“Cranz told me you were coming, and how,” Perón said. “And also that von Gradny-Sawz had told him he’d bought you a car and that you had driven out to San Martín de los Andes to see our friend Schmidt. What was that all about?”
“You’re always one step ahead of me, aren’t you, Juan Domingo?”
“I try to stay that way.”
“Never travel by submarine, Juan Domingo. I am still recovering.”
“What was that all about?” Perón asked. “Why didn’t you fly on the Condor? Why all the secrecy?”
“So far as the submarine is concerned, the Führer himself wanted to know if that transport system will actually work if needed. . . .”
“Things don’t seem to be going very well in the war, do they?”
“As a senior officer, I cannot agree with you. That would constitute defeatist talk. As a friend, in confidence between us, that’s an understatement. You heard the Americans are in Naples?”
Perón nodded.
“And things aren’t going too well in the east either,” von Deitzberg said. “Anyway, I was the guinea pig to check out transportation by submarine. It was a long, long voyage.”
“And driving all the way to San Martín de los Andes to see Schmidt?”
“Well, there were two reasons for that. The first was that I wanted to check on our Operation Phoenix properties out there. . . .”
“And the second?”
“Reichsführer-SS Himmler himself told me to do something nice for you, and Schmidt has been working on that for me.”
“What would doing something nice for me entail, exactly?” Perón asked suspiciously.
“The Reichsführer wants you to know how much we appreciate all that you have done for us,” von Deitzberg said.
“And?”
“How about a nine-room villa on two hundred and fifty hectares on the shore of Lake Nahuel Huapi in Bariloche? Does that sound nice to you?”
“It sounds like something I would have a hard time explaining.”
“We’ll talk about it. Believe me, Juan Domingo, it can all be handled with the greatest discretion.”
“Discretion is very important,” Perón said. “And speaking of which, there’s someone I want you to meet. And here discretion is really the watchword.”
Perón put his index finger below his left eye, closed the right eye, and then pulled down the loose flesh below his left eye.
He pulled the door open and waved von Deitzberg into the apartment.
Von Deitzberg thought: What’s this? I am about to be introduced to his latest conquest from the cradle?
Perón gestured at a line of liquor bottles.
“A little of that Johnnie Walker would go down nicely, thank you very much,” von Deitzberg said.
Perón made the drinks, and as he was handing one to von Deitzberg a not-unattractive blond woman walked into the room and smiled a little uneasily at them.
This one’s not thirteen! She has to be at least eighteen.
Eighteen, hell! She’s twenty-four, twenty-five, trying to look like she’s eighteen.
Who the hell is she?