‘Good morning, Captain May,’ said the duty officer after he’d checked his passport. ‘Where are you flying today, sir?’
‘Buenos Aires.’
‘Have a good flight.’
Once his bags had been checked, he passed through customs and headed straight for gate No. 11. Don’t stop, don’t look round, don’t draw attention to yourself, were the instructions given by the anonymous man who was more used to dealing with spies than authors.
The last forty-eight hours had been non-stop, after Emma had finally agreed, albeit reluctantly, that he could assist them with Operation Run Out. Since then his feet, to quote his old master sergeant, hadn’t touched the ground.
The fitting of a BOAC captain’s uniform had taken up one of those hours, the photograph for the fake passport another; the briefing on his new background, including a divorced wife and two children, three hours; a lesson on the duties of a modern BOAC captain, three hours; a tourist’s guide to Buenos Aires, one hour; and over dinner with Sir Alan at his club, he still had dozens more questions that needed to be answered.
Just before he left the Athenaeum to spend a sleepless night at Giles’s house in Smith Square, Sir Alan had handed him a thick file, a briefcase and a key.
‘Read everything in this file during your journey to Buenos Aires, then hand it to the ambassador, who will destroy it. You’re booked into the Milonga Hotel. Our ambassador, Mr Philip Matthews, is expecting to see you at the embassy at ten on Saturday morning. You will also hand him this letter from Mr Selwyn Lloyd, the foreign secretary, which will explain why you’re in Argentina.’
Once he’d reached the gate, he walked straight up to the attendant at the desk.
‘Good morning, captain,’ she said, even before he’d opened his passport. ‘I hope you have a pleasant flight.’
He walked out on to the tarmac, climbed the steps to the aircraft and entered an empty first-class cabin.
‘Good morning, Captain May,’ said an attractive young woman. ‘My name is Annabel Carrick. I’m the senior stewardess.’
The uniform, and the discipline, made it feel like being back in the army, even if he was up against a different enemy this time, or was it, as Sir Alan had suggested, the same one?
‘May I show you to your seat?’
‘Thank you, Miss Carrick,’ he said as she led him to the rear of the first-class cabin. Two empty seats, but he knew only one of them would be occupied. Sir Alan didn’t leave that sort of thing to chance.
‘The first leg of the flight should take about seven hours,’ said the stewardess. ‘Can I get you a drink before we take off, captain?’
‘Just a glass of water, thank you.’ He took off his peaked cap and put it on the seat beside him, then placed the briefcase on the floor under his seat. He had been told not to open it until the plane had taken off, and to be certain no one could see what he was reading. Not that the file mentioned Martinez by name from the first page to the last, referring to him only as ‘the subject’.
A few moments later, the first passengers began to make their way on to the plane, and for the next twenty minutes they located their seats, placed their bags in the overhead lockers, shed their coats, and some of them their jackets, settled themselves down, enjoyed a glass of champagne, clicked on their seat belts, selected a newspaper or magazine, and waited for the words, ‘This is your captain speaking.’
Harry smiled at the thought of the captain being taken ill during the flight and Miss Carrick running back to ask him for his assistance. How would she react when he told her that he’d served in the British merchant navy and the US army, but never the air force?
The plane taxied on to the runway, but Harry didn’t unlock his briefcase until they were in the air and the captain had turned off the seat-belt sign. He pulled out a thick file, opened it and began to study its contents, as if he was preparing for an exam.
It read like an Ian Fleming novel; the only difference was that he was cast in the role of Commander Bond. As Harry turned the pages, Martinez’s life unfolded in front of him. When he took a break for dinner, he couldn’t help thinking that Emma was right, they should never have allowed Sebastian to go on being involved with this man. It was far too big a risk.
