Roberto nodded pensively. In the closing stages of the war, the Allied pressure on the few remaining German-controlled ports had beenferocious. Ramón’s description perfectly fit a submarine that had narrowly survived a depth charge. To have made it as far as the Rías Baixas was a feat in itself.
Ramón took another puff on his cigar. “One of the officers spoke a bit of Spanish, and he told my father and Orlando Freire that they were aiming for Argentina. While the three of them were talking, a group of men came out on deck for some air. They had different uniforms from all the rest. Apparently, they had skulls embroidered on their collars. Know what that means?”
Roberto swallowed hard. The so-called “ratlines” that had operated toward the end of the war were escape routes used by large numbers of senior Nazi officers to get to South America and thereby evade justice. There were dozens of known cases but not many firsthand accounts, and here was this man suddenly offering up a description of one such escape.
“They were short of everything.” Ramón tapped the cigar in the ashtray. “Medicines, food, and especially fuel. There would be no crossing the Atlantic without that.”
“And they requested it from your father and Orlando.”
“They didn’t request it.” He shook his head. “They wanted to buy it. They gave them each a one-hundred-gram gold bar to ensure their silence, and promised them much more if they could get them what they needed.”
“And did they?”
“Of course not!” laughed Ramón. “My father and Orlando Freire were poor as anything, and they lived on a remote island. Where were they going to get medicines, supplies, or thousands of gallons of fuel? This was Spain after the civil war we’re talking about. Everything was thin on the ground.”
“I see. And I guess they didn’t notify the authorities either.”
“The authorities would just have confiscated the gold and thrown them in jail.”
“So they kept it a secret and didn’t tell anyone.”
“Well, they did a bit more than that.” Ramón stubbed out the cigar now, crushing it in the bowl of the ashtray with three dabs of the wrist. “They came up with a plan to get their hands on the rest of the gold that was in that submarine.”
“They what?”
“It was a perfect chance to escape a life of poverty.” Ramón leaned back in his armchair. “They were tough men, accustomed to hardship, but they were also used to seizing chances when they came along. And this, without any doubt, was the best opportunity they’d ever had in their lives.”
“Wait a moment,” said Roberto. “Are you telling me that your father and Rosalía Freire’s father stole gold from a bunch of fleeing Nazis?”
“Even better than that.”
“Go on . . .”
“It’s very simple,” he said. “They took them all out.”
22
The Cell Tower
For a long time, the only thing to break the silence was the roaring of the storm outside and the rattling of the window as it was buffeted by the wind. Roberto looked at Ramón Docampo agog, simply unable to believe his ears.
“What do you mean, took them all out?” he eventually managed to say. “You’re kidding, surely.”
“It was the only way.” Ramón shrugged. “As I said, those were hard times.”
“How did they do it? It was two men against a whole crew, plus whoever else was on board. It wouldn’t have been easy.”
“On the contrary. Later that day, Orlando and my father crossed to the south of the islet, where the submarine was waiting for them. They took the largest cooking pot they’d been able to get their hands on, full of fish stew, freshly made.”
“They brought them a meal ...”
“Seasoned with a whole packet of strychnine, the stuff used in rat poison.”
“They poisoned them!” Roberto was wide eyed. “But that’s ... awful!”
“Oh, hardly,” Ramón said, quite blithely. “Think about it. Most of the passengers on that sub were war criminals; it isn’t as if they didn’t deserve it. They must have racked up goodness knows how many deaths among them. As for the crew, well ... it was war; death was part and parcel. Just a few more for the grim reaper’s tally.”
“Even so, it’s abhorrent,” protested Roberto. “How could they just take the law into their own hands, and decide to keep the gold too?”
