Antonio placed the Bible delicately on the table. “Thank you, my love. I am afraid that my gift to you does not measure up.”
“Oh, nonsense, husband,” she said, reaching to the chair next to her. The briefcase was beautiful, hand-crafted by a man in the village near Antonio’s post. “If I am to be taken seriously as a student, the professors must see me with something besides a common backpack to carry my books.” She would have preferred jewelry, of course—she was a woman, after all—but men were men. Antonio was a fine one, devoted to her and the children. She had watched him tenderly tuck them into their beds a half-hour before. What more could a wife ask? Well, perhaps to have a husband who was around more than once a month.
“Your studies, they go well?”
“Yes,” she said proudly. “In a year, you will have a wife with a degree in economics, from the University of Buenos Aires. Then I will get a job, and soon after that we will be able to afford to move.”
Antonio’s eyes glazed over a bit. “Yes, perhaps to Recoleta,” he mused. Many residents of working-class barrios, like La Boca, dreamed of living one day in the fashionable Recoleta, with its upper-class homes and beautiful parks. He and Theresa occasionally took a Sunday afternoon drive to its Plaza Francia, strolling through the craft fair, the largest in the city.
“Eduardo wants to live there and be a pasaperro,” she said with a laugh. She remembered how the children had marveled at the professional dog-walkers, who sometimes had as many as a dozen canines at the ends of their leashes.
“Well, we shall see,” Antonio said. “My tour is up in six months. Then I should be posted somewhere much closer.”
Theresa’s eyes softened. “Oh, I hope so, my husband. Pilcaniyeu is so far away…”
“Too far,” he agreed. Once a month, he was allowed a weekend leave to visit his family. Fortunately, he was almost always able to hitch a ride on an Air Force transport, so the thousand-kilometer journey went fairly quickly. The ride back, though, was always long. “Coronel Reinke likes me, I think, which is unusual. They’re almost all Germans, you know, at least among the officers.”
“As you’ve said before, Antonio,” she said. There was a definite social pecking order in Argentina, and the Italians, despite being more numerous, tended to be under the Germans. “But you are a good officer. Reinke knows that.”
“I hope so,” he said. He paused, thinking, then said, “I have not told you, but now I will: there is a good chance I am to be promoted, perhaps as soon as next month.”
“Promoted! To mayor?”
“Yes,” he said with a grin. “Major Schaaf is being transferred to a combat unit. I am next in line.”
Theresa was excited now. “A promotion! To major, and second-in-command?”
“Hopefully,” he said, trying to curb his own excitement. He’d intended to hold off telling Theresa until it was official. No point in getting her worked up over something that might not happen. But, well, it was Christmas…
“My husband, second in command of the security force at such an important place. Perhaps then, commander one day?” In her excitement, she had forgotten about the distance. Of course, if Antonio were given command, they would have to move…
He shook his head. “I think not, my dear. The Germans are in firm control of the facility. They would never have an Italian in charge of security. A legacy of the war, I’m afraid.”
“No matter,” she said. “You will be an important man. Even more important than now,” she added quickly. Her face was a bit flushed. Was it the wine they had at dinner? She stood up and took his hand. “Come, my husband. The children are asleep now. Come to our bedroom and make love to me.”
He looked at her, and marveled that her body had ripened into robust womanhood, not too much different than when they had married, despite the two children she had carried. “A request like that, how can I refuse?”
CHAPTER TEN
Estancia Valhalla, Argentina
Christmas Day 1981
Dusk was settling over the estancia. Willy Baumann sat on his deck, enjoying the warm weather, his cognac, and the aftereffect of the sumptuous Christmas dinner he’d eaten just an hour before. A few hundred meters away, his gauchos were playing a raucous game of pato, a combination of basketball and rugby played on horseback. Wearing helmets and kneepads, the competing teams vied for a large leather ball with six handles, passing it among each other until they could throw it through their opponent’s goal, a large hoop. Willy had played the game many times and enjoyed it, but was glad he was far away now. The gauchos were still celebrating Felice Navidad and some were a little the worse for wear already.
