“These Secret Service agents have been nosing around the base flashing their badges and asking my junior officers and enlisted men if they know anything about Nazis being smuggled through here. Or even of mysterious airplanes passing through here. They are even threatening them with what happens when you lie to a Secret Service agent.” He chuckled, and added: “I wonder what they’re going to think about your mysterious airplane.”
“If they ask, what will they be told?”
“Same that we were told. That it’s a charter flight to rescue Argentine diplomats from Germany. Unless . . .”
“No. That’s fine. And it has the advantage of being the truth. Did these Secret Service people talk to you, tell you what they’re looking for?”
“No. I must look like somebody who would smuggle Nazis.”
“If they had asked you, General—”
“I thought we were on a first-name basis.”
“Sorry. Bob, if they had asked you . . .”
“What would I have told them? The truth. I’ve heard the rumors, and I think there’s something to them, but I don’t have any personal knowledge, and my counterintelligence people haven’t come up with anything concrete.”
“The rumors are true. One of my jobs is to try to stop fleeing Nazis trying to get to South America from getting there, or catch them. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. But before I get into that, how long has this planeload of Secret Service agents been here?”
“About forty-eight hours. All they were supposed to do was take on fuel, but there was a message saying ‘delay departure until further notice.’”
“Which conveniently provided time for their people to ask questions of your people.”
“That thought ran through my mind. What the hell is that all about?”
“I don’t know,” Clete said. “Maybe we’ll find out when we get to Germany. Let’s get back to the reason I wanted to see you. We have some pretty good intelligence that a number of German submarines are headed for Argentina. The number ranges from three we’re very sure about, to a fleet—as many as twenty-odd. A fleet seems unlikely but can’t be dismissed out of hand. The Nazis have a program called the Phoenix Project—”
“That’s real?” Bendick asked.
“I don’t know what you heard about it, so let me tell you what I know about it. Starting in 1943, the Nazis started sending money and things that can be easily converted to money—gold, diamonds, other precious stones, et cetera—to Argentina. The idea was to set up sanctuaries in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Brazil to which senior officers could flee, both escaping the trials we plan for them and using their new home as a base from which they can rise, rested and with large amounts of money, phoenix-like, and keep National Socialism going. Or bring it back to life.”
“That’s pretty much what I heard, but it sounded like the plot for a bad movie,” Bendick said.
“They sent a lot of money—hundreds of millions of dollars—to Argentina, plus some senior SS officers to run the program. We’ve managed to stop a lot of it, but by no means all.”
“What kind of senior SS officers?”
“Himmler’s adjutant, for one. Actually, the Reichsführer-SS’s First Deputy Adjutant. SS-Brigadeführer Ritter Manfred von Deitzberg. He came by submarine.”
“And this guy is already in Argentina?” Bendick asked incredulously.
“Yeah, but he’s no longer a problem,” Clete said.
“How so?”
“He was taking a leak in the men’s room of a charming little hotel in the charming little village of San Martín de los Andes, when someone blew his brains all over the urinal with a Ballester-Molina—an Argentine copy of our .45.”
“You wouldn’t happen to know who did that, would you, Clete?”
“Of course not,” Clete replied not very convincingly.
“And what are the Argentines doing about all these Nazis running loose in Argentina? Looking the other way?”
“You ever hear that money talks, Bob?”
“Is that what it is?”
“There is also an element—perfectly serious people—who feel the Nazis were a Christian bulwark against the Communist Antichrist. Unfortunately, to some odd degree, I’m afraid they may be right.”