Death and Honor Page 11

  There had been a good many German names and titles in what Frade had said, and Graham realized that Frade had pronounced them correctly and with ease.

  “Where’d you get the German?” Graham asked.

  “Siggy Stein—Sergeant Stein—asked me if I didn’t think I should at least be able to understand some German, so he’s been teaching me.”

  “And doing very well, I must say,” Graham said.

  “There’s not really a hell of a lot to do here on the pampas,” Frade said. “There’s been plenty of time to try to learn German. I want to get back to that— not much to do—but later. Let me finish.”

  “Sorry. Go ahead.”

  “Von Deitzberg, who is smart, tough, and could charm the balls off a brass monkey, decided that maybe the captain of the Reine de la Mer knew something that hadn’t come out about (a) how come the Argentines knew where they were going to try to land all that money; (b) how much, if at all, the gottverdammt Amerikaners involved in (a) . . .”

  Graham smiled at the “goddamned Americans” correctly translated and pronounced in German. Frade smiled back.

  “. . . and (c) how come von Wachtstein, who was in the boat with Grüner and Goltz, didn’t also get his brains blown all over the beach of Samborombón Bay—”

  “We got lucky there, didn’t we?” Graham interrupted.

  “Yeah, we did. I fucked up there big-time; Argentines don’t believe the Scripture that says that vengeance is only the Lord’s. I should have known that Enrico and Sarjento Gómez would not pass up an opportunity to kill the Germans who ordered my father’s murder, tried to murder me, and in the process got Enrico’s sister’s throat slashed. We got lucky that Enrico knew von Wachtstein had nothing to do with my father’s murder and that he’s a friend of mine and, when he saw von Wachtstein in the boat, told Gómez.”

  “I’m as much at fault about what happened on the beach as you are,” Graham said. “I didn’t come to Argentina for the first time yesterday. I know all about their concepts of vengeance and honor. I should have told Sawyer to watch those two.”

  “Which would have made him curious why we wanted von Wachtstein kept alive, and we couldn’t tell him, could we? And even if we had told him that Enrico and Gómez had more on their minds than covering his ass while he was taking pictures, there was nothing Polo could have said or done to stop them.”

  " ’Polo’?”

  “Sawyer. He’s the only one who’s not bored out of his skull here,” Frade said, smiling. “He spends most of his time on horses, swinging a mallet at a willow-wood ball. He’s pretty good; he was a three-goal player before he joined the Army.”

  “Who does he play with?” Graham asked.

  “My father’s polo team. Of which, of course, my father was captain. San Pedro y San Pablo. I call them the Pedro y Pablo Hot Shots.”

  “And how do you explain Sawyer to them?”

  “Well, first of all, they live here. El Patron doesn’t have to explain anything to them. And Sawyer—and the others—are by no means the first people who have been guests here for extended periods while other people were looking for them. If you’re asking, ‘Am I putting the team at risk?’—no. The opposite, I would say. Most of the polo players are supervisors of some kind. Which means they run the gauchos who are my perimeter guard. Nobody gets close to this place without my having at least thirty minutes’—more often an hour’s— warning.”

  “How about from the air?”

  “We don’t get as much warning of somebody flying over,” Frade admitted. “But you would be surprised how far the sound of an aircraft engine carries in the pampas. And that’s not much of a threat anyway. Martín knows what we’re doing here—including that we have the radar—and doesn’t seem to care. What he worries about is my guys being loose in Argentina. So I don’t let them leave the estancia.”

  Graham considered that, nodded, and then said, “Well, you don’t have to worry about Oberst Grüner and Standartenführer Goltz anymore.”

  “What makes you think I was worried about them?”

  “Weren’t you worried they’d have another shot at you?”

  “That’s a given. If the SS-SD guys in the embassy ever have the chance to kill any of us, and one of Martín’s men isn’t actually watching them that moment, they’ll take it. That’s another reason I don’t let anybody leave the estancia. Tony Pelosi’s safer with his diplomatic passport. We don’t try to kill their guys with diplomatic status, and they don’t try to kill ours.”

