“He flinched,” I said, “as if I had taken a swing at him. If he didn’t have Nazi gold on his mind, his normal reaction would have been simply to comment on the watch.”
“That’s still no proof of anything, Peter,” Jo said.
“True. But it tells us what’s on his mind. It tells us he probably knows of the gold ingot in Frank’s possession and where he got it. What MacIntosh’s connection is to the gold—that’s what we don’t know.”
“Did he say anything about kicking me out of the company?”
I sipped the coffee thoughtfully before answering.
“So far as C. Gerald MacIntosh is concerned,” I said, “your place in life is to be in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant, not running a security company.”
Anger flared in Jo’s eyes, then settled to a simmer. After a moment, she shrugged.
“What can you expect?” She smiled weakly.
“I mentioned your military experience, but he poo-pooed it,” I said. “He said women weren’t real soldiers and spent their careers in the rear with the gear.”
Cats have a sixth sense. They know when something explosive is about to occur. Jack leapt from Jo’s lap just an instant before she propelled herself from the chair, cursing.
“How the hell does he think I got this?” she demanded, slapping her injured leg. “What? I broke a high heel dancing at the base cotillion?”
Jo paced about the small room while Jack ran for cover in the kitchen. I stood and placed my hands on her shoulders, trying to calm her. She tried to brush my hands away, but I held on tight. Her anger spent, Jo leaned into me, still softly swearing.
“He’s a chauvinist pig,” she said.
“More of an out-right misogynist,” I said. “It’s part of his belief system. Sexism is one of the fourteen attributes of fascism.”
I let her go, picked up my coffee cup, and took it into the kitchen.
“Oh, Jonathan Glasgow called,” Jo said. “What a peculiar man.”
“I’ve heard him called worse,” I said.
“When I told him I was a friend of yours, he went on and on pontificating about the merits and demerits—as he called them—of relationships.”
“Did he approve or disapprove of them?”
“I’m not sure,” Jo said. “I sort of blanked out after the first ten minutes.”
“Sounds like Jonathan,” I said. “Did he leave a message—for me, I mean?”
“Just for you to call him. He left his cell phone number. It’s on the desk. He was adamant that you not call his office number.”
“I think Jonathan is getting a wee bit paranoid,” I said, dialing the number.
“Aren’t we all,” Jo muttered.
Glasgow answered on the first ring.
“Peter!” he greeted me. “Had a splendid talk with your female acquaintance today. What was her name? Jo. An interesting name for a woman. Normally thought of as a man’s name, of course, the diminutive of Joseph. But just as apt as the diminutive of Jolene or Josephine.”
“Joanne,” I said.
“What?”
“In this case, Jo is short for Joanne.”
“Of course, of course,” he said. “And an excellent listener she is.”
“Jonathan, you don’t get out much, do you?”
“Alas,” he sighed, “no. It’s my work, you know. It keeps me very busy. Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” I said, smiling at Jo. “What’d you call for, Jonathan?”
“It’s those numbers you emailed me,” he said. “3148361144921.”
“Another mint code?”
“Heavens, no, Peter,” he said, “though I must admit they stumped me for a while. Had I not glanced at the world globe on my desk, I might never have realized what they were.”
“Globe?”
“Yes, globe, Peter. They are a reference to latitude and longitude.” He paused a moment, then resumed sounding as if he were reading. “That is thirty-one degrees, forty-eight minutes, and thirty-six seconds north latitude, and one hundred fourteen degrees, forty-nine minutes, and twenty-one seconds west longitude.”
“That’s somewhere in Mexico, isn’t it?” I asked. “Thirty-two degrees, thirty-two minutes north is the U.S.-Mexico maritime boundary here in San Diego. And we sit at one hundred seventeen degrees west longitude.”
“Correct,” Jonathan said. “It is just southeast of San Diego. More precisely it is a spot in the Reserva de la Biosfera Alto Golfo de California y Delta del Río Colorado.”
“Upper Gulf of California Biosphere Reserve and the Colorado River Delta,” I translated.
