“Has Mayor [Major] Delgano come up recently?” Martín asked.
“Haven’t seen him, mi Coronel.”
“Do me a favor. Call El Palomar, and see if and when he’s landed out there. If he hasn’t, call Campo de Mayo, and see if he’s taken off from there, and if not, why not.”
El Palomar (literally, “The Dove”) was Buenos Aires’s civilian airport. Campo de Mayo, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, was the country’s most important military base, and the Army Air Service kept a fleet of aircraft there.
“Sí, mi Coronel.”
“If I ask Señora Mazza to do it, they give her the runaround,” Martín said. “They’ll tell you.”
Señora Mazza was the private secretary to the Director of the Bureau of Internal Security. It was said, not entirely as a joke, that she knew more of Argentina’s military secrets than any half-dozen generals.
Attiria chuckled.
“Anyone dumb enough to give her the runaround will suddenly find himself up to his ass in ice and penguin shit in Ushuaia,” he said. “I’ll let you know what I find out.”
Because of its isolation and bitterly cold weather, Ushuaia, in Tierra del Fuego, at the southern—Cape Horn—tip of South America, was regarded as the worst possible place to be stationed.
Martín smiled at him, then walked down the wide, polished marble corridor. Near its end, hanging over a standard office door, was a sign reading, “Ethical Standards Office.”
The corridor ended fifty feet farther down, at a pair of twelve-foot-high double doors, suspended in a molded bronze door frame. On them was lettered, in gold, “Office of the Director, Bureau of Internal Security.”
At the moment, there was no Director.
In Martín’s judgment, El Almirante Francisco Montoya, the former Director, had done a magnificent—and nearly successful—job of straddling the fence between supporting the government of President Ramón S. Castillo and the Grupo de Oficiales Unidos (GOU), which had, under El Coronel (Retired) Jorge Guillermo Frade, been planning its overthrow. When the revolution came, it had been far less bloody than it could have been, largely because of the careful planning of el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade. Frade had been determined that the Argentine revolution would not emulate the bloody Spanish Civil War.
Frade himself had been assassinated shortly before the revolution began, and his friend and ally, General de Division (Major General) Arturo Rawson, had stepped into the presidential shoes Frade had been expected to fill. Rawson was a good man, Martín thought. But he was neither as smart nor as tough as Coronel Frade.
He wasn’t alone in this assessment. It was clear to Martín that the Germans had arranged for the assassination of Frade because he was smart enough and strong enough not only to control Argentina but to tilt his nation toward the Anglo-American alliance.
Montoya’s careful neutrality had not sat well with the new Presidente Rawson, and he had ordered Montoya into retirement within an hour of the occupation by the revolutionaries of the Casa Rosada (the Pink House—the seat of government) and the Edificio Libertador.
He had at the same time offered the post to Martín, who had, with some difficulty, managed to turn it down.
As Chief of the Ethical Standards Office of the BIS (an office that made him directly subordinate to the Director), Teniente Coronel Martín had been responsible for keeping an eye on the GOU. Though he had regularly provided Admiral Montoya with intelligence that made the intentions of Frade and the GOU quite clear, Montoya had been unwilling—or unable; he was not a man of strong character—to bring himself to either suppress the revolutionaries or join them.
Shortly before the revolution began—after much thought, some of it prayerful, and for reasons he really hoped were for the good of Argentina—Martín had decided that his duty required him to support the revolutionaries. From that moment, he had worked hard—and at great personal risk—to conceal the plans of the GOU and the names of its members from Admiral Montoya and the Castillo government.
Martín felt little sympathy for Montoya, for he believed that he had failed in his duty as an officer to make a decision based on his oath to defend Argentina against all enemies. As far as Martín was concerned, el Almirante Montoya had made his decision to straddle the fence based on what he considered to be the best interests of Francisco Montoya. He deserved to be retired. Or worse.
But for reasons that were both practical and selfless, Martín did not want to find himself sitting behind the ornately carved Director’s desk as Montoya’s successor.
For one thing, he had told el Presidente Rawson, the position called for a general or flag officer, and he was not even close to being eligible for promotion to General de Brigade (Brigadier General, the junior of the general officer ranks).
Rawson had replied that Martín’s contribution to the revolution had not only been important but was recognized, and that he himself had been especially impressed with Martín’s accurate assessments of the actions various officers in the Castillo government would take when the revolution began. As far as he was concerned, this proved that Martín could take over the Director’s post with no difficulty. And with that in mind, he added, Martín’s promotion to General de Brigade in several months was not out of the question.
Martín had countered by respectfully suggesting that if he were promoted out of turn, and named Director, the resentment from the senior officer corps of both the Army and the Armada would be nearly universal and crippling.
He also believed, but did not tell Rawson, that if he was named Director—with or without a second promotion—it would be only a matter of time before he was forced from the office. The generals—and senior colonels who expected promotion to general officer as a reward for their roles in the revolution—might swallow their disappointment and resentment toward a peer who was given the post, but they would unite against a Director who before the Revolution had been a lowly—and junior—teniente coronel.
That would leave (in what Martín liked to think was an honest evaluation of the situation) no one of his skill and experience to provide the government with the intelligence it needed. And when dealing with the North Americans and the Germans, gathering intelligence should not be left to an amateur.
Six general officers (in addition to two colonels, Perón and Sanchez, who were about to be promoted) considered themselves ideally qualified to be Director, and were vying for the post. No admirals were being considered. The only significant resistance to the revolution had come from the Armada.
Martín believed—but did not tell Presidente Rawson—that any of the eight would be delighted to have as their deputy a qualified intelligence officer who had already been given his prize—his promotion—for his role in the revolution, expected nothing more, and would not pose a threat.
He also did not tell Presidente Rawson that he could better serve Argentina from a position behind the throne of the Director of Internal Security than by sitting in the ornate gilded chair itself, and that he could train whomever was finally appointed to the post, much as he had taught Almirante Montoya, who had come from the School of Naval Engineering and had known nothing about intelligence.