  “That doesn’t apply to what happened to Grüner and Goltz?”

  “I think the Germans think they were killed by Argentines, getting revenge for my father. The proof seems to be that no Americans at the embassy have been killed, tit-for-tat. I was sort of hoping they’d get Delojo.”

  “Your mouth sometimes—often—runs away with you, Frade. You can’t really mean that.”

  “Yeah, I can. I don’t trust him. You want to hear the rest of this?”

  Graham nodded.

  “Where was I?” Frade said.

  “Where were you? Himmler was sending his adjutant over here masquerading as a Wehrmacht general—”

  “Von Deitzberg,” Frade confirmed, “who decided that somebody reliable should talk to the captain of the Reine de la Mer. So he went to Canaris and Canaris loaned him his liaison officer to the foreign ministry, a submarine officer slash intelligence officer named Boltitz, Korvettenkapitän Karl Boltitz. Boltitz speaks Portuguese, which was important because the captain of the Reine de la Mer didn’t speak German.

  “So off von Deitzberg and Boltitz go to Portugal and talk to the captain of the Reine de la Mer. Boltitz smells a rat about von Wachtstein walking away— actually rowing away, I suppose—from the beach unhurt, but has no proof of anything. Von Deitzberg is very impressed with the way Boltitz has dealt with the Portuguese captain, and with the fact that Boltitz speaks Spanish; he doesn’t. So he goes back to Canaris and tells him that he wants to borrow him a little longer, to take him to Argentina with him. Canaris isn’t happy with that, but von Deitzberg is Himmler’s adjutant, and Canaris decides not to fight.

  “So, off to Argentina, where Boltitz noses around—he’s clever as hell—and finds out that von Wachtstein tipped us off as to where the Reine de la Mer was going to put the money ashore. That he’s the traitor, in other words. Now, here’s where it gets interesting—”

  “Interesting? So far this tale of yours sounds like a screenplay for a cheap spies-and-robbers movie.”

  “Yeah, I know. Let me finish. Now, Boltitz is an officer and a gentleman. His father is a vice admiral. And he knows that so is von Wachtstein—that his father is a generalmajor. Now, when two officers and gentlemen are involved in something like this, there’s a set of rules, based on their code of honor.

  “So Boltitz goes to von Wachtstein and tells him he knows what’s going on, and that he expects von Wachtstein to behave like an officer and a gentleman is supposed to in these kind of situations.”

  “You’re not going to tell me he handed him a pistol with one cartridge and then left him alone?”

  “It was a little more complicated than that,” Frade replied. “Boltitz went to von Wachtstein and told him that if he had a fatal crash—spread himself all over the runway—at El Palomar when he came back from Uruguay, Boltitz would not turn him in; the family’s honor would not be sullied, and his father would not be sent to a concentration camp. And von Wachtstein agreed to do it.”

  “This is so bizarre I’m beginning to believe it,” Graham said.

  “Of course, I’m only a temporary officer and gentleman by act of Congress for the duration plus six months,” Frade said, “but if it had been me . . .”

  Graham chuckled.

  “. . . I’d have said, ‘Heil Hitler, Herr Korvettenkapitän!’ then killed him and tossed his body into the River Plate.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He went to Lutzenberger.”

  “The ambassador?�
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  Frade nodded and said, “Manfred Alois Graf von Lutzenberger, ambassador of the German Reich to the Republic of Argentina.”

  “To confess? What?”

  “Lutzenberger is also one of the good guys,” Frade said. “He and General von Wachtstein went to college together. He knows that von Wachtstein brought a hell of a lot of money here—and is getting more from Switzerland— for after the war.”

  “What do you mean for after the war?”

  “To send back to Germany, after we win the war, to make sure they don’t lose their land.”

