CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

Vicinity of the Bariloche Train and Bus Terminals, 1622 the same day

Antoine found a group of Porteños squatting among their belongings waiting for their train to the outskirts of Bariloche—Rio Negro Province. He insidiously insinuated himself into the group, avoiding physical or verbal contact as much as possible. He kept the brim of his cap down to hide his eyes and pretended to be asleep. In common with other Third World countries, the periphery of San Carlos de Bariloche included poorly integrated areas which encroached upon the rural settlements with their antiquarian ways. The poverty and constantly increasing ramshackle buildings inadequate to provide the shelter and privacy needed of the rural and the urban groups sometimes fomented violent interactions. Only four months of the year could be considered to have pleasant climatic conditions which aggravated the interrelations among the more or less permanent residents. It was four-thirty when he became aware of a series of incidents taking place in and around the two stations. The small commotions—which were commonplace among the Porteños—produced almost negligible interest–let alone disruption–among the men and women sitting or squatting, smoking, and snacking; so, there was no general excitement.

But to Antoine’s trained and anxiety-enhanced eye and mind—now at a considerably heightened level of focus—there was dismay. In two separate scuffles, he saw small groups of very fit men wrestle down Rolf Kohns and Clause Fischer and drag them into alleys close at hand. His first impulse was to race to their aid, but his rational mind forbade him to do so. As he watched the minor dramas, he saw Serge Rounsavall, Hugues Beauchamp, Jérôme Christophe Mailhot, and Willibald Movius enter Pullman buses and saw the buses pull out of the station. He presumed that Berthold Küppers should now be considered a casualty—if not a KIA—and had to be written off along with Rolf and Clause.

“Worse,” he muttered to himself, “the three men possess vital secrets which could bring all of the rest of us five Gebirgsjägers down.”

He and his remaining men were not out of danger yet—not by a long shot. Serge, Hugues, Jérôme, and Willibald watched the same scene and felt equally helpless. It was rapidly becoming an every-man-for-himself situation.

After an excruciating delay to get a new steward on the Via Bariloche bus, Antoine’s escape vehicle pulled out and made its way onto Highway 213 headed west towards the border. He knew that a man who had not been through all of the trials that he had might have gone out to save his men, but he could not afford to take the chance. He bid a mental farewell and set his face towards Puerto Varas.

It was almost twenty past four when the Mossad members of the Project Save the Generals arrived in the station area. They had to become less careful of risks and more assertive if this was not to become an almost complete loss with all the consequences. Moises mentally begged someone, somewhere, to supply a solution and quickly.

While he mused, he became more convinced that all of the criminals had successfully fled the area, if not even the jurisdiction. Enos walked past an alley and happened to see two men changing their clothes. That was altogether suspicious; so, he decided to walk up to the two and demand to see identification as if he were a policeman. It was a bluff, and he knew it. But he needed to have time to have his team catch up. He believed it would not be long before the two found a ride and disappeared.

“Hey, you, what are you doing? Come out where I can see you.”

His voice carried all the sound of authority despite that he was nothing but a spy and an assassin. It would go very badly for him if he were to be caught. He fingered the L-pill in his front pocket.

Rolf spotted him and casually stepped up to the intruder and asked, “What’s the problem, Officer?”

“The department is searching for several criminal fugitives. You were changing your clothes in the back of that alley which makes you seem suspicious. Show me your papers quickly; so, I can be on my way.”

Rolf debated for a moment, but his options were very limited. He thought about bulldozing over the smaller man facing him and running away or alternatively of wrestling him to the ground and killing him. His other option was to bluff his way out. He trusted the ODESSA’s papers; they looked completely authentic to him. He showed the officer his passport. Enos did not care whether the papers were genuine or not. He had hit the jackpot. There in his hands was proof positive that he had the right man. The name—Guglielmo Pardini—on the passport matched up with the name of the Nazi war criminal, Rolf Kohns. The passport photo was also a dead giveaway.

“I need you and your friends to come with me. We will have some questions for you at the station. Do I need to put cuffs on you, Sr. Pardini?”

“What cause have you to arrest me?” Rolf demanded.

“No arrest, sir. We simply need to have you answer some questions at headquarters. Your cooperation in this matter will be in your favor if anything improper should ever be brought forward about you.”

The other man—Clause Fischer—was attentive to the interaction between Rolf and the police officer. He knew they could not spend any more time chatting; if the cop committed to putting cuffs on Rolf, their chances for escape would evaporate. He moved closer, as unobtrusively as possible.

Rolf caught a glimpse of Clause in the corner of his peripheral vision. He gave Clause a quick glance and a nod then returned his attention back to the officer. He calculated his chances of overpowering the smaller man—with the help of Clause, if necessary—and they were good. He outweighed the officer by probably eighty pounds and was eight inches taller. He had had combat experience, and he doubted that the small man had never been in a real fight. Besides, he had big, slow, but powerfully-built Clause on his side. The odds were completely in his favor.

