“Yes, sir. That sums it up very well.”
“How many men do we have here?” Mannhoffer asked.
“You’re speaking of SS?”
Mannhoffer nodded.
“Directly subordinate to me, sir, there are fifty-two. Eleven junior officers, the rest other ranks. And there are perhaps a hundred others who can be pressed into our service—SS personnel sent here for other reasons. I’m compiling a roster.”
“I thought there were a few more than that. Immediately subordinate to me, I mean.”
“We lost sixteen of them, sir.”
“What do you mean ‘lost’?”
“Shortly after the Froggers deserted their post at the embassy, we learned that they were being held at a small estancia—one of Frade’s—in Tandil. A raid was staged with the mission of eliminating them. Four SS officers and twelve other ranks were assigned to the mission, to augment troops of the Argentine Tenth Mountain Regiment. After the initial assault, the Argentines left and our people stayed behind to make sure the Froggers had in fact been eliminated. None of the SS men were seen or heard from again. They are probably buried in unmarked graves on the Pampas.”
“Sixteen SS troopers just vanished?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Leaving me just fifty-two. Well, we’ll have to use what we have. They are, after all, SS.”
“To do what, sir?”
“As incredible as this might sound at first, the future of National Socialism is now in the hands of two men, neither of whom can any longer use their names, much less their ranks.”
Richter did not reply.
“Think about it, Richter. The Führer is dead. Joseph Goebbels is dead. Heinrich Himmler is dead. Hermann Goering is a prisoner and will probably be hung. Everyone who served in the SS is being arrested. We’re all that is left.”
He paused to let this sink in, then said fervently, “But National Socialism is not dead! It will rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes. Because of us, Señor Richter.”
Richter, who looked uncomfortable, again did not reply.
“If you have something to say, Richter, say it!” Mannhoffer snapped.
Richter nodded, then carefully began, “I’ve had a lot of time to think our situation over, Herr Brig— Señor Mannhoffer.”
“And you have concluded?”
“That for the immediate future, until time passes, it would be best if we just lay low, do nothing that would call attention to us. Then, as I said, when time passes we can begin our work.”
Mannhoffer didn’t reply for a long moment.
“I, too, had a good deal of time to consider our situation,” he began finally. “On that gottverdammt U-boot. There’s not much else to do on a U-boat. Well, I initially came to the same conclusion. But then I thought a little deeper.”
“Yes, sir?”
“I realized that disappearing into the woodwork was not the thing to do. We have to have continuity, Richter. Continuity.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand, sir.”
“We have to be a continuation of the Third Reich, of National Socialism, not a small group of former National Socialists who, after escaping to Argentina, decided to see what they could do about bringing National Socialism back. People have to believe we are members of the Third Reich continuing to fight its battles.”
“Yes, sir. Sir, how are we going to do this?”
“By doing what soldiers always do in a war, Richter. By killing our enemies and our traitors.”
Richter did not reply.
“The image of ourselves in the public’s imagination that I intend to build is of a secret organization—a large secret organization—dedicated to the maintenance of National Socialist principles. Now, try to follow my reasoning. We will eliminate someone, say von Wachtstein. No one will know who did it. But they will wonder, ‘Who did this and why?’
“And they will first remember that he was a traitor to the Reich when he was an attaché at the embassy. ‘Is it possible he was killed for being a traitor?’ they will ask, and then they will answer their own question.”
“Yes, I see.”
“But caution is the handmaid of victory, Richter. Whatever we do cannot fail. Therefore I think we should start with the von Tresmarcks. Give us a little practice, so to speak. How many SS are in Paraguay?”
“Twenty-two, sir. I should have included them in the number of those who are immediately subordinate to us. Two junior officers and twenty other ranks. I just don’t know how many SS there are in Paraguay not officially subordinate to us.”
“Find out. What I intend to do is make sure that the SS who mistakenly believe they are ‘not officially subordinate’ to me are reminded, forcibly if need be, that I am the senior SS officer in Argentina and Paraguay—actually in all of South America.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is Fassbinder capable of going there and taking charge of the SS we now control in a mission to locate von Tresmarck, eliminate him, and recover the cash von Deitzberg gave him? Or would you prefer to do that yourself?”
“I’m sure Fassbinder can handle it.”
“Tell him not to kill the boyfriend. Rough him up. Badly rough him up, but leave him alive so the word will get out the SS punished von Tresmarck.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And locate Frau von Tresmarck—or whatever she is calling herself these days. In this regard, while she will have to be eliminated eventually, I would like to recover the Confidential Special Fund assets before we do that. So, for the moment, just locate her.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is this tailor Fassbinder went to fetch any good?”
“Very good, sir.”
“I simply can’t go around looking like this,” Mannhoffer said. “It would attract the wrong kind of attention.”
[FOUR]
4730 Avenida Libertador General San Martín
Buenos Aires, Argentina
1015 16 October 1945
Don Cletus and Doña Dorotea Frade were taking breakfast with their children on the balcony of the top-floor master suite of the mansion when the elevator door opened with a squeal.
