Forster was not privy to anything concerned with the confidential special fund, and Cranz had no intention of telling him.
But if von Tresmarck did something stupid—something that might call attention to anything, which included the fund—Cranz told Forster that he wanted to hear about it right away.
Von Tresmarck would also be told that he now was directly responsible to Cranz, and bluntly reminded that he had one foot on the slippery slope to a pink triangle on a gray Sachsenhausen inmate’s uniform.
Cranz saw no potential problems with any of this, and was delighted with what he saw as his future here in Buenos Aires. Neither was he worried that anything would happen in Germany to see him recalled. That couldn’t be done without the acquiescence of everyone involved with Operation Phoenix—and that group included Martin Bormann. Karl Cranz was much closer to Hitler’s right-hand man than anyone thought, and Bormann wanted Cranz in Buenos Aires. Bormann knew more about the confidential special fund than anyone thought, because Cranz had gone to him and told him.
Bormann’s reactions had not been what Cranz had expected. The Reichsleiter had not gone to Himmler with the information that von Deitzberg was conducting what Himmler probably would have considered a treasonous fraud against the Third Reich. Nor had he asked to be included in the distribution of the fund’s munificence.
“What I want you to do about that, Karl,” he’d said, using Cranz’s Christian name for the first time, “is play along with them. Sometimes, something sordid like that can be transformed into something useful. And don’t worry. If it comes out, I’ll tell the Führer you were acting on my orders.”
Cranz had asked Bormann what to do about taking money from the special confidential fund, saying that it would look suspicious if he didn’t. Bormann had said, somewhat cryptically, “Don’t do anything that would cause suspicion,” and Cranz had decided that that was permission to keep taking the money.
The money was one of the reasons Cranz also was pleased about what life in Buenos Aires promised to be, especially after Ilse and the children joined him. Frogger had told him that there was a generous Foreign Service allowance for renting an apartment, adding that he didn’t use all of his and pocketed the difference, which was permitted.
Cranz had immediately decided to do the opposite, to augment the rental allowance with money from the special confidential fund. When Ilse and the children joined him, they’d find a very nice apartment—perhaps even a chalet in one of the suburbs—waiting for them.
He’d also used some special confidential funds the night before. He’d sort of tricked Boltitz into taking him to his tailor by asking him what he planned to do about new uniforms to go with his new rank. When Boltitz had replied that he’d have to go—and soon—to von Wachtstein’s tailor to have the extra golden stripe added to the sleeve, Cranz had said, “I’ll go with you, Karl. I need some suits, and I might as well take advantage of not having to worry about a clothing ration.”
He’d ordered half a dozen suits, shirts, and neckties. Not that it mattered, but they were really inexpensive. And when they walked back onto the street, he’d seen a lingerie store with what looked like silk stockings in the window.
Silk stockings were hard to come by in Berlin, even in the special stores for senior officers. The opposite was apparently true in Buenos Aires. The store had shelf upon shelf of them, and at quite reasonable prices.
He bought a dozen pair of the best quality the store offered. He would get Captain von und zu Aschenburg, the Condor pilot, to take them to Ilse. He would put a note in the box, suggesting that Ilse give a pair or two of them to her friend Gerda. She would probably do so anyway, but it was best to make sure. Gerda, the daughter of Walter Buch, chairman of the party’s court for the determination of NSDAP legal matters and internal discipline, was married to Martin Bormann.
Von und zu Aschenburg, too, was going to be useful. Once he got in the habit of taking small packages from South America to Berlin, those packages in the future could contain Swiss francs, English pounds, and American dollars for von Deitzberg.
One of the problems with the special confidential fund was that the payments made to gain the freedom of the Jews in the concentration camps were transacted in Uruguay. That required converting the funds to currency usable in Germany. Reichsmarks were hard to come by in Argentina and Uruguay without going through either the Buenos Aires branches of the Deutsche Bank or the Dresdnerbank—which of course being German kept detailed records, which of course was not a good thing. Thus, von Tresmarck had to send the cash in the diplomatic pouch, and that raised the risk of Hauptsturmführer Forster—who was both zealous and until now under no one’s authority— finding out what von Tresmarck’s little packages contained.