“It would seem so,” Jonathan said. “This area was declared a nature reserve only in 1993. It extends from the Colorado delta out into the northern waters of the Sea of Cortés. Prior to that overfishing threatened many marine species as well as the region’s fishing industry—”
“What’s it got to do with gold, Jonathan?” I interrupted.
“I haven’t the foggiest, Peter,” he said. “Well, that’s not exactly true. I have a theory, but it is merely that.”
Another conspiracy theory, I thought, but I begged him to go on.
“About a hundred miles south of the reserve is a small, out-of-way fishing village called La Playa de Cortés,” he said. “It’s a small, secluded village, even today. But during Prohibition, rum runners built a quay there large enough to dock a cargo vessel. They would load up on hooch—” Jonathan chuckled at his use of the colloquialism. “—then cruise the west coast of the United States, stopping now and then to rendezvous with lighters, which offloaded the alcohol and transported it ashore.
“Now, here’s my theory,” Jonathan continued. “What if Kapitän Müller used that quay to tie up the cruiser Danzig while German diplomats negotiated with the President Camacho? Then when the negotiations failed, Muller initiated a back-up plan, this Emergency Plan Zebra, and had the gold removed from his ship and buried in what is today a nature preserve?”
“Why would he do that?” I asked. “I mean bury the gold? Why not just sail away with it?”
“Once Mexico declared war on Germany, Müller was deep in enemy territory. He couldn’t risk having his ship and the gold captured. So, he had it taken away and hidden, perhaps for future use. Remember, I said the Nazi leadership was stashing gold in hidden caches all around the world in the event they were defeated. And remember one of Müller’s three radio dispatches said the location for Plan Zebra had been determined and forwarded to the German consulate in Tijuana, which isn’t that far from either the reserve or La Playa de Cortés.”
I thought it over, and it seemed to sync with what we knew. Still, we had no proof and I said so.
“Also correct,” Glasgow said. “I believe one of us should venture down to La Playa de Cortés and search for evidence the Danzig was there. Perhaps even go to the coordinates in the nature reserve and look for evidence of the gold.”
“One of us?” I asked.
“By which I mean you,” Glasgow said. “You are best suited for such a venture, considering your background. You speak Spanish; I speak German and French and a little Italian. Plus, my stomach, despite its appetite for food, has never responded well to Mexico’s spicy cuisine or its water, if you know what I mean.”
I couldn’t argue with Glasgow’s logic and said so. When I hung up, I walked back to the living room and took an atlas from the bookshelf.
“Did I hear you say something about going somewhere?” Jo asked. She had retrieved Jack from under the kitchen table and was sitting on the couch, smoothing his ruffled fur.
I relayed Glasgow’s theory to Jo as I located La Playa de Cortés on the map page for northwestern Mexico. It was nestled near the armpit of the Gulf of California, just south of where mainland Mexico and the peninsula of Baja California joined.
“You really think you could find proof that a World War Two German ship visited this Mexican town all these years later?”
I shrugged. “I might get luck
y and find an eye witness,” I said. “Or maybe just local stories. In Mexico, local stories and myths often have some basis in truth.”
“When do we leave?”
“I leave tomorrow,” I said. “You stay here.”
“Why?” Jo’s tone of voice left no doubt how she felt about that.
“Because you’re still considered a suspect in Frank’s murder,” I said. “You get anywhere near an international flight and the cops will have you in handcuffs before you could produce your passport.”
Jo pouted about that, but eventually nodded agreement. She had stopped stroking Jack’s fur, and he pawed her hand to get her started again.
“What about Jack?”
“I’ll ask Cindy to come over and stay with him,” I said. “She takes care of him when I’m gone.”
“That is not necessary.” Jo bit off each word. “I’ll take him home with me.”
“The hell you will,” I said. “If Jack gets one look at your place, he’ll never want to come back here. I’ll call Cindy.”
“Then I’ll stay here with Jack,” Jo said. “No more discussion. It’s a done deal.”
One look at Jo and I knew it was, indeed, a done deal.