  “This General von Wachtstein thinks Germany’s going to lose?”

  Frade nodded, and said, “More than that.”

  “What more than that?”

  “You speak German, right?”

  “I can read and write it, but when I try to speak it, German-speaking people have a hard time trying not to laugh.”

  Frade stood up and walked to the bookcases on one wall of the study. He took a firm grip on a shelf and tugged mightily. With a squeak, a section of the bookcase swung outward, revealing a wall-mounted safe. He worked the combination, spun a large stainless-steel wheel, and pulled the door open. From an inside drawer, he took an envelope and handed it to Graham.

  “No, you can’t have this,” he said. “But I think you should read it. When my father read it, it brought tears to his eyes, and when I read it last week, it did the same thing to me.”

  Graham took the envelope. The lined envelope was fine vellum, and so were the two sheets of paper it held.

  Schloss Wachtstein

  Pomern

  Hansel—

  I have just learned that you have reached Argentina safely, and thus it is time for this letter.

  The greatest violation of the code of chivalry by which I, and you, and your brothers, and so many of the von Wachtsteins before us, have tried to live is of course regicide. I want you to know that before I decided that honor demands that I contribute what I can to such a course of action that I considered all of the ramifications, both spiritual and worldly, and that I am at peace with my decision.

  A soldier’s duty is first to his God, and then to his honor, and then to his country. The Allies in recent weeks have accused the German state of the commission of atrocities on such a scale as to defy description. I must tell you that information has come to me that has convinced me that the accusations are not only based on fact, but are actually worse than alleged.

  The officer corps has failed its duty to Germany, not so much on the field of battle, but in pandering to the Austrian corporal and his cohorts. In exchange for privilege and “honors,” the officer corps, myself included, has closed its eyes to the obscene violations of the Rules of Land Warfare, the Code of Honor, and indeed most of God’s Ten Commandments that have gone on. I accept my share of the responsibility for this shameful behavior.

  We both know the war is lost. When it is finally over, the Allies will, with right, demand a terrible retribution from Germany.

  I see it as my duty as a soldier and a German to take whatever action is necessary to hasten the end of the war by the only possible means now available, eliminating the present head of the government. The soldiers who will die now, in battle, or in Russian prisoner of war camps, will be as much victims of the officer corps’ failure to act as are the people the Nazis are slaughtering in concentration camps.

  I put it to you, Hansel, that your allegiance should be no longer to the Luftwaffe, or the German State, but to Germany, and to the family, and to the people who have lived on our lands for so long.

  In this connection, your first duty is to survive the war. Under no circumstances are you to return to Germany for any purpose until the war is over. Find now some place where you can hide safely if you are ordered to return.

  Your second duty is to transfer the family funds from Switzerland to Argentina as quickly as possible. You have by now made contact with our friend in Argentina, and he will probably be able to be of help. In any event, make sure the funds are in some safe place. It would be better if they could be wisely invested, but the primary concern is to have them someplace where they will be safe from the Sicherheitsdienst until the war is over.

  In the chaos which will occur in Germany when the war is finally over, the only hope our people will have, to keep them in their homes, indeed to keep them from starvation, and the only hope there will be for the future of the von Wachtstein family, and the estates, will be access to the money that I have placed in your care.

  I hope, one day, to be able to go with you again to the village for a beer and a sausage. If that is not to be, I have confidence that God in his mercy will allow us one day to be all together again, your mother and your brothers and you and I in a better place.

  I have taken great pride in you, Hansel.

  Poppa.

  Graham read the letter, then looked at Frade.

  “Jesus Christ,” Graham said softly.

  “Yeah.”

  “And Whatsisname, the ambassador, is ‘our friend’?”

  “Lutzenberger,” Frade furnished.

  “How did you come by this letter?”

  “From von Wachtstein. He needed help to deal with his money. I owed him.”

  “What for?”

  “He warned me they were going to bushwhack me, remember? That gave him a big IOU on me.”

