“Screw you,” Nervo said without rancor, and turned to his locker and took an envelope from it.
“You can have that,” he said. “You owe me.”
Martín opened the envelope. It contained a single sheet of paper.
* * *
1623 ARENALES
APARTMENT 5B
45-707
MARIA TERESA ALSINA
2103 SANTA FE
APARTMENT 4H
DOB 16 MAY 1928
* * *
It was the address and telephone number of an apartment building. Martín searched his memory a moment and came up with a mental image. It was at the corner of Arenales and Coronel Díaz in Barrio Norte, a northern suburb of the city.
“You’re sure about this, Santiago?” Martín asked.
“Yeah, I’m sure. I saw el Coronel Juan Domingo Perón go in there myself.”
“Sixteen May 1928. That makes her fifteen,” Martín said.
“Next month, she’ll be fifteen,” Nervo said. “Well, you know what they say, if they’re big enough to bleed, they’re big enough to butcher.”
“Who else knows about this?”
“One of my lieutenants, two of my sergeants, and me.”
“Can you keep it that way?”
“Of course.”
“You’re right, Santiago, I owe you.”
“Yeah, you do,” Nervo said.
Martín offered him his hand, then went to his locker and dressed quickly.
The moment he stepped into the street outside the men’s locker room, he heard the starter of the Dodge grind, and a moment later the car started moving toward him. He signaled to Sargento Lascano to stay behind the wheel and climbed into the backseat. “The officer’s sales store, please, Manuel,” he ordered.
“Señor, I don’t know where—”
“On the Avenida 9 de Julio, across the avenue from the French Embassy.”
“Sí, Señor.”
“You’ll learn these places soon enough, Manuel,” Martín said.
But I think it will be some time before I start telling you things like what I have just learned. That the new Assistant to the Minister of War, the distinguished el Coronel Juan Domingo Perón, has rented an apartment and installed in it his new mistress, who will be fifteen years old next month.
Lascano returned to Avenida Libertador by turning right onto Calle Arribeños, then making a right when the street dead-ended at one of the parks scattered throughout the Barrancas del Belgrano. As he did, Martín happened to glance up and saw the miniature Statue of Liberty that had been erected there about the same time the real one was going up in New York Harbor.
I wonder if Cletus Frade knows that’s there? For that matter, I wonder if the American Ambassador does?
Lascano drove downtown at a shade under the speed limit.
By the time they had passed the Hipódrome, and the Frade family’s guest house, a medium-size, turn-of-the-century mansion, which was across the street from it, Martín became aware of their pace.
The police are not going to stop this car, much less issue a summons to any car carrying me, or any other officer of the Bureau of Internal Security. So what do I do? Tell him to go faster? And give him the idea that he can ignore the speed limits?
“Manuel, pick it up a little, will you? I’m running late.”
“Sí, Señor.”
The speed increased another five miles an hour.
“A little more, please, Manuel.”
Manuel added another five miles per hour to their velocity.
Martín was pleased.
Lascano errs on the side of caution. That’s a desirable characteristic in the intelligence business. The trick is knowing when to take a chance.
The officers’ clothing store was in a turn-of-the-century mansion much like the Frade place on Libertador.
“Where should I park, Señor?” Lascano asked. “There are no-parking signs.”
“Right in front,” Martín said. “I won’t be a moment. I have to pick up a uniform.”
“Señor, I’d be happy to go in for you.”
I wonder if he volunteered to go in for me because he would rather not sit at the wheel of an illegally parked car on the busiest street in Buenos Aires? Or because he is simply trying to please me?
“It will be quicker if I go,” Martín said, giving him the benefit of the doubt. “But thank you, Manuel.”
The uniform was waiting for him inside, with its new insignia in place.
This is the third time in three years I’ve been here. The last time was yesterday, when I came to see if they could take care of the insignia overnight. The time before that was three years ago, when I picked up this uniform, my present to myself, on my promotion to teniente coronel. I don’t think I’ve worn it a dozen times in three years.
And if I am growing middle-aged flab, the way Santiago Nervo is, and can’t get into this, then what?
Martín got back into the Dodge and ordered Lascano to take him to the Edificio Libertador.
When the car had stopped at a side entrance to the large, eleven-story building, Martín permitted Lascano to open the car’s door for him.
“Manuel, have you ever heard of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo?” Martín asked when he was standing by the side of the car.
“Sí, Señor.”
“Do you know where it is?”
“Sí, Señor. Near Pila, in Buenos Aires Province.”
“And how would you get there from here?”
“Señor, I would need a map.”
“Where would you go for that?”
“To an ACA station, Señor,” Lascano replied, referring to the Automobile Club of Argentina.
Martín was again pleased with his choice of driver/bodyguard.
“Go to an ACA station now. Buy every road map they have on sale. Get a receipt. Turn in an expense voucher. You have cash?”
“Sí, Señor.”
“Personal or official?”
