“I decided I didn’t want to waste any fuel trying to meet up with the Americans,” Clete said. “And I’m hoping that if there are Germans up here, they won’t be able to find us—you’ll notice I have turned off our navigation lights—or if they do, we’ll be able to outrun them.”
“I agree, Capitán,” the copilot said.
Clete looked at him.
He was crossing himself and mumbling a prayer.
XI
[ONE]
2404 Calle Bernardo O’Higgins
Belgrano, Buenos Aires, Argentina
0815 1 October 1943
SS-Brigadeführer Ritter Manfred von Deitzberg, first deputy adjutant to Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, awoke sweat-soaked in the bedroom of his apartment in the petit-hotel at O’Higgins and José Hernández in
the up-scale Belgrano neighborhood.
Worse, he knew that he was going to be sick to his stomach again. He padded quickly across the bedroom to the bathroom and just made it to the water closet before he threw up.
First, an amazing volume of foul-smelling green vomitus splashed into the water. This was followed moments later by a somewhat lesser volume of the green vomitus.
Von Deitzberg now desperately wished to flush the toilet but knew from painful past experience that this was not going to be immediately possible. For reasons known only to the gottverdammt Argentines, the water reservoir was mounted so high on the wall, with a flushing chain so short, it was damned near impossible to pull it when sitting on the toilet, and absolutely impossible to do so when one was on one’s knees hugging the toilet.
It would be out of reach until he managed to recover sufficiently to be able to get off his knees and stand up with a reasonable chance of not falling over; that, too, had happened.
The entire sequence had happened so often—this was the fourth day—that von Deitzberg knew exactly what to expect, and that happened now. There were two more eruptions—this varied; sometimes there were three or more—after which von Deitzberg somehow knew that was all there was going to be. Then he could very carefully get to his feet, stand for a moment to reach the gottverdammt flushing chain handle, and then quickly hoist the hem of his nightgown and even more quickly sit on the toilet seat in anticipation of the burst of vile-smelling, foul-looking contents of his bowels that most often followed the nausea.
Baron von Deitzberg was suffering from what August Müller, M.D., described as “a pretty bad cold, plus maybe a little something else.”
Doctor Müller was on the staff of the German Hospital. A Bavarian, he had been in Argentina for ten years. More important, he was a dedicated National Socialist, two of whose sons had returned to the Fatherland and were now serving in the SS.
For these reasons, Dr. Müller could be trusted to understand that there were reasons why SS-Brigadeführer von Deitzberg was secretly in Argentina under the name of Jorge Schenck and, of course, why von Deitzberg could not go to the German Hospital, where questions would certainly be asked.
Dr. Müller would treat the brigadeführer in his apartment and would tell no one he was doing so.
Von Deitzberg was not surprised he was ill. He was surprised that it took so long—until he was in his new apartment—for it to show up. He believed he had contracted some illness—probably more than one; Dr. Müller’s “a little something else”—on U-405 during that nightmare voyage.
And he knew where he had caught Dr. Müller’s “pretty bad cold.” Fifty meters from the shore of Samborombón Bay, the rubber boat in which von Deitzberg was being taken ashore had struck something on the bottom. Something sharp. There had been a whooshing sound as the rubber boat collapsed and sank into the water.
The water was not much more than a meter deep. There was no danger of anyone drowning, and—giving credit where credit was due—the U-405’s sailors quickly got von Deitzberg and his luggage ashore. By then, however, von Deitzberg was absolutely waterlogged and so were the two leather suitcases he’d bought on his last trip to Argentina, and of course their contents.
The result had been that von Deitzberg had been soaking wet during the four-hour trip in First Secretary Anton von Gradny-Sawz’s embassy car from the beach to his new apartment. There was simply nothing that could be done about it.
By the time they reached the apartment, von Deitzberg had been chilled and was sneezing. Von Gradny-Sawz obligingly arranged for an Old Hungarian Solution to the problem—a hot bath, then to bed after drinking a stiff hooker of brandy with three tablespoons of honey—and said when he returned in the morning he would have with him Dr. Müller. “To be sure things were under control,” he’d said.
Von Deitzberg almost refused the physician’s services—the more people who knew about him being in Buenos Aires, the greater the chances the secret would get out—but after von Gradny-Sawz had explained who Dr. Müller was, he agreed to have him come.
Dr. Müller was there at nine the next morning, oozing Bavarian gemuetlichkeit and medical assuredness. By then von Deitzberg’s eyes were running, his sinuses clogged, he was sneezing with astonishing frequency and strength, and he was running a fever. He was delighted to have the services of a German physician, even one who proudly proclaimed himself to be a “herbalist,” a term with which von Deitzberg was not familiar.
He soon found out what it meant.
As soon as von Gradny-Sawz had returned from the nearest pharmacy and greengrocer with the necessary ingredients, Dr. Müller showed one of the petit-hotel’s maids—actually, she was the daughter of one of the maids; he later learned she was fifteen and that her name was Maria—how to prepare a number of herbal remedies.
He started with showing Maria how to peel and chop four cloves of garlic and then put them in a cup of warm water, making a remedy that von Deitzberg was to take three times a day.