Blood and Honor [calibre 2.45.0]

Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay had a criminal element quite as vicious as any in Berlin or Hamburg. Gr?ner had little trouble contracting with a group of Argentine smugglers to eliminate this OSS team on the river Plate, and then with a group of Paraguayans to eliminate the Argentines when they went to Paraguay "until things cooled down."

The Americans then sent a second team of OSS agents to Buenos Aires, and again they were identified to Gr?ner by German sympathizers in the Argentine military. Though Gr?ner attempted to eliminate the team chief, the attempt failed. And shortly after the replacement replenishment vessel—the Portuguese-registered Reine de la Mer —arrived in the Bay of Samboromb?n with a fresh cargo of torpedoes and fuel, she was blown to bits, taking to the bottom with her a submarine that was tied up alongside taking on fuel. There were no survivors.

Gr?ner didn't know exactly how this was accomplished. But he suspected the infiltration into Argentina of a team of U.S. Navy underwater demolition experts—with the assistance of el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade. Frade also doubtless helped the team in its exfiltration from that country.

It was a monumental disaster for submarine operations. The Reine de la Mer had managed to refuel and otherwise replenish only one submarine before it was destroyed. Afterward, Gr?ner had no idea how many other submarines— he guessed ten, or perhaps a dozen—were ranging the South Atlantic counting on replenishment in Samboromb?n Bay.

What those submarines did when they were advised that fuel and food— not to mention torpedoes or ammunition for their cannon—were not going to be available in the South Atlantic was unpleasant to think about.

Even the obvious—heading for the submarine pens on the coast of France—was not possible for some of them. They did not have the necessary fuel for the twenty-day voyage.

There were options, of course. There are always options. They could rendezvous at sea with other submarines. Those with reserve fuel could share it with those whose tanks were empty. As a last desperate measure, one submarine could theoretically tow another.

Gr?ner had heard nothing of what actually happened. The German embassy in Buenos Aires was told only what it was necessary for it to know. Significantly, Gr?ner thought, there had been no word of a replacement for the Reine de la Mer. Which probably meant that none was en route. There was a possibility, of course, that the completely unexpected—and catastrophic—loss of the Reine de la Mer had so upset people that Buenos Aires would learn of a replacement vessel only when it entered Argentine waters.

It was also possible, of course, that a midocean rendezvous had taken place, with the submarines receiving at least fuel from the tanks of German surface warships, or perhaps even from merchantmen, German or otherwise, which would at least get them back to the sub pens in France.

But for all practical purposes, the destruction of the Reine de la Mer had brought submarine operations in the South Atlantic to a halt.

El Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade had been one of the most powerful men in Argentina. It was scarcely a secret that he had been the power behind the Grupo de Oficiales Unidos, who were reliably reported to be about to stage a coup against the government of President Ramon S. Castillo. At one time, Frade, a close friend of General Pedro P. Ramirez, the Argentine Minister of War, had been thought to be, like Ramirez, very sympathetic to the German cause.

That had changed. In an unexpectedly masterful stroke on their part, the Americans sent in Frade's long-estranged son. Blood, Gr?ner knew, was indeed stronger than water, and he himself knew the strong emotion—mixed pride and love—a father felt for a son who was a heroic aviator.

Gr?ner now acknowledged that he had allowed that knowledge to color his judgment. Young Frade had turned out to be more than a son sent to tug on the heartstrings of a father from whom he had been long separated. He was also a professional intelligence officer. The bodies of the two highly qualified assassins sent to eliminate him, and the blown-up Reine de la Mer, were absolute proof of that.

After a good deal of thought, Gr?ner decided that Goltz had waited to come to Argentina until the operation to eliminate el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade was carried out. If Goltz had been in Argentina, some would suspect he was involved in that. Because of the implications of the Frade elimination, and of his own and Ambassador von Lutzenberger's objections to it, Gr?ner also decided that the order to eliminate Frade must have come from higher up—perhaps from Canaris or Ribbentrop. But he wasn't sure. In his experience, highly placed SS-SD officers were very good at arranging for fingers of suspicion to point at other people.

There would be a long list of other items on Goltz's agenda, of course, matters that interested the upper echelons of the Nazi hierarchy.

This secondary list would start with questions concerning how long it had taken him to deal with the problem of el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade once the order to eliminate him was given. This would be followed by the ritual inquiries into the level of devotion to the F?hrer personally and to National Socialism generally by members of the Embassy staff from Ambassador Manfred Alois Graf von Lutzenberger downward.

Goltz and his superiors would also be interested in what he had done, and was doing, to aid the escape and repatriation of the officers of the Graf Spee who had been interned in Argentina since the ship was scuttled.

Getting the officers out of the internment camp and back to Germany was of personal interest to Abwehr Chief Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, who had himself escaped from Argentine internment during the First World War. Oberst Gr?ner was very sensitive to this; Canaris was not only his superior officer in the Abwehr, but an old friend as well.

He was sure that Canaris had been satisfied with his report on the sinking of the Reine de la Mer, and that Canaris would not hold him personally responsible for it, or for the failed elimination attempt on the OSS team chief. Things go wrong, honest mistakes are made; in his report to Canaris he had admitted his culpability.

He'd admitted further that he should not have presumed that Coronel Frade's son was the naive amateur he had believed him to be, and that he also should have presumed Frade would help his son, regardless of his sympathy for the German cause. Canaris would understand. But that did not mean that others high in the Intelligence and Espionage hierarchies of the Third Reich would be satisfied with his explanations, or with the time it took him to comply with orders to eliminate el Coronel Frade.

"Herr Oberst," G?nther Loche announced loudly as he pushed open the door to the suite Gr?ner had taken for the visiting liaison officer, "Standartenf?hrer Goltz!"

Gr?ner liked Loche, a civilian employee of the Embassy known as a "local hire," because he was just smart enough for his driving duties—in other words, not too smart to the point where he would take an interest in matters that were none of his business.

His parents had immigrated to Argentina after the First World War and went into the sausage business, where they mildly prospered. More important, they were as devoted supporters of Adolf Hitler and National Socialism as anyone Gr?ner had ever met. And there was something else: G?nther's father, who had served on the Western Front in the First World War and had few illusions about combat service, was delighted that Gr?ner had convinced G?nther that he could make a greater contribution to National Socialism by serving as his driver than by "returning to the Fatherland" and volunteering for military service.

"Welcome to Argentina, Herr Standartenf?hrer," Gr?ner said, raising his arm in the approved Nazi salute. "Oberst Gr?ner at your service. I hope it was a pleasant flight?"