“And did they say how long it would take to get a report back?”
“Three weeks to a month.”
“During which time they can look for and probably find U-234,” Mannhoffer said. “And once they find it . . .”
“I don’t think we have to worry about that.”
“. . . if they can send a freighter to a rendezvous point near the Falkland Islands, they can send it—with those fifty NKVD agents or Marines aboard—”
“You’re not listening to me, Ludwig,” Körtig interrupted. “There’s no way they could find U-234.”
“Gerhard, the landfall coordinates were in the safe of U-405 when that gottverdammt von Dattenberg surrendered it to the Argentines.”
“Encoded,” Körtig said. “The coordinates were encoded among other coordinates. Von Dattenberg didn’t even know he had them. And even if they suspected U-234 made it to Argentina—and I don’t think they do—but even if they knew she was down there somewhere, they could never find her.”
“Ludwig,” Lang offered, “I have trouble finding the damn U-boat when I go down there. And I know exactly where she is. She blends into the landscape—seascape?—because she’s painted white—a sort of grayish white—and she’s covered with white camouflage nets. You can’t see her, you have no suggestion there’s anything there until you get within a couple of hundred meters.”
“Could she be seen from the air?”
“Not if the airplane was flying any higher than two or three hundred meters. She is covered with white camouflage netting. I just told you that.”
“For the sake of argument, Horst—indulge me—could she be seen from a slow, low-flying—say, one-fifty- or two-hundred-meter—aircraft?”
“If Santa Claus was flying overhead in his sleigh—and looking carefully—maybe.”
Mannhoffer ignored the sarcasm. “What if the aircraft was a Piper Cub or, say, a Storch? Flown by a pilot with extensive experience in flying in arctic conditions in Russia? Could he see the U-234, camouflage netting or no camouflage netting?”
“He probably could. But that’s a hell of a stretch, Ludwig.”
“What if I told you that flatbed trucks carrying a Piper Cub, a Storch, and a bulldozer capable of carving out an airfield, plus a fuel truck with twelve thousand liters of fuel, and two army trucks—one carrying twenty heavily armed soldiers and the other rations, heavy weapons, and ammunition—are about to leave, if they haven’t already left, Aeropuerto Frade for an undisclosed destination in the south of the country?”
“My God!” Körtig exclaimed.
“They’ve got a Storch?” Lang asked incredulously. “Where did they get a Storch?”
“I have no idea,” Mannhoffer said. “But Frade has one. It’s painted bright red. And now he’s got a pilot skilled in arctic operations—former Major Wilhelm Grüner—to fly it.”
“His father must be spinning in his grave,” Lang said.
“Let’s not get excited,” Körtig said. “They don’t know where U-234 is. How could they?”
“They broke the coded rendezvous points?” Mannhoffer said. “There’s a number of possibilities there.”
“Such as?”
“One that comes immediately to mind—”
“Let’s accept, for the sake of argument,” Körtig said, “that they know that U-234 made it here, and have a general idea where she lies. How are they going to find
it?”
“With the Storch, obviously.”
“All right, let’s go down that path. If the Storch doesn’t make it down there, ergo, they can’t find U-234. How can we arrange that? Get some of the Tenth Mountain people already down there at Estancia Condor to set up a roadblock, something like that?”
“You’re pissing into the wind, Gerhard. Never underestimate the enemy,” Mannhoffer said.
“Meaning what?”