“Then why do they bid on it?”
“To either keep us from getting it or to make us pay very dearly for it.”
“And they never take the beef? Win the auction?”
“Oh, yes, Herr Cranz. They take it frequently. Whenever we don’t top their bid.”
“And if they don’t want it, what do they do with it?”
“They—that is to say, Swift and Armour—corn it and tin it.”
“And what exactly does that mean?”
“The meat is treated with brine and then tinned.
I’m sure you’ve seen the tins, Herr Cranz.” He gestured with his hands. “One end of the tins is larger than the other.”
“I’ve seen them,” Cranz said. “Let me see if I have this straight. If the Americans win the auction of frozen beef sides, they thaw the sides and then convert the entire side—steaks, roasts, everything—into tinned corned beef?”
“Precisely, Herr Cranz.”
“Doesn’t that make the tinned beef prohibitively expensive?”
“What I believe happens, Herr Cranz, is that the Americans—there is a man at the American embassy, a man named Delojo, who is actually a lieutenant commander in the American Navy and who is the American OSS chief in Argentina—”
“The OSS gets involved in these beef auctions?”
“And in the auctions for leather and wool, everything we want and they don’t want us to have. What he does in the case of the beef is compensate Swift and Armour for the difference between what the beef is worth and what they have paid for it. In other words, if the frozen sides are worth—”
“I get the picture,” Cranz interrupted. “And what do they do with all this tinned beef?”
“They ship it to the United States in neutral bottoms, some Argentine, and then transship the majority of it to England in their convoys.”
“How do you know all this?”
“From my experience, of course. I know about the American OSS man from the late Oberst Grüner. He kept a pretty close eye on the OSS, as you can imagine.”
“And the same sort of thing, you say, goes on with wool and leather?”
“And all foodstuffs,” Frogger said. “The details of the transactions are somewhat different, you will understand, but you will see that you will be kept rather busy.”
Cranz looked at his watch.
“Why don’t we see about lunch?” he asked. “We can continue this conversation while we eat. Is there somewhere close?”
“The ABC is near. At Lavalle 545.”
“And what is the ABC?”
“Probably the best German restaurant in Buenos Aires, Herr Cranz.”
“Sounds fine,” Cranz said. “Why don’t we go there?”
And the first thing I’m going to do when we get back is have Ambassador von Lutzenberger cable the foreign ministry and have the orders sending you home canceled.
I have a job of great importance to do here, and I can’t do it if I have to spend all my time in an auction bidding war against the goddamn OSS over tinned corned beef!
[FOUR]