“What map?” Clete said.
“This one,” she said unnecessarily. “I found it in that thing.” She pointed to a meter-long leather tube that he recognized as an Ejército Argentino map case. “It’s off the coast south of Mar del Plata. There are marks and notes on it around Necochea. I’ll bet when Peter sees the photo I’m making, he’ll say it’s where the submarine landed. Isn’t that interesting that Tío Juan would have a map of that area?”
“Why the hell did you go in his map case?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Yes, I do.”
She looked at him unapologetically, then said, “I thought maybe it would contain something naughty.” She paused. “But this is better, isn’t it?”
“It is if he doesn’t walk in on us taking a picture of it.”
“Well, then take the damned camera and make the picture!”
The rolled map would not go back in the case. There was something else inside that stopped it.
“Baby, when you took out the map, was it by itself or rolled with something else?”
“There was another map, of South America, rolled around it.”
Clete, not without effort, got the map of South America out of the map case and unrolled it on the bed.
“Now give me that one, sweetheart,” he said, motioning for the first one that they’d photographed. He casually glanced at the second map. “Wait a minute. What the hell is this?”
He looked more closely, and saw clearly that it was a map of the South American continent. But something about it did not look right.
The map bore a label stating that it had come from the Map and Topographic Office of the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht in Berlin. It was labeled VERY SECRET and carried the title Sud-Amerika Nach der Anschluss.
“Oh, shit!”
That translates as “South America, After the Annexation”!
He scanned the map and noticed that Uruguay and Paraguay no longer existed as sovereign countries; they now were part of Argentina, much as Austria had become part of Germany Nach der Anschluss. The map also showed Peru and Bolivia divided more or less equally between Argentina and Brazil.
“What is it?” Dorotea said.
“It’s why Tío Juan hopes the Germans will win the war. Put a fresh roll of film in the camera, honey. I want to take pictures of this to Washington, too.”
XIII
[ONE]
Office of the Director Office of Strategic Services National Institutes of Health Building Washington, D.C. 1425 1 August 1943
“Waiting to see me, Alex?” the director of the Office of Strategic Services inquired of the OSS deputy director for Western Hemisphere operations, who was sitting in an upholstered chair in Donovan’s outer office, holding a copy of The Saturday Evening Post.
“Oh, you are a clever fellow, aren’t you? You take one look at someone and you can tell just what they’re up to.”
“I asked him if he wanted to go in, General Donovan,” Donovan’s secretary said, just a touch self-righteously.
Donovan signaled for Graham to go into his office, then turned to his secretary. “Bring me and the Latin Bob Hope here some coffee, will you, please, Margaret?”
“I’ve never been called that before,” Graham said.
“And I’m sorry I did,” Donovan said. “I hope Hope doesn’t hear about it. I really like him.”
Graham waited until Donovan took his seat behind his desk, then handed him a manila folder stamped TOP SECRET in red.