Cranz had arrived in what arguably was his office at five minutes to nine. His good feeling lasted until he glanced at his watch and saw that it now was quarter past nine.
One would have thought that Frogger would have come in a bit early, not a bit late.
He said and did nothing even then, instead glancing through the Argentinisches Tageblatt, the German-language newspaper. Somebody—he couldn’t remember who—had told him that the Argentines, who regarded the Tageblatt as a “guest newspaper,” would not permit it to publish much of anything at all except announcements of church meetings, births, weddings, deaths, and the like unless the items first had been published in an Argentine newspaper—and then only if the translation was approved by the Argentine government and the paper ran both the German translation and the original story in Spanish, either side by side or one after the other.
Reading it now, Cranz thought that were it not for the notices of the deaths of Argo-Germans in Africa and Russia, and pleas to contribute to Winterhilfe— which asked Germans abroad to aid Germans impoverished by the war—one would never know a war was on.
He quickly tired of reading news of the Buenos Aires German community’s church suppers and such.
He looked at his watch again.
Nine twenty-five.
Where the hell is he?
He couldn’t remember the name of Frogger’s secretary, so he couldn’t call for her. Instead, he got up from Frogger’s desk and walked to the outer office.
“Señora,” he asked politely, “you don’t happen to know where El Señor Frogger is, do you?”
She smiled, then said she was sorry, she had no idea.
“What time does he usually come to work?”
“He’s usually here, señor, when I come in.”
“And when do you usually come in, señora?”
“El Señor Frogger likes to have me at my desk at eight, señor.”
“He didn’t send a message that he would be late?”
“No, señor.”
“Would you please try to get him, or La Señora Frogger, on the telephone for me, please?”
Three minutes later, she reported that there was no answer at El Señor Frogger’s home number or at the Café Flora, where he and La Señora Frogger sometimes went for breakfast.
Cranz smiled and thanked her, gave the situation a moment’s thought, then went looking for First Secretary Anton von Gradny-Sawz.
Cranz had already formed several opinions about Gradny-Sawz, none of them very flattering. He had decided Gradny-Sawz was shrewd but not very bright; that it had been a mistake by Bormann to name him to try to enlist Colonel Perón—that Cranz probably would have to take that task onto himself—and that while Gradny-Sawz probably was not the traitor, neither was he trustworthy.
But Gradny-Sawz was first secretary of the embassy, and thus Frogger’s immediate superior, and Cranz didn’t want to go to the ambassador about something petty like Frogger not showing up for work on time.
When Cranz got to Gradny-Sawz’s office, von Deitzberg was in there with Gradny-Sawz and looked at Cranz with annoyance.
“Will this wait, Cranz?” von Deitzberg snapped.
“Frogger hasn’t come in, and I was going to ask the first
secretary if he perhaps knew anything about it.”
“Did you call him at home?” von Deitzberg asked.
“There’s no answer,” Cranz said.
“Let me check with Fräulein Hässell,” Gradny-Sawz said, and dialed a number.
Fräulein Hässell had no idea why Herr Frogger had not come to work.
Nor did Ambassador von Lutzenberger, who suggested it might be a good idea to send Untersturmführer Schneider around to their apartment to make sure that nothing was wrong.
“You go with him, Cranz,” von Deitzberg ordered, “and take Raschner with you.”
The Frogger apartment was on the fourth floor of a turn-of-the-century apartment building on Calle Talcahuano. A park separated it from the Colón Opera House.
When there was no answer to the in-house telephone, the concierge said the Froggers must have gone out before he came on duty at nine, then gave the men a good deal of trouble when they said they wanted to have a look in the apartment.
