“En route to Argentina, the station will transmit specific orders to Capitán von Dattenberg giving him the details regarding where you and your men are to be put ashore in the rubber boats.
“I don’t intend to jeopardize this system by transmitting a long message in which you will attempt to justify to Admiral Canaris putting you ashore in Montevideo or Buenos Aires despite the risks that would pose to not only your mission, but also mine. Do you understand, Señor von Deitzberg?”
After a long moment, von Deitzberg smiled. “Of course. I simply didn’t understand. As I said before, I am not a mariner.”
[FIVE]
ABC Restaurant
Lavalle 545
Buenos Aires, Argentina
1320 18 September 1943
“There it is, on the left,” Anton von Gradny-Sawz said, pointing as he leaned forward in the rear seat of the embassy’s Mercedes.
“Jawohl, Herr von Gradny-Sawz,” Günther Loche said crisply.
“Pick me up in an hour and a half, Günther,” von Gradny-Sawz ordered as Loche pulled into the curb. “At ten minutes before three.”
“Jawohl, Herr von Gradny-Sawz.”
“Get yourself some lunch during that time, but before, before you eat, find a public telephone—there’s a booth at the intersection of Lavalle and Carlos Pellegrini—and call the embassy and tell Ambassador von Lutzenberger or Fräulein Hässell—no one else; keep trying until you get one or the other—that I am taking lunch with el Coronel Martín and possibly someone on his staff at the ABC; that I expect to be finished before three and will then go to the embassy.”
“Jawohl, Herr von Gradny-Sawz.”
“Now, Günther, who are you going to call, and when, and what are you going to say?”
“Before I eat, Herr von Gradny-Sawz, I am to find a public telephone, and call the ambassador or Fräulein Hässell and tell them you’re having lunch with el Coronel Martín at the ABC restaurant, and expect to be finished before three, and after that will go to the embassy.”
“And, Günther, and?”
“Excuse me, Herr von Gradny-Sawz?”
“And who are you going to give that message to if neither Ambassador von Lutzenberger nor Fräulein Hässell is available?”
Günther was visibly confused for a moment, but then said, “Herr von Gradny-Sawz, you said I was to keep trying until I got one of them; not give the message to someone else.”
“Correct,” von Gradny-Sawz said, and got out of the car.
As he crossed the sidewalk and pushed open the door to the restaurant, von Gradny-Sawz thought, somewhat smugly: What that zealous but none-too-bright would-be Sicherheitsdienst agent is going to do is go to the pay phone, call Commercial Counselor Karl Cranz or, failing to get him on the phone, Deputy Commercial Counselor Erich Raschner—
“Deputy Commercial Counselor” Raschner, my left foot’s big toe!
Does SS-Obersturmbannführer Cranz really think people don’t know SS-Sturmbannführer Raschner’s not a diplomat? Raschner is crude, ignorant, and a peasant!
—and tell one or the other of them that I’m having lunch in the ABC with Martín.
Only then—or perhaps even after he has his lunch—will he try to call Ambassador von Lutzenberger and tell him what I’m doing.
Which is exactly what I want him to do.
Cranz and Raschner will think both that (a) Günther is keeping a close eye on me and (b) that I don’t even suspect that he is.
Von Gradny-Sawz felt a little light-headed.
He was, he realized, about to cross the Rubicon.