The estancia was spread over thousands of hectares, supporting hundreds of head of cattle and horses, employing some three hundred people, including a general manager who reported directly to Willy. It was a minor part of his overall responsibilities, but his favorite, doubtless due to his Argentine blood. The other businesses were run by competent managers and occupied a fair amount of his time, but since the advent of CAPRICORN three years earlier, the Bund had required more and more of his attention. Right now, on the table next to his chair, sat a stack of monthly reports from the Bund’s various gauleiters, the regional commandants. There were twenty-four of them, one for each of the twenty-three provinces, plus the federal district that encompassed Buenos Aires. They all were directly responsible to the Bundesobergruppenführer, the Bund general, a position held by Dieter Baumann since 1974. Number three in the Bund hierarchy behind the Reichsleiter and the Bundesführer, Dieter was in charge of the Bund’s day-to-day operations and its special projects. In the past three years his duties had largely been administered by his executive officer, Oberst Wilhelm Baumann.
It was more than a full-time job, and not for the first time Willy wished it wasn’t his. He glanced at the reports, which had come to the estancia by messenger the day before. They could wait. His eyes returned to the broad vistas stretching to the west.
“No paperwork today, eh, Willy?”
That drew a short laugh. “Not today, Heinz. Come, sit, have a drink with me.”
Heinz Nagel folded his lanky frame into the chair next to Willy’s. He was about two inches taller than Willy, and three months younger. They had been friends since kindergarten; Heinz’s father, Günther Nagel, operated the neighboring estancia, and was a prominent Bund member in his own right. “That was an excellent dinner,” Heinz said, stifling a burp. “Please give my compliments to the chef.”
“You can tell him yourself, when you ask for his daughter’s hand,” Willy said with mock seriousness.
Heinz laughed. “I have no intention of marrying Sophia,” he said, “and you know that.” The estancia’s chef, Luigi, had been brought over from Italy ten years before, after Dieter enjoyed a fabulous meal at a struggling ristorante in Genoa. Willy’s father, in need of a chef back home, convinced the owner and chief cook of the establishment to accept his generous offer of a buyout, bring his family to Argentina and go to work on Dieter’s estancia. Luigi brought his wife and ten-year-old daughter, Sophia, who had now grown to voluptuous womanhood, something Heinz had not been hesitant to appreciate.
Both men were still single, and as they neared thirty—coming up next year, in fact—they were starting to feel a little pressure from their fathers to find women, settle down and start producing grandchildren. For Heinz, always the more carefree of the two, it was easy to laugh that off and continue indulging his bachelor whims. For Willy, consumed ever more by the work of running the Baumann business empire, not to mention his growing obligations with the Bund, romance had never really intruded into his life. There were women, of course, both here and abroad; some of them made their intentions quite clear and were willing to do virtually anything to become the next mistress of the estancia. A very few of them caused a spark inside him, but nothing had yet happened to fan that into a flame.
The latest spark had been ignited by his dinner companion for the day, something Heinz
was well aware of. “Sophia is a playmate of mine,” he said now. “But your Giselle, now, she is a real woman. You should marry her, you know.”
Willy took a sip from his glass as he contemplated the virtues of Giselle Carmaño. There were many. The daughter of Roberto and Barbara Carmaño, a family of mixed Spanish and German blood, Giselle was twenty-five, bright, educated, and stunningly attractive. Her father’s estancia, Santa Barbara, was some fifty kilometers to the south and was almost as large and prosperous as Valhalla. Even better, from the perspective of a possible son-in-law who might be interested in such things, Señor Carmaño also owned one of the largest import/export firms in Buenos Aires. But unlike many young Argentine men of means, Willy had never been interested in a woman as a means to facilitate a business merger. He had known Giselle since childhood, and had been involved with her for about two years now, since her return from an extended stay in Spain, where she completed her education at the Complutense University of Madrid. She stimulated him physically, to be sure, but more importantly she stimulated him intellectually.
