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Safer Refuge. Fact, fantasy or a mixture of both, the tale spun by Farago was undeniably fascinating. Bormann, he said, left the Führerbunker for safer refuge in another nearby bunker that had been prepared by Nazi Executioner Adolf Eichmann. According to Farago, Bormann later used clerical clothes supplied by an Austrian bishop to reach Bavaria, then moved on to Northern Italy to visit his fatally ill wife in Merano. After his wife died, Bormann lived in a Dominican monastery in Bolzano, awaiting a chance to flee to Argentina where he had stored a fortune in currency, precious stones and gold, much of which had been extracted from the teeth of gas-chamber victims. Bormann, said Farago, had consigned the hoard to Argentina by U-boat before the war ended. The fugitive Nazi finally reached Argentina in 1948 through the assistance of Eva Perón, who used contacts in the Vatican to get him a passport issued under the ironical Jewish name of Eliezer Goldstein. For making Bormann feel at home in Argentina, Farago claimed, Dictator Juan Perón extracted from Bormann's booty a ransom of nearly $200 million.
According to Farago, Bormann lived comfortably in Argentina for seven years, acting as a sort of "Godfather" to other Nazi refugees, including Eichmann. But in 1955, when Perón lost power, Bormann no longer felt safe. He fled to Brazil and Bolivia, where he seemed to lead a checkered existence. At one stage, Farago had him visiting "prurient nightclubs"; at another, the fugitive Nazi posed as a priest and took part in baptisms, weddings and funerals. In 1960, Bormann moved again—this time to Chile. He bought a farm near Valdivia or Linares (Farago varied the location), close to the Argentine border, and turned it into an armed fortress, complete with antiaircraft gun. From this stronghold, wrote Farago, Bormann regained control of his funds in Argentina and began to build a business empire with Mafia-type takeovers of legitimate businesses. Among other things, Farago added, Bormann gained a monopoly on the timber market in Northern Argentina and Southern Paraguay.
Bormann, who is 72 if he is alive, was depicted as being frequently on the move, sometimes out of fear and sometimes simply on business trips, but always accompanied by his chauffeur-bodyguard, "a German-speaking Chilean of Irish descent," Jorge O'Higgins. Bormann wears plastic gloves, said Farago, so that his fingerprints can never be taken, and had a mistress in Santiago who bore him four children. As of a few weeks ago, Farago contended, Bormann was back in Argentina, in Salta province, living in "a cottage on the Rancho Grande, the vast estate of Arndt von Bohlen und Halbach, last scion of the Krupp family." Like so much of Farago's other material, this episode included authentic-sounding detail, stating, for instance, that Bormann's attentive host was the estate's manager, a naturalized Turk. But too many of the details do not stand up to examination. Arndt von Bohlen und Halbach does not own any ranch in Argentina. Al-fried Krupp's sister, Waldtraut Burckhardt, does own one in Salta province but it is called Finca Ampascachi, not Rancho Grande. The manager is a German, not a naturalized Turk.