“You’re going to have to learn to trust me. Tell me about things like this.”
And, again, after a moment, he nodded.
“What happens to the property of a dead man? It goes to his wife, right?”
“Right.”
“That would be fine, but the wife is already dead. Then what?”
Perón thought about that a moment, then said, “They would look for other relatives, who would have the right of inheritance.”
“But not back to the German Embassy, right?”
“No, of course not. The Germans don’t want anything about this program to come out.”
“So what happens to you, Inge,” Evita asked, “when the Germans find out their hundreds of millions of pesos’ worth of property is now going to the Argentine relatives of a dead man they never heard of?”
“I would either be taken back to Germany and, after they tortured me enough to convince themselves I was telling the truth, executed. I know too much. Or they might just execute me here.”
“Which means that the relatives get the properties,” Evita said. “What about this? We go back to Buenos Aires. We find some notary we can trust and Inge transfers all the properties to someone else. Tomorrow. As soon as we get back to Buenos Aires. And then Inge Schenck disappears. You’ve got some cash?”
Inge nodded. “There was a lot of cash in Manfred’s briefcase. It’s now in my luggage.”
“Perhaps it would be wise to let me keep it for you,” Perón suggested.
Inge did not reply.
“So the whole thing depends on us getting to Buenos Aires before the Gendarmería finds out Inge is dead. Can we do that, Juan Domingo?”
He took a long moment to consider the question.
“They told me that ‘senior officials’ will be here in the morning,” he replied, “and as soon as they are here, we’ll be free to go. I will suggest that Señora Schenck be allowed to fly the body to Buenos Aires for burial; that will serve to avoid the questions of a funeral service and interment here.” He paused. “Yes, it can be done. Will be done.”
“You know someone who can be trusted to hold this property for us?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Inge,” Evita asked. “Would you say that sharing half of these properties with us would be a fair price for getting you out of your predicament?”
After a moment, Inge nodded.
[SIXTEEN]
Altitude 500 meters
Above Highway 146
Five Kilometers West of Highway 146/143 Intersection
Mendoza Province, Argentina
17 October 1943
Don Cletus Frade pointed out the front window of the olive-drab Piper Cub.
Two kilometers ahead, and five hundred or so meters above, an identical Piper was flying in wide circles to the right of Highway 146.
Two minutes after that, Clete pointed out the window again, this time downward to a large cloud of dust raised by a vehicular convoy of ten large Ejército Argentino trucks, preceded by a Mercedes sedan and followed by two pickup trucks, the bed of one filled with cans of gasoline and the other with spare tires on wheels.
The president of the Argentine Republic looked where Frade was pointing and then, cupping his hands around his mouth, shouted, “So far, so good.”
Clete had taken off shortly after 0500—as soon as he had enough visibility to do so—and flown cross-country toward a guesstimate position eighty kilometers southeast from San Luis on Highway 146.
An hour and thirty minutes later, just about the time he had decided that putting a twenty-liter can of avgas in the lap of the president of the republic just before takeoff had been the right thing to do, dark smoke rising from gas-and oil-filled cans told him that gendarmes from San Luis had come through.
The smoke pots on the highway had the “runway” marked out to Clete’s specifications: “No rocks and twice the length of a polo field.”
He landed, took the gas can from the lap of General Rawson, and then topped off the Cub’s fuel by pouring the avgas the gendarmes had brought from a can through a chamois cloth filter.
Fifteen minutes after landing, he was airborne again.
The second Húsares de Pueyrredón Piper, the one he saw now, had taken off immediately after he had and flown the dirt road from Mendoza, carrying General Nervo, to its refueling point. Then it had taken off and continued down the dirt road until it intersected Highway 146, onto which it had turned to the northeast.
It came upon the convoy first—which wasn’t surprising, as it had less a distance to fly—and had then followed orders by flying wide circles to the right of the road.
Clete flew his Cub to intercept the other one, and signaled to the pilot that he was going to fly low over the road to make sure it wasn’t full of large rocks and then land. The Húsares de Pueyrredón pilot nodded his understanding.
Clete pushed the nose down and headed for the road. At probably three hundred feet, using the cloud of dust as a wind sock, he decided that he had gotten lucky. By flying into the prevailing wind, which was the way you were supposed to do it, he would end his landing roll right in front of the Mercedes.
He could see nothing on the road that would keep him from landing, and also that the passengers in the Mercedes were looking up at him incredulously.
He went around, came in low and slow—and touched down.
The Mercedes was two hundred meters down the road. General Rawson got out, tugged on the skirt of his tunic, and then, with his back to the Mercedes, checked his pistol.
He had shown it to Clete just before they had taken off. It was a pretty little Colt short-barreled revolver chambered for the .32 Police cartridge. Clete thought it would probably be about as lethal as the Red Ryder Daisy BB gun he had been given for his fifth birthday.
He reached onto the floor of the Cub and picked up his Model 1911A1 .45 semiautomatic pistol and slipped that into the pocket of his JACKET. LEATHER, NAVAL AVIATORS W/FUR COLLAR, and then, to be sure he wasn’t going to be out-gunned, took a Thompson .45 ACP submachine gun from where he had propped it between the fuselage skin and the instrument panel.
By then the other Cub was down, and General Nervo and the pilot—who looked more than a little nervous—had walked up to them.
