Death and Honor

[ONE]

Aboard the Motor Vessel Ciudad de Cádiz 48 Degrees 85 Minutes South Latitude 59 Degrees 45 Minutes West Longitude 1200 7 July 1943

El Capitán José Francisco de Banderano, a tall, slender, hawk-nosed, somewhat swarthy forty-five-year-old wearing a blue woolen, brass-button uniform with the four golden stripes of his rank on the sleeves, stood on the flying bridge of his ship with binoculars to his eyes. He was making a careful scan of as much of the South Atlantic Ocean as he could see.

There’s nothing out there—not even whitecaps. Just a smooth expanse of ocean.

De Banderano over the years had seen his share of action—had damn near been killed—and knew that an enemy man-o’-war quickly could turn a peaceful patch of ocean violent. Thus he was on a high alert, acutely aware—certainly in broad terms, if not in detail—that while elsewhere in the world the war raged more dramatically, it just as easily could literally explode here.

Indeed, the three-day-old Battle of Kursk—it would last till 23 August— was pitting about three thousand Soviet tanks against roughly that many German tanks. It would become the largest tank battle ever, with the Germans and Russians each losing almost all of their tanks.

Meanwhile, on that very day of 7 July, an Allied fleet of 2,760 ships— primarily from Norfolk, Virginia, and Scotland’s River Clyde—was converging on a rendezvous point in the Mediterranean Sea near Malta. Three days hence, American troops under Lieutenant General George S. Patton and British troops under General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery would execute Operation Husky—the invasion of Sicily.

It would be the first Allied assault on German-occupied Europe.

De Banderano went back on the bridge, set the binoculars in their rack by his chair, and rubbed his hands. The high seas of the South Atlantic in July were cold.

“Herr Kapitän!” announced a young man wearing the white jacket of a steward. He offered a tray on which sat a china mug of steaming coffee.

De Banderano took it.

“Danke,” he said.

As he started sipping from the cup, he thought:

It is highly unlikely that luncheon will be interrupted by a signal from the U-405. It is entirely possible that we will never hear from the U-405, period. The rendezvous was supposed to be within a forty-eight-hour window. That ran out twelve hours ago.

My options are (1) head for Buenos Aires now, or (2) go at midnight, which will mean I give them another twenty-four hours beyond the window, or (3) go at first light, which will mean I will have stayed on station for thirty or so hours beyond the window.

I want this mission to be successful, but I can’t keep making slow circles in the South Atlantic forever.

I will decide over lunch. If not, then at dinner.

“You may serve luncheon whenever it is convenient,” de Banderano ordered.

“Jawohl, Herr Kapitän,” the young blond steward replied, clicked his heels, and marched off the bridge.

Capitán de Banderano, with some disgust, watched him leave. He was aware that the steward spoke little Spanish—and that he was neither a steward nor much less a seaman.

The day before the Ciudad de Cádiz had sailed from Cádiz, the steward— eighteen-year-old Rottenführer Paul Plinzer—was one of fifteen Germans who had boarded the ship. There was “special cargo” aboard, and it had been decided that it needed the special protection that only the Schutzstaffel could provide.

There were three officers, Sturmbannführer (Major) Alfred Kötl and Obersturmführers (Lieutenants) Willi Heitz and Ludwig Schmessinger. They wore their uniforms and lived in officer’s country.

And there were twelve enlisted men, under an oberscharführer (sergeant); two unterscharführers (corporals); and nine rottenführers (lance corporals). They wore civilian clothing and were berthed with the crew.

Sturmbannführer Kötl had volunteered Plinzer’s services as steward almost as soon as they had left port, saying that the young Dresdener might as well do something to earn his keep.

De Banderano suspected that Plinzer’s real function was to report to Kötl what happened on the bridge. He had given freedom of the bridge to Kötl alone, and Kötl obviously could not be there all the time. A steward did not have to explain his presence.

De Banderano did not like Kötl. He thought him to be arrogant and more self-important than he had any right to be. The situation was exacerbated because Kötl did not know what the special cargo was, or what it was for, or where it was going, only that he was to protect it; he understandably suspected that de Banderano knew the answers and was not telling him.

De Banderano in fact knew only where the special cargo was going. His secret orders, sealed until they were at sea, were to rendezvous with the submarine U-405 at sea, about 220 nautical miles due north of the Falkland Islands, which were some 260 nautical miles east of the southern tip of Argentina. There he would replenish the U-405’s fuel, food, and torpedoes, hand her captain his sealed orders, and, as the last step, transfer to the U-405 the crates of special cargo with Sturmbannführer Kötl, an officer of Kötl’s choice, and five of Kötl’s men.

