Huerta had promised the presidency to Felix Diaz. In order to get him out of the way he sent Diaz to negotiate a Japanese understanding. The United States gently diverted Señor Diaz from his mission. Huerta began to lose the grip he held; three other factionists, Villa, Carranza and Zapata, each at the head of an army, were aiming at his head, and shortly before the world went to war the old rogue fled to Barcelona. There Rintelen negotiated with him in February, 1915, and out of their conferences grew a plan to restore him to the Mexican presidency. This plan would have meant war between Mexico and the United States, which was precisely what von Rintelen and his Wilhelmstrasse friends desired: American forces would have to be mobilized at the Rio Grande, and American munitions, destined for the Allies, would have to be commandeered and diverted to Mexico. The aged general arrived in New York in April, and was interviewed and photographed. He told the public through the newspapers that he proposed to acquire an estate on Long Island and the public considered it not inauspicious that the veteran warrior should have come to pass the remainder of his stormy life in the world's most peaceful country. Fortunately for the peace of the United States not every one believed him. Within a week of his arrival von Rintelen slipped into New York. He placed in the Havana branch of the Deutsches Bank and in banks in Mexico City some $800,000 to Huerta's credit, and within a short time the political jackals who lived on foreign subsidy began to prick up their ears. Von Papen and Boy-Ed had made trips to the Mexican border, arranging through their consular agents in the Mexican towns across the river the mobilization of Germans in Mexico, the storing of supplies and ammunition, and the deposit of funds in banks at Brownsville, El Paso, San Antonio and Douglas. Not all Mexicans in the United States were Huertistas, however, and one Raphael Nieto, Assistant-Secretary of Finance to Carranza, was quite as eager to follow Huerta's activities as were the agents of the United States. The Carranzistas joined forces with the Secret Service and found out that the plot had already begun to develop.