No. 1: It All Started Here.

It was a morning in the mid to late 1990s – I can’t remember exactly what year. I was reading The Wall Street Journal over my morning coffee when I saw this piece on page one, where the WSJ generally put offbeat stories.  

The Journal loved to use puns in headlines for these kinds of stories, and this was no exception: 

“Someone Is Holding Juan Perón’s Hands: No Suspects Fingered.”

The subhead amplified the intrigue:

“New Theory in Bizarre Case. Concerns Missing Millions; A String of Odd Deaths.”

I read on to learn that in 1987 persons unknown broke into Juan Perón’s crypt in Chacarita Cemetery outside of Buenos Aires. They surgically amputated his hands and absconded with them. At the time the article was written, the hands had not been recovered – and the thieves had not been identified.

Stoking my interest even more, the article reported that several people investigating the theft had died mysteriously within weeks of launching their probe. There was also speculation that the hands were somehow connected to the millions of dollars in loot that Perón had allowed Nazis to ship into Argentina during and after WWII – much of which remained missing.

The story hooked me, and I immediately had a gnawing feeling that it might even inspire a novel.  After all, people loved books based on little-known Nazi plots. Two of my favorites were The Odessa File and The Boys from Brazil.  

I was swamped at the time with my advertising work, so I filed the clipping away – thinking I might explore the subject further someday when I had more time.

More time came in the year 2000. Friends from Northern California were taking a year’s sabbatical from their jobs and moving to Buenos Aires. They invited me and my wife, Linda, to spend the millennium with them.

There was a lot of worry back then that clocks and computers would go screwy when 12:01 am hit on January 1, 2000 – hence my decision to shut down my creative services company for two weeks to get everything fixed after New Year’s. Since we had the time and Linda and I had never been to Buenos Aires, we decided to take our friends up on their invitation.