“Yes, I should,” Willy said, “but you know why I haven’t yet.”
“So her father is not a member of the Bund,” Heinz said. “You won’t be marrying her father.”
“I’d be marrying her family,” Willy corrected, “you know that as well as I do. We have to be careful about who knows of our work, Heinz, especially now.” With CAPRICORN near completion, marriage to Giselle was out of the question for at least a year. If everything went according to plan in the upcoming year, perhaps by next Christmas, he could ask Giselle’s father for her hand.
But there were so many ifs.
If the work at Pilcaniyeu proceeded on schedule; if Galtieri didn’t interfere; if the South Georgia operation went forward on time; if the English reacted as they predicted; if the Americans stayed out of it; if CAPRICORN remained a secret...
A lot of ifs. Too many. Something was bound to go wrong. Well, that’s why they had contingency plans, including one that was meant to deal with a government takeover of the Pilcaniyeu facility. Willy had put that particular plan on alert status two weeks earlier, after his meeting with Galtieri, but, fortunately, the president had not made good on his veiled threat to move against the Bund in that direction. Heinz had done his part well.
“You are thinking of things perhaps way too serious for the occasion, my friend,” Heinz said.
Willy had to chuckle at that. “Perhaps,” he said. “But we have important days ahead, Heinz. Very important days.” Heinz was of necessity aware of most of CAPRICORN’s scope. Like Willy, he had been carefully groomed for his position; his father had been head of the Bund’s security arm for nearly thirty years. Over the objections of some of the Bund’s more cautious members, Brigadeführer Nagel insisted that his operation use the name Sicherheitsdienst. What made these members nervous was the fact that this was the same name used by the security wing of the Nazi Party’s notorious SS. Heinz had once revealed to Willy over a bottle of schnapps that Günther insisted on using the name for that very reason. Knowing Günther’s wartime background, Willy had not been surprised. Still, he rarely referred to the group by its initials, SD, and neither did Heinz.
In a way, the very existence of the Bund SD was a perfect illustration of what Willy often thought of as the conflicting, evolving state of the Bund. Its founding fathers, the Kameraden, meant for the Bund to serve a certain purpose, and it had achieved success, thanks in large part to the iron discipline of those men. They brought that with them from the Fatherland, and also many of its institutions and traditions. Thus, a man like Günther Nagel could take the title of Brigadeführer, the Waffen-SS equivalent of brigadier general. Other arms of the Bund, however, if they utilized military ranking at all, stayed away from those used by the SS. Dieter Baumann, for instance, had the ceremonial rank of Generalmajor, equal in rank to Brigadeführer. Willy himself had risen to the rank of colonel in the Argentine Army before resigning from the service, and was still referred to by that rank. Heinz made captain before getting out.
By the mid-fifties the Bund had largely achieved what it had set out to do, and then, according to what Dieter told him, came a period of reflection and indecision. Some of the Kameraden were content to retire and enjoy the lives they had built as landowners and businessmen. Others wanted more; they wanted not just to enjoy Argentina, but to run it. Finally, the Reichsleiter himself stepped in and made the decision: the Bund would move forward, and Willy often wondered if the seeds of CAPRICORN had been sown around an argumentative conference table on some estancia in 1956.
But what about tomorrow? By the time Willy was his father’s age, it would be the twenty-first century, and a third generation of Bund members would be getting ready to take command, just as Willy’s generation was doing now. What would it be then?
Well, a lot of that could very well be determined in the next year. In fact, whether or not the Bund survived into the 1990s, much less a decade later, would likely hinge on what happened in the next twelve months.
“Have you given any thought to what will happen when those important days are done?” Heinz said now, breaking Willy out of his reverie. “Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that CAPRICORN succeeds. One year from now, Willy, what will we be planning for 1983, and the years after that?”
Willy grinned at his friend. “We will be good Germans, Heinz, and do what our superiors tell us to do.”