He had not told Kötl about that, and was looking forward to doing so. He doubted the SS officer would be happy to get on a submarine, destination unknown.

Once the transfer had taken place, the Ciudad de Cádiz was to proceed to Buenos Aires, where she was to take onboard as much fuel as they would sell him, and as much frozen meat and fresh produce as possible. In Buenos Aires, he would be provided with a chart overlay marking half a dozen rendezvous points in the South Atlantic Ocean. Once he had sailed from Buenos Aires, he would be advised by a radioed coded phrase at which of the rendezvous points and on what day and at what time he was to rendezvous with other submarines.

De Banderano had no idea what was in the securely sealed wooden crates of the special shipment, although he doubted that it was what he had been told. Oberst Karl-Heinz Grüner, the military attaché of the German embassy in Buenos Aires, had come aboard the Comerciante del Océano Pacífico when she was at anchor, supposedly with “engine problems,” in Samborombón Bay in Argentine waters in the Río de la Plata estuary.

He had told her master—de Banderano—that what he wanted to do was smuggle ashore the special cargo—which contained radios, civilian clothing, and other matériel—to be used to help the interned officers of the Graf Spee escape from Argentina and return to the war.

De Banderano hadn’t believed that the crates contained radios and clothing—all readily available in Buenos Aires—but had said nothing. He had believed the story about helping the Graf Spee officers escape their internment, and that had sounded like a noble effort to attempt.

Two hours later, it had been moot.

Somebody had tipped the Argentines, and as soon as the crates had been placed on the beach of Samborombón Bay from the longboats of the Océano Pacífico —de Banderano had commanded one himself—there had been a sudden deadly mass of rifle fire. Oberst Grüner and Standartenführer Goltz had been killed immediately. Only by the grace of God had the third German officer involved, Luftwaffe Major Peter von Wachtstein, and de Banderano himself escaped death. And only the grace of God had permitted von Wachtstein and de Banderano to get the crates of the special cargo back into the longboats and back aboard the Océano Pacífico.

Within hours, an Argentine navy launch had drawn alongside the Océano Pacífico and handed de Banderano orders to immediately depart Argentine waters and never return.

A week after the Comerciante del Océano Pacífico tied up at Cádiz, while de Banderano had awaited further orders regarding the special cargo still in the hold—but absent the bodies of Oberst Grüner and Standartenführer Goltz, which had been removed for shipment to Germany—he had had a visitor.

The visitor had been wearing civilian clothing but identified himself as Fregattenkapitän Otto von und zu Waching. Further, he said he served as a special assistant to Vizeadmiral Wilhelm Canaris.

De Banderano had been concerned that he was about to have trouble because the smuggling operation had failed. Although there was no way he could have known the Argentines would be waiting for them on the beach, he in fact was the master of the Océano Pacífico and therefore responsible for not having complied with his orders to land the special cargo safely.

That was only tangentially what Fregattenkapitän von und zu Waching had come to see him about. The first thing von und zu Waching had done—in the privacy of de Banderano’s cabin, with only the first officer and the chief engineer present—was to present all three officers, on behalf of Admiral Canaris and the Kriegsmarine, the award of the Iron Cross, Second Class, for their valorous service aboard the Comerciante del Océano Pacífico during an extremely hazardous and important voyage.

Then, from another oblong box covered with artificial blue leather, he took an Iron Cross, First Class, award and presented it to Capitán de Banderano. Von und zu Waching, holding the citation, read: “For personal valor on a secret mission for the German Reich during which Kapitän de Banderano demonstrated the finest characteristics of a naval officer under heavy enemy fire.”

Then Fregattenkapitän von und zu Waching asked de Banderano if he and his officers would consider undertaking another such mission to Argentina.

De Banderano had glanced at his men, then said, “I am sure I am speaking for all of my officers when I say we would be honored, Herr Fregattenkapitän. But the Argentines have made it quite clear that if the Océano Pacífico should ever again appear in Argentine waters, she will be seized as a smuggler.”

“So I understand,” Fregattenkapitän von und zu Waching replied. “I suspect that what we’ll have to do is get you another ship, won’t we?” He smiled at de Banderano, then pointed out the bridge window. “How about that one?”

De Banderano and the others had looked where he was pointing and saw tied up at the adjacent wharf a modern freighter, substantially larger than the Océano Pacífico. They had all been confused. Von und zu Waching was not the type of officer to make jokes.

He quickly made it clear that he wasn’t making a joke now.

“That’s the Ciudad de Cádiz, which arrived from Hamburg last night,” von und zu Waching said. “If you are willing to take another assignment for us, that will be your ship.”

