Von Wachtstein had a good deal of experience landing a Storch on the dirt road at Villa General Belgrano.
When the crew of the pocket battleship Graf Spee had been interned after the Battle of the River Plate, it had been decided to put them in Villa General Belgrano. Some said this was simply a decent thing to do. Settled by Germans starting in 1930, the village looked like it belonged in the Bavarian Alps; the internees would be comfortable there.
Others said the internees had been placed there because its location and the sympathies of the German population would facilitate the escape of the internees. Credence to the latter theory came when most of the officers and skilled technicians escaped within a year of their internment.
When Hansel had been Major von Wachtstein, the assistant military attaché for air of the embassy of the German Reich, he had flown to Villa General Belgrano at least twice a month, and sometimes more often, to deliver mail, pay the internees, and handle other administrative matters. He had flown in what was now Frade’s flaming red Storch, then painted in the camouflage pattern of the Wehrmacht, and with a large swastika painted on its vertical stabilizer. The heroic recipient of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross had then been a welcome visitor.
“And the second reason?” Frade asked.
“I want Peter to have a word with von Dattenberg for me.”
“He’s there?” von Wachtstein asked, in surprise.
“He—and the rest of his crew—will be there by the time we get there.”
Von Wachtstein looked at his wristwatch.
“Another two problems, Bernardo,” von Wachtstein said. “If we left right now—and we can’t—it would be dark by the time we got there.”
“I’d hoped you could pick me up at Jorge Frade very early tomorrow morning,” Martín said.
“You didn’t have to drive all the way out here to ask me that,” von Wachtstein said. “And you know it. But I said ‘two problems.’ By now, Bernardo, they know. Somebody is sure to have told them.”
What von Wachtstein did not say—did not have to say, because Martín had known almost from the first—was that for most of the time he had been a decorated hero of the Luftwaffe he had also been a traitor to der Führer and the Thousand-Year Reich by being Frade’s—the OSS’s—mole in the German embassy.
“I’m counting on that,” Martín said.
“What the hell does that mean?” Frade challenged.
“You’re the one who told me that the most amazing thing you found in Berlin was that there were absolutely no Nazis and everybody hated Hitler.”
“Touché, mi General,” Frade said, with a chuckle.
“Why should the internees be any different, Peter?” Martín asked. “What nine out of ten of them are doing now is trying—desperately—to figure out how they can avoid getting shipped back to Germany and can stay, settle down, permanently in Villa General Belgrano. If you were popular delivering the payroll and their mail, wait until you see how they love you when they learn you’re a close friend of the head of the BIS.”
“Beware, Hansel,” Frade said. “El General has some Machiavellian plan in mind.”
“I’m just a simple airplane pilot . . .” von Wachtstein began.
That caused Frade to snort.
“. . . so you’ll have to explain that to me,” von Wachtstein finished.
“There are several things I’d like to learn in Villa General Belgrano,” Martín said. “One: Who has been aiding the escape of the Graf Spee officers?”
“Would you be surprised to learn that it was my beloved Tío Juan?” Frade asked sarcastically.
“Not at all,” Martín said, ignoring the sarcasm. “But I just left President Farrell, and if I had photographs of Perón rowing SS-Brigadeführer Ludwig Hoffmann ashore in the San Matias Gulf, he wouldn’t take any action against him if it looked to him—and it would—that it might set off a civil war. But if I can learn who actually had done the work for Perón, that’s something else.”
“How so?” von Wachtstein asked.
“If somehow that proof—and it would have to be incontrovertible—somehow came into the hands of the American ambassador and he presented it to the Foreign Ministry . . .”
“That won’t work, Bernardo,” Frade said.
“Why not?”
“Because you couldn’t give it to Ambassador Alexander. I would have to.”