Cranz was perhaps disloyally amused at Raschner’s coldly angry reaction to that.
He’s going to have to remember that this is not Germany and that a Gestapo badge is absolutely meaningless here.
Cranz’s charm, diplomatic passport, and a small cash gift overcame the concierge’s reluctance to let them into the apartment. The concierge was visibly relieved when Schneider produced a key.
The Froggers were not in the apartment. The beds were made, and there was no sign that they had had their breakfast there. There was nothing suspicious about that. They were Germans. When Germans got out of bed, they made the bed. When they had breakfast, they cleaned the table and the plates and silver and the kitchen.
Yet there also was not any lingering smell from someone having cooked a breakfast meal.
“Herr Obersturmbannführer,” Raschner called softly from a table in the sitting room.
Cranz walked to him.
“What looks like a photo frame has recently been removed from here,” Raschner said, pointing to barely discernible disturbances in a very light coating of dust.
Cranz raised his eyebrows in question.
“I noticed the absence of photographs of the sons,” Raschner said. “There are no photos anywhere. Then it seemed to me that there were photo frames missing from the arrangement on the mantel”—he gestured with his finger toward the mantelpiece—“and then I found this.”
Cranz nodded.
“May I proceed, Herr Obersturmbannführer?”
“Proceed to what, Sturmbannführer?”
“While I see if I can find a photo album anywhere, I will send Schneider to the garage to see if their auto is there.”
“You’re suggesting what, Sturmbannführer?”
“Let me see if we can find the car and a photo album before I suggest anything, Herr Obersturmbannführer.”
“Please call me ‘Herr Cranz,’ Sturmbannführer.”
“May I proceed, Herr Cranz?”
“Go ahead.”
[TWO]
Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo Near Pila Buenos Aires Province, Argentina 1030 14 July 1943
Don Cletus Frade sat at a small glass-top table on a small verandah outside the master bedroom of the big house waiting for his wife to join him. He was reclined in his chair, his feet resting on the other chair, and holding a brown manual in his hands.
The manual, published by the Aeronautics Division, Ministry of the Interior, Republic of Argentina, was titled “A Practice Examination for Those Intending to Take the Qualifying Examination Leading to the Award of the Rating of Commercial Aviation Pilot.”
The manual had come to him from Major Gonzalo Delgano, Argentina Army Air Service, “Retired,” now the chief pilot of South American Airways. He had pointed out, reasonably, that inasmuch as the “understanding” was that all SAA pilots be Argentine nationals, it might be better if Don Cletus got an Argentine pilot license as an Argentine citizen.
It would be, Delgano had said at the time, a mere formality. Then he had come back and reported that the examining officer was being a “bit difficult” and Don Cletus would have to go to El Palomar and take the examination. It would probably be a matter of simply showing up—Delgano would meet him there—and signing a few papers.
Reasoning that while Delgano was probably right, this still was Argentina, and that it was better to be safe than sorry.
Clete had called Tío Juan Domingo and explained the problem.
Colonel Perón said that it was nonsense, not to worry about it, that he would have a word with whoever it was in charge of such things. Then he had called back and said “there were formalities,” and that he would need to go to El Palomar and sign a few papers. And he would meet him there to make sure things went smoothly.
The “practice examination” seemed to have been written for people who really didn’t have much practical aviation experience. Among other gems, offered as True or False, it asked would-be aviators “Should seat belts be worn at all times?” and “Should flights over bodies of water be undertaken only in good weather?”
Doña Dorotea Mallín de Frade came onto the verandah in her negligee and a robe, both pale blue. Don Cletus’s heart jumped.
That has to be the best-looking woman in the world.
For the first time in my life, I understand why people go bananas when they see the Virgin Mary with the Baby Jesus in her arms.
My God, I’m the luckiest man in the world to have that beautiful, wonderful, loving woman carrying our child!
