An interior phone rang three times before it was answered in Spanish.
“Consular section. Consul Schneider speaking.”
The tower operator switched to German.
“Herr Untersturmführer, here is Kurt Schumer at El Palomar.”
Untersturmführer Johan Schneider also switched to German.
“How can I help you, Herr Schumer?”
“We just had a radio call from Lufthansa Six Zero Two, Herr Untersturmführer. ”
“And?”
“We can hear him, Herr Untersturmführer, but he cannot hear us, which suggests he is some distance away.”
“We have had no word of an incoming Condor,” Schneider said.
Schumer didn’t reply.
“Which, of course,” Schneider went on, “does not mean that a Condor is not on its way here. Thank you, Herr Schumer. I shall take the necessary steps.”
“My pleasure, Herr Untersturmführer.”
“Heil Hitler!” Schneider barked, and broke the connection.
There was, of course, a protocol spelled out in great detail in the embassy of the German Reich for a situation like this. At the moment, it wasn’t working very well.
Untersturmführer Schneider, who was listed on the embassy’s manning chart as an assistant consul, was a member of the Sicherheitsdienst (the Security Service, known by its acronym, SD) of the Sicherheitspolizei (the Security Police, known by its acronym, SIPO), which in turn was part of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (the Reich Security Central Office, known by its acronym, RHSA) of the Allgemeine-SS. The SS itself was divided into two parts, the other being the Waffen-SS, which was military in nature.
Untersturmführer Schneider was very much aware that he was the senior SS officer presently assigned to the embassy of the Reich in Buenos Aires. This was pretty heady stuff for an untersturmführer, which was the SS rank corresponding to second lieutenant.
In theory, he was answerable only to the ambassador, Manfred Alois Graf von Lutzenberger, but on the day Schneider had reported for duty, von Lutzenberger had told him that the military attaché, Oberst Karl-Heinz Grüner, was the reichssicherheitshauptamt’s man in Buenos Aires. He also told him that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler himself, to facilitate Grüner’s carrying out of those duties, had commissioned Grüner an honorary oberführer-SS. Consequently, Schneider was to consider himself under Grüner’s orders.
Oberst/Oberführer Grüner had immediately named Untersturmführer Schneider Officer-in-Charge of Security Documents, which meant that he would have responsibility for the reception, care, and transmission of all documents containing secrets of the embassy.
In carrying out his duties, Grüner told Schneider, he would wear civilian clothing, refer to himself as a consular officer, and not make use of his SS rank, as he himself never made reference to his SS rank. It was better, Grüner had told him, that it not become public knowledge that the SS was in the embassy.
Furthermore, Grüner had told him, he would serve as his deputy in matters of counterintelligence, which duties he could better carry out if no one was aware he was an officer of the Sicherheitsdienst. He was to make immediate and secret reports to Grüner—and only Grüner—of any activity that he found suspicious.
There were ancillary duties as well, among them responsibility for the diplomatic pouches. He was to meet every incoming Lufthansa flight and take from its steward the incoming diplomatic pouch, which he would take to the embassy and hand over to Grüner personally. Similarly, he would get the Berlin-bound diplomatic pouch from Grüner and personally hand it to the Condor steward just before the Condor headed home.
The protocol had become unworkable when Oberst/Oberführer Grüner had given his life for the Fatherland at Samborombón Bay. Untersturmführer Schneider remained subordinate to the military attaché, but the military attaché—the acting military attaché until another could be sent from Berlin— was Major Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein of the Luftwaffe, who, as far as Schneider knew, had no SS connection whatsoever.
More than that, Schneider on several occasions had been ordered to surveille von Wachtstein by following him around Buenos Aires and by tapping his telephones in the embassy and at his apartment. This at least suggested that either Oberst Grüner or Ambassador von Lutzenberger—or both—were suspicious of him. Schneider himself thought there was something very strange in von Wachtstein’s having come through the gunfire at Samborombón Bay unscathed when Oberführer Grüner and SS-Standartenführer Josef Goltz both had been shot to death.
But orders are orders and remain in effect until changed by competent authority—which in this case would be Ambassador von Lutzenberger, who had not even mentioned the protocol, much less any change in his duties, to Schneider since Grüner had been killed. Schneider had no choice but to follow protocol, which required him on being notified of the imminent arrival of a Lufthansa flight to notify the military attaché who, protocol dictated, “would provide further instructions as necessary.”
He found Major von Wachtstein in his—rather than Oberst Grüner’s— office. He was in civilian clothing, smoking a long thin cigar, and reading an American magazine, Life. The first time Schneider had seen von Wachtstein reading enemy reading material—a copy of the London Times—he had reported him to Grüner, who had told him that von Wachtstein was doing so because he was ordered to do so, to see if there was anything in The Times which would be of interest to the Abwehr.
When von Wachtstein finally looked up from the magazine and saw Schneider, Schneider threw out his arm in the Nazi salute and barked, “Heil Hitler!”
Von Wachtstein returned the salute, not very crisply.
“What is it, Schneider?”
“Herr Major, I have just learned of the soon arrival of a Condor at El Palomar.”
“What’s a ‘soon arrival’? When is a ‘soon arrival’? In the next ten minutes? Tomorrow? Friday?”
“Herr Major, I believe the aircraft is about to land at El Palomar.”
“I was not aware we were expecting a flight. Were you?”
“I was not, Herr Major.”
“You will go downstairs and wake up Günther Loche and tell him to bring a car around, Herr Schneider, while I go by the ambassador’s office to tell him that you and I are on our way to El Palomar.”
Günther Loche, a muscular twenty-two-year-old with a blond crew cut who von Wachtstein regarded as more zealous a Nazi than the Führer himself, was a civilian employee of the embassy. He had been born in Argentina to German parents who had immigrated to Argentina after the First World War. He had been Oberst Grüner’s driver, and until a replacement for Grüner was assigned, he was von Wachtstein’s driver.
“You will be going with me, Herr Major?” Schneider said.
Oberst Grüner had rarely done that.
“No. The way that works, Untersturmführer Schneider, is that inasmuch as I am a major and the acting military attaché, you will be going with me.”
“Jawohl, Herr Major,” Schneider said, then threw out his arm again and barked, “Heil Hitler!”
Schneider suspected—he had no idea why—that von Wachtstein didn’t like him. But he was not offended by von Wachtstein’s curt—even rude—sarcasm. For one thing, an officer who had received the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross for extraordinary valor in aerial combat was entitled to be a bit arrogant.
And for another, I was wrong; I should have been more precise than “soon arrival.”
And I had no right to question his orders.
After the first call, Lufthansa Six Zero Two had attempted to contact the El Palomar tower once a minute for the next eleven minutes. Finally, the El Palomar tower operators had gotten through: “Lufthansa Six Zero Two, this is El Palomar.”