  “And are you helping him?”

  “My Uncle Humberto is.”

  Graham looked at him for amplification.

  “Humberto Valdez Duarte,” Frade explained. “Managing director of the Anglo-Argentine Bank. He’s married to my father’s sister. It was their son—my cousin—who got himself killed at Stalingrad spotting artillery, when all he should have been doing was observing.”

  “If their son was killed with the Germans at Stalingrad, why is he helping?”

  “I suppose the real reason is he figured my IOU to von Wachtstein was a family debt of honor.”

  “And you think he can be trusted?”

  Frade nodded. “I think he was forced to face the fact that his son was a fool. But he’s not going to do anything to hurt me. Or von Wachtstein.” He paused and chuckled, then added: “I’d bet my life on it.”

  “You realize, I suppose, that not only should you have shown me this letter long before this—”

  “I thought about that. And decided not to pass it on. I didn’t know what would be done with the information, and I didn’t want General von Wachtstein getting hung on a butcher’s hook as a traitor because of something I’d done.”

  “That sort of decision is not yours to make, Major Frade.”

  “I generally make all my own decisions,” Frade said. “Deferring only to people I know are smarter than me.”

  “Officers senior to you are presumed to be smarter than you.”

  “That hasn’t been my experience.”

  Graham realized that he was dangerously close to losing his temper, and that would make matters even worse.

  “This helping von Wachtstein conceal his money over here, I hope you’re aware, could be considered as treating with or giving aid and comfort to the enemy.”

  “I hope that wasn’t a threat.”

  “It was a simple statement of fact, Frade.”

  Neither said anything for a moment, then Graham asked, “What happened when von Wachtstein went to the ambassador? Let’s get back to that.”

  “He told him—this is almost a quote—to be careful when he came back from Uruguay; he needed him. Actually, he said, ‘Germany needs you.’ ”

  “Why was von Wachtstein flying to Uruguay in the first place?”

  “They have a Fieseler Storch. Like a Cadillac version of the Piper Cub. He goes over there all the time, carrying stuff, people, et cetera.”

  “And then what?”

  “Lutzenberger calls Boltitz in and shows him a letter from Canaris, which says Boltitz is to regard any orders from Lutzenberger as if they came personally from him.”


  “And the orders from Lutzenberger were to lay off von Wachtstein?”

  “That, too, of course. But, more importantly, admitting—without actually coming out and saying it—that he’s part of the whole resistance to the Nazis, and probably part of—at least a supporter of—the plot to kill Hitler.”

  “And then von Wachtstein told you what had happened?”

  “He flew out here, with Boltitz, in the Storch. They both told me.”

  “And then you sent me the radio?”

  Frade nodded.

  “Frade, I can only hope that you appreciate what dangerous ground—what thin ice—you’re walking on,” Graham said seriously.

  “I can only hope that you appreciate your OSS guy down here is in way the hell over his head.”

  “Is that another shot at Commander Delojo?”

  “I was talking about me.”

  “Commander Delojo is the Argentine OSS station chief,” Graham said. “He’s my OSS guy down here.”

  “Then I can only hope you appreciate your OSS guy down here is not only in way over his head, but isn’t working exclusively for the OSS.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “He’s an Annapolis ring-knocker, a lifer, who still has dreams of being captain of a battleship. He is not going to do anything that might displease the Navy Department, and, conversely, is going to do anything he thinks will please them—get him his battleship—like sending them anything about what the OSS is doing down here that they might like to know. He scares the hell out of me.”

  “I don’t believe that he’s that way.”

  “If Delojo knew anything about what I’ve just told you, it would be in the next diplomatic pouch to the Office of Naval Intelligence. And Christ only knows what they would do with it.”

  God damn it! He’s right.

  That wasn’t considered before—what the hell, the Navy’s on the same side in this war—but it should have been. And by me.

  Well, as soon as I get back to Washington, I’ll get Delojo out of here.