“God only knows when I can get my wife and children out of Germany, but until I can arrange that—and it might not be until after the war—I will not have the problem of having two wives.”
“And when that happens?” Cranz asked. “It’s none of my business, I realize . . .”
“No, Karl. It is none of your business. All I can tell you is that Frau von Tresmarck fully understands that this is a temporary charade, and that I am a happily married man and an honorable SS officer not at all interested in her physical charms.”
“I didn’t mean to suggest—”
Von Deitzberg silenced him with a raised hand.
“Sometime late this afternoon, Hauptsturmführer Forster is going to seek an audience with Ambassador Schulker in Montevideo. He will tell the ambassador he’s very afraid something is very wrong: Sturmbannführer Werner von Tresmarck had told him that he and his wife were going to take a week’s vacation at someplace called Punta del Este. Forster will report that that is not the case; they are not in the hotel where they said they were going to stay. Frau von Tresmarck booked passage on the overnight steamer last night—
“Actually,” von Deitzberg interrupted himself, “that’s a rather nice trip. You board, have a very nice dinner, go to bed,
and when you waken, the ship is docking in Buenos Aires—”
Von Deitzberg took a sip of his Kaffee mit schlagobers and then went on. “Frau von Tresmarck did not tell him she was doing so. Inquiry of their neighbors revealed that von Tresmarck himself has not been seen for a week or more.
“Forster will ask the ambassador for direction. Schulker, being Schulker, will almost certainly decide on patience and calm. Which means it will probably be tomorrow, or even the day after, before he informs the local police and of course our own Ambassador von Lutzenberger.
“Your slow and careful investigation will then begin. You will after some time—two days, perhaps three—learn from von Gradny-Sawz that he received a telephone call from Frau von Tresmarck asking him to make reservations at the Alvear Palace for her—alone—for a week, and to meet her at the pier when the ship arrived. He will tell you he did so, took her by taxi to the hotel, saw her inside, and has not seen or heard from her again. She offered no explanation for her being in Buenos Aires. You will believe him.
“Your investigation will continue, but when you can spare a few minutes from your relentless search for the missing Frau von Tresmarck, I want you to get me maps—detailed maps—of Frade’s estancia near here, the airfield where these airplanes are parked, and of his estancia in Mendoza.”
“That’s not going to be easy,” Raschner said.
“I didn’t ask for your opinion of the difficulty of the task, Erich, I told you to do it.”
“Jawohl, Mein Herr.”
“Perhaps von Wachtstein could be of assistance,” von Deitzberg said. “Ae - rial photos of the airfields and the estancias?”
“With respect, Mein Herr. The airfield at Morón, certainly. The estancia near here, Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, is as large as Berlin or Munich. What should I photograph? And at this moment, I don’t have any idea where Frade’s estancia in Mendoza is.”
“You’re a good man, Raschner. You’ll figure it out.”
Von Deitzberg reached for another jelly-filled roll.
[TWO]
Río Hermoso Hotel
San Martín de los Andes
Neuquén Province, Argentina
2035 5 October 1943
SS-Brigadeführer Ritter Manfred von Deitzberg was frankly astonished—pleased but astonished—that he had any energy left for that sort of thing after that incredibly long drive from Buenos Aires, but when he came out of the bathroom, Inge, waiting to have a shower herself, had stripped down to her underwear and one thing had quickly—very quickly—led to another.
They could have come by train. Von Gradny-Sawz had told him that while the Argentine rail system was nothing like the Deutsche Reichsbahn—the prewar Deutsche Reichsbahn—the British-built system here left little to be desired. The trouble was that San Martín de los Andes was literally in the middle of nowhere, and he would have had to change trains and then take a bus.
That ended the pleasing notion of rolling across Argentina in a first-class railway compartment with Inge. He didn’t want to get on a bus, and he thought an automobile would probably turn out to be useful.
Von Gradny-Sawz had bought a car for him, paying an outrageous price for a two-year-old American Ford “station wagon”—von Deitzberg had no idea what that meant—with not very many miles on the odometer. The Automobile Club of Argentina had provided excellent road maps free of charge when he went to their headquarters to personally buy the required insurance. Von Gradny-Sawz said that the Automobile Club was a law unto itself, and that they demanded to see in person the individual the Caja Nacional de Ahorro Postal was about to insure.
On the map, San Martín de los Andes did not look to be very far from Buenos Aires until he looked at the scale of the map, then checked the chart of distances on the reverse.
It was about fifteen hundred kilometers from Buenos Aires to San Martín de los Andes. He remembered that a little more than five hundred kilometers was all that separated Berlin and Vienna.