He then went on to explain that the Ciudad de Cádiz had been launched in late 1941 at the Blohm und Voss shipyard in Hamburg, and that, until two weeks ago, had been registered as the Stadt Kassel of the Hamburg-American Line.

“From the time of her launching,” von und zu Waching said, “she’s undergone extensive conversions at Blohm und Voss. The original idea had been to convert her into a raider, a fast merchantman with armament concealed on her aft- and foredecks. The theory was that she would not raise the suspicions of an enemy merchantman until it was too late for it to take evasive or any other action. The German battle flag would be suddenly hoisted, the false bulkheads around her two 70mm and four 30mm automatic cannon would drop and while the thirties worked over the enemy ship’s radio shack and superstructure, the heavier cannon would blast her hull.

“It was a clever idea,” von und zu Waching went on, “but the Stadt Kassel never put to sea on such a mission, for many reasons, some of them intertwined. For one thing, the U-boats had done a better job of sinking Allied merchantmen in the North Atlantic than anyone had thought they would.

“There was no sense risking a valuable ship like the Stadt Kassel—and getting her through the English Channel would pose a very serious risk—when U-boats could do the job.

“And there had been no reason to send the Stadt Kassel to the South Atlantic to intercept Allied merchantmen headed from Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay to England or the Mediterranean Sea. For one thing, the U-boats again were doing a fine job, in large part because they were being replenished in the River Plate by ‘neutral’ ships while the Argentines looked the other way.”

Von und zu Waching had let them absorb all that, then continued: “That situation deteriorated severely and rapidly, as you well know, gentlemen, when the Americans established their air base at Pôrto Alegre, Brazil, from which they fly their specially rigged B-24 bombers on wide-ranging antisubmarine patrols. That had made it necessary for the U-boats to operate outside the B-24’s patrolling range.

“Secondly, the Americans caught on to the replenishment by ‘neutral’ merchantmen in the River Plate. The Americans sent one of their submarines after one of them, the Reine de la Mer, sinking her and the U-boat that was tied up alongside for the replenishment.

“The official version of that sinking was ‘an unfortunate explosion,’ but the Argentines let us know they would be very unhappy if we attempted to resume replenishment activities anywhere in Argentine waters.

“And your unfortunate experience in Samborombón Bay has made it clear they were perfectly willing—no matter their personal sympathies—to do what was necessary to protect their neutrality.

“For obvious reasons—although we tried it and are continuing the effort— use of U-boats converted to replenishment vessels is an unsatisfactory solution to the problem. By the time the replenishment submarines rendezvous with the hunter U-boats, they have barely enough of their own fuel to take them home, and little—sometimes no—fuel available to transfer.

“And as they have no refrigerator compartments, they cannot bring adequate supplies of frozen food to their sister submariners. And further, transferring heavy machinery—much less torpedoes—from one U-boat to another on the high seas was something that had not been considered when the U-boats had been designed. As you well know, it is difficult to move anything heavy in smooth seas, and just about impossible to transfer torpedoes in anything rougher.

“At this point, Admiral Raeder, Admiral Canaris, and others took another look at the Stadt Kassel. With only minor additional modifications—the installation of auxiliary fuel-storage tanks and the addition of winches and pumps, primarily, and ports near the waterline—she readily could be converted to a splendid submarine replenishment vessel. Getting her through the English Channel remained risky, but in present circumstances, that risk seemed justified. The U-boats in the South Atlantic were out of fuel, out of torpedoes, out of food. The conversions were ordered.

“Admiral Canaris then suggested, and Admiral Raeder agreed, that it would be better to reflag the Stadt Kassel. Not only could a neutral—say, Spanish— vessel pass through the English Channel immune to British interference, but she could call at Montevideo and Buenos Aires and other ports, and there purchase food and other supplies, obviating the need for her to sail back and forth to Europe.

“The question then became where could we find a competent crew for what was now the Ciudad de Cádiz? A crew not only in sympathy with the aims of Germany, but of proven devotion and courage?”

Von und zu Waching had taken a moment to look each man in the eye, then had said, “You have just answered that question for me, gentlemen. I salute you.”

And his right arm had shot out in the Nazi salute.

Ten minutes later, Rottenführer Plinzer returned to the bridge to tell Capitán de Banderano that luncheon was served.

He nodded his understanding, took one last look at the empty South Atlantic, then left the bridge for the wardroom.

The wardroom was large enough for a dining table used for nothing else. It had not been that way on the Océano Pacífico. Her one wardroom table had to be used for everything that required a flat surface.

