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“We”? Cronley thought. In a pig’s ass!
The last person I expect to see standing at an ironing board is Mattingly, dressed up like Clark Gable, ironing documents.
Well, face it, Jimmy. All those movies where Clark Gable and Alan Ladd, et cetera, are intelligence officers, spending their time in romantic saloons exchanging soulful looks with Ingrid Bergman or some other erotic tootsie—they’re all bullshit.
In the real world, intelligence officers such as myself stand at an ironing board flattening bent sheets of paper and getting their romance in a whorehouse.
“What we will do is make two copies of everything Herr Mannberg and Sergeant Hessinger have found,” Mattingly said. “One set of copies will go to Colonel Frade in Argentina and the other be held for incorporation into the files of whatever the reborn OSS is called, whenever that occurs.”
“If that occurs,” Tiny said.
“Oh, ye of little faith,” Mattingly said. “I believe it will, perhaps not soon, but inevitably. But as I was saying before I was interrupted: We can guarantee the safety of these files by transferring them only amongst us. For example, from Lieutenant Cronley, who will take them under heavy, but inconspicuous, guard in one of our ambulances to Rhine-Main, where he will personally place them in the hands of Colonel Frade, and Colonel Frade only, just before Frade takes on fuel to fly to Lisbon on his way back to Argentina.
“After all the files Colonel Frade has requested, and those others I think he ought to have, are copied, we will begin to copy the files of Abwehr Ost so they can be incorporated into the files of the reborn OSS. We will continue to do that until the available copying paper is exhausted. By then I hope to have an additional supply of the special paper. Samples have been sent to the United States for analysis, and to determine how we can make it ourselves.”
The translation of that is that I will be here ironing paper for the next three to four years.
“I think that about covers everything,” Colonel Mattingly said. “Are there any questions?”
Silence ensued.
“In that case, I have to get back to the Farben building. Keep your seats, please, gentlemen.”
Then Mattingly marched out of the room.
[TWO]
Estación Retiro
Plaza San Martín, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2030 15 October 1945
SS-Brigadeführer Ludwig Hoffmann—whose new libreta de enrolamiento identified him as Ludwig Mannhoffer, born November 5, 1899, in Dresden, Germany, and as a citizen of the Argentine Republic since 1917—walked down the platform of what was officially the Ferrocarril General Bartolomé Mitre railway station. He was thinking that the way he was dressed, compared to the other passengers in the first-class car, made him look like a failed door-to-door toilet-brush salesman.
His annoyance turned to concern as he got closer to the terminal building and began to worry that something had gone wrong and that no one was here to meet him. The concern grew when he considered his options if no one had.
He would have to get into a taxi and go to a hotel. He was reasonably sure his new libreta would stand scrutiny.
But then what?
If something happened to keep Raschner from coming to the station—and he knew how important meeting me was—does that mean that gottverdammt Martín is going to be waiting for me here? That’s a credible scenario. . . .
Thank God, there he is!
A short, squat, bald-headed man in his late forties was coming down the platform, smiling.
Look how he’s dressed! No one’s going to mistake him for a toilet-brush salesman!
“Let me take your bags, Señor . . . ?” the man said in Spanish.
“Mannhoffer,” he provided. “L
udwig Mannhoffer. And you are?”
“Richter, Señor Mannhoffer, Erich Richter. And Señor Konrad Fassbinder is outside at the curb with a car.”
The last time Mannhoffer had seen Richter had been in the SS Headquarters on Prinz Albrechtstrasse in Berlin. He had then been SS-Sturmführer Erich Raschner.