They didn’t pay any attention. The children’s dog, a large black Labrador retriever named Poocho, was dragging Master Jorge Howell Frade, aged eighteen months, across the floor by his diaper. The toddler was howling. Doña Dorotea was yelling. Don Cletus was laughing.
“You sonofabitch!” Doña Dorotea screamed.
“Are you referring, my dear, to your husband or the dog?”
Doña Dorotea and Don Cletus looked toward the elevator.
Cletus Marcus Howell, wearing a seersucker suit and holding a cigar in one hand and a stiff-brimmed straw hat in the other, stood there.
“Both,” Doña Dorotea said.
“Well, I’ll be goddamned,” Don Cletus said.
The old man whistled shrilly. Poocho let go of Jorge’s diaper, trotted to the old man, sat on his haunches, and offered his paw. The old man solemnly shook it.
Jorge stopped howling.
Doña Dorotea snatched him off the floor and went to the old man and kissed him.
“I just happened to be in the neighborhood,” Cletus Marcus Howell said. “And I thought I might as well just drop in and see my grandson, my great-grandsons, and the beautiful and charming mother of the latter.”
“How did you get here?” Clete asked.
Frade knew that, it being Monday, the next Pan American–Grace flying boat from Miami wasn’t due until Tuesday. He was keenly aware of the details because a shipment of radio parts for SAA had been “misrouted” by Panagra, and only recently “found” and promised on the Tuesday flight. Clete had strongly suspected Juan Trippe’s hand caused that delay.
“In some comfort,” his grandfather said. “I will tell you all about it, but that will have to wait until the ladies—now powdering their noses—are finished gushing over you and your children.”
“Ladies? Plural? You brought everybody with you?
”
Before Howell could answer, the door to the suite opened and three women entered.
“Thank you ever so much for sending the elevator back down for us, Dad,” said one of them sarcastically. She was a stocky, short-haired blonde in her late forties. “All you had to do was close the damned door!”
“Sorry,” the old man said, not very sincerely. “In the States, they close automatically.”
The woman was Martha Williamson Howell. She was Howell’s daughter-in-law and the only mother Clete had ever known. With her were two young women, her daughters, Elizabeth, known as Beth, a tanned and athletic twenty-two-year-old, and her sister, Marjorie, twenty, sort of a smaller version of her sister. They were Clete’s cousins, but he had grown up with them and thought of them as his sisters.
Martha Howell went to Clete and wrapped him in a bear hug.
“Well,” she said, “I can see that Dorotea has been feeding you.”
“Almost every day,” Clete said.
He looked at Beth.
“No, he’s not,” Clete said, answering her unasked question. “And I really don’t know when he will be.”
“You bastard!” she said.
“Isn’t that what you were going to ask me?” Clete asked.
“She’s right,” Martha Howell said. “You can be a bastard. You have your grandfather’s genes.”
“And his father’s,” the old man said. “We can’t leave Ol’ Horr-gay out of that equation, can we?”
“Enough!” Dorotea said furiously. “I don’t know what the hell is wrong with all of you, but I’ve had enough of it.”
“What I think we should do, Cletus,” the old man said, “to escape the wrath of the females of the clan, is go somewhere—your splendidly equipped library comes to mind—and have a Sazerac.”
“My God, it’s half past ten in the morning!” Martha said.
“It is never too early for a Sazerac. As long as you have been married into this family, Martha, you should know that.”
He headed for the elevator. By the time he reached it, so had Cletus.
[FIVE]
“Dare I hope that you have Peychaud’s?” the old man asked as Clete stepped behind the bar in the library.
Peychaud’s bitters were an absolutely necessary ingredient to make a genuine Sazerac.
Clete held up a small bottle.
“I stole this from the house on Saint Charles Avenue.”
“Jean-Jacques told me that you taught Dorotea to drink Sazeracs.”
“A mistake—they make her mean,” Clete said as he looked for, found, and triumphantly held up a bottle of Templeton Straight Rye Whiskey.
“I never heard what you were doing there.”
“And you never told me what you’re doing here. Or how you got here.”
“The grandson said, mistakenly believing the grandfather to be so far into his dotage that he will not realize the subject has been changed.”
Clete smiled, then said, “So how did you get here?”
“In a Lockheed Constellation. They’re really the only way to fly.”
Clete finished making the cocktails and handed his grandfather one of them.
“Whatever the circumstances, I’m glad you’re here,” Clete said.
They touched glasses.
“No matter how you got here,” Clete added.
“I just told you. In a Lockheed Constellation.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Clete said, after a moment.
The old man shook his head, smiling.
“Whose Constellation?”
“Mine.”
“Now, that I don’t believe.”
“Have I ever lied to you?”
“Yes, you have. And sometimes they’ve been whoppers.”
“But always, you must admit, with good intentions. This, however, is not one of those occasions.”
“This time you have evil intentions?”
“Well, if you’re really curious, Clete . . .”
“I am beside myself with curiosity.”
