Death and Honor

[SEVEN]

Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo Near Pila Buenos Aires Province, Argentina 0020 24 July 1943

Von Wachtstein saw the glow of what had to be the headlights of Cletus Frade’s Horch—what other car could possibly be racing down the private macadam road connecting Estancia Santo Catalina and Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo at this time of night?—long before he saw the headlights themselves.

He pulled his mother-in-law’s Buick to the side of the road and threw the switch so the headlights went off and the parking lights came on.

When the approaching headlights were two or three hundred meters distant—close enough to blind von Wachtstein—they suddenly turned to dying glows, then went completely out.

What the hell!

It took perhaps twenty seconds for his eyes to regain their acuity, and then he could see very little except the patch of gravel shoulder illuminated by his parking lights.

After a moment, he got out of the Buick. He stood on the road, looking down it into the dark.

“You are alone, señor?” a familiar voice said behind him.

Von Wachtstein turned and saw Enrico, his self-loading shotgun pointing at the ground.

“You really thought I was going to ambush him, Enrico?”

“We are perhaps a kilometer from where El Coronel and I were ambushed, Señor Wachtstein,” Enrico said, then added pointedly, “Either by Germans or by pigs working for the Germans.”

He walked in front of the Buick and signaled into the darkness that it was all right to come closer.

The enormous Horch headlights came back on and the car approached. When it was perhaps fifty meters distant, von Wachtstein could see that Doña Dorotea Mallín de Frade was driving, and that her husband was riding on the running board next to her, a Thompson submachine gun slung from his shoulder.

When the Horch had stopped parallel to the Buick, Frade jumped to the ground.

“We’re going to have to stop meeting this way, Hansel,” Frade greeted him. “People will talk.”

Von Wachtstein didn’t reply for a moment, then he said, “At about eighteen hundred tonight, six wooden crates—each a meter long, three quarters of a meter wide, and three-quarters of a meter deep—were brought ashore from the U-405, loaded onto Argentine army trucks, then taken I have no idea where.”

“My God!” Dorotea said.

“What was in the crates?” Frade asked softly.

“Almost certainly money. Probably gold and jewels, too. It’s the special shipment, Clete.”

“Where was this?” Dorotea asked.

“On a deserted beach near Necochea.”

“Necochea’s a small town on the coast,” Dorotea explained to her husband, “about ninety kilometers south of Mar del Plata.”

“How do you know they were Argentine army trucks?” Frade asked.

“Well, they were under command of a colonel of mountain troops, and some of them were wearing uniforms.”

“That’s some five hours ago,” Frade said. “Too late to do anything about the goddamned submarine.”

“I really hope so,” von Wachtstein said.

“Excuse me?” Dorotea said.

“Kapitänleutnant Wilhelm von Dattenberg, her commander, is an old friend of mine. We went to school together.”