What the hell is he up to?
“May I ask, Herr General, where I am being taken?” von Dattenberg asked.
“The way that works here, Herr Kapitän,” Martín replied, “as I’m sure it did in the former Thousand-Year Reich, is that the intelligence officer, not the prisoner, gets to ask the questions.”
“I protest being separated from my men,” von Dattenberg said.
“Protest duly noted,” Martín said. “And you may also file a protest to the representative of the International Red Cross as soon as that opportunity presents itself. Now, what is your choice? Trussed or not trussed?”
“I will not willingly go anywhere with you, sir.”
“Capitán Keller,” Martín said, switching to Spanish, “would you please round up two or three of your more muscular sailors and, say, three meters of stout twine and bring them in here?”
Martín saw on von Dattenberg’s face that he understood the order and thus spoke Spanish; he was not surprised.
“Sí, mi General.”
Before the sailors and the twine appeared, von Dattenberg said, “You have my parole, Herr General.”
“As an honorable officer?”
“As an officer of the Kriegsmarine, Herr General.”
“Good,” Martín said, and switching to Spanish added, “Mi Almirante, would you be kind enough to take Capitán von Dattenberg and myself to my airplane?”
—
Nothing that happened in the next three hours did anything to assuage von Dattenberg’s confusion or bafflement.
First they drove from the Rivadavia to an airfield on which sat an assortment of naval aircraft that had been obsolete before the war had begun. As they approached one of the hangars, its doors opened and sailors pushed onto the tarmac an aircraft with which von Dattenberg was familiar, a Wehrmacht Fieseler Storch.
This one, however, was painted flaming red and bore Argentine markings.
He was then loaded into it, General Martín climbed in, the engine was started, and perhaps ninety seconds later it had taxied to a runway and begun its takeoff roll.
Von Dattenberg remembered what General Martín had said about his only recently having learned how to fly.
A minute or two after that, looking down from no more than five hundred meters, von Dattenberg could see no signs of civilization at all, not even a road. They were flying over grasslands stretching to the horizon in all directions and punctuated here and there by clumps of trees. Cattle—more cattle than von Dattenberg could remember ever having seen—were scattered over the grassland.
Von Dattenberg put this together and decided they were flying over Argentina’s famed Pampas, which he now recalled stretched for hundreds of miles. That made sense. His pilot was an army general. He was being taken to an army base. Army bases were often built in the country.
For the next hour and a half, von Dattenberg looked for signs—even a road—that would indicate they were approaching such an army base. He saw none as far as he could see in any direction—nothing but the Pampas.
He had just about decided that he was having one of those incredibly realistic dreams one had from time to time, and would soon wake up to find he had dozed off in the wardroom of the Rivadavia, when General Martín dropped the nose of the Fieseler and quickly descended to perhaps two hundred meters above ground level.
Von Dattenberg was now looking more or less sideward at the clumps of trees and the cattle—not down at them.
They flew at this altitude for perhaps two minutes. Then General Martín took the airplane even closer to the ground, which caused von Dattenberg to remember again that the general had only recently learned how to fly.
And then they were flashing over something constructed by man. Specifically, over the roofs of perhaps two dozen single-story buildings, one of them enormous and sprawling.
Von Dattenberg was trying very hard to get a better look out the rear of the Storch when General Martín put it into a very steep turn, leveled off, and then dropped the nose even closer toward the ground. He saw what looked like a dirt airstrip.
I am going to die in the middle of nowhere!
And then I will wake up in the wardroom of the Rivadavia.
And then the Storch touched down, bounced back into the air, touched down again, bounced back into the air again, and touched down again, this time staying on the ground.