“Get on the radio, please, Captain,” von Wachtstein ordered. “In English.”
“Tempelhof, South American Zero One Zero.”
“Go ahead, Zero One Zero. I read you five by five.”
—
As von Wachtstein taxied La Ciudad de Mar del Plata under the soaring arch of the airport, he saw a Horch like the one Colonel Robert Mattingly had in Frankfurt. He wondered who owned this one, then saw Mattingly himself leaning on it.
Former Kapitän zur See Karl Boltitz, now wearing what Peter thought of as the OSS uniform, an insignia-less U.S. Army officer’s uniform, stood beside Mattingly. On the other side of the Horch were two huge black sergeants, one cradling a Thompson submachine gun in his arms.
He had expected to see Mattingly in Frankfurt. Frade had told him Mattingly would have General Gehlen’s and the Americans’ dossiers on the Nazis who had come off U-405 as well as some other intelligence they would bring back to Argentina. And he had not expected to see Boltitz, who he last heard was in Denmark trying to learn both what had happened to his father in the last days of the war and something about the fleet of U-boats that had supposedly left Germany and Norway just before the surrender.
Peter believed that Boltitz’s mission had to be a wild-goose chase. He thought Admiral Boltitz, who knew what the Nazis had done to officers involved in the bomb plot, had chosen a quick end by drowning in the frigid waters of a Norwegian fjord—a sailor’s death—over the humiliation and death by torture he knew he would receive if the Schutzstaffel could get their hands on him.
Von Wachtstein knew that his father would have welcomed that option.
And von Wachtstein thought the stories about as many as thirty submarines leaving Germany for South America were, as Frade had succinctly put it, bullshit. And he thought Karl should know better than to waste his time looking for something that never was.
He and Karl had been in the Fort Hunt Senior Enemy Officer POW Interrogation Facility outside Washington, D.C., during the last six weeks of the war. They followed the progress of the war on radio station WJSV, the owner of which, they were told, was presently serving as Eisenhower’s naval aide-de-camp. There were almost daily reports of the concern at Eisenhower’s headquarters over the Werwolf.
These were supposed to be fanatic SS troopers who would stay behind as the Allies advanced through Germany and then attack from the rear. They were going to do this in the Black Forest and elsewhere and ultimately at Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s mountaintop retreat in Bavaria, where they would fight until the last of them was dead, killing as many Allied soldiers as possible.
Eisenhower’s Supreme Headquarters seemed to know a great deal about UNTERNEHMEN WERWOLF—OPERATION WEREWOLF—including the name of its commanding officer, SS-Obergruppenführer Hans-Adolf Prützmann. It was said that after Berlin fell, General George S. Patton was prepared to use three armored divisions to deal with WERWOLF.
It turned out to be bullshit. WERWOLF didn’t show up in the Black Forest—or anywhere else—and a platoon of paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division captured Berchtesgaden without firing a shot.
It had been one last—and highly successful—act of psychological warfare concocted by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, and von Wachtstein thought the fleet of submarines supposed to be headed for South America was much the same thing. And had been about as successful for the Nazis as had the WERWOLF deception.
The Allies had launched a massive search for the submarines, primarily involving aircraft in Europe and B-24 bombers modified to be submarine hunters flying out of USAF bases in Brazil and North Africa, but also including naval vessels all over the North and South Atlantic oceans.
Aside from several U-boats sunk in or near the English Channel, none of the twenty—or thirty, or sixty, depending on which scenario one used—submarines supposed to be en route to South America was ever found.
The arrival of U-405 seemed to finally settle the question. Willi von Dattenberg, her master, was arguably the best and most experienced of all U-boat skippers when it came to sailing to Argentina to secretly put ashore whatever cargo and people senior Nazi officers wanted to smuggle into Argentina.
When Willi told Clete he thought Clete could stop worrying about U-234—which implied stop worrying about any other submarines as well—that seemed to be the final word.
So poor Karl had been on one wild-goose chase.
When von Wachtstein now saw Mattingly looking at him, he waved and then turned to Captain Lopez.
“The people I have to see are on the tarmac,” von Wachtstein said. “I’m going to have to get out of here as soon as I can. The SAA people and representatives from the Argentine embassy are waiting for our flight. With them, you can handle the shut-down, off-loading, and paperwork. It shouldn’t be a problem. There’s a restaurant in the airport hotel. The U.S. Army runs it, but we can eat there. After you’ve eaten and seen to the refueling, tell the SAA station manager to give the crew a tour of Berlin—better yet, tell them Señor Frade told you to tell the station manager to get you a tour.”
“You’ll be where?” Lopez asked.
“When I know what’s going on, I’ll be in touch.”
“How will I get in touch with you if I need you?”
“This is Berlin, Captain Lopez, not Buenos Aires. If you take the tour what you’ll see is hundreds of hectares of rubble. I can’t give you a phone number that I don’t know. I’ll be in touch.”
Von Wachtstein unfastened his shoulder belt and got out of the pilot’s seat.
[FOUR]
357 Roonstrasse, Zehlendorf
Berlin, Germany