This long-legged blonde was different from the others, somehow. It wasn’t just the British accent, although that was somehow erotic and probably appealed to Clete at least as much as it did to him.
The first hint he had that Dorotea was something special was when she announced in the dining room that she was going to sit in on the meeting. Clete had accepted that announcement without question—while at the same time trying to throw out the old man.
Jimmy had decided that was because she was Clete’s wife—you can’t throw your wife out of her own dining room—but changed that opinion during the discussion of the landfall. He saw by her face that she wasn’t just politely listening. She was interested.
And more than interested: Jimmy had the feeling that Dorotea knew where he was going with the discussion as soon as von Dattenberg did. Which meant before Colonel Cletus did. Clete still didn’t have a clue.
And then when the Argentine general was right on the edge of losing it, she put that fire out by suggesting they “go upstairs and watch the races.”
Jimmy had no idea what she was talking about, but whatever it was had calmed the general.
—
Everybody in the dining room filed out into the enormous foyer of the mansion and headed toward a wide stairway—divided at the top—leading to the upper floors. Clete and Dorotea walked behind General Martín, who was having a hard time with his crutches. Jimmy fell in line behind them.
As Jimmy wondered how the hell the general was going to get up the stairway on his crutches, the general hobbled to the left of the staircase. When Jimmy got there, he saw what he thought of as an old-fashioned elevator.
First, what looked like an ordinary closet door had been pulled open. Exposed was the elevator door itself, sort of a fence that opened and closed like an accordion.
Clete reached around General Martín and folded open the accordion fence door.
General Martín carefully hobbled inside the elevator.
Clete literally bowed Dorotea into the elevator, then got on himself.
There was barely room for all of them on the elevator.
“I’m surprised you don’t know this, Jimmy,” Frade announced. “Generals and field grade officers, plus of course beautiful women, get to ride. Second lieutenants climb the stairs. Three flights up. Good luck, Lieutenant, and Godspeed!”
Dorotea and the general laughed. Clete closed the door, there came a clank, and the elevator began to rise.
[THREE]
Apartment 4-C
1044 Calle Talcahuano
Buenos Aires, Argentina
1405 20 October 1945
Konrad Fassbinder answered the telephone on the second ring.
“Hola?” he said, listened, and then said, “Wait there.”
Then he put the handset in the cradle and turned to Ludwig Mannhoffer.
“The messenger is at the opera, Herr Mannhoffer. At the ticket booth.”
“That being the case, I suggest you go get the message,” Mannhoffer said. “Richter, you go with him and make sure that he’s not being followed.”
“Jawohl, Herr Mannhoffer,” Erich Richter said, and gestured for Fassbinder to go to the door.
—
Fassbinder returned five minutes later. And a minute after that Richter came into the apartment.
“He was not followed,” Richter announced.
“As far as you could tell,” Mannhoffer said. “Well, let me have it, Fassbinder.”
Fassbinder handed him a large sealed envelope. Mannhoffer put it on the kitchen table and opened it. When he did so, there came a harsh odor of chemicals.
“I hate that smell,” Mannhoffer said.
The envelope contained a sheaf of what photographers called “immediate proofs.” They were photographic prints made as quickly as possible—as soon as the developed film was out of the tank, dried, and fed to an automatic advancing device in an enlarger. The prints most times were not “fixed” well, or at all, which caused them to fade more quickly than those properly processed.
But they did provide a quick view of what the photographer had caught on film, and that was what Mannhoffer wanted as soon as possible—and had paid a great deal of money to get.
These immediate proofs showed passengers disembarking the South American Airways Constellation La Ciudad de Mar del Plata after its arrival a little more than two hours earlier at Aeropuerto El Coronel Jorge G. Frade at the conclusion of its final leg from Berlin.
Mannhoffer didn’t know of course where the photographer had been when he took the pictures. But he had been in the Sicherheitsdienst of the SS long enough to make a good guess. He had somehow managed to set up his cameras—almost certainly Leica CIIs—on tripods on the roof of Hangar Two. The Leicas had spring-driven film-advance mechanisms and film magazines that held 120 35mm frames, rather than the normal magazine that contained twenty-four.