CHAPTER 19
I TOOK A COMMUTER flight from Tijuana to Puerto Penasco’s Mar de Cortés International Airport, the closest airfield to La Playa de Cortés. Despite its newly minted status as an international airport, Mar de Cortés was little more than an airstrip with a handful of corrugated steel hangars and a small terminal. A thick, early morning fog hung over the field as we stepped from the turboprop puddle jumper. I could almost imagine myself as Bogey making his iconic airport speech to Ingrid Bergman, only we weren’t in Casablanca, and I never had been to Paris. In fact, the closest I’d ever been to Morocco was the battlefields of Kuwait and Iraq, and I’d never been to Europe at all. I rented a beaten-up Land Rover and drove north up the coast road toward my destination.
La Playa de Cortés was like so many small villages I’d visited throughout Mexico and Central America. The American tourist trade had not yet bestowed its bounty on the town. The main street, or paseo, was barely wide enough to allow two cars to pass each other. Donkey carts crowded the narrow street, weighted down with the latest harvests of local farmers and fishermen. Small shops, restaurants, and an occasional hotel bordered the paseo, all built in traditional adobe motif. Colorful fabrics fluttered in the breeze from where they hung next to freshly slaughtered chickens and ducks. Clinker-built wooden boats sat hauled up on the beach, their simple sails furled and their nets laid out to dry or be mended. The aroma of fresh fish, strong coffee, stronger tobacco, and real Mexican cooking mixed with the scent of the sea. It brought back memories of when I was young, eager to sink myself into the culture, and forget the loneliness and despair that drove me across the border.
La Playa de Cortés’s isolation, however, didn’t spare it from the intrusion of obsessive wealth and affluence. Cut into the forested hillsides surrounding the bay were roads leading to lavish villas with large, walled porticos jutting out from the thick growth like sun-bleached jawbones—the homes, I suspected, of cartel bosses, the narco capos who ran the contrabandistas who fed America’s insatiable appetite for illegal drugs.
I found a cheap room in a pensione and perused some tourist brochures left on the nightstand. Two house geckos clung to the walls, which I took as a sign of good luck as they ate the insects that often plagued these small bed-and-breakfast inns. I breakfasted on eggs and chilaquiles—quartered and fried tortillas garnished with frijoles, crema, crumbled queso fresco, and sliced avocados—and washed it all down with strong black coffee.
After getting directions from the inn keeper, I made my way down the paseo to the town hall which, besides being La Playa de Cortés’s administrative center, was also its visitor and historical center. A small, thin man with nervous eyes magnified by thick lenses encased in round, black plastic rims, greeted me in broken English. I told him in Spanish that I was a writer researching a historical piece on German immigrants to Mexico and understood there was once such a population in or around La Playa de Cortés.
“Oh, once, sí,” said the little man, pleased to meet a gringo who spoke his own tongue. Americanos weren’t known for their fluency in foreign languages. “But long ago. Before the war, the big one. Many left during the war, went back to Germany. Others assimilated. We have many residents with German surnames, but are they still Germans? I do not think so.”
“During the war, where there any Nazis here?”
The little man looked shocked at the suggestion.
“Nazis? You mean like…” He placed two fingers of his left hand to his upper lip and gave a stiff-arm salute with his right arm. I nodded. “No, no, not here. Those that were Nazis returned to Germany. Mexico fought the fascists, you know.”
“Yes,” I said. “What about German sailors? Maybe merchant sailors, like from a cargo ship?”
The small man shrugged.
“We are not a big harbor town,” he said. “Only a small fishing village. Fishermen are our only sailors. Now and then, a small cruise ship will anchor in the bay, or a big Norte Americano yacht. No cargo ships.”
“Is there anyone in town old enough to remember the German immigrant community first hand?” I asked.
The little guy mulled that over, then said, “There is Guzman. Manuel Federico Guzman. He was a child back then, but he is of German descent. He may have some memories to share.”
“Where can I find Señor Guzman?”
“He has a small souvenir shop,” the man said. After giving me directions, he added with a slight sneer, “If he is not there, try the cantina next door.”
I found Guzman in the cantina. He was a heavyset, middle-aged man with an olive complexion and blue eyes. Lengthy strands of graying hair poked out from beneath a Panama hat. A loose-fitting guayabera shirt barely hid his paunch. After introducing myself, I bought us each a Carta Blanca and asked him about his German ancestry.