“Both, Señor.”
“When you have the maps, bring the one for Buenos Aires Province to my office, and I’ll mark Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo and the best way to get there. The estancia is not on the ACA map.”
“Sí, Señor,” Lascano said. “Señor, are we going to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo? I will need fuel—”
“We may. In this business, one never knows where one might have to go, or when. So whenever there is the opportunity, make sure you have fuel, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Sí, Señor.”
Martín turned, and climbed a short flight of stairs to a metal door, carrying the bag with his uniform in it over his arm. A soldier in field gear, wearing a German-style steel helmet and with a Mauser rifle slung from his shoulder, pulled it open for him and came to attention, clicking his heels as Martín entered the building.
It made Martín a little uncomfortable, although he smiled at the soldier.
The soldier thinks he knows who I am, and that I am authorized to enter the building. The operative word is thinks. One of his officers—or more likely one of the sergeants of the guard—has apparently told him that a “civilian” entering the building through this door, of such and such a height and description, is actually a coronel of the Bureau of Internal Security, and should not be subjected to close scrutiny.
But how does he know, without actually checking my credentials at least once—and if this soldier had done that, I would have remembered—that I am that BIS officer?
The answer is he doesn’t. It is one of the problems of the Army…and, for that matter, of Argentina. Even before he entered the Army, he was taught that it is not wise to question your superiors. That it is wise to give your superiors—and to this country boy in
uniform, the fact that I am wearing a suit and have a car with a driver makes me a superior—the benefit of the doubt.
Martín walked down a long corridor almost to the center of the building, then rode an elevator to the ninth floor. There two BIS men in the elevator foyer did in fact examine him carefully before popping to attention in their civilian clothing.
“Buenas tardes, mi Coronel,” the older of them, Warrant Officer Federico Attiria, said.
“Has Mayor [Major] Delgano come up recently?” Martín asked.
“Haven’t seen him, mi Coronel.”
“Do me a favor. Call El Palomar, and see if and when he’s landed out there. If he hasn’t, call Campo de Mayo, and see if he’s taken off from there, and if not, why not.”
El Palomar (literally, “The Dove”) was Buenos Aires’s civilian airport. Campo de Mayo, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, was the country’s most important military base, and the Army Air Service kept a fleet of aircraft there.
“Sí, mi Coronel.”
“If I ask Señora Mazza to do it, they give her the runaround,” Martín said. “They’ll tell you.”
Señora Mazza was the private secretary to the Director of the Bureau of Internal Security. It was said, not entirely as a joke, that she knew more of Argentina’s military secrets than any half-dozen generals.
Attiria chuckled.
“Anyone dumb enough to give her the runaround will suddenly find himself up to his ass in ice and penguin shit in Ushuaia,” he said. “I’ll let you know what I find out.”
Because of its isolation and bitterly cold weather, Ushuaia, in Tierra del Fuego, at the southern—Cape Horn—tip of South America, was regarded as the worst possible place to be stationed.
Martín smiled at him, then walked down the wide, polished marble corridor. Near its end, hanging over a standard office door, was a sign reading, “Ethical Standards Office.”
The corridor ended fifty feet farther down, at a pair of twelve-foot-high double doors, suspended in a molded bronze door frame. On them was lettered, in gold, “Office of the Director, Bureau of Internal Security.”
At the moment, there was no Director.
In Martín’s judgment, El Almirante Francisco Montoya, the former Director, had done a magnificent—and nearly successful—job of straddling the fence between supporting the government of President Ramón S. Castillo and the Grupo de Oficiales Unidos (GOU), which had, under El Coronel (Retired) Jorge Guillermo Frade, been planning its overthrow. When the revolution came, it had been far less bloody than it could have been, largely because of the careful planning of el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade. Frade had been determined that the Argentine revolution would not emulate the bloody Spanish Civil War.
Frade himself had been assassinated shortly before the revolution began, and his friend and ally, General de Division (Major General) Arturo Rawson, had stepped into the presidential shoes Frade had been expected to fill. Rawson was a good man, Martín thought. But he was neither as smart nor as tough as Coronel Frade.
He wasn’t alone in this assessment. It was clear to Martín that the Germans had arranged for the assassination of Frade because he was smart enough and strong enough not only to control Argentina but to tilt his nation toward the Anglo-American alliance.
Montoya’s careful neutrality had not sat well with the new Presidente Rawson, and he had ordered Montoya into retirement within an hour of the occupation by the revolutionaries of the Casa Rosada (the Pink House—the seat of government) and the Edificio Libertador.
He had at the same time offered the post to Martín, who had, with some difficulty, managed to turn it down.
As Chief of the Ethical Standards Office of the BIS (an office that made him directly subordinate to the Director), Teniente Coronel Martín had been responsible for keeping an eye on the GOU. Though he had regularly provided Admiral Montoya with intelligence that made the intentions of Frade and the GOU quite clear, Montoya had been unwilling—or unable; he was not a man of strong character—to bring himself to either suppress the revolutionaries or join them.