Colonel Schmidt and several officers were standing in front of the Mercedes. They were wearing Wehrmacht steel helmets. Clete remembered that the first time he’d ever seen a picture of his father—Colonel Graham had shown it to him in the hotel in Hollywood—his father had been dressed just like this.
“Do we go there, or what?” Nervo asked.
“I’m the president of the Argentine Republic,” Rawson said softly. “People come to me.”
A very long sixty seconds later, the officers with Colonel Schmidt came to attention and marched toward the people standing by the airplanes.
“Do you think they’ve spotted the president?” Nervo asked quietly.
“We’ll soon find out,” Rawson himself answered.
The expression on el Coronel Schmidt’s face didn’t change even when he was so close to Rawson that it would have been impossible not to recognize him.
Schmidt saluted. Rawson returned it.
“All right, Colonel,” Rawson said. “If you have an explanation, I’m ready to hear it.”
“Mi general,” Schmidt said, “I very much regret that I must ask you to consider yourself under arrest pending court-martial.”
Clete saw that one of the officers with Schmidt—there were four of them—had his hand in his overcoat pocket.
That sonofabitch has one of those toy Colt revolvers in there!
“Arrest? Court-martial? I’ll remind you, Colonel, that I am the president of the Argentine Republic.”
“You are a traitor to the Argentine Republic, Gen—”
He did not get to finish the sentence. Seven 230-grain, solid-point bullets from Don Cletus Frade’s Thompson struck him in his midsection, from just above his crotch on his ri
ght side to just below his shoulder joint on his left.
Schmidt fell backward.
Clete turned the Thompson on the officer he thought might have a little Colt revolver and, just as the pistol cleared the officer’s pocket, put four rounds of .45 in him.
“Cletus! My God!” President Rawson exclaimed. “What have you done?”
“He kept us alive is what he did,” Nervo said.
Nervo now had his pistol drawn.
“On the ground, the rest of you, or you’re dead!” Cletus ordered, gesturing with the muzzle of the Thompson.
The others dropped to the ground, one of them trying without success to keep away from the blood now leaking from the bodies of el Coronel Schmidt and the man who had tried to use his little Colt revolver.
Clete turned to the pilot of the second Cub, who was ashen-faced.
“What you’re going to do, Lieutenant, is first get yourself together, then go halfway to that convoy, put your hands on your hips, and bellow ‘Senior noncommissioned officer, front and center,’ or words to that effect. And when he presents himself, bring him to me.”
The lieutenant didn’t move.
“Lieutenant, do what Don Cletus has ordered,” President Rawson said.
The lieutenant straightened, then walked around the bodies on the ground and toward the convoy.
Three minutes later, the lieutenant returned, following a large, middle-aged man who had a Thompson hanging from his shoulder.
Next time, Lieutenant, you might think of taking his fucking weapon away from him!
The man saluted. “Mi general, Suboficial Mayor Martínez of the 10th Mountain Regiment reporting as ordered.”
Rawson returned the salute and then looked at Cletus with an Okay, now what? look on his face.
“Sergeant Major,” Clete said, “I am Major Cletus—”
“I know who you are, Don Cletus,” Suboficial Mayor Martínez said. “Enrico has been my lifelong friend. It was I who called him to warn him that el Coronel Schmidt was coming to your house in Tandil.”
“With God as your witness, you are loyal to General Rawson?” Clete asked.
“With God as my witness, mi general.”
“Suboficial Mayor,” General Rawson said, “if I ordered you to take the regiment back to San Martín de los Andes, with these officers under arrest, what would you do?”
“I would have the regiment turned and moving in five minutes, mi general.”
“Do it, Suboficial Mayor,” General Rawson ordered.
As they watched Suboficial Mayor Martínez march away, Nervo said, “What do we do about Perón, Mr. President?”
“You go to Bariloche in the other Cub and place him in protective custody. Suggest to him that he return to Buenos Aires as soon as possible. Arrange things so that ‘as soon is possible’ is tomorrow. Not before. By that time, I should have things straightened out, at least to the point where I can make an intelligent decision about how to deal with el Coronel Perón.”
He turned to Cletus. “Let’s go, Cletus. Now that you’ve saved my life, the sooner I can get to Buenos Aires, the better.”
Clete looked at Nervo.
“Have a good time in Bariloche, General.”
Nervo smiled. “And you in Buenos Aires. Don’t think you’re going to be able to relax, Don Cletus. I have a feeling we’re all going to be very busy very soon.”
POSTSCRIPT
In this fictional work, reference was made to the actual Nazi massacre of 335 men and boys in the Ardeatine Caves in Rome during World War II.
The story line dealt with the escape of Nazis from Allied retribution during and after the war, and several scenes were laid in San Carlos de Bariloche, which is today sometimes known as “Argentina’s Vail,” making reference to the wonderful skiing in Vail, Colorado.
In 1996, the SS officer second in command of the mass murders in the Ardeatine Caves, Erich Priebke—who had escaped to Argentina on a false passport and other documents provided, he said, by Vatican authorities—was put aboard a Falcon DA 90 aircraft sent by the Italian government and extradited to Italy to finally face trial.
He had lived in Bariloche for fifty years, and owned a hotel there.
Argentina’s interior minister, Carlos Corach, suspended several Bariloche police officers who had embraced Priebke fondly just before he boarded the airplane.
The Honor of Spies Page 58