However, he’d agreed with her that if at any time he felt their son’s life was in danger, he would return to London on the next plane with Sebastian sitting beside him. He glanced out of the window. Instead of flying south, he and William Warwick were meant to be on their way up north that morning to begin a book tour. He’d been looking forward to meeting Agatha Christie at the Yorkshire Post literary lunch. Instead, he was heading to South America, hoping to avoid Don Pedro Martinez.
He closed the file, returned it to the briefcase, slid it under the seat and drifted into a light sleep, but ‘the subject’ never left him. By the age of fourteen, Martinez had left school and begun life as an apprentice in a butcher’s shop. He was fired a few months later (reason unknown), and the only skill he took with him was how to dismember a carcase. Within days of becoming unemployed, the subject had drifted into petty crime, including theft, mugging, and raiding slot machines, which ended with him being arrested and sent to prison for six months.
While he was locked up, he shared a cell with Juan Delgado, a minor criminal who’d spent more years behind bars than on the outside. After Martinez had served his sentence, he joined Juan’s gang and quickly became one of his most trusted lieutenants. When Juan was arrested yet again and returned to jail, Martinez was left in charge of his dwindling empire. He was seventeen at the time, the same age as Sebastian, and he looked set for a life of crime. But destiny took an unexpected turn when he fell in love with Consuela Torres, a telephone operator who worked on the international exchange. However, Consuela’s father, a local politician who was planning to run for mayor of Buenos Aires, made it clear to his daughter that he didn’t want a petty criminal as a son-in-law.
Consuela ignored her father’s advice, married Pedro Martinez, and gave birth to four children, in the correct South American order, three boys followed by a girl. Martinez finally gained his father-in-law’s respect when he raised the necessary cash to fund his victorious election campaign for mayor.
Once the mayor had taken up residence in city hall, there were no municipal contracts that didn’t pass through Martinez’s hands, always with an added 25 per cent ‘service charge’. However, it wasn’t long before the subject became bored with both Consuela and local politics, and began to expand his interests when he worked out that a European war meant there would be endless opportunities for those who could claim neutrality.
Although Martinez was naturally inclined to support the British, it was the Germans who offered him the opportunity to turn his small fortune into a large one.
The Nazi regime needed friends who could deliver, and although the subject was only twenty-two when he first turned up in Berlin with an empty order book, he left a couple of months later with demands for everything from Italian pipelines to a Greek oil tanker. Whenever he attempted to close a deal, the subject would make it known that he was a close friend of Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, and had met Herr Hitler himself on several occasions.
For the next ten years, the subject slept in aeroplanes and on ships, trains, buses and once even a horse and cart, as he travelled around the world, ticking off a long list of German requirements.
His meetings with Himmler became more frequent. Towards the end of the war, when an Allied victory looked inevitable and the Reichsmark collapsed, the SS leader began paying the subject in cash; crisp English five-pound notes, hot off the Sachsenhausen press. The subject would then cross the border and bank the money in Geneva, where it was converted into Swiss francs.
Long before the war had ended, Don Pedro had amassed a fortune. But it was not until the Allies were within striking distance of the German capital that Himmler offered him the opportunity of a lifetime. The two men shook hands on the deal, and the s
ubject left Germany with twenty million pounds in forged five-pound notes, his own U-boat, and a young lieutenant from Himmler’s personal staff. He never set foot in the fatherland again.
On his arrival back in Buenos Aires, the subject purchased an ailing bank for fifty million pesos, hid his twenty million pounds in the vaults, and waited for the surviving members of the Nazi hierarchy to turn up in Buenos Aires and cash in their retirement policy.
The ambassador stared down at the ticker tape machine as it clattered away in the far corner of his office.
A message was being sent direct from London. But as with all Foreign Office directives, he would need to read between the lines, because everyone knew that the Argentinian secret service would be getting the message at the same time, in an office just a hundred yards up the road.
Peter May, the captain of the England cricket team, will be opening the batting on the first day of the Lord’s Test match this Saturday at ten o’clock. I have two tickets for the match, and I hope Captain May will be able to join you.
