Page 100
Silk stockings were hard to come by in Berlin, even in the special stores for senior officers. The opposite was apparently true in Buenos Aires. The store had shelf upon shelf of them, and at quite reasonable prices.
He bought a dozen pair of the best quality the store offered. He would get Captain von und zu Aschenburg, the Condor pilot, to take them to Ilse. He would put a note in the box, suggesting that Ilse give a pair or two of them to her friend Gerda. She would probably do so anyway, but it was best to make sure. Gerda, the daughter of Walter Buch, chairman of the party’s court for the determination of NSDAP legal matters and internal discipline, was married to Martin Bormann.
Von und zu Aschenburg, too, was going to be useful. Once he got in the habit of taking small packages from South America to Berlin, those packages in the future could contain Swiss francs, English pounds, and American dollars for von Deitzberg.
One of the problems with the special confidential fund was that the payments made to gain the freedom of the Jews in the concentration camps were transacted in Uruguay. That required converting the funds to currency usable in Germany. Reichsmarks were hard to come by in Argentina and Uruguay without going through either the Buenos Aires branches of the Deutsche Bank or the Dresdnerbank—which of course being German kept detailed records, which of course was not a good thing. Thus, von Tresmarck had to send the cash in the diplomatic pouch, and that raised the risk of Hauptsturmführer Forster—who was both zealous and until now under no one’s authority— finding out what von Tresmarck’s little packages contained.
Cranz had arrived in what arguably was his office at five minutes to nine. His good feeling lasted until he glanced at his watch and saw that it now was quarter past nine.
One would have thought that Frogger would have come in a bit early, not a bit late.
He said and did nothing even then, instead glancing through the Argentinisches Tageblatt, the German-language newspaper. Somebody—he couldn’t remember who—had told him that the Argentines, who regarded the Tageblatt as a “guest newspaper,” would not permit it to publish much of anything at all except announcements of church meetings, births, weddings, deaths, and the like unless the items first had been published in an Argentine newspaper—and then only if the translation was approved by the Argentine government and the paper ran both the German translation and the original story in Spanish, either side by side or one after the other.
Reading it now, Cranz thought that were it not for the notices of the deaths of Argo-Germans in Africa and Russia, and pleas to contribute to Winterhilfe— which asked Germans abroad to aid Germans impoverished by the war—one would never know a war was on.
He quickly tired of reading news of the Buenos Aires German community’s church suppers and such.
He looked at his watch again.
Nine twenty-five.
Where the hell is he?
He couldn’t remember the name of Frogger’s secretary, so he couldn’t call for her. Instead, he got up from Frogger’s desk and walked to the outer office.
“Señora,” he asked politely, “you don’t happen to know where El Señor Frogger is, do you?”
She smiled, then said she was sorry, she had no idea.
“What time does he usually come to work?”
“He’s usually here, señor, when I come in.”
“And when do you usually come in, señora?”
“El Señor Frogger likes to have me at my desk at eight, señor.”
“He didn’t send a message that he would be late?”
“No, señor.”
“Would you please try to get him, or La Señora Frogger, on the telephone for me, please?”
Three minutes later, she reported that there was no answer at El Señor Frogger’s home number or at the Café Flora, where he and La Señora Frogger sometimes went for breakfast.
Cranz smiled and thanked her, gave the situation a moment’s thought, then went looking for First Secretary Anton von Gradny-Sawz.
Cranz had already formed several opinions about Gradny-Sawz, none of them very flattering. He had decided Gradny-Sawz was shrewd but not very bright; that it had been a mistake by Bormann to name him to try to enlist Colonel Perón—that Cranz probably would have to take that task onto himself—and that while Gradny-Sawz probably was not the traitor, neither was he trustworthy.
But Gradny-Sawz was first secretary of the embassy, and thus Frogger’s immediate superior, and Cranz didn’t want to go to the ambassador about something petty like Frogger not showing up for work on time.
When Cranz got to Gradny-Sawz’s office, von Deitzberg was in there with Gradny-Sawz and looked at Cranz with annoyance.
“Will this wait, Cranz?” von Deitzberg snapped.
“Frogger hasn’t come in, and I was going to ask the first
secretary if he perhaps knew anything about it.”
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100 (Reading here)
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 125
- Page 126
- Page 127
- Page 128
- Page 129
- Page 130
- Page 131
- Page 132
- Page 133
- Page 134
- Page 135
- Page 136
- Page 137
- Page 138
- Page 139
- Page 140
- Page 141
- Page 142
- Page 143
- Page 144
- Page 145
- Page 146
- Page 147
- Page 148
- Page 149
- Page 150
- Page 151
- Page 152
- Page 153
- Page 154
- Page 155
- Page 156
- Page 157
- Page 158
- Page 159
- Page 160
- Page 161
- Page 162
- Page 163
- Page 164
- Page 165
- Page 166
- Page 167
- Page 168
- Page 169
- Page 170
- Page 171
- Page 172
- Page 173
- Page 174
- Page 175
- Page 176
- Page 177
- Page 178
- Page 179
- Page 180
- Page 181
- Page 182
- Page 183
- Page 184
- Page 185
- Page 186
- Page 187
- Page 188
- Page 189
- Page 190
- Page 191
- Page 192
- Page 193
- Page 194
- Page 195
- Page 196
- Page 197
- Page 198
- Page 199
- Page 200
- Page 201
- Page 202
- Page 203
- Page 204
- Page 205
- Page 206
- Page 207
- Page 208
- Page 209
- Page 210
- Page 211
- Page 212
- Page 213
- Page 214
- Page 215
- Page 216
- Page 217
- Page 218
- Page 219
- Page 220
- Page 221
- Page 222
- Page 223
- Page 224
- Page 225
- Page 226
- Page 227
- Page 228
- Page 229
- Page 230
- Page 231
- Page 232
- Page 233
- Page 234
- Page 235
- Page 236
- Page 237
- Page 238
- Page 239
- Page 240
- Page 241
- Page 242
- Page 243
- Page 244
- Page 245
- Page 246
- Page 247
- Page 248
- Page 249
- Page 250
- Page 251
- Page 252
- Page 253
- Page 254
- Page 255
- Page 256
- Page 257
- Page 258
- Page 259
- Page 260
- Page 261
- Page 262
- Page 263
- Page 264
- Page 265