Best Kept Secret (The Clifton Chronicles, #3)(93)

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 subject 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?’