The ambassador smiled. He was well aware, as was any English schoolboy, that Test matches always began at 11.30 a.m on a Thursday, and that Peter May didn’t open the batting. But then, Britain had never been at war with a nation that played cricket.
‘Have we met before, old chap?’
Harry quickly closed the file and looked up at a middle-aged man who clearly lived on ‘expenses’ lunches. He was clinging to the headrest of the empty seat next to him with one hand, while holding a glass of red wine in the other.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Harry.
‘I could have sworn we had,’ the man said, peering down at him. ‘Perhaps I’ve mistaken you for someone else.’
Harry heaved a sigh of relief when the man shrugged and walked unsteadily back towards his seat at the front of the cabin. He was just about to open the file again and continue his background study of Martinez, when the man turned round and made his way slowly back towards him.
‘Are you famous?’
Harry laughed. ‘That’s most unlikely. As you can see, I’m a BOAC pilot, and have been for the past twelve years.’
‘You don’t come from Bristol then?’
‘No,’ said Harry, sticking to his new persona. ‘I was born in Epsom, and I now live in Ewell.’
‘It will come to me in a moment who you remind me of.’ Once again the man set off back to his seat.
Harry reopened the file, but like Dick Whittington the man turned a third time, before he had a chance to read even another line. This time he picked up Harry’s captain’s hat and collapsed into the seat beside him. ‘You don’t write books, by any chance?’
‘No,’ said Harry even more firmly, as Miss Carrick appeared carrying a tray of cocktails. He raised his eyebrows and gave her what he hoped was a ‘please rescue me’ look.
‘You remind me of an author who comes from Bristol, but I’m damned if I can remember his name. Are you sure you’re not from Bristol?’ He took a closer look, before releasing a cloud of cigarette smoke in Harry’s face.
Harry saw Miss Carrick opening the door of the cockpit.
‘It must be an interesting life, being a pilot—’
‘This is your captain speaking. We are about to experience some turbulence, so would all passengers please return to their seats and fasten their seat belts.’
Miss Carrick reappeared in the cabin and walked straight to the back of the first-class section.
‘I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but the captain has requested that all passengers—’
‘Yes, I heard him,’ said the man, hauling himself up, but not before he’d blown another cloud of smoke in Harry’s direction. ‘It’ll come to me, who you remind me of,’ he said, before making his way slowly back to his seat.
36
DURING THE SECOND leg of the journey to Buenos Aires, Harry completed the file on Don Pedro Martinez.
After the war, the subject bided his time in Argentina, sitting on a mountain of cash. Himmler had committed suicide before coming to trial at Nuremberg, while six of the henchmen on his list were sentenced to death. Eighteen more were sent to prison, including Major Bernhard Krüger. No one came knocking at Don Pedro’s door claiming their life insurance.
Harry turned the page to find that the next section of the file was devoted to the subject’s family. He rested for some time before he continued.
Martinez had four children. His first born, Diego, was expelled from Harrow after tying a new boy to a boiling-hot radiator. He returned to his native land, without an O level to his name, where he joined his father and, three years later, graduated with honours in crime. Although Diego wore pinstriped, double-breasted suits tailored in Savile Row, he would have spent most of his time in a prison uniform if his father hadn’t had countless judges, police officers and politicians on his payroll.
His second son, Luis, immatured from boy to playboy during one summer vacation on the Riviera. He now spent most of his waking hours at the roulette tables in Monte Carlo, gambling with his father’s five-pound notes in an attempt to earn them back in a different currency.
Whenever Luis had a good run, a flood of Monegasque Francs would find their way into Don Pedro’s account in Geneva. But it still annoyed Martinez that the casino was making a better return than he was.
The third child, Bruno, was not a chip off the old block, as he displayed far more of his mother’s qualities than his father’s shortcomings, although Martinez was happy to remind his London friends that he had a son who would be going up to Cambridge in September.
