The Rhinemann Exchange (53 page)

There was no second, no instant, to throw away on hesitation.

David ran to the steel door, pulled it open and raced around the corner of the wall to the concealed section of the gunwale. As he did so, a guard—the sentry on the bow of the trawler—came into view. His rifle was waist high and he fired.

Spaulding fired back. But not before he realized he was hit. The Nazi’s bullet had creased the side of his waist; he could feel the blood oozing down into his trousers.

He threw himself over the railing into the water; screams and shouts started from inside the cabin and farther away on the pier.

He thrashed against the dirty Rïo slime and tried to keep his head. Where was he? What direction! Where? For Christ’s sake,
where!

The shouts were louder now; searchlights were turned on all over the trawler, crisscrossing the harbor waters. He could hear men screaming into radios as only panicked men can scream. Accusing, helpless.

Suddenly, David realized there were no boats! No boats were coming out of the pier with the searchlights and high-powered rifles that would be his undoing!

No boats!

And he nearly laughed. The operation at Ocho Calle was so totally secretive they had allowed no small craft to put into the deserted area!

He held his side, going under water as often as he could, as fast as he could.

The trawler and the screaming Rhinemann-Altmüller guards were receding in the harbor mist. Spaulding kept bobbing his head up, hoping to God he was going in the right direction.

He was getting terribly tired, but he would not allow himself to grow weak. He
could not
allow that! Not now!

He had the “Tortugas” indictment!

He saw the pilings not far away. Perhaps two, three hundred yards. They
were
the right pilings, the right piers! They … it,
had
to be!

He felt the waters around him stir and then he saw the snakelike forms of the conger eels as they lashed blindly against his body. The blood from his wound was attracting them! A horrible mass of slashing giant worms were converging!

He thrashed and kicked and fought down a scream. He pulled at the waters in front of him, his hands in constant contact with the oily snakes of the harbor. His eyes were filled with flashing dots and streaks of yellow and white; his throat was dry in the water, his forehead pounded.

When it seemed at last the scream would come,
had
to come, he felt the hand in his hand. He felt his shoulders being lifted, heard the guttural cries of his own terrified voice—deep, frightened beyond his own endurance. He could look down and see, as his feet kept slipping off the ladder, the circles of swarming eels below.

Eugene Lyons carried him—
carried
him!—to the FMF automobile. He was aware—yet not aware—of the fact that Lyons pushed him gently into the back seat.

And then Lyons climbed in after him, and David understood—yet did not understand—that Lyons was slapping him. Hard. Harder.

Deliberately. Without rhythm but with a great deal of strength.

The slapping would not stop! He couldn’t make it stop! He couldn’t stop the half-destroyed, throatless Lyons from slapping him.

He could only cry. Weep as a child might weep.

And then suddenly he
could
make him stop. He took his hands from his face and grabbed Lyons’s wrists, prepared, if need be, to break them.

He blinked and stared at the physicist.

Lyons smiled in the shadows. He spoke in his tortured whisper.

“I’m sorry.… You were … in temporary … shock. My friend.”

An elaborate naval first aid kit was stored in the trunk of the FMF vehicle. Lyons filled David’s wound with sulfa powder, laid on folded strips of gauze and pinched the skin together with three-inch adhesive. Since the wound was a gash, not a puncture, the bleeding stopped; it would hold until they reached a doctor. Even should the wait be a day or a day and a half, there would be no serious damage.

Lyons drove.

David watched the emaciated man behind the wheel. He was unsure but willing; that was the only way to describe him. Every now and then his foot pressed too hard on the accelerator, and the short bursts of speed frightened him—then annoyed him. Still, after a few minutes, he seemed to take a careful delight in manipulating the car around corners.

David knew he had to accomplish three things: reach Henderson Granville, talk to Jean and drive to that sanctuary he hoped to Christ Jean had found for them. If a doctor could be brought to him, fine. If not, he would sleep; he was beyond the point of functioning clearly without rest.

How often in the north country had he sought out isolated caves in the hills? How many times had he piled branches and limbs in front of small openings so his body and mind could restore the balance of objectivity that might save his life? He had to find such a resting place now.

