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1545 10 October 1945
Large, double-pane windows in the suite on the top—sixth—floor of the hotel provided a splendid view of Lake Nahuel Huapi and, beyond that, the foothills of the Andes Mountains.
There were three middle-aged men in the “sitting” area. They were gathered around a low table that was just about covered with hors d’oeuvres, bottles of wine, champagne, and spirits.
El Coronel Hans Klausberger of the Tenth Mountain Division was in full uniform, but did not exactly cut a military figure. He was portly and rather short.
One of the others?
?Señor Franz Mueller, who owned the Hotel Cóndor—was elegantly dressed in a double-breasted suit. Compared to him, the third man, SS-Brigadeführer Ludwig Hoffmann, wearing the best suit he had had in Germany, and which he had put on shortly before getting off U-405, looked positively dowdy.
Hoffmann had just reached for another—his fifth—piece of prosciutto wrapped around a melon chunk when there was a knock at the door. Señor Mueller went to the door, unlocked it, and admitted another elegantly dressed middle-aged man.
“We were about to give up on you, José,” Mueller said.
Señor José Moreno was the assistant managing director of the Banco Suisse Creditanstalt S.A.
“I had some difficulty getting the libreta de enrolamiento for Herr Hoffmann,” Moreno said.
“But you have it?” el Coronel Klausberger asked.
Moreno’s face showed he didn’t like the colonel talking to him as if he was a subordinate.
Before answering, Moreno went to the table, politely asked, “May I?” and then helped himself to a glass of wine. He ate a prosciutto-wrapped chunk of melon. And then another.
Finally, Moreno nodded at Klausberger.
“Of course I have it,” Moreno said. “And then Aeroposta Argentina canceled my flight. They apparently have no aircraft capable of reaching another airfield if they can’t land here because of the weather.”
“But you are here,” Hoffmann said.
“Brigadeführer Hoffmann?” Moreno asked. “Pardon my bad manners, sir. Welcome to Argentina.”
He walked to Hoffmann and they shook hands.
“Oberst Klausberger has been telling me that under the circumstances, it would be best not to refer to me by my rank,” Hoffmann said.
“That was stupid of me,” Moreno said. “It won’t happen again.”
Hoffmann’s acknowledgment of the apology—a brief nod—was that of a general officer acknowledging an apology for a blunder by his aide-de-camp. Moreno didn’t like that very much either.
Moreno decided that while courtesy is often important, tolerating discourtesy is often taken as an admission of subordination, and he had no intention of letting Hoffmann think he was in a position to order him around.
I’ll fix that right now.
“I see you’re wearing the insignia of your old regiment, Hans,” he said with a smile. “May I infer from that that your little difficulty has been put to rest once and for all?”
El Coronel Klausberger glared at him.
“You may,” he said icily.
“What little difficulty was that?” Hoffmann asked.
“Well, for a while there, it looked as if Hans was going to stand before a wall with a blindfold over his eyes,” Moreno said.
With a broad smile on his face, Moreno mimed a firing squad rifleman taking aim.
And, as he thought he would, Klausberger lost his temper.