“Get your goddamn feet off my chair, Cletus!” Doña Dorotea greeted him. “I’ve told you a hundred times!”
He took his feet off her chair and put the manual on the floor.
Antonio La Vallé, the butler, trailed by one of the maids, appeared.
“Would Doña Dorotea prefer her eggs soft-boiled or scrambled?”
“The thought of either makes me nauseous,” Doña Dorotea said.
“You have to eat, precious,” Clete said.
“Yes, I know. I’m eating for two. What is that wonderful American phrase? ‘Up yours,’ Cletus.”
“Give her the eggs scrambled, with toast and orange juice, please,” Cletus said.
Doña Dorotea had managed to get everything down without nausea and was mopping at her plate with a piece of toast when Antonio came back onto the verandah.
“Don Cletus,” he announced, “four people, one a woman, in an American auto with diplomatic license tags have just come onto the estancia.”
Clete nodded his thanks and wondered aloud, “I wonder who the hell that is? A woman?”
Dorotea shrugged.
“In twenty minutes, you will know.”
“In twenty minutes, I have to take off for El Palomar.”
“In a Cub, darling, right?”
“In a Cub, my love.”
After a second glass of after-dinner Argentine brandy the previous evening, Clete had confided to Dorotea that he was thinking of flying the Lodestar to El Palomar for his pilot’s test.
“I mean, how could they question my ability to fly a transport if I flew there in the Lodestar?”
“They would question your sanity for flying it alone,” she said. “And if you ever fly it alone again, you will thereafter sleep in it alone. You are about to be a father. Perhaps, as you say, you should write that down.”
Not quite twenty minutes later, Clete and Dorotea had a second cup of coffee on the verandah as they waited for the mysterious American car with diplomatic license tags to appear.
It turned out to be a 1941 Chevrolet sedan. Captain Max Ashton was driving, and beside him in the front seat was a plump, balding, forty-nine-year-old who looked like a friendly shopkeeper. Clete knew who he was, and his curiosity was now in high gear.
Milton Leibermann was accredited to the Republic of Argentina as one of the five legal attachés of the United States embassy. It was technically a secret that he was also the special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Arge
ntine operations, and that all “legal attachés” were FBI agents.
In what Colonel Graham had described to Clete as yet another wonderfully Machiavellian move of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the President had assured FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover that the FBI was responsible for all intelligence and counterintelligence activities in the Western Hemisphere. The President had also told OSS Director William J. Donovan that Central and South America were of course included in the OSS’s worldwide responsibilities.
The result of this was that there were two U.S. intelligence agencies operating throughout Central and South America who regarded themselves as being in competition with each other and therefore had as little to do with each other as possible. And in Argentina—where Major Cletus Frade, chief of OSS Western Hemisphere Team 17, code name Team Turtle, did not trust the OSS Station Chief, Argentina, Lieutenant Commander Frederico Delojo, USN, as far as he could throw him—that meant there were three American intelligence agencies whose members did not talk to each other.
The exception to this was the relationship between Major Frade and Mr. Leibermann. There was a strong feeling of mutual admiration. Leibermann was a first-generation American who had learned his German and Yiddish from his parents and his Spanish from the Spanish-Harlem section of Manhattan.
He had developed contacts with the German and German-Jewish communities in Buenos Aires and elsewhere. Frade—with the caveat that Leibermann not pass it on to his FBI superiors—had told Leibermann about the operation the SS had ransoming concentration camp inmates. Leibermann had agreed to keep the secret, because he personally believed the OSS was better equipped to deal with the problem than was the FBI. The FBI’s expertise lay in solving crimes and ransoming operations of an entirely different nature.
Leibermann was the only person not in Team Turtle who knew that “Galahad, ” Frade’s man in the German embassy, was Major Hans-Peter Baron von Wachtstein. He had kept this secret, too, although, as the SAC in Buenos Aires, he had been tasked “as the highest priority” to find out who Galahad was.
Death and Honor Page 25