And tomorrow he would make the final arrangements with Erich Rhinemann.

The final pages of the indictment.

“We have to find a telephone,” said David. Lyons nodded as he drove.

David directed the physicist back into the center of Buenos Aires. By his guess they still had time before the FMF base sent out a search. The orange insignias on the bumpers would tend to dissuade the BA police from becoming too curious; the Americans were children of the night.

He remembered the telephone booth on the north side of the Casa Rosada. The telephone booth in which a hired gun from the Unio Corso—sent down from Rio de Janeiro—had taken his last breath.

They reached the Plaza de Mayo in fifteen minutes, taking a circular route, making sure they were not followed. The Plaza was not deserted. It was, as the prewar travel posters proclaimed, a Western Hemisphere Paris. Like Paris, there were dozens of early stragglers, dressed mainly in expensive clothes. Taxis stopped and started; prostitutes made their last attempts to find profitable beds; the streetlights illuminated the huge fountains; lovers dabbled their hands in the pools.

The Plaza de Mayo at three thirty in the morning was not a barren, dead place to be. And David was grateful for that.

Lyons pulled the car up to the telephone booth and Spaulding got out.

“Whatever it is, you’ve hit the rawest nerve in Buenos Aires.” Granville’s voice was hard and precise. “I must demand that you return to the embassy. For your own protection as well as the good of our diplomatic relations.”

“You’ll have to be clearer than that, I’m afraid,” replied David.

Granville was.

The “one or two” contacts the ambassador felt he could reach in the Grupo were reduced, of course, to one. That man made inquiries as to the trawler in Ocho Calle and subsequently was taken from his home under guard. That was the information Granville gathered from a hysterical wife.

An hour later the ambassador received word from a GOU liaison that his “friend” had been killed in an automobile accident. The GOU wanted him to have the news. It was most unfortunate.

When Granville tried reaching the wife, an operator cut in, explaining that the telephone was disconnected.

“You’ve involved us, Spaulding! We can’t function with Intelligence dead weight around our necks. The situation in Buenos Aires is extremely delicate.”

“You
are
involved, sir. A couple of thousand miles away people are shooting at each other.”

“Shit!” It was just about the most unexpected expletive David thought he could hear from Granville. “Learn your lines of demarcation! We all have jobs to do within the … artificial, if you like, parameters that are set for us! I repeat, sir. Return to the embassy and I’ll expedite your immediate return to the United States. Or if you refuse, take yourself to FMF.
That’s
beyond my jurisdiction; you will be no part of the embassy!”

My God!
thought David.
Artificial parameters. Jurisdictions. Diplomatic niceties.
When men were dying, armies destroyed, cities obliterated! And men in high-ceilinged rooms played games with words and attitudes!

“I can’t go to FMF. But I can give you something to think about. Within forty-eight hours all American ships and aircraft in the coastal zones are entering a radio and radar blackout! Everything grounded, immobilized. That’s straight military holy writ. And I think you’d better find out why! Because I think I know, and if I’m right, your
diplomatic wreck
is filthier than anything you can imagine! Try a man named Swanson at the War Department. Brigadier Alan Swanson! And tell him I’ve found ‘Tortugas’!”

David slammed down the receiver with such force that chips of Bakelite fell off the side of the telephone. He wanted to run. Open the door of the suffocating booth and race away.

But where to? There was nowhere.

He took several deep breaths and once more dialed the embassy.

Jean’s voice was soft, filled with anxiety. But she had found a place!

He and Lyons were to drive due west on Rivadavia to the farthest outskirts of Buenos Aires. At the end of Rivadavia was a road bearing right—it could be spotted by a large statue of the Madonna at its beginning. The road led to the flat grass country,
provinciates
country. Thirty-six miles beyond the Madonna was another road—on the left—this marked by telephone junction wires converging into a transformer box on top of a double-strapped telephone
pole. The road led to a ranch belonging to one Alfonso Quesarro. Señor Quesarro would not be there … under the circumstances. Neither would his wife. But a skeleton staff would be on; the remaining staff quarters would be available for Mrs. Cameron’s unknown friends.

