they were prostitutes; there’s a difference. And secondly, shame on you.”
“You weren’t interested?” Tony asked. “Christ, they were really good-looking!”
“Well, I have this problem, Tony. I have the honor of the Marine Corps to think of. Marine officers don’t pay women; it’s the other way around.”
“Oh, shit,” Tony groaned.
“There wasn’t time, and I didn’t think it was such a good idea,” Clete explained.
Not for the sake of the efficient execution of my assigned mission, he thought, but because the dark and innocent eyes of the Virgin Princess seemed to be looking at me.
“Well, I don’t mind telling you I was tempted. I haven’t had any in a long time. You bastards didn’t give me any time in New Orleans…”
“We bastards?”
“…and when I was on leave at home, my brothers insisted on showing me a good time; they never left me alone.”
“Your brothers don’t like women?”
“One of them is a priest.”
“Oh. Tough luck. Well, you shouldn’t have any trouble getting the wick dipped in B.A., Tony. There’s women all over.”
“I’m working on a little something,” Tony said. He was thinking of the girl he had seen go in the Ristorante Napoli in La Boca.
I’m going back there and just hang around and look for her, he thought. That is, if we get back, and don’t get stood against some wall and shot for trying to smuggle twenty pounds of molded Composition C4 and walkie-talkies into Argentina.
He picked up his beer glass.
“Isn’t it about time we started back?”
“Jesus Christ, it’s dark out here,” Tony said. “There’s not a goddamned light anywhere!”
“Shut up!” Clete ordered abruptly.
He thought he had heard the sound of an aircraft engine, a little one, probably a Lycoming. And then he was sure.
“Get on the horn,” he ordered as he reached for the headlight switch.
“It’s not 0400,” Tony protested.
“Goddamn it, do what you’re told.”
“Mallard, Mallard,” Tony complied. “This is Hunter, Hunter. Over.”
There was an immediate reply.
“Hunter, Mallard,” an American voice said. “How do you read? Over.”
“Five by five. Over.”
“Hunter, leave your lights on.”
“Mallard, roger your lights on,” Tony said, and then repeated the order to Clete.
“Roger, I have you in sight. Is the road clear? How do you estimate the wind?”
“He wants to know if the road is clear and about the wind,” Tony relayed.
Clete stuck his index finger in his mouth and then extended his arm over his head. Then he took the walkie-talkie from Tony and pressed the PRESS-TO-TALK switch.
I think that crazy sonofabitch is about to try to put it down! Why else would he ask about the road being clear?
“Mallard, winds from the north negligible, I say again, negligible. The road is paved with gravel and clear. I say again, paved with gravel and clear.”
“OK, Hunter, here we go.”
Without realizing they had done so, both Tony and Clete had gotten to their feet, and they were now standing on the seat of the Ford, their waists about at the level of the top of the windshield. They could hear the sound of the aircraft engine, but all they could see of it was the orange glow of the engine exhaust, and there was no way to judge from that where the aircraft was. And then the exhaust glow disappeared.
Suddenly, blinding them, a landing light came on, and the sound of the engine changed as the pilot retarded the throttle. The landing light lined up with the road, and dropped lower and lower. It was impossible to see the airplane against the brilliance of its landing light, but Clete heard a chirp of wheels and then a rumble as it touched down. The landing light died into an orange glow, but it took their eyes some time to readjust.
And then there was an orange Piper Cub taxiing up to the grille of the Ford.
“I will be a sonofabitch!” Tony said as he jumped over the side of the Ford. Clete went over the other door and followed Tony to the airplane as the pilot, in a summer-weight flying suit, got out.
“God bless the Army Air Corps,” Clete said to the pilot as he put out his hand.
“Actually, I’m an Engineer officer,” the pilot said. “I’m an Army Liaison Pilot, teaching the Brazilians to direct artillery fire.”
“Corps of Engineers?” Tony said delightedly. “Me too.”
“I thought you guys were in the OSS,” the pilot said.
“Never believe what anybody over the grade of captain tells you,” Clete said, “as we say in the Marine Corps.”
“Marine Aviator? You sounded like a pilot, on the horn.”
“Fighter pilot, way out of his element,” Clete said. “I thought you were supposed to air-drop this stuff.”
“The Air Corps wanted to. They were going to make a big deal of this, come in with a C-47, drop some pathfinder in first, then drop this stuff with a great big fucking cargo parachute, you know how they are. I figured, shit, this stuff doesn’t weigh fifty pounds altogether, I can put it in the backseat. So I came over—lost, of course—here yesterday, and took a look, and here I am. What is that stuff, anyway? It looks like boards.”
“It’s supposed to,” Tony said. “It’s Composition C4. They molded it to look like wood boards.”
“Then that explains what your guy meant when he said ‘be damned careful with these.’ Detonators, right?”