Shortly before the revolution began—after much thought, some of it prayerful, and for reasons he really hoped were for the good of Argentina—Martín had decided that his duty required him to support the revolutionaries. From that moment, he had worked hard—and at great personal risk—to conceal the plans of the GOU and the names of its members from Admiral Montoya and the Castillo government.
Martín felt little sympathy for Montoya, for he believed that he had failed in his duty as an officer to make a decision based on his oath to defend Argentina against all enemies. As far as Martín was concerned, el Almirante Montoya had made his decision to straddle the fence based on what he considered to be the best interests of Francisco Montoya. He deserved to be retired. Or worse.
But for reasons that were both practical and selfless, Martín did not want to find himself sitting behind the ornately carved Director’s desk as Montoya’s successor.
For one thing, he had told el Presidente Rawson, the position called for a general or flag officer, and he was not even close to being eligible for promotion to General de Brigade (Brigadier General, the junior of the general officer ranks).
Rawson had replied that Martín’s contribution to the revolution had not only been important but was recognized, and that he himself had been especially impressed with Martín’s accurate assessments of the actions various officers in the Castillo government would take when the revolution began. As far as he was concerned, this proved that Martín could take over the Director’s post with no difficulty. And with that in mind, he added, Martín’s promotion to General de Brigade in several months was not out of the question.
Martín had countered by respectfully suggesting that if he were promoted out of turn, and named Director, the resentment from the senior officer corps of both the Army and the Armada would be nearly universal and crippling.
He also believed, but did not tell Rawson, that if he was named Director—with or without a second promotion—it would be only a matter of time before he was forced from the office. The generals—and senior colonels who expected promotion to general officer as a reward for their roles in the revolution—might swallow their disappointment and resentment toward a peer who was given the post, but they would unite against a Director who before the Revolution had been a lowly—and junior—teniente coronel.
That would leave (in what Martín liked to think was an honest evaluation of the situation) no one of his skill and experience to provide the government with the intelligence it needed. And when dealing with the North Americans and the Germans, gathering intelligence should not be left to an amateur.
Six general officers (in addition to two colonels, Perón and Sanchez, who were about to be promoted) considered themselves ideally qualified to be Director, and were vying for the post. No admirals were being considered. The only significant resistance to the revolution had come from the Armada.
Martín believed—but did not tell Presidente Rawson—that any of the eight would be delighted to have as their deputy a qualified intelligence officer who had already been given his prize—his promotion—for his role in the revolution, expected nothing more, and would not pose a threat.
He also did not tell Presidente Rawson that he could better serve Argentina from a position behind the throne of the Director of Internal Security than by sitting in the ornate gilded chair itself, and that he could train whomever was finally appointed to the post, much as he had taught Almirante Montoya, who had come from the School of Naval Engineering and had known nothing about intelligence.
Rawson attributed Martín’s reasons for declining the directorship to commendable modesty, and decided that for the moment, until a Director could be chosen, Martín would serve as Interim Director. Rawson assured Martín he would seek his advice about which officer he should name Dir
ector.
Martín pushed open the door from the corridor to the foyer of his office. Three men rose to their feet. Two were in business suits, and by appearance could have been bankers or lawyers or successful shopkeepers. They were, in fact, agents of the BIS assigned to the Ethical Standards Office. The third man, who wore the uniform of a Suboficial Mayor, and was in fact a sergeant major, was also an agent of the BIS.
Martín motioned all three of them to follow him into his office. When they were all inside, he motioned to Suboficial Mayor Jose Cortina to lock the door.
“Who’s with the President?” Martín asked.
Cortina provided two names.
Martín nodded his approval.
President Rawson was accompanied everywhere by his armed aide-de-camp. There was also a Policía Federal bodyguard detail. It consisted of two bodyguards and the drivers of all the cars in any presidential motor parade, which might be anywhere from two to six cars. All of these drivers were also armed.
The Policía Federal believed this was enough protection. Martín devoutly hoped it would be; but to err on the side of caution, he had ordered that two men from the Ethical Standards Office be with the President at all times.
The Policía Federal considered this an insult to their competence, but there wasn’t anything they could do about it. Until a new Director of the BIS was named and took office, only the President himself could override Martín’s decisions.
If the Germans were brazen enough to assassinate Coronel Frade, they just might be brazen enough to try to eliminate General Rawson. They might think he had been responsible for—or at least knew about and tacitly supported—the shooting of the two German officers on the beach near Puerto Magdalena, and be seeking revenge. Or they might decide to remove him because he shared Frade’s pro-Anglo-American, anti-German beliefs. Or there might be an attempt on his life from officers or officials who had been deposed in the revolution. Because the threat was real, Martín saw it as his duty to do whatever he could to protect the President, whether or not the Policía Federal liked it.
Secret Honor Page 10