XII
[ONE]
Aboard Lufthansa Flight 742
Over Portugal
1320 8 May 1943
It had been a very long and dangerous flight. They had to travel 2,700 miles from Buenos Aires to Cayenne in French Guiana in the northeast of the South American continent, and then 2,500 miles across the Atlantic Ocean from Cayenne to Dakar, on the west coast of Africa, and then 1,800 miles from Dakar to Lisbon. These great distances posed enormous problems of a purely aeronautical nature.
For starters, communication between the points of departure and the en route destinations was unreliable, if it worked at all. And even if there was communication, the weather reported at Cayenne might change completely by the time the Condor—which cruised at 215 knots—arrived there after a thirteen-hour flight from Buenos Aires, and the weather in Dakar might have changed drastically also after another twelve-hour flight.
And then they had to take off on each leg with the expectation that the aircraft would not encounter unusually strong headwinds (which would exhaust the fuel supply) or a storm that could not be flown around with the available fuel.
The weight of the fuel severely limited the Condor’s passenger and cargo weight allowances. Thus, on this flight the twenty-six-passenger aircraft carried only eight passengers in addition to First Secretary Anton Gradny-Sawz, Sturmbannführer Werner von Tresmarck, and Major Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein. Five of them were diplomats—two from Argentina, two from Chile, and one from Paraguay. The other three were Germano-Argentine businessmen.
Peter suspected the Germano-Argentines had been more or less ordered to take the Condor, and he thought the diplomats were fools. Either they didn’t comprehend the risk or they were flying despite it, for reasons of prestige or Latin machismo.
Brazil was at war with Germany, and under the rules of warfare the Condor was fair game. Because it could not fly over Brazil, it had to fly at least a hundred miles off the coast, in hopes that it would not be spotted by the American-supplied B-24 aircraft that patrolled the South Atlantic Ocean off Brazil and Uruguay looking for German submarines.
Cletus Frade had told Peter about the B-24s in Brazil. While they weren’t as heavily armed as the B-24s bombing Germany—since there were no German fighters operating in the area, they could dispense with the weight of the machine guns and ammunition they would normally have carried—they still carried enough Browning .50-caliber machine guns to shoot down a Condor.
Clete did not, in fact, think there was a great chance that the Condor would run into a patrolling B-24, and even if a B-24 pilot saw the Condor, he probably wouldn’t attack. Shooting down an unarmed transport, almost certainly carrying civilians, wasn’t the sort of thing a pilot would want to do.
“You might find yourself offered the choice between landing in Brazil, though, or getting shot down,” Clete said, “but what you really have to worry about is the Dakar-Lisbon leg.”
There was an active war in North Africa, with German bombers patrolling to interdict Allied shipping, and American fighters based in Morocco patrolling to interdict German bombers. Any aircraft with a swastika on its tail would be fair game.
With the exception of the steward, the Condor crew had just about ignored the passengers until they reached Dakar. Peter thought that was understandable. Von Tresmarck was in his SS uniform, and no one with the brains to find his ass with both hands wanted to get any closer to anyone in the SS than necessary. Peter himself had boarded the plane in civilian clothing, and on his diplomatic passport, and the crew naturally assumed he was a diplomat—like Gradny-Sawz, who had lost no time informing the pilot he was First Secretary of the German Embassy.
When they had refueled in Dakar, however, Peter had changed into his uniform, partly because his civilian clothes showed the signs of all that time in the air, and partly because he decided that he’d rather be in uniform if he was going to get shot down by some American P-51 Mustang pilot operating out of Morocco—which, come to think of it, would probably be a better way to check out than what’s liable to happen to me in Germany; my father wouldn’t be involved, and Alicia could get on with the sort of life she deserves.
That changed things, as far as the Condor pilot was concerned. The blond young man he had mistaken for a diplomat was not only a fellow pilot but the recipient of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross. They were still climbing out of Dakar when the steward came to him and told him the pilot wanted to see him in the cockpit.
He had the chart laid out on his lap, with their intended course marked on the celluloid with a grease pencil.
Out to sea, then a turn right, and up the North Atlantic 250 miles off the Moroccan coast, then another right turn straight into Lisbon. An X about halfway on the grease-pencil line indicated the Point of No Return, beyond which they would be closer to Lisbon than to Dakar.
“The Americans sometimes come this far offshore—but not often,” the pilot explained, “but they’re looking for surface shipping and submarines, which means they seldom fly higher than twenty-five hundred or three thousand meters, and usually lower. And they’re usually in something we can outrun—B-24s, B-17s, sometimes B-26s, and sometimes a twin-engine Navy amphibian.
“But they have radios, and if they spot us, they just get on the radio and give our position. There’s Amis, and even some English, all over the area around the mouth of the Mediterranean. So the trick is not to get spotted. The way to do that is to fly high—not so high as to make contrails, but higher than they usually fly. They’re generally looking down, for subs and shipping, and for our boys, who’re doing the same thing.
“The nightmare is that we get spotted by a Mustang patrol. They’ve got droppable auxiliary tanks and can range pretty far. And we can’t outrun a Mustang.”