Heinz smiled, and nodded. “Good Germans, yes. But of course we aren’t Germans, Willy. Never have been. We’re Argentines. We were born here. We are not our fathers.”
“What are you saying, Heinz?” Willy was surprised; he had rarely heard his friend reveal thoughts of a political nature. Heinz had a razor-sharp intelligence underneath his devil-may-care exterior, and Willy had never for a moment doubted his fealty to the Bund. But like his father, Heinz devoted his professional energies toward what was perhaps the most apolitical organ of the Bund. Others would make the decisions, and the SD would make sure they were carried out with the greatest efficiency.
“Well, I have been thinking of what will happen after CAPRICORN. Haven’t you?”
“Some,” Willy admitted. In truth, his thoughts had strayed in that direction more than once lately.
“So, a year from now, Willy, we are toasting a successful 1982. The Argentine flag is flying over the Malvinas, the English have retreated to their islands in disgrace, the Brazilians and the Chileans are afraid of us, even the mighty Americans are cowed by our daring and our strength. What then?”
“We go on from there,” Willy said, not liking where this was going, but intrigued nonetheless.
“Yes, but where? What do you suppose the Reichsleiter has planned, Willy?”
“You know as well as I do, Heinz, I’m not privy to the thinking of the Reichsleiter or the Cabinet. Not even my father tells me about those meetings.” Dieter Baumann filled one of the few seats on the committee that actually ran the Bund. How much influence the Reichsleiter held over it was a matter of speculation. Sometimes Willy thought that it was not very much, that the Reichsleiter, respected as he was by the other Kameraden, was not much more than a figurehead these days. Other times, he wasn’t so sure.
“The men of the Cabinet are old, Willy. Our fathers will not see the next century. We will.”
“I’m not sure where you are going with this, Heinz.”
His friend stared back at Willy with his cobalt-blue eyes. “The next century will be ours, Willy, ours and our childrens’. If CAPRICORN is successful, that can be a springboard to the new century for us. It is up to us to determine how our children will toast us, let us say, on Christmas of 2031. Will they be fat and lazy on their estancias, and say we were the men who humiliated the English, and avenged our fathers, and then went back to making money and raising horses, or will they say something else?”
“Such as…”
Heinz grinned, but it was a different one than his usual one. This one had l
ess gemütlichkeit and more steel behind it, and his eyes were shining now. “Perhaps, on that day fifty years from now, my friend, my son will raise a glass with yours, and they will say, ‘To our fathers, who challenged the world and won for us a continent!’”
In spite of the evening’s warmth, Willy felt a chill.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Virginia
December 1981
Jo was adjusting her uniform Tuesday morning when her father appeared in the bedroom doorway. “Heading out pretty soon?” he asked.
“My appointment with the Congresswoman’s not till three,” Jo said. “I thought I’d head over to the Pentagon this morning, look up some old friends. I might not have time tomorrow.” She checked her watch: six-fifty. Her driver, arranged by the Air Force, wouldn’t arrive for another half-hour. As usual, she was early. Just like her father; Joseph was already well into his workday routine, rising at five, twenty minutes on the stationary bike down in the basement with the morning news on the TV, two newspapers devoured along with his breakfast, out the door by seven. It hadn’t changed in years.
“I have to leave in about fifteen minutes, but could you stop by the den when you’re done here? Just need a minute.”
“Sure, Daddy.”
Joseph Geary’s study was like something out of the fifties, with crowded bookshelves lining three walls and a solid oak desk topped with a blotter and a telephone. At least it wasn’t a rotary phone anymore, she noticed. The room was solid, old-school, just like her father. He was putting some files into his well-worn briefcase when he looked up as Jo entered. A wide grin broke out below the graying mustache. “My, you look sharp,” he said.
She tried to put aside her thought that he looked a lot older than the last time she’d seen him, six months earlier. Well, he was past sixty now, and he had a high-stress job. Being Deputy Director of Operations for the CIA wasn’t an easy posting. “Thank you. What’s up?”
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