Once the cameras had been focused on the stairways leading to the passenger and cockpit doors, all the photographer had to do was push their shutter release button and he had his series of images being snapped.
And it was immediately apparent to Mannhoffer that these pictures were worth every centavo he was paying for them. Within thirty seconds, he had decided that it was going to be necessary to start eliminating people now, tomorrow, rather than when it would be more convenient or safer.
In addition to the traitorous former Major Hans-Peter von Wachtstein, whom Mannhoffer expected to see, there was von Wachtstein’s traitorous friend, former Kapitän zur See Karl Boltitz, walking down the stairway with two other Germans whom Mannhoffer absolutely didn’t expect to see: former Oberstleutnant Dieter von und zu Aschenburg and former Major Wilhelm Grüner of the Luftwaffe.
Both had obviously betrayed their solemn oath of loyalty to the Führer and were now happily in the employ of the gottverdammt Americans.
Just, Mannhoffer thought disgustedly, as Fregattenkapitän Wilhelm von Dattenberg had proven to be a traitor. Instead of scuttling U-405 as ordered, von Dattenberg had surrendered the U-boat to the Armada Argentina. Which meant—although the Armada Argentina was too stupid to know it—that the landfall coordinates for U-234 were not destroyed but in their hands.
And then the immediate proof photos showed an American officer, armed, climbing down the stairwell with two suitcases, whereupon he and the suitcases fell under the protection of General Martín and Frade’s Private Army.
And then there were photos that showed everybody had gone to Frade’s house across from the racetrack. Whatever they had gone there for, he knew that it was not to watch the races.
Mannhoffer looked up from the photographs.
“Fassbinder,” he ordered, “I want you to contact our man at Jorge Frade, and tell him that I want to know what’s going on at Frade’s house as soon as it happens.”
“I believe he’s already got the mansion under surveillance, Herr Mannhoffer. There are the photos of it—”
“We know they are there, but not what they are doing there! So, get in a taxi and go to Avenida Libertador, find whoever it is we have doing the surveilling, find out what he’s learned, and report back to me.”
“Jawohl, Herr Mannhoffer.”
“Well, don’t just stand there. Get moving!”
As soon as the door had closed behind Fassbinder, Mannhoffer motioned for Richter to join him.
“Erich, you have heard, I’m sure, that the more people who know a secret, the more quickly it stops being a secret.”
“Yes, sir.”
“For that reason, until now, I have not told you that both SS-Brigadeführer Gerhard Körtig and SS-Oberführer Horst Lang are here in Argentina.”
Richter’s surprise was evident on his face.
“They came aboard U-234,” Mannhoffer said.
“U-234 made it here?”
Mannhoffer nodded.
“There’s a good deal I have to tell you,” Mannhoffer said. “But first go to the telephone kiosk in the Café Colón. Call
this number . . .”
He wrote a number on a piece of paper.
“Memorize that, and then burn it,” he ordered.
“Jawohl, Herr Mannhoffer.”
“Either Lang or Körtig will answer. They are . . . not in Buenos Aires. Whoever answers, ask for Señor Kramer. Tell Señor Kramer that you’re Señor Schmidt and that you’re sorry but you can’t have dinner with him today. Perhaps next week. Got it?”
Richter looked at the number and nodded.
“That will get them both here as soon as possible, Erich. Which should take three hours, perhaps a little less.”
“Jawohl, Herr Mannhoffer.”
[FOUR]
4730 Avenida Libertador General San Martín
Buenos Aires, Argentina
1415 20 October 1945
Still wondering what kind of races could be held in what had to be the mansion’s attic, Jimmy finally reached the top of the third flight of stairs, which ended facing a door. He pushed it open and found himself at the off-the-street end of a cavernous room that stretched across the entire floor. Huge doors opened onto a large balcony.