Rolf was wrong on all points of his calculations. He plunged ahead to grab the small cop in a powerful bear hug. Enos was ready. His other job—when he was not out stalking Nazi war criminals—was being the main instructor in Krav Maga for the IDF [Israel Defense Forces], in the Institute in Tel Aviv. Rolf found himself flat on his back and unable to catch his breath on the filthy pavement of the alley.

Clause flung himself at Enos, but instead of landing a powerful roundhouse punch to the face of the smaller man, he caught a stone-hard pointed elbow to his delicate nose before he was upended by a quick and accurate leg sweep. He landed on his back, and Enos chopped his Adam’s Apple with a flat fist blow that caused the much larger man to believe he was going to suffocate.

Manny, Aaron, and Lev quickly joined Enos, swarming over the two barely conscious Gebirgsjägers, trussing them up and gagging them with well-practiced efficiency. In less than a minute, the two were sitting on the floor of a large tourist bus trying to regain their wits. Lev left Aaron to guard the two fugitives, and he and Manny exited the bus to continue the search for the rest of the elusive war criminals. One of the ODESSA men drove the escape bus quickly out of the area. The search—which lasted less than an hour—proved to be futile. Rather than risk being identified as Mossad, Moises decided to call it off in Bariloche. He made a guess that the Nazis would not stay in the city, even with the large number of fairly fanatical sympathizers.

“The question is,” he said, “did they go north, or did they go south?”

The distances going north were longer, and the number of Nazi sympathizers ready to offer assistance fewer, which made the risks of getting apprehended worse. He had limited manpower but an adult lifetime of experience to make his hunches better than most men’s objective reasoning.

“South,” he said.

“Shorter distance, more stops, narrow country. They may be in a lorry or a car, but they were not likely to be able to get taxis willing to cross the border or to find a fast traveling bus. We don’t have to worry about the niceties of bus travel. We can drive at twice the speed of the tourist bus to the border and then set up ambushes in towns along the way,” said Davido.

“Puerto Varas or Porto Montt are the best choices for the Nazis,” said Gavriel. “I’ve been studying the maps of Patagonia for the last ten days. They have to get to an airport in Chile, hoping that they are not expected there or that they have good enough papers to get them on a plane and back to Europe or even the US”

“I agree,” said Moises. “Let’s go ahead on that presumption and try and get to Puerto Varas first. From there we can call back and see if the police or INTERPOL have heard of any older military-looking men getting off anywhere down the line. We’ll leave a couple of men in Puerto Varas; and the rest of us can go to Port Montt and see if our fugitives were able to get on a ferry, ship, or a boat. I think that will tighten the net the most.”

Lev told the rest that he was not so sure, but at least the plan included immediate action, and that was the kind of solution he like best. All of the agents of Project Save the Generals agreed that it was the most logical direction and plan. Since Argentina is huge—almost 2,500 miles long and more than 620 miles wide—they would have the advantage of a narrower search area in Chile, but their work would still be considerable. Chile occupies a land mass more than triple the length of the state of California and almost four times the length of Italy. The saving grace for the project officers was that Chile is a long but very narrow country; it has an average width of only about 110 miles, with a maximum of 217 miles at Antofagasta and a minimum of 9.6 miles near Puerto Natales.

At the Argentina/Chile border station located at Paso Cardenal Antonio Samoré, the buses carrying the fugitives and the ones carrying the pursuing agents had to wait in a long tedious line while uncaring customs agents scrutinized the identification papers of every passenger in every vehicle and questioned vigorously whether anyone was carrying any forbidden food products such as peanuts, almonds, trail mix, cheese, raw meat, yogurt, clove garlic, or fresh vegetables or fruit. All of the men involved were Europeans and were finding that crossing this isolated border was a considerably more lengthy process than they were used to in Europe. The fugitives were sweating from the stress and fear of being surprised by the agents coming after them, and the agents were worried that their quarries would be long gone by the time they were able to cross into Chile. Moises and his agents had stopped for a quick check in Villa La Angostura, just eighteen and a half miles from the crossing. No one had seen anyone matching the descriptions and photo arrays the agents showed them.

The border crossing is located at an altitude of almost 4,300 feet—low by comparison to many of the other crossings—making it one of the easiest of the Argentina/Chile passes and even had a paved road part of the way. The agents’ bus was jammed between two Tas Choapa buses, and the fugitives had to wait impatiently with a view of the front end of one Via Bariloche bus and the back end of a Tas Choapa bus. Beyond the border crossing, the fugitives crossed the Cordillera de Los Andes from Argentiina to Chile and passed through a fairly barren region with leafless tall trees in a partially inhabited part of Chile with more than an hour’s head start on their pursuers. They traveled gradually west down the lower elevations, further along passing into a country of mountains, lush forests, and lakes.