Tony took the small package the pilot extended to him and opened it.
“Right,” he said. “I hope you didn’t have this near the explosives.”
“I had it on my lap.”
“Jesus!” Tony said.
“Let’s get me unloaded and out of here,” the pilot said. “I’d love to stay and chat, but I really don’t want to know what you guys are going to do with that stuff, and I don’t want to spend the war in a Uruguayan jail.”
Three minutes later, he was gone.
When Clete got behind the wheel of the Ford and pressed the starter, the batt
ery was dead. Tony, sweating and swearing, had to push the car to get it started. But in another three minutes, they too were gone.
XII
[ONE]
Aboard the General Belgrano
Río de la Plata
0945 13 December 1942
Shortly after they sailed from Lisbon, Captain Manuelo Schirmer, master of the General Belgrano, began to extend to Hauptmann Freiherr von Wachtstein of the Luftwaffe certain privileges. First, that of his table. At the start of the voyage, Peter was assigned to an eight-place table in the dining room. When he arrived for lunch, six other people were there, a middle-aged Argentinean couple and a somewhat younger German couple and their two children. When he politely asked about their home, they replied they were from Heidelberg, then made it quite clear they were not interested in conversation.
When he went in for dinner, the steward intercepted him and led him to the captain’s table. This was placed lengthwise across the back of the room and was set with ten places, all on one side.
“Mi Capitán,” the steward said, addressing a stocky, blond-haired man in his forties, who was wearing a uniform blouse with four gold stripes on each sleeve over a navy-blue turtleneck sweater. “El Capitán von Wachtstein.”
“I am Kapitän Schirmer, Herr Hauptmann,” Schirmer said in German, examining him carefully and unabashedly, “I thought you might be more comfortable taking your meals here.”
“That’s very kind of you, mi Capitán,” Peter replied in Spanish. “Thank you.”
“Ah, you speak Spanish. Good.”
Schirmer then introduced him to the other officers at the table. Not all the ship’s officers came to the first dinner, but eventually Peter understood that these included Schirmer, his first, second, and third mates; the chief engineer, his first, second, and third assistant engineers; and the ship’s doctor. There were no other passengers at the table; obviously he was being given a special privilege.
The next morning, at breakfast, Schirmer invited him to visit the bridge. And when Peter went up later that morning, waiting for permission to enter, Schirmer loudly and formally announced, “Hauptmann von Wachtstein has the privilege of the bridge.”
Peter knew virtually nothing about the customs and protocol of the sea. But he was a soldier, and understood that an order had been issued, and that he was being granted the privilege of permanent access to the bridge—this was not a good-for-only-one-visit invitation. Schirmer showed him around the bridge and the chart room, introduced him to his second mate (who had not been at dinner the night before), and then announced that Peter would be more comfortable in the supercargo cabin on the bridge deck, not presently in use, and that if he had no objection, he would have the steward move his things from his cabin on the passenger deck.
“Mi Capitán,” Peter replied, “I don’t know what ‘supercargo’ is. It sounds like either gold bullion, or diamonds, or something stowed outside on the deck under a tarpaulin, rather than downstairs in the hold.”
Schirmer laughed.
“Below decks, Herr Hauptmann, not downstairs,” he said, and then went on to explain that there was a cabin reserved for the senior hierarchy of L.M.A.E.—a company executive, for example, or an L.M.A.E. master or chief engineer traveling as a passenger.
“In that case, mi Capitán, I accept,” Peter replied. “Thank you very much.”
Peter had a strong temptation to suspect that he was being given all of these privileges because he was such a naturally charming fellow, but he resisted it. More likely, Schirmer, whose name was obviously German in origin, was extending a sort of Germanic privilege. Or else Capitán Schirmer was possibly treating Hauptmann von Wachtstein like a fellow officer.
By the third day out of Lisbon, they were on a partial first-name basis: Schirmer started to call him “Peter.” Peter, however, decided that good manners and protocol required that he continue to call Schirmer “Capitán,” and did so.
On the fifth day out, very late at night, as they were playing chess in Capitán Schirmer’s cabin, Schirmer told him the real reason he granted Peter the privilege of the captain’s table and the supercargo cabin. Of the one hundred and five passengers aboard the General Belgrano, thirty-nine, including the couple from Heidelberg and their children, were Jewish.
“I didn’t know, Peter, whether or not you were a Jew-hating Nazi,” Schirmer said, meeting his eyes, “but it was clear to me that you were making the Steins uncomfortable. And making things worse, the Argentineans at the table are rooting for the English in this war. He was educated in England and works for our railroad, which was designed and built by the English.”
“I am not, mi Capitán, either a Nazi or a Jew-hater.”
“I didn’t think you would be, just to look at you, but I had no way of knowing.”