Everyone who had been at lunch was in the room, plus servants and nannies. There were also an infant and a little boy who Jimmy decided were Clete and Dorotea’s kids.
And Elsa.
She was standing, with von Dattenberg, at the far end of the room, on the balcony.
She was wearing a dress—a pale blue dress, a real dress—not an insignia-less WAC officer’s uniform skirt.
She was even more beautiful than Jimmy remembered.
As he watched, von Dattenberg touched her arm and nodded toward Jimmy, as if to say, “There he is.”
Elsa looked, and then smiled brightly at him.
Too brightly.
He knew from that moment that he was not going to spend the rest of his life with Elsa von Wachtstein.
I’m probably not even going to have dinner with her.
Not that I would want to anyway.
If you make a horse’s ass of yourself with somebody, you want to get away from them, not have dinner.
Von Dattenberg put his hand on Elsa’s arm and led her across the room to him.
“I understand you know each other,” von Dattenberg said.
“Jimmy,” Elsa said, “what a pleasant surprise. Willi just told me that you were here.”
Surprise, sure. Pleasant? I don’t think so.
I think the last person in the world you wanted to see here, Baroness, was Second Lieutenant James D. Cronley Jr.
She kissed his cheek with all the passion of a Sunday school teacher kissing one of her students.
“And here I am,” Jimmy said.
“I didn’t expect to see you here.”
I never would have guessed from that dazzling smile.
“Well, life is full of surprises, isn’t it?”
“What are you doing here?” Elsa asked.
“I don’t think he can tell you,” von Dattenberg said.
“Oh.”
“Elsa told me how kind you were to her in Marburg, Jimmy,” von Dattenberg said.
“I was just doing my duty, Willi.”
I’m an Aggie, Willi. A graduate of Texas A&M.
It is a matter of pride with us Aggies that we never turn down a drink or a piece of ass.
“I got the impression that it went beyond that,” von Dattenberg said. “I know she’s really grateful.”
And she damn sure should be.
It’s a pity she’s not Catherine the Great of Russia—who is probably, come to think of it, a distant cousin of the baroness. Catherine was known to reward lieutenants of the Household Cavalry for sexual services rendered.
She made some colonels and a few—for outstanding stud service—she made dukes.
For my stud service—God knows Elsa the Great found no fault with it—I should now be Colonel James Cronley, the Grand Duke of Marburg.
Elsa would not look at him.
“I hate to break up this touching reunion,” Frade said at his ear, “but General Martín thinks we should get you out of that uniform, and he’s right.”
Jimmy turned to Clete. “How are we going to do that?”
“We’re going in there,” Frade said, pointing at a door.
“And I’m going with you,” Martha Howell said, as she walked up to them. “To make sure he gives you something nice. What’s your trouser size, Jimmy?”
“Waist thirty, length thirty-six,” Cronley said. He turned back to Elsa. “Maybe we’ll bump into each other again while I’m here.”
“That would be nice,” Elsa said.
[FIVE]
“What is this place? It looks like a clothing store,” Cronley said.
“This was my father’s wardrobe. He was something of a clotheshorse,” Clete replied.
“What about shoes? What’s your shoe size, Jimmy?” Martha asked.
“Ten and a half D.”
“What size does that convert to down here, Cletus?” Martha asked.
“I have no idea, but it’s moot. El Coronel didn’t go to shoe stores. He had shoemakers come here. Or had his shoes made in London. But they fit me, and back in the days when I went to shoe stores like the common people, I was a ten and a half. And in the Marine Corps my trouser size was thirty, thirty-seven. You seem to have grown, little brother.”
“Pick out a jacket, Jimmy,” Martha ordered. “We’ll start with that.”
“Which jacket do I get, Clete?”
“Any one your greedy little heart desires. There’s plenty of them. El Coronel ordered them three at a time.”
“You’re kidding,” Martha said.