When Capitán de Banderano walked into the wardroom, all those officers who were not standing rose quickly to their feet. They were all neatly uniformed, and there were far more of them than were normally found on a freighter of this size.

“Please be seated, gentlemen,” Capitán de Banderano said as he slid into his chair at the head of the table.

The officers sat down. Unless there was an emergency requiring their services, they would remain seated until Capitán de Banderano left the table or he formally excused them.

The wardroom customs of the Ciudad de Cádiz were very much the customs of ships of the line of the Royal Spanish Navy. This was not only because Capitán de Banderano was a graduate of the Spanish Naval Academy—as three generations before him had been—and because before the Civil War he had been a lieutenant commander in the Royal Spanish Navy and master of the frigate Almirante de Posco. It also was because the Ciudad de Cádiz was, in Capitán de Banderano’s judgment, not an ordinary freighter but a de facto man-of-war, and had to be run accordingly.

Before the Civil War, de Banderano had every reason to believe that he would rise in rank to capitán—his father had—or possibly even to almirante— as had his grandfather. But the godless Communists and their friends had destroyed that ambition, as well as most of Spain itself.

Early in the Civil War, de Banderano had been detached from the Almirante de Posco to serve on the staff of El Generalissimo Francisco Franco shortly after that great man saw it as his Christian duty to take over the reins of government from the king and expel the godless Communists from Spain in order to restore Spain to her former greatness.

As the Civil War dragged on and on, de Banderano’s duties had less and less to do with the navy; but they had taken him to all fronts and given him the opportunity to see what the Communists had in mind for Spain. And he had seen that they were godless, the anti-Christ. With his own eyes, he had witnessed the murdered priests and the raped nuns and the results of mass executions.

And he had seen, too, that the Germans and the Italians—both fully aware of the threat communism posed to the very survival of Christian civilization— had come to the aid of a fellow Christian nation that once again had infidel hordes raging at her gates.

It was de Banderano’s professional opinion as an officer that without the help of German weapons provided to General Franco’s army, without the aerial support of the German Condor Legion, without the sixty thousand troops the Italians had sent, the war probably would have been lost.

The English and the Americans had remained “neutral” in the conflict. But that in practice had meant they were helping the enemy. The Americans had even sent soldiers, formed into the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, to aid the Communists.

The behavior of the English and the Americans had baffled de Banderano. The usual explanation of it was that they were not Roman Catholic, and that their “churches” had been infiltrated and corrupted by Communists; but he thought that was too simple an answer. A large number of the Germans who came to help Spain were Protestant. He also thought the other answer was too simple: that the Jews controlled both England and America.

Too many good Spanish Jews had fought as valiantly as anyone on the side of El Caudillo—Franco—for anyone to believe that all Jews were allied with the anti-Christ.

By the time General Francisco Franco had finally, after three bloody years, brought the godless Communists to their knees, Spain was destitute—and not only because the Communists had stolen almost the entire gold stocks of the kingdom; literally tons of gold taken to Russia.

There was hardly enough money to operate, much less construct, men-of-war. The once-proud Spanish navy was on its knees again, thanks to the Communists. By then Capitán José Francisco de Banderano had understood there would be no command of a man-of-war for him in the Royal Spanish Navy post-Civil War.

Yet both his ability and his faithful service had not gone unnoticed. He was rewarded with a command in the Spanish merchant navy.

Before he was approached by the German naval attaché and offered command of the Comerciante del Océano Pacífico, he had seen with his own eyes and heard with his own ears American navy ships roaming the North Atlantic.

The Americans were searching for German submarines, the latter of which had under international law every right to sink vessels bound for England laden with war matériel. When the American ships found a U-boat they reported their positions by radio, in the clear. In the clear meant that radios aboard English men-of-war were given the positions of German submarines—near the supposedly “neutral” American men-of-war.

The notion of violating the rules of warfare by violating anyone’s neutrality would have deeply offended him before the Civil War. Now it seemed only right. The actions of the English during the Civil War were blatantly antagonistic to neutrality. And, later, the actions of the Americans after the beginning of the current war, but before they themselves joined the hostilities, were equally contrary to neutrality.

Whatever their reasons for opposing Hitler, for refusing to accept that the war Hitler was waging against the Communists was their own war, the fact was that England and America were fighting Germany, and that was sufficient cause for Capitán José Francisco de Banderano to do whatever he could to oppose them.

Capitán de Banderano hadn’t hesitated a moment before accepting the German offer to take command of the Comerciante del Océano Pacífico, and he had been honored by their offer for him to take command of the Ciudad de Cádiz.