“I wonder how they got out of Germany,” Peter blurted, thinking aloud.
“I have no idea,” Schirmer replied. “The L.M.A.E. office in Lisbon makes sure they have an entrance visa to Argentina and a paid-for ticket, and that’s all we care about.”
“There are a number of Germans, mi Capitán, myself and my father and many of our friends included, who loathe the Nazis and are ashamed at their treatment of Jews.”
“As far as I am concerned, the subject is closed. All is well that ends well, Peter. I find you a delightful dinner companion and an even more delightful opponent at chess. You are not quite as good as I am, but you’re good enough to give me a very good game.”
“Our final breakfast, Peter,” el Capitán Schirmer said on the morning of December 13, as they lingered over their coffee. “I shall miss your smiling face, an island of joy in this sea of sourpusses.”
The Chief Engineer snorted. “There is something wrong with a man who leaps out of bed when he doesn’t have to,” he said.
“You Spaniards feel that way,” Schirmer said. “We of German stock regard each day as a glorious opportunity to do something constructive.”
“Carajo!”—roughly, Oh shit!
“Pay no attention to him, Peter. He has been bitter since the day he discovered he is known as ‘Tiny Prick’ among the girls under the El Puente Pueyrredón”—a railroad bridge in La Boca.
The Chief Engineer stood up and held out his hand to Peter.
“If I don’t see you again, it’s been a pleasure, Peter. I’m in the telephone book. If you have a free moment, give me a call, and I will take you to El Puente Pueyrredón and ask the girls themselves to tell you what they call el Capitán.”
Peter stood up.
“Thank you, Sir, for the privilege of your company.”
As they shook hands, there was a subtle change in the ambient vibrations of the ship. The Chief Engineer cocked his head.
“Stop engines,” he said. At the same instant, Peter reached the conclusion that the vibration was gone, and that meant the engines had stopped.
Schirmer nodded, and turned to Peter.
“They were on the radio this morning,” he said. “They are sending people to meet you aboard the pilot boat. Maybe you should get dressed.”
For the last ten days of the voyage Peter had been dressing just as the ship’s officers dressed—in white shirt and shorts loaned to him by Capitán Schirmer.
“Yes, Sir. I suppose I’d better. Con su permiso?”—With your permission? (May I leave you?)
The officer’s steward had his perfectly pressed and starched summer khaki uniform hanging on the door of his cabin.
I wonder how much I should tip him. He’s really taken good care of me. I should have asked Schirmer. I will miss him. I will miss the whole damned thing, the steward, the good food, the officers at the table, but especially Schirmer.
When he left his cabin, he saw Schirmer standing on the flying bridge, looking down at the sea. He went to him and asked about the tip. Schirmer told him, then pointed down.
Peter turned. A good-looking launch, with a good deal of varnished wood and gleaming brass, was alongside. A ladder had been put over
the side, and a tall stocky man in an ornate uniform was very carefully climbing up it. Waiting to follow him was a much thinner man in a Wehrmacht colonel’s uniform. He removed his cap and dabbed at his forehead and shaved head with a handkerchief.
Those are winter uniforms. Why the hell are they wearing winter uniforms in this heat?
The Belgrano’s second mate was on deck with a couple of sailors.
Probably waiting for the clown in the ornate uniform—what the hell is that, anyway?—to fall off the ladder.
“I suppose I’d better go down there,” Peter said.
Schirmer nodded and grunted.
Peter went down the two ladders to the main deck. He reached the railing as the second mate helped the clown in the fancy uniform onto the deck.
Peter noticed for the first time that there was a brassard with a red swastika on the clown’s left sleeve.
That makes him a Nazi.
The clown looked at Peter sternly.
The sonofabitch expects me to salute him. Fuck him. That’s not a military uniform. Maybe Nazi party, probably diplomatic corps. I am a soldier; I exchange salutes with soldiers.
“Guten Morgen,” Peter said politely.
The Wehrmacht Colonel came on deck a moment later.
Peter saluted, a military salute.
“Guten Morgen, Herr Oberst.”
“Herr Hauptmann,” the Colonel replied as he returned the salute.
The clown in the fancy uniform held out his right arm stiffly in the Nazi salute. Peter glanced up at the flying bridge. Schirmer was still leaning on the rail, watching the little ceremony. He was smiling, as if amused.
“I am Anton von Gradny-Sawz, First Secretary of the Embassy of the German Reich to the Republic of Argentina,” the clown announced, “and this is Oberst Karl-Heinz Grüner, the Military Attaché.”
“Hauptmann von Wachtstein,” Peter said, “and this is Claudio Saverno, Second Officer of the Belgrano.”
“Welcome aboard the Belgrano,” Saverno said in Spanish.
A third man, in mussed civilian clothing, stepped off the ladder onto the deck.
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