Aboard Motor Vessel Comerciante del Oceano Pacifico
Samboromb¢n Bay
River Plate Estuary, Argentina
0810 19 April 1943
Capitan Jose Francisco de Banderano, master of the Oceano Pacifico, was, of course being generously compensated for his services-as was his crew. There had been a generous sign-on bonus, and a promise of an equal amount at the conclusion of the voyage, even if the ship was lost. In addition, each month an amount equal to, and in addition to, his monthly pay would be delivered to his wife, in cash-and thus tax-free. If things should go really wrong, his wife would receive a generous death benefit, plus a pension for the rest of her life. The German Naval Attach‚ in Madrid had made similar provisions for every member of his crew.
But the generous pay was not the reason he had accepted the commission. He believed in the German cause.
Like his father and grandfather before him, Capitan de Banderano was a graduate of the Spanish Royal Navy Academy. He graduated at eighteen, was appointed a midshipman, and then, on attaining his twenty-first birthday, was commissioned a Lieutenant in the Royal Spanish Navy.
By the time the Communists started the revolution, he had risen to Lieu-tenant Commander and was in command of the frigate Almirante de Posco. Be-fore the revolution, he hoped to rise in rank to Capitan-as his father had-or possibly even to Almirante-as his grandfather had.
The revolution changed all that. He was early on detached from the Almi-rante de Posco to serve on the staff of General Francisco Franco, El Caudillo, when that great man saw it as his Christian duty to expel the godless Commu-nists from Spain and restore Spain to her former greatness.
As the Civil War dragged on and on, his duties had less and less to do with the Navy, but they took him to all fronts and gave him the opportunity to see what the Communists had in mind for Spain. And they were godless, the Antichrist. He saw the murdered priests and the raped nuns.
Hitler, "Der F?hrer," and Benito Mussolini, "El Duce," were deeply aware of the nature of the Communists, and of the threat communism posed to the very survival of Christian civilization; and they sent help. Der F?hrer more than El Duce, to be sure, but both came to the aid of a Christianity that once again had infidel hordes raging at her gates.
Without the help German weapons provided to General Franco's army, without the aerial support of the German Condor Legion, it was entirely possi-ble that the war could have been lost.
The English and the Americans remained "neutral," but that in practice meant they were helping the loyalists. The Americans even sent soldiers, formed into the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, to aid the Communists.
Capitan de Banderano was frankly baffled by the behavior of the English and the Americans. The usual answer to this conundrum was that they were not Roman Catholic, and their "churches" had been infiltrated and corrupted by Communists; but he thought that was too simple an answer. A large number of the Germans who came to help Spain were Protestant. He also thought the other answer was too simple: that the Jews controlled both England and America.
Too many good Spanish Jews had fought as valiantly as anyone on the side of El Caudillo to believe that all Jews were allied with the Antichrist.
But whatever their reasons for opposing Hitler, for refusing to accept that the war Hitler was waging against the Communists was their own war, the fact was that England and America were fighting Germany, and that was sufficient cause for him to do whatever he could to oppose them.
The notion of violating the Rules of Warfare by violating Argentine neu-trality would have deeply offended him before the Civil War. Now it seemed only right. The actions of the English during the Civil War were blatantly an-tagonistic to neutrality. And later, the actions of the Americans after the begin-ning of the current war, but before they themselves joined the hostilities, were equally contrary to neutrality.
There was no command for Capitan de Banderano in the post-Civil War Royal Spanish Navy. Spain was destitute-and not only because the Commu-nists stole literally tons of gold, almost the entire gold stocks of the kingdom, and took it to Russia. There was hardly enough money to operate-much less construct-men-of-war. The once proud Spanish navy was on its knees, again, thanks to the Communists.
Thus, his service during the Civil War was rewarded with a command in the Spanish merchant navy. He saw with his own eyes and heard with his own ears American Navy ships roaming the North Atlantic searching for German sub-marines-which had every right under international law to sink vessels laden with war materiel and bound for England. When the American ships found one, they reported their positions by radio, in the clear. "In the clear" meant that ra-dios aboard English men-of-war were given the positions of their enemy by "neutral" American men-of-war.
In Capitan de Banderano's opinion, the English and the Americans were absolutely hypocritical in their denunciation of anyone else who violated neu-trality.
And it was the further judgment of Capitan de Banderano that the captain of the American destroyer Alfred Thomas deserved to be brought before an in-ternational tribunal for reckless endangerment on the high seas and put in prison.
He almost wished the American destroyer put a shot across his bows then, or took some other action. He thought there was a good chance he could have blown her out of the water with naval cannon carried aboard the Oceano Paci-fico in false superstructure.
He had always been skilled with naval artillery. He suspected-but did not know-that someone who knew him in the Admiralty had recommended him to the Germans for command of the Comerciante del Oceano Pacifico because of this skill.
In any event, he was approached about taking command of the Oceano Pacifico on a "special mission"-and of course he suspected that mission was to replace the Reine de la Mer that the Americans had sunk. When the com-mand was offered, he made up his mind to accept the commission even before the generous emoluments were mentioned.
Even if there was, so to speak, no command of the Royal Navy available to him, even if he was technically a civilian, he knew in his heart that he would be fighting the Antichrist, the godless Communists.
Capitan de Banderano was in his cabin shaving when the Second Officer knocked and announced that a small boat was approaching the Oceano Pacif
ico from the port.
"How far?"
"A mile or so, Sir. I would say she will come close in five minutes."
"Thank you, I will be there directly."