Perón’s expression answered for him.
“What is it we say about suboficial mayors, Juan Domingo?” Ramos went on. “That ‘they gossip more than women at the village well’?”
“Goddamn that old sonofabitch!”
“You can’t condemn a dog for barking, Juan Domingo. It’s the nature of the beast.”
“I have known Rodríguez since he was Teniente Frade’s batman!”
“He didn’t even think he was doing anything wrong. He was having a glass of wine with some other old soldiers, and he knew what happened would be of interest to them. An hour later, that story was all over the barracks, two hours later all over Campo de Mayo, and within two days all over Argentina. It was not Rodríguez’s intention to harm you, Juan Domingo.”
“You’re a good deal more forgiving than I am,” Perón snapped.
“I hope that’s contagious, when you start asking yourself, ‘How dare Eduardo come here and talk to me the way he did?’”
Perón looked at him for a long moment.
“You were never very bright, Eduardo,” he said with a smile. “But you have been a good and loyal friend since our first day at the academy.”
“Thank you, and please remember that.”
“Is there anything else you have to say, Eduardo?”
“Get rid of both Rudy Nulder and the blonde, Juan Domingo, and make sure that everybody in this building, the Circulo Militar, and at Campo de Mayo knows you have.”
Perón’s face tightened.
“What is it we said as children? ‘Don’t hold your breath’?”
Ramos rose to his feet.
They less-than-enthusiastically patted one another on the back, and then Ramos went to the office door and through it.
[FOUR]
Highway 252
Three Kilometers North of Marburg an der Lahn
The American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1300 6 October 1945
The roadblock had been established primarily to look for former members of the Schutzstaffel—the infamous SS—and other Nazis in the
long lines of Germans fleeing what was now the Russian Zone of Occupation. The border between the two zones was about fifty kilometers northeast of the roadblock.
The roadblock was operated by U.S. Army military policemen, twenty-four men supervised by a captain and a lieutenant. Three checkpoints had been established, each under an MP sergeant. A long line of refugees led to each.
Each refugee was asked by an MP—whose proficiency in the German language ranged from fluent to almost nonexistent—for his or her Personalausweis—identity card—which was then carefully scrutinized.
If the ID appeared genuine, the refugee was asked where he or she had come from, and where he or she was bound.
In the case of females, especially women with children, the document check was perfunctory. The names were checked against a Wanted List. If there was no match, the women were permitted to continue down the highway—actually a two-lane cobblestone road—toward Marburg an der Lahn.
Males of any age, but especially those of military age, were scrutinized far more carefully. Most of the MPs who spoke fluent German were Jewish, and some of them had barely escaped Nazi Germany with their lives. Many—perhaps most—had family members who had perished in the concentration camps. They were motivated to find Nazis trying to escape retribution.
Any refugee who could not produce a Personalausweis, or whose identity seemed questionable, or whose name matched one on the Wanted List, was taken to a U.S. Army six-by-six truck and loaded aboard for further investigation by the CIC, the Army’s Counterintelligence Corps.