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“Hola, Eduardo,” Vicealmirante Guillermo Crater called cheerfully, putting out his hand. “Up early this morning, are you?”
“Admiral,” Ramos replied curtly, and kept walking without taking the outstretched hand.
Ramos had not forgiven Vice Admiral Crater for what had happened outside a downtown motion picture theater five days after the Japanese capitulation. They were standing on the sidewalk, waiting for their cars after watching newsreels of the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay. That sequence had begun with an aerial view of the U.S. Pacific fleet at anchor, which was what was on Crater’s mind.
“Well, Eduardo, we were lucky, weren’t we?” Crater had begun the conversation.
“Excuse me?”
“To be on the right side,” Crater had said. “I would really have hated to see all those ships, even half of all those battleships and aircraft carriers, sitting out there”—he had gestured toward the River Plate—“and thinking of us as the enemy. Wouldn’t you?”
You sonofabitch! General Ramos had thought.
You’ve been cheering for the goddamn Americans all along!
He had not responded. Instead, he had given Crater a cold smile and turned his back on him.
At the elevator bank, a teniente (lieutenant) sat at a small desk beside the last elevator door. A sergeant, a Schmeisser submachine gun slung in front of him, stood beside him. The lieutenant got to his feet as Ramos and Montenegro approached.
“Mi General?” he asked politely.
“The general is here to see el Colonel Perón,” Montenegro answered for Ramos.
The lieutenant consulted a list, and then politely announced, “Mi General, you’re not on the minister of War’s schedule.”
“I know,” Ramos snapped. “Open the damned door!”
As a general rule of thumb, lieutenants do not challenge generals. And, in this case, the lieutenant knew that General Ramos was both a member of the clique at the top of the Ejército Argentino and one of Perón’s oldest and closest friends.
The bronze elevator door whooshed open, and Ramos and Montenegro got on. The elevator rose quickly and smoothly to the twentieth floor, where the doors opened onto the foyer of the offices of the minister for War of the Argentine Republic.
Ramos marched to the minister’s outer office.
A major, seeing Ramos, rose to his feet behind a large, ornately carved desk.
“Be so good as to tell el Coronel Perón that I am here,” Ramos ordered, and then, as if anticipating the question, added, “He does not expect me.”
The major walked quickly to ceiling-high bronze double doors, opened the left one, and entered. The door closed automatically behind him.
Fifteen seconds later, he reappeared, now holding the door open.
“Mi General, the minister will see you.”
Ramos announced, “Capitán Montenegro will see that we are not disturbed. You will see that the telephone doesn’t ring unless General Farrell is calling.”
He then walked into Perón’s office.
General Edelmiro Julián Farrell had been the dictator—or, more kindly, the de facto president—of Argentina since February 24, 1944. He had made no secret of his sympathies for the Axis during the war, but most people believed they were rooted in the ancestral hate of the Irish for all things British rather than admiration for the Nazis and Adolf Hitler.
The vice president, secretary of War, and secretary of Labor and Welfare of the Argentine Republic, el Coronel Juan Domingo Perón, was a tall, olive-skinned man with a luxurious head of black hair. He came out from behind his enormous desk to greet General Ramos. He opened his arms to Ramos, and they patted one another’s back.
“And to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure, Eduardo?” Perón asked.
“Unexpected, to be sure. But pleasure? I don’t think you’re going to take much pleasure in my being here when you learn why.”
“That sounds ominous,” Perón said.
“How long have we known each other, Juan Domingo? Been friends?”