“The Air Corps canceled a contract with Lockheed for a VIP-outfitted Constellation—the one in which, I understand, you were flown to Berlin to meet the President—
Jesus Christ, how did he hear about that?
“—and Howard let me have it cheap but with caveats.”
“Cheap?”
“As you may have heard, the war is over. There is now what is known as ‘war surplus.’”
“How cheap is war surplus?”
“I’m embarrassed to tell you.”
“And the caveats?”
“I could not resell it for a year, and even then not to a foreign corporation, such as South American Airways. Apparently, Juan Trippe thinks you already have enough Constellations and had a word with his senator.”
“I never even thought of getting some 1049s from war surplus,” Clete said, as much to himself as to his grandfather.
“You should have,” the old man said. “Perhaps you could have gotten to our senators before Trippe got to his. Anyway, there’s a lot of bargains out there. I just put in a bid for six Navy tankers.”
“What are you going to do with six tankers?”
“If you paid just a little attention to the family’s petroleum business, you might have an idea. And I bought the Flying Brothel.”
“Whatever for? Do you have any idea how much it costs to operate one?”
“To the last dime.”
“So why?”
“A number of reasons. For one, I wanted to come down here to see you, and I didn’t want to have to call Juan Trippe and say, ‘Please find me a seat on one of your flying boats.’ I can’t stand that sonofabitch.”
“I thought you were pals.”
“So tell me how goes your war against the godless Communists?”
Where the hell did he hear about that?
As if reading Clete’s mind, the old man went on, “I ran into a mutual acquaintance of ours, purely by coincidence, in the restaurant of the Hay-Adams, and he told me, as he waved a small American flag back and forth, that the reason you can’t come home is that you’re the nation’s last defense against Joe Stalin and all his wicked works.”
Is he talking about Colonel Graham? Allen Dulles?
“You talked to Colonel Graham?”
“I think that’s his name. Fat Mexican. He used to be a friend of mine.”
Used to be? They have been close friends, personally and professionally, for years.
When Howard Hughes caught his uncle with his hand too deep in the Hughes Tool cash box, he turned to them. They provided the lawyers—the expensive lawyers—Howard needed to get himself legally declared to be an adult so he could take over Hughes Tool in his own right.
“‘Used to be a friend’? Now you’re warring with Graham?”
Howell didn’t have time to answer the question before Antonio Lavalle opened the door and announced, “Don Cletus, your guests have arrived. May I show them in?”
Clete didn’t have time to answer that question, either, before Doña Claudia Carzino-Cormano pushed past the butler and entered the library.
“Antonio told me you were having a cocktail in the library,” she announced indignantly. “At half past ten in the morning . . .”
She stopped when she saw Cletus Marcus Howell.
“Well, look who’s here,” the old man said. “Will you join us, Claudia? The more the merrier, I always say.”
“Señor Howell,” she said. “What an unexpected pleasure.”
She didn’t sound very sincere.
“I thought we were on a first-name basis,” the old man said. “Have I done something to offend?”
Hans-Peter von Wachtstein and Wilhelm von Dattenberg came into the room. Through the open door, Clete saw Alicia von Wachtstein and Elsa von Wachtstein in the foyer.
“Did I hear the word ‘cocktail’?” Peter asked.
“You’ll have to ask your mother-in-law if you can have one,” Clete said
.
Claudia snorted and walked out of the library.
“Hansel, you’ve never met my grandfather, have you?” Clete said. “Grandfather, this is Peter von Wachtstein.”
“I’ve heard a good deal about you, sir,” Peter said.
“And I’ve heard a good deal about you, too,” the old man said. “From my chauffeur.”
“Uh-oh,” Clete said.
“Do you realize, Cletus, that it took Alex Graham—”
“Your fat Mexican former friend?” Clete interrupted. “That Alex Graham?”
“—and both of my senators to get Tom out of that mess you put him in?”
“What mess was that?” Clete asked innocently.
“You spirited your friends here out of that Top Secret POW camp in Virginia and then left poor old Tom to face the music. The FBI wanted to charge him with aiding and abetting a prison break, and the Army wanted to add high treason,” the old man said, then realizing Clete was pulling his leg, and concluded, “As you goddamn well know.”
“I told Tom to tell the FBI that I held a gun on him,” Clete said. “He said he hadn’t had so much fun since driving you around dodging revenuers during Prohibition.”
The old man ignored that and turned on von Dattenberg.
“You’re the other one, right?”
“Excuse me?”
“The other German my grandson helped to escape from Fort Hunt. The one trying to take advantage of my granddaughter.”
Clete laughed out loud. Von Wachtstein chuckled and smiled.
“It’s not funny, goddamn it, Cletus!” von Dattenberg said.
“Grandfather, this is Willi von Dattenberg, late fregattenkapitän of the submarine service of the Kriegsmarine,” Clete said. “An officer and a gentleman who has never even met Beth. The one trying to take advantage of Beth—actually, when I think about it, it’s the other way around—is Karl Boltitz.”
“Huh,” the old man snorted.
Doña Dorotea and Doña Alicia came into the library.
Empire and Honor Page 23