“There’s not much that can,” Peter agreed.
“I’ll keep you posted,” the pilot said, and Peter knew his invitation to visit the cockpit had expired.
The steward came down the aisle to Peter, who was dozing, spread out over two seats. He had made a bed, or sorts, from the cushions of the empty seats.
“The Captain has sent for you, Herr Major.”
We changed course ninety degrees thirty minutes ago. Which either means we are within Portuguese airspace, and have made it, or there are a couple of Mustangs chasing us.
“Thank you,” Peter said, got up, and walked with difficulty—his right leg was painfully asleep—to the cockpit.
The pilot handed him the celluloid-covered chart and pointed to a spot, their location, off a town called Faro, on the coast of Portugal, right above the Spanish border. It was not on the grease-pencil course marked on the chart.
“I don’t like to fly the same course every time. Or, for that matter, twice in a row. So I took a chance the Amis would be working off the Morocco coast. I guessed right. No Amis. We should be on the ground in forty-five minutes. It’ll be a short stop, just for fuel, and then on to Madrid, where we’ll spend the night.”
Portuguese immigration officials and a representative of Lufthansa came aboard the Condor as soon as it had parked in front of the terminal.
The man from Lufthansa, a tall, muscular blond who looked healthy enough to be wearing a uniform (which made Peter wonder if he might also be the local Gestapo representative), informed them that after their passports had been examined, they would be taken to the transient lounge while the Condor was being serviced. This would probably take no more than an hour.
As they descended the portable stairway, Peter saw Portuguese policemen lining their path to the terminal building.
An In Transit lounge had been set up in the terminal to take care of international passengers who were only passing through Portugal and thus would have no reason to require customs and immigration.
Inside, just after he had spotted and started toward the men’s room, Peter
saw two well-dressed men in the lounge. Neither of them—they were both blond and fair-skinned—looked Portuguese.
[TWO]
1610 8 May 1943
When Korvettenkapitän Karl Boltitz had been introduced to SS-Obersturmbannführer Karl Cranz in Berlin, Boltitz had not been at all surprised that he was outranked by the SS officer who would accompany him to Spain, but he had been surprised by Cranz the man.
For one thing, he was affable, even charming. Boltitz’s experience with the Gestapo—at all levels—had taught him that they were usually surly and suspicious; and as their rank rose, so did their arrogance.
Cranz, a tall, slender blond-haired man of maybe thirty-five, had taken him from Himmler’s office to the Hotel Adlon, then had suggested that since they were about to spend so much time together, they might as well be on an informal, first-name basis.
As they talked, though Cranz had looked with obvious approval at the young women at the bar, he identified himself as the last faithful husband in Berlin, and showed Boltitz, with obvious pride, photographs of his wife and three children.
Their dinner together was quite pleasant—and Cranz grabbed the check. During the meal, he expressed apparently genuine admiration for those who’d served in U-boats, and he confessed relief that at least one of them spoke Spanish fluently enough to talk easily to Kapitän de Banderano in Cadiz.
Boltitz was of course aware that the charm and affability were almost surely part of Cranz’s professional technique (to put the enemy, so to speak, at ease), and reminded himself to be careful. But he was nevertheless relieved that he would not have to spend the next two or three weeks with a typical Gestapo asshole.
During most of their train trip across Germany, France, and Spain, Cranz kept himself occupied by burying his nose in a book; then, in Madrid, he quickly got rid of the resident Gestapo agent and took Boltitz on a two-hour shopping trip for clothing and toys for his family.
They traveled from Madrid to Cadiz, accompanied by a consular officer from the embassy, to make the arrangements to transfer the bodies of Oberst Grüner and Standartenführer Goltz from the Océano Pacífico to the hands of a local undertaker. After the bodies had been placed in sealed caskets, arrangements would be made to transport the caskets out of Spain, through France, and finally to Berlin.
Once that was accomplished, Cranz took Boltitz on another shopping expedition, and then they returned to Madrid. That night, over dinner in a first-class restaurant, and well into their second bottle of wine, Cranz asked for the first time, conversationally, what Boltitz thought “went wrong” in Argentina.
Boltitz replied, quite honestly, that he really had no idea…only questions.
“One of the theories, you know,” Cranz said, “is that it had absolutely nothing to do with Operation Phoenix; that it was simply the Argentine officer corps’ expression of disapproval over the elimination of Oberst Frade.”
“How would the Argentines have known when and where the landing from the Océano Pacífico would be made?”
“You think, then, do you, that treason is involved?”
“It’s not unlikely that the Argentines have someone in the embassy. That makes it espionage, or, if you like, counterespionage, on the part of the Argentines, rather than treason on the part of a German.”
“Interesting,” Cranz said.
“The problem with that theory—and it’s only a theory—is that if the Argentines do have somebody in the embassy who had access to the when-and-where information, they might also have access to the what information.”
“If they had known the what—the nature of the special shipment—wouldn’t they have tried to seize it?”
“That would have made it pretty obvious that they have someone in the embassy, wouldn’t you think?”