“No, I’m not. One went to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, one went in here, and one went to Casa Montagna. I’ve been passing out those latter ones to the Good Gehlens.”
“You haven’t told me about the . . . Good Gehlens,” Martha said.
“I’m still making up my mind whether I will or not,” Frade said.
There were more suits than Jimmy could count hanging in the wardrobe, and on the other side as many sport coats. He found one—a tweed jacket with suede leather patches at the elbows—that he really liked. He held it out for Clete to see. When Clete gave him a thumbs-up, he took it from its hanger.
Jimmy tossed the jacket on a red leather upholstered bolster in the center of the room, unbuttoned his Ike jacket, and tossed that on the bolster. Then he slipped out of his shoulder holster.
“What’s that for?” Marjorie asked.
Jimmy hadn’t seen her come into the room.
“He needs it, Squirt,” Clete said. “Leave it at that.”
“Needs it for what? And don’t call me Squirt.”
“Why does he need it, Cletus?” Martha asked.
“If he needs a gun, what about you?” Marjorie challenged. “I don’t see you wearing a shoulder holster like Edward G. Robinson in a gangster movie.”
“She used to be such a sweet little girl,” Clete said.
“Answer her question,” Martha said. “And my questions. It’s time for that.”
“I don’t usually carry a pistol because Enrico and his riot gun are ten steps away ninety percent of the time. And because Dorotea carries a revolver in her purse. And because . . .”
He pushed aside the suits hanging close to the door and pulled out a Thompson submachine gun.
“Okay?”
“Tell me about this General Gehlen,” Martha said.
“Shouldn’t we get Beth in here?” Marjorie asked. “Shouldn’t she hear this, too?”
“Not necessary,” Clete said. “Karl has already told her.”
“You told Beth—or told Karl he could tell Beth—and didn’t tell me?” Martha asked.
“I told Karl he could tell Beth because I knew he would anyway,” Clete said. “If you haven’t noticed, they’re pretty close.”
Martha ignored the sarcasm.
“And didn’t tell me?” Martha pursued.
Clete didn’t reply directly.
“Jimmy, pick out enough clothing for a week,” he ordered. “Shoes, socks, shirts, ties—everything. Take it all in the dressing room”—he pointed to a door—“and try it on. Try everything on. And after you’ve done that, put on one set of civvies and put the rest on that”—he pointed to the bolster—“and I’ll rustle up a valise for it.”
“Am I going somewhere?”
Again, Clete didn’t reply directly. “And, while you’re doing that, I’ll explain to the ladies what’s going on.”
He jerked his thumb in a get moving gesture.
[SIX]
Jimmy backed out of the dressing room into the wardrobe, his arms full of his new clothing. He was wearing some of it, the tweed jacket with suede elbow patches, a white dress shirt, a striped silk tie, gray flannel trousers, and a pair of what looked like new loafers. The shoes had surprised him—he’d thought loafers were purely American. These, which had belonged to Clete’s Argentine father, were English. Stamped on the leather inside was Joseph Cheaney & Sons London.
All the clothing—even the shirt and shoes—almost fit, which also had surprised him. It was a little loose, but it fit. To judge by that, Clete was only slightly larger than he was, which was a little surprising as he had always thought of Clete as being “bigger.”
He dropped the armful of clothing on the bolster and turned around. Mrs. Howell and Clete were no longer in the wardrobe.
But Marjorie was. She was holding the Thompson submachine gun.
“Jesus, Squirt, be careful with that!”
“I took the magazine out,” she said, and held the weapon up to show him that she had. “I’ve never fired one of these.”
“It would knock you on your . . . keister.”
“Says the expert.”
“As a matter of fact, I fired expert with the Thompson.”
“Wow!” she said sarcastically.
Now is not the time to get into a scrap with her.
Never argue with a female holding a Tommy gun.
He struck a pose he thought was like that of a model.
“Well, what do you think?”
Marjorie put the magazine back in the Thompson and then put the weapon back where Clete kept it behind the clothes.
Empire and Honor Page 38