Jean would obey his orders: she would not leave the embassy.

And she loved him. Terribly.

Dawn came up over the grass country. The breezes were warm; David had to remind himself that it was January. The Argentine summer. A member of the skeleton staff of Estancia Quesarro met them several miles down the road past the telephone junction wires, on the property border, and escorted them to the
rancheŕia
—a cluster of small one-story cottages—near but not adjacent to the main buildings. They were led to an adobe farthest from the other houses; it was on the edge of a fenced grazing area, fields extending as far as the eye could see. The house was the residence of the
caporal
—the ranch foreman.

David understood as he looked up at the roof, at the single telephone line. Ranch foremen had to be able to use a telephone.

Their escort opened the door and stood in the frame, anxious to leave. He touched David’s arm and spoke in a Spanish tempered with pampas Indian.

“The telephones out here are with operators. The service is poor; not like the city. I am to tell you this,
señor.
”

But that information was not what the gaucho was telling him. He was telling him to be careful.

“I’ll remember,” said Spaulding. “Thank you.”

The man left quickly and David closed the door. Lyons was standing across the room, in the center of a small monastery arch that led to some sort of sunlit enclosure. The metal case containing the gyroscopic designs was in his right hand; with his left he beckoned David.

Beyond the arch was a cubicle; in the center, underneath an oblong window overlooking the fields, there was a bed.

Spaulding undid the top of his trousers and peeled them off.

He fell with his full weight into the hard mattress and slept.

It seemed only seconds ago that he had walked through the small arch into the sunlit cubicle.

He felt the prodding fingers around his wound; he winced as a cold-hot liquid was applied about his waist and the adhesive ripped off.

He opened his eyes fiercely and saw the figure of a man bent over the bed. Lyons was standing beside him. At the edge of the hard mattress was the universal shape of a medical bag. The man bending over him was a doctor. He spoke in unusually clear English.

“You’ve slept nearly eight hours. That is the best precription one could give you.… I’m going to suture this in three places; that should do it. There will be a degree of discomfort, but with the tape you’ll be quite mobile.”

“What time is it?” asked David.

Lyons looked at his watch. He whispered, and the words were clear. “Two … o’clock.”

“Thank you for coming out here,” said Spaulding, shifting his weight for the doctor’s instruments.

“Wait until I’m back at my office in Palermo.” The doctor laughed softly, sardonically. “I’m sure I’m on one of their lists.” He inserted a suture, reassuring David with a tight smile. “I left word I was on a maternity call at an outback ranch.… There.” He tied off the stitch and patted Spaulding’s bare skin. “Two more and we’re finished.”

“Do you think you’ll be questioned?”

“No. Not actually. The junta closes its eyes quite often. There’s not an abundance of doctors here.… And amusingly enough, interrogators invariably seek free medical advice. I think it goes with their mentalities.”

“And I think you’re covering. I think it
was
dangerous.”

The doctor held his hands in place as he looked at David. “Jean Cameron is a very special person. If the history of wartime Buenos Aires is written, she’ll be prominently mentioned.” He returned to the sutures without elaboration. David had the feeling that the doctor did not wish to talk further. He was in a hurry.

Twenty minutes later Spaulding was on his feet, the doctor at the door of the adobe hut. David shook the medical man’s hand. “I’m afraid I can’t pay you,” he said.

“You already have, colonel. I’m a Jew.”

Spaulding did not release the doctor’s hand. Instead, he held it firmly—not in salutation. “Please explain.”

“There’s nothing to explain. The Jewish community is filled with rumors of an American officer who pits himself against the pig.… Rhinemann the pig.”

“That’s all?”

“It’s enough.” The doctor removed his hand from Spaulding’s and walked out. David closed the door.

Rhinemann the pig. It was time for Rhinemann.

The teutonic, guttural voice screamed into the telephone. David could picture the blue-black veins protruding on the surface of the bloated, suntanned skin. He could see the narrow eyes bulging with fury.