Little was known about the fourth child, Maria-Theresa, who was still at Roedean, and always spent the holidays with her mother.
Harry stopped reading when Miss Carrick set up a dinner table for him, but even during the meal, the damn man lingered in his mind.
During the years after the war, Martinez set about building up his bank’s resources. The Family Farmers Friendly Bank operated accounts for those clients who possessed land but not money. Martinez’s methods were crude but effective. He would loan farmers any amount of money they required, at exorbitant interest rates, as long as the loans were covered by the value of the farmers’ land.
If customers were unable to make their quarterly payment, they received a foreclosure notice, giving them ninety days to clear the entire debt. If they failed to do so, and almost all of them did, the deeds for the land were confiscated by the bank, and added to the vast acreage Martinez had already accumulated. Anyone who complained received a visit from Diego, who reshaped their face; so much cheaper and more effective than employing lawyers.
The only thing that might have undermined the avuncular cattle baron image Martinez had worked so hard to cultivate in London was the fact that his wife Consuela finally came to the conclusion that her father had been right all along, and sued for divorce. As the proceedings took place in Buenos Aires, Martinez told anyone in London who asked, that Consuela had sadly died of cancer, thus turning any possible social stigma into sympathy.
After Consuela’s father failed to be re-elected as mayor – Martinez had backed the opposition candidate – she ended up living in a village a few miles outside Buenos Aires. She received a monthly allowance, which didn’t allow her many shopping trips in the capital, and no possibility of travelling abroad. And sadly for Consuela, only one of her sons showed any interest in keeping in touch with her, and he now lived in England.
Only one person who was not a member of the Martinez family warranted his own page in Harry’s file: Karl Ramirez, whom Martinez employed as a butler/handyman. Although Ramirez had an Argentinian passport, he bore a striking resemblance to one Karl Otto Lunsdorf, a member of the 1936 German Olympic wrestling team who later became a lieutenant in the SS, specializing in interrogation. Ramirez’s paperwork was as impressive as Martinez’s five-pound notes, and almost certainly came from the same source.
Miss Carrick cleared away the dinner tray and offered Captain May brandy a
nd a cigar, which he politely declined, after thanking her for the turbulence. She smiled.
‘Turned out not to be quite as bad as the captain had originally thought,’ she said, masking a grin. ‘He asked me to let you know that, if you’re staying at the Milonga, you’d be most welcome to join us on the BOAC bus, which would allow you to avoid Mr Bolton’ – Harry raised an eyebrow – ‘the man from Bristol, who’s absolutely convinced he’s met you somewhere before.’
Harry couldn’t help noticing that Miss Carrick had glanced at his left hand more than once, on which a pale band of skin clearly indicated that a wedding ring had been removed. Captain Peter May had been divorced from his wife Angela for just over two years. They had two children: Jim, aged ten, who was hoping to go to Epsom College, and Sally, aged eight, who had her own pony. He even had a photograph of them to prove it. Harry had handed his ring to Emma for safe keeping just before he departed. Something else she didn’t approve of.
‘London has asked me to make an appointment to see a Captain Peter May at ten o’clock tomorrow morning,’ said the ambassador.
His secretary made a note in the diary. ‘Will you require any background notes on Captain May?’
‘No, because I haven’t a clue who he is, or why the Foreign Office wants me to see him. Just be sure to bring him straight to my office the moment he arrives.’
Harry waited until the last passenger had disembarked before he joined the crew. After he’d been checked through customs, he walked out of the airport to find a minibus waiting at the kerb.
The driver placed his suitcase in the baggage hold as Harry climbed on board to be greeted by a smiling Miss Carrick.
‘May I join you?’ he asked.
‘Yes, of course,’ she replied, moving over to make room for him.
‘My name’s Peter,’ he said as they shook hands.
‘Annabel. What brings you to Argentina?’ she asked as the bus made its way into the city.