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There was no way, he decided, that he was going to be able to drive a distance three times that between Berlin and Vienna in the “fairly easy two days” von Gradny-Sawz estimated it would take.

The silver lining to that dark cloud was the prospect of spending three nights—perhaps even four—in some of the bucolic roadside inns the ACA recommended on their maps. He was in no particular hurry, and after that gottverdammt submarine, he was entitled to a little rest and relaxation.

It didn’t turn out that way. Once they were fifty kilometers or so from Belgrano, they were into the pampas. The road stretched in a straight line to the horizon. There was very little traffic, and the American Ford V-8 engine propelled the station wagon easily at eighty miles per hour, which translated to about 130 kph.

That first day, they reached an idyllic roadside inn near Santa Rosa in time for cocktails and dinner, during which he checked the map and saw they were halfway to San Martín de los Andes.

The next day, although they came out of the pampas and had to travel winding roads through what he supposed were the foothills of the Andes Mountains, they made just about as good time.

He was pleased that he had decided to bring Inge with him for several reasons, in addition to the carnal. He had decided, telling himself he had to be honest about it, that her enthusiasm was probably because she was both afraid of him and needed him, rather than because of his masculine charm and good looks.

It didn’t matter why she was willing to do all sorts of things the instant he ordered them—or even suggested them—only that she was.

But aside from that, Inge proved to be a fountain of information regarding the investments of both the Operation Phoenix funds and those of the confidential fund. She had spent a good deal of the trip explaining details to him, often taking the appropriate documents from those he’d liberated from von Tresmarck’s safe, as well as the ones he had ordered Cranz to bring him from the embassy in Buenos Aires.

He had learned that Oberst Schmidt had been very useful in locating and dealing with the middlemen necessary to the acquisition process. Until Inge had uncovered this, he had thought Schmidt had been useful only in the military matters, providing security at Samborombón Bay and putting up the SS men Himmler had insisted on sending to guard the special shipments.

Von Deitzberg had come to San Martín de los Andes primarily to avail himself of Schmidt’s military assets; eliminating the Froggers had to be accomplished as quickly as possible. But what he had learned driving across the pampas made him think very seriously about the whole operation.

What had been done from the beginning of Operation Phoenix, when Oberst Grüner, the military attaché, had been running things, was first to hide the cash and gemstones and gold in the safety-deposit boxes of reliable ethnic Germans who held Argentine citizenship.

Step two was to systematically turn the gemstones and gold into cash and then, slowly, so as not to attract attention, get the cash out of the safety-deposit boxes and into the bank accounts of the ethnic Germans.

Step three, using the money now in the ethnic Germans’ bank accounts, was to purchase the businesses and real estate that were the rock upon which Operation Phoenix would stand. The deeds to all the property were held by the same reliable ethnic Germans.

The ethnic Germans could be trusted for two reasons. First, it was jokingly said that the Ausländischer Deutsch tended to be better Nazis than, say, Göring or Goebbels, if not the Führer himself.

Second, perhaps of equal importance, the Ausländischer Deutsch knew that Oberst Grüner, in addition to his military attaché duties, had been secretly the highest-ranking member of the Sicherheitsdienst in South America. That meant they knew that anything less than total honesty when dealing with the assets of Operation Phoenix would be rewarded with the painful death of everybody in the family in Argentina, and with the even more painful deaths of any relatives of the Ausländischer Deutsch who happened to be fortunate enough to be still living in the Fatherland.

Grüner’s death on the beach at Samborombón Bay had of course taken some of the glitter from the notion of German invincibility, and with that the certainty of punishment. Cranz was good, but not nearly as menacing a figure as Grüner had been.

The current situation would prevail, of course, but only until it looked to the Ausländischer Deutsch that the Germans were about to lose the war—or, God forbid, had actually lost it—when they would begin to consider that the property and money placed into their care was now theirs.

The honesty of people depends in large part on their judgment of whether or not they will be caught stealing.

The next step in that line of thinking, should the unthinkable happen, would be for them to ask themselves, “How likely is it that Hermann Göring will show up at my door and ask for directions to, and the keys to, the estancia I bought for him? Bought for him in my name.”

I have already transferred all of the Operation Adler property in Uruguay to Herr Jorge Schenck—in other words, to me. It doesn’t matter that I did so because I frankly didn’t know what else to do with it. I had to take it away from von Tresmarck, and obviously I couldn’t, even as fond as I am growing of Inge, risk putting it in her name.

What I will do here, right now, is take a look at the various real-estate properties owned by the former confidential fund and transfer one of them—perhaps two, but I don’t want to move too quickly and draw attention to Herr Schenck—to me.

Von Deitzberg finished dressing, examined himself admiringly in the mirror, and decided the tailors in Buenos Aires were every bit as good as the ones in Berlin, the main difference being that here the tailors’ shops were full of fine woolens and the ones in Berlin had either been destroyed in the bombing or were out of material, even to those with the special SS clothing ration coupons.

His mind turned back to the present: If I report to Himmler that I am taking the appropriate steps not only to recover the Operation Phoenix assets von Tresmarck stole, but to protect our assets in Argentina from disappearing by putting them in my name, he will understand. And that will give me an excuse—“It’s not going as quickly as one would wish”?

?to stay here.

It might also serve as the reason to keep Cranz and Raschner here, so that some of the properties can be transferred to them. I am going to have to give them something, enough to keep them happy. Two birds with one stone.

He walked to the bathroom door and pushed it open. Inge, drying herself, had one foot resting on the water closet.

“Hurry it up,” he said. “Schmidt’s due any minute.”

She smiled and wiggled her buttocks at him.

He turned and went to the window and looked down at the street.

San Martín de los Andes was really nothing more than a small village. There was hardly any vehicular traffic on the street he could see at all.