“You know better than to ask me to answer that question.”
“You can’t hide him for long.”
“We can try. And if these people do find him, I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing I didn’t do anything to reveal where he’s being held.”
Crater met Martín’s eyes for a long moment.
“Why don’t you see what you can get out of Fregattenkapitän Wilhelm von Dattenberg?”
“That name rings a bell,” Martín said, almost to himself. “You say you have him on the Rivadavia?”
Crater nodded. “In her wardroom.”
“Not alone, I hope?”
“No, Bernardo, not alone. I didn’t want him to make himself another Langsdorff.”
Kapitän zur See Hans Wilhelm Langsdorff, captain of the Panzerschiff (pocket battleship) Admiral Graf Spee, had in 1939 refused Hitler’s order to “die fighting” by taking his seriously damaged vessel into combat against three British cruisers waiting for him outside the harbor of Montevideo, Uruguay.
Instead, once he had seen to the burial of his dead and the hospitalization of his wounded in Montevideo, and arranged for the internment of the rest of his crew in Argentina, he scuttled his vessel just outside Montevideo harbor.
He was taken to Buenos Aires. To prove that saving his crew, and not his own life, was the reason he had scuttled the Graf Spee, he then put on his dress uniform, stood over the German navy battle flag on the floor of his hotel room, and blew his brains out.
—
When Vicealmirante Crater and General Martín walked into the wardroom of the Rivadavia, Fregattenkapitän Wilhelm von Dattenberg stood and came to attention before his naval escort, Capitán de Corbeta José Keller, could put down his coffee cup.
“Please keep your seat, Kapitän,” Crater said, in German, adding, “This is General Martín.”
Von Dattenberg clicked his heels and bobbed his head.
“I understand you’ve told the admiral, Kapitän,” Martín said, also speaking German, “that you came here directly from Germany, that you did not, in other words, touch somewhere else on our shores to unload either people or cargo before you appeared here.”
Von Dattenberg did not reply.
“The trouble one has as an honorable officer, Kapitän von Dattenberg, is that when you’re lying, this is as evident to other honorable officers as a wart on your nose would be. Both Vicealmirante Crater and myself like to think of ourselves as honorable officers. We clearly see the wart on your nose.”
Von Dattenberg’s face showed his surprise.
“Didn’t they teach you that in the Kriegsmarine?” Martín pursued. “Or at Philipps University?”
The second question visibly surprised von Dattenberg.
Vicealmirante Crater had two questions in his mind:
Where the hell is Martín going?
And how the hell did he know where von Dattenberg went to university?
“We are now going to take a ride in my airplane, Kapitän von Dattenberg,” Martín said.
Now what the hell? Crater thought.
“You may make the trip to my airplane trussed up like a Christmas goose,” Martín went on, “and be loaded aboard by several of the admiral’s more muscular sailors. Or, if you wish, you can give me your parole as an honorable officer, and not be trussed. The truth is that I only recently learned how to fly, and I’m not good enough at it to simultaneously fly and try to dissuade you of any notions you might have to exit this world à la the late Kapitän zur See Langsdorff.”
Well, if Bernardo’s intention was to really baffle von Dattenberg, he’s succeeded.