“There’s a man in their Bureau of Internal Security, an Oberstleutnant named Martín—”
“Who is supposed to be very clever,” Boltitz interrupted, “and who, incidentally, has been promoted Oberst.”
Cranz had looked at him thoughtfully. “I hadn’t heard about the promotion,” he said, and then: “In other words, you’re suggesting that if he had to give up something—the special shipment or his man in the embassy—Oberst Martín decided to give up the special shipment?”
“It’s a possibility,” Boltitz said, “But I repeat, I really have no idea what I’m talking about.”
“Neither of us does, I’m afraid,” Cranz said, and then, making it sound as if the thought had just occurred to him, asked, “What do you think about going to Lisbon to meet the Condor from Buenos Aires?”
“That’s a very good idea,” Boltitz replied honestly.
Cranz smiled and nodded. “And since Portugal is not involved in this war,” he said, “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if I found some really nice things in Lisbon for the wife and kids.”
In Lisbon, Boltitz was once again taken on shopping expeditions, during the course of which Cranz found it necessary to buy a huge suitcase to carry all the nice things he’d found for the wife and kids.
That night at dinner, Cranz threw another idea on the table, again making it sound as if it had just occurred to him. “What if we take our people off the airplane?” he asked. “They’re certain to be tired after their flight. We could take them out to dinner….”
“In vino veritas?” Boltitz asked.
Cranz nodded. “We could put them on the Swiss Airways flight to Zurich tomorrow,” he said. “I really would like more than an hour or two with them.”
And you didn’t think about that until just now, right?
“And if we did that, and went with them, there would be another advantage,” Cranz went on with a conspiratorial smile. “We wouldn’t have to spend hours typing up a report.”
“And then we’d fly back to Cadiz?”
“Why not?”
“What about tickets and visas for them to enter Portugal?” Boltitz asked.
Cranz tapped the breast of his suit jacket and winked, making it clear that he had considered that some time before.
Boltitz and Cranz rode to the airport in a Mercedes sedan assigned to the Naval Attaché of the German Embassy, with a second car, an embassy Opel Kapitän, following them. Boltitz had known the attaché from their cadet days at the Naval Academy.
At the airport, they found that the people they wanted to see were effectively sealed off in the Transit Lounge since, de jure, the In Transit passengers had not been admitted into Portugal. That meant that Boltitz and Cranz had more than a little difficulty getting in.
However, a combination of diplomatic indignation (they were carrying diplomatic passports and carnets issued by the Portuguese Foreign Ministry identifying them as diplomats attached to the German Embassy), Cranz’s charm, and a small gift of cash got them through the locked doors fifteen minutes before the Condor landed.
Though the lounge was small and sparsely furnished, there were comfortable leather armchairs. There was also a counter that offered sandwiches and coffee, and, of course, there were rest rooms. On a small table between the doors to the rest rooms someone had erected a neat triangle of rolls of toilet tissue.
“I suppose,” Cranz said with a smile, “that the first thing most arriving passengers will want to do is answer the call of nature.”
When a waitress came into the room, she offered them coffee and very sweet biscuits.
“When the plane lands, I’ll have a word with the crew about unloading their luggage,” Cranz said. “And you explain to them that their travel plans have been changed.”
Boltitz nodded, at the last second restraining his impulse to acknowledge the order by saying, “Jawohl, Herr Obersturmbannführer.”
If Cranz wants to think that he has convinced me we’re pals, fine.
As soon as the ground handlers had rolled the st
airway up to the Condor, Cranz left the terminal and walked toward the airplane without speaking to any of the arriving passengers as they came off the airplane.
And he knows who they are as well as I do. There are photographs in all their dossiers.
The first man off the plane was First Secretary Gradny-Sawz. Boltitz followed Cranz’s example and let him pass into the transient room without giving him any sign of recognition. Sturmbannführer Werner von Tresmarck, in uniform, followed him. As he passed, he looked at Boltitz carefully, obviously suspecting he was German and wondering why he was there.
Major Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein came in next.
Although Boltitz knew from his dossier that von Wachtstein had won the Knight’s Cross—indeed, had gotten it from the hands of Adolf Hitler himself—it was a little strange to see the man in person. The Knight’s Cross was one of the few decorations that still meant something. It was awarded only in cases of really unusual valor in the face of the enemy, not as a reward for long and faithful service to the Nazi party.
“Major von Wachtstein?”
Von Wachtstein looked at him carefully. One eyebrow rose just perceptibly before he nodded.
“I’m Karl Boltitz of the embassy,” Boltitz said.
Von Wachtstein waited expressionless for him to go on.
“Actually, Major, I’m Korvettenkapitän Boltitz.”
“Oh, the new naval attaché,” von Wachtstein said, and offered his hand. “How do you do?”
Von Wachtstein’s grip, not surprising Boltitz, was firm.
“What are you doing here?” von Wachtstein asked.
“The opportunity came up, and I thought it might be valuable to have a word with you before I went to Buenos Aires.”
Von Wachtstein’s eyes showed his disbelief.
If he’s involved, he’s doomed. You can read his face like a newspaper.
“Actually, I’m here—”
Secret Honor Page 37