“Sí, my father’s father came from the old country,” he said in Spanish. “Bavaria.” He raised his beer with one hand and patted his stomach with the other. “Perhaps that is why I drink so much cerveza. It’s in my blood.”
After an hour of reliving his youth among the German immigrants, and two more Carta Blancas, Guzman seem primed for questions about Captain Müller and his ship, the Danzig.
“I understand that during the American Prohibition Era, La Playa de Cortés was a center for smuggling alcohol to the States,” I said. “Is that true?”
Guzman nodded. “Sí, but not here, not the town,” he said. “Some gringos—forgive me, I mean no insult—some Norte Americanos came down here and built a muelle—that is a…”
“A mole,” I said. “A dock.”
“Sí, and they would bring in large boats, enormous boats—”
“Ships, you mean?” I asked.
“Ships,” Guzman said, nodding. “And they filled them with cerveza, tequila, whiskey—as much as the ships would hold—and sail away.”
“They’d head up north, to the U.S.,” I said.
Guzman shrugged. “I suppose,” he said. “That is what I heard. They sailed away to your country to sell the alcohol.”
“What about Germans?” I said.
“Understand, señor, as old as I am now, I was not even born during your Prohibition time,” he said. “But, yes, I believe many in the German colony took part in loading the ships.”
“No, I mean later,” I said. “After Prohibition, around the early 1940s. Did any German Nazi ship use the muelle?”
Guzman’s beer stopped halfway to his mouth, and his booze-dulled eyes sharpened as they looked at me.
“Perdóname, señor,” he said, “but I do not understand the question.”
I ordered two more beers, paid for them with U.S. dollars and left a pile of greenbacks resting on the table between us. Guzman eyed the bills but said nothing.
“I understand a Germ
an cargo ship called the Danzig came to La Playa de Cortés in 1942 and may have tied up at the muelle you describe. Do you remember such an event?”
Guzman eyed the money again, then glanced around the cantina. He leaned forward and in a low voice said, “I have never heard of this German ship Danzig. However, in 1942 a ship called the Dalsland tied up there. She flew a Swedish flag.”
“She was from Sweden?”
Guzman looked at the stack of greenbacks again and said, “I did not say that, señor. I said she flew a Swedish flag. But the men onboard were German.”
I felt my heart beat quicken.
“How do you know they were German?” I asked.
“They spoke German,” Guzman said. “My father spoke fluent German, as do I.” He tapped himself on the chest. “The Germans hired my father to interpret for the ship’s captain and crew. I often accompanied my father on his work. Sometimes I, too, would interpret for the crewmen.”
Guzman’s eyes became distant, as if seeing something from long ago. He leaned back, dabbed his eyes with a paper napkin, and then blew his nose.
“Perdóname, again, señor,” he said. “It was not a time of good memory.”
“Why is that?” I asked. “What happened?”
Guzman glanced at the money, frowned, then nodded as if deciding.
“They—these Germans—they murdered my father,” he said.
CHAPTER 20
“IT WAS THE DAY Mexico declared war on Germany,” Guzman continued. “This ship, the Dalsland—or Danzig, as you call it—had arrived about a month before. It tied up at the muelle with much fanfare. Sailors from the marina—our navy—and soldiers greeted them as friends. Everything was happy at first. The German sailors were entertained by our German colony, and they were welcomed in the cantinas and brothels.”
Guzman took a long drink from his beer, and I ordered two more bottles. He nodded his thanks before continuing his story.
“Everything was good for about two weeks,” he said. “Then German submarines—U-boats, sí?—sank two of our own cargo ships. It was by mistake, of course, but Señor Hitler would not apologize and many Mexicanos demanded retribution. The celebrations ended. The German sailors were ordered not to leave their ship. One day, the captain of the ship told my father they needed to dispose of some old cargo, and they needed somewhere to store it until they came back later. My father went away for two days with one of the ship’s officers—I believe he was the navigator. He had a box with one of those tools sailors use to determined where they are.”
The Fourth Rising (Peter Brandt Thrillers Book 3) Page 10
