“Let’s get me unloaded and out of here,” the pilot said. “I’d love to stay and chat, but I really don’t want to know what you guys are going to do with that stuff, and I don’t want to spend the war in a Uruguayan jail.”
Three minutes later, he was gone.
When Clete got behind the wheel of the Ford and pressed the starter, the batt
ery was dead. Tony, sweating and swearing, had to push the car to get it started. But in another three minutes, they too were gone.
XII
[ONE]
Aboard the General Belgrano
Río de la Plata
0945 13 December 1942
Shortly after they sailed from Lisbon, Captain Manuelo Schirmer, master of the General Belgrano, began to extend to Hauptmann Freiherr von Wachtstein of the Luftwaffe certain privileges. First, that of his table. At the start of the voyage, Peter was assigned to an eight-place table in the dining room. When he arrived for lunch, six other people were there, a middle-aged Argentinean couple and a somewhat younger German couple and their two children. When he politely asked about their home, they replied they were from Heidelberg, then made it quite clear they were not interested in conversation.
When he went in for dinner, the steward intercepted him and led him to the captain’s table. This was placed lengthwise across the back of the room and was set with ten places, all on one side.
“Mi Capitán,” the steward said, addressing a stocky, blond-haired man in his forties, who was wearing a uniform blouse with four gold stripes on each sleeve over a navy-blue turtleneck sweater. “El Capitán von Wachtstein.”
“I am Kapitän Schirmer, Herr Hauptmann,” Schirmer said in German, examining him carefully and unabashedly, “I thought you might be more comfortable taking your meals here.”
“That’s very kind of you, mi Capitán,” Peter replied in Spanish. “Thank you.”
“Ah, you speak Spanish. Good.”
Schirmer then introduced him to the other officers at the table. Not all the ship’s officers came to the first dinner, but eventually Peter understood that these included Schirmer, his first, second, and third mates; the chief engineer, his first, second, and third assistant engineers; and the ship’s doctor. There were no other passengers at the table; obviously he was being given a special privilege.
The next morning, at breakfast, Schirmer invited him to visit the bridge. And when Peter went up later that morning, waiting for permission to enter, Schirmer loudly and formally announced, “Hauptmann von Wachtstein has the privilege of the bridge.”
Peter knew virtually nothing about the customs and protocol of the sea. But he was a soldier, and understood that an order had been issued, and that he was being granted the privilege of permanent access to the bridge—this was not a good-for-only-one-visit invitation. Schirmer showed him around the bridge and the chart room, introduced him to his second mate (who had not been at dinner the night before), and then announced that Peter would be more comfortable in the supercargo cabin on the bridge deck, not presently in use, and that if he had no objection, he would have the steward move his things from his cabin on the passenger deck.
“Mi Capitán,” Peter replied, “I don’t know what ‘supercargo’ is. It sounds like either gold bullion, or diamonds, or something stowed outside on the deck under a tarpaulin, rather than downstairs in the hold.”
Schirmer laughed.
“Below decks, Herr Hauptmann, not downstairs,” he said, and then went on to explain that there was a cabin reserved for the senior hierarchy of L.M.A.E.—a company executive, for example, or an L.M.A.E. master or chief engineer traveling as a passenger.
“In that case, mi Capitán, I accept,” Peter replied. “Thank you very much.”
Peter had a strong temptation to suspect that he was being given all of these privileges because he was such a naturally charming fellow, but he resisted it. More likely, Schirmer, whose name was obviously German in origin, was extending a sort of Germanic privilege. Or else Capitán Schirmer was possibly treating Hauptmann von Wachtstein like a fellow officer.
By the third day out of Lisbon, they were on a partial first-name basis: Schirmer started to call him “Peter.” Peter, however, decided that good manners and protocol required that he continue to call Schirmer “Capitán,” and did so.
On the fifth day out, very late at night, as they were playing chess in Capitán Schirmer’s cabin, Schirmer told him the real reason he granted Peter the privilege of the captain’s table and the supercargo cabin. Of the one hundred and five passengers aboard the General Belgrano, thirty-nine, including the couple from Heidelberg and their children, were Jewish.
“I didn’t know, Peter, whether or not you were a Jew-hating Nazi,” Schirmer said, meeting his eyes, “but it was clear to me that you were making the Steins uncomfortable. And making things worse, the Argentineans at the table are rooting for the English in this war. He was educated in England and works for our railroad, which was designed and built by the English.”
“I am not, mi Capitán, either a Nazi or a Jew-hater.”
“I didn’t think you would be, just to look at you, but I had no way of knowing.”
“I wonder how they got out of Germany,” Peter blurted, thinking aloud.
“I have no idea,” Schirmer replied. “The L.M.A.E. office in Lisbon makes sure they have an entrance visa to Argentina and a paid-for ticket, and that’s all we care about.”