Curtain of Death (Clandestine Operations 3)

Five minutes later, Cronley finished: “. . . but when I returned from Berlin, Sergeant Finney told me that Cousin Luther made no move to corrupt him, and that Commandant Fortin later told him that Luther himself had disappeared into Odessa. So that idea didn’t work.”

“You say your cousin was an SS officer?” White asked.

“Yes, sir. According to Commandant Fortin, he was an SS-sturmführer when he deserted in the last days of the war.”

“According to my information, so did SS-Brigadeführer Ulrich Heimstadter and his deputy, Standartenführer Oskar Müller. I think we may be onto something.”

“I don’t understand, sir. I never heard those names before.”

“Wernher von Braun’s rocket operation at Peenemünde required much labor support,” Gehlen said. “Slave labor, to put a point on it. Heimstadter was in charge of the labor force, and treated these people very badly. And then when it initially appeared that the Russians would reach Peenemünde first, before the Americans, he had all of them shot and buried in a mass grave, so they wouldn’t be able to tell the Russians what they had seen. And then SS-Brigadeführer Ulrich Heimstadter and his deputy, Standartenführer Oskar Müller, deserted and disappeared.”

“Why did they desert?” Cronley asked.

“They thought it might be a defense when they fell into Russian or German hands. ‘Just as soon as I could, after learning for the first time what terrible things the SS had done, I deserted . . .’

“Then came Operation Paperclip. Every one of von Braun’s people who could be passed through one of the ‘kindly’ denazification courts that General White mentioned had been ‘denazified’ and sent to the United States. In the process, the scientists professed shock and indignation about what Heimstadter and Müller had done to the poor slave laborers—”

“Which meant,” White picked up, “that Heimstadter and Müller didn’t get to go to America, but instead have been on the run from both the Allies and the Russians. They are trying to make their way—assisted, as Good Nazis, by the Odessa organization—first to Italy or Spain, and finally to South America.”

“Sir, you don’t think these two—Heimstadter and Müller—have so far made it out of Germany?” Cronley asked.

White shook his head and said, “No.”

Gehlen said, “I would be very surprised if they’ve made it to South America. Spain, perhaps, but not South America.”

“Why do you say that?” White asked.

“Niedermeyer would know.”

“Who’s he?”

“The man I have in Argentina to keep an eye on the Nazis we sent there. Former Oberst Otto Niedermeyer.”

“Going off at a tangent,” White asked, “what’s ultimately going to happen to the Nazis? Where are they now?”

“Full details, or a synopsis?” Gehlen asked.

“Try to strike a reasonable compromise between the two, if you please, General,” White said, smiling.

“Originally,” Gehlen said, “they were all confined on an estancia in Patagonia. The estancia had passed to Cletus Frade on the death, the murder by the SS, of his father. Their confinement was supervised by General de Brigade Bernardo Martín of BIS—”

“Which is?” White asked.

“The Argentine intelligence service. Martín is its chief. The Nazis were—are—guarded by BIS men who in turn supervise the actual guards who are soldiers of the Húsares de Pueyrredón, a cavalry regiment which el Coronel Frade had commanded. Niedermeyer told me Martín had told him that what the Húsares wanted to do with the Nazis was disembowel them.

“Martín himself hates Nazis. But, realizing that the people we sent there could not be held forever, they set up what could be called their own denazification program. Once they had impressed upon the Nazis that while they would eventually be released, what they should be considering was the conditions on which they would be released, and that the Argentine government did not consider itself bound by the deal struck between Mr. Dulles and myself. That, in other words, should they misbehave, they would be sent back to Germany to face trial.”

“How did you feel about that?”

“General, my insistence on including the Nazi members of my organization in my arrangement with Mr. Dulles was not out of concern for the Nazis, but rather their families. I knew what the Soviets would do to them.”

White was silent a moment. Then he nodded and said, “I had to ask, General Gehlen.”

“I understand. Well, to shorten this. General Martín and Otto Niedermeyer have released some of our Nazis, starting with those they agree will pose the least threat to Argentina. Some have been released within Argentina, where the BIS keeps an eye on them. Others were released to Paraguay and Brazil. With regard to the former, the president is Major General Higinio Morínigo, who until we lost the war and the horrors of the death camps became known, was an unabashed admirer of National Socialism, generally, and Hitler, in particular.

“The same is true of one of his colonels, Alfredo Stroessner, with whom Martín has had a relationship over the years, and has come to believe that Stroessner has not lost his admiration for National Socialism but believes the Nazis were responsible not only for the death camps and other atrocities but for what he calls the ‘perversion of National Socialism.’”

“That’s absurd,” White said.