The Knight´s Legacy

The SS Hitmen

The lethargy of the journey had taken over all the occupants of the truck, and the fatigue overcame them. Horstmann, which had remained awake with great effort, opened partially eyes, inspected his companions in particular to the presumed SS and decided that it was time to act. He took his bag of belongings and approaching quietly to the rear end of the truck, waited a few seconds until the vehicle slowed at a curve and then jumped into the void. The Colonel landed on the hard Patagonian soil which received him inclemently, crushing his right arm and pulling a whimper from him; immediately and overcoming the pain produced by the fall, Horstmann rose and ran searching the cover of the hard and dry bushes that covered the landscape. His goal was to run cross-country perpendicular to the route of the vehicle and put the maximum distance with it.

 He had traveled about 200 kilometers westwards, sometimes walking through the arid plateau, at other times carried by people travelling in some occasional car or chariot drawn by horses, who accepted to transport him for free without asking questions, which also would have been impossible for language reasons. He was surprised the willingness and good disposition of those simple peasants, taking into account his appearance that after four days of flight was hardly apt to inspire confidence. A peculiar sense of hospitality encouraged the inhabitants of those remote solitary places to help an outsider with unusual clothes and manners.

He had avoided entering the city of San Antonio Oeste, then a small town, to avoid finding  men who would probably be following his steps, perhaps determined to eliminate him. Although he could not be sure of their intentions, since he suspected the presence of former members of the SS and the Gestapo coming out of the submarines he would assume that they would be aware of his research in Antarctica and would be hostile. A rising paranoia started to seize Horstmann and accompanied him for a long time; its effects were perhaps disquieting but functional to his fugitive status.

He had also set aside the town of Valcheta, but was extremely tired and had exhausted his provisions. The slow truck packed with tools that was now carrying him now approached a village called Nahuel Niyeu.

Horstmann arrived very fatigued to the village. Days of sleeping in the wilderness, with his eyes partially open to avoid attacks from his assumed pursuers, bandits or wild animals, were producing their cumulative effect and his body and mind demanded him to rest. In his elementary Spanish he asked for a hostel and someone the "Post of Mustafa" at some 50 meters from the main street of the village. There he asked a room to the owner, a fat Syrian who led him to one of the two available rooms in the back part of the House, with a window onto a back patio, beyond which there was a chicken coop, a crumbling wiring, and then the broad field with a forest of lengas, typical Patagonic tree. Exhausted, he lay dressed in bed, despite his previous determination to seize the opportunity to bathe in the tub and immediately fell asleep. Such was his fatigue, which did not have any dream, despite the travails of his subconscious.

He woke up uneasy in the middle of the night, after several hours of deep sleep. Something had triggered the sense of acute self-preservation that had become his second nature. Although he didn't know that it was he sharpened the hearing and sight in the total darkness. He heard a few distant noises, which soon he associated with a car stopping at a distance with its engine running. His brain, still sleepy, told him the incongruity of a car in that remote place and at that time. Some friction on the  corridor leading to his room ended up waking him. He took his bag and his jacket, opened the grimy window slowly and without noise and jumped into the courtyard. The hen House poultry, suddenly awakened by the intruder began to cluck desperately, and a few shouts in German behind showed him that someone had entered his room. Without worrying about making noise anymore Horstmann crossed the courtyard running , jumped over the wiring and ran towards the dark Grove without looking back. The men who followed him shouted warning about his escape and two shots sounded in the night. He felt an acute and excruciating pain in his right arm but he kept running until he  could reach a canyon or stream dry bed. There he twisted to the left along the bed of the ravine, which continued until it was transformed into a sandy area. Horstmann then  took a random direction going cross-country trusting to mislead his pursuers. He ran  still a long way, with an arm immobilized and sore, until he believed to be momentarily safe, then stopped panting on a fallen log, in order to recover breath and remained on it a few minutes. When he set to return to flight, his eyes saw at the nascent dawn light a solid figure standing very close and staring at him. His heart stopped as he recognized the alleged SS of the truck and despite the shadows glimpsed a weapon in the hand of the subject. The man approached him and spoke in German.

“We finally found you, Herr Oberst. You are a very slippery.”

“Who are you and why are chasing me?

“The first thing you have the right to know. I am the Petty Officer Hans Scheid of the  SS as you may have possibly guessed. I can't answer the second thing because I don't know. I just have orders from my boss to eliminate you.”

“Who is your boss?”

“The Colonel Kurt Grobel, also of the SS. Well, please understand that I have to do it. Es tut mir leid.” 

Having said this the man raised his gun and aimed at Horstmann´s chest. At that distance he could not fail; Horstmann closed his eyes.

A boom resonated in the desert, echoing in remote hills. Horstmann, amazed to find himself alive opened his eyes and glimpsed in the shadows that Scheid was collapsing slowly. Immediately the adrenaline was put back to work and he ran until he fell into a dark long ditch covered a scrubland. Among its  branches he could distinguish two men with long weapons that were approaching the body lying in the dust. It was too far to hear the conversation between them, which in any case he would not have understood.

“Juan, this one dead.” Said the lowest in Spanish, .

“Display the men and look for the Colonel.” answered the man called Juan. The other returned to the shadows to comply with the order.

Juan Williams and his friend Nahualkir commanded a game of trackers that were following Horstmann´s footsteps since the arrival of the submarine, which had not gone unnoticed, with the task of carrying him as far as possible alive to their contacts on the coast. From there someone would pull him out of the Argentine territory by sea.

With the darkness of the night Horstmann could pass unnoticed beside the men who were looking for him. Despite not having understood the conversation, he had captured the gist of its content. An hour after he stopped exhausted behind a rock. He looked over it and with relief checked that no one was following him. Just then he worried about his wound. The bullet had grazed the arm producing a tearing of the flesh. The Colonel tore off a piece of his shirt long skirts and covered the wound and at the same time forming a kind of tourniquet.

Now he had clarified their doubts: his paranoia had not deceived him, he was actually being followed, his stalkers were German, they were ex members of the SS and it was evident that they sought to kill him. No doubt the owner of the Inn had betrayed him but to do so it was necessary that the pursuers had spread the word that they wanted to find him, and possibly offered some reward for his whereabouts. The men that  had miraculously arrived in time to save him from the execution by Scheid probably worked somehow for the British and he  could not trust them either. Therefore his only alternative was to hide permanently. Although he was not a man to complain, he reviewed his sad plight. Alone, almost penniless in a strange country of which he did not even know the language, without contacts or friends, and pursued by ruthless men who wanted to silence him. His original follow plan heading West towards the area of San Carlos de Bariloche, in which he had heard there were settlers of German and Swiss origin with whom he therefore could understand should however be ruled out. Surely his chasers had armed their networks there. He decided to set course to the South and then to the West, through immense desolate plateaus of  which he lacked even maps or driving directions. The idyllic arrival at the cove full of flamingoes had become to Colonel Heinz Horstmann a never-ending nightmare.