Honor Bound Read online

  “I am talking about saving Germany, Karl,” von Haas said.

  “The Austrian Corporal is protected by a regiment, each of whose members devoutly believes he is the salvation of Germany.”

  “He will destroy Germany, and you know it.”

  “You are not the first to come to me, Dieter,” von Wachtstein said.

  “I am ashamed that I was not.”

  “I told them all the same thing: I believe any attempt to assassinate Hitler is doomed to failure.”

  “So is Freddy von Paulus’s mission at Stalingrad,” von Haas interrupted.

  “And that in the unlikely happenstance that such an attempt did succeed,” von Wachtstein went on, ignoring him, “we might not—Germany might not—be at all better off. His successor would be Hermann Goering. We would exchange a psychopath for a drug addict. And upon the death of Herr Schicklgruber, the slime around him…and I include the entire inner circle…would immediately put into operation their own plans to get rid of Hermann. There would be chaos.”

  “Wouldn’t anything be better than what we have now, Karl?” von Haas asked.

  “I’m not at all sure,” von Wachtstein said.

  “I thank you for hearing me out, Karl.”

  “I have not turned you down,” von Wachtstein said.

  “That’s what it sounded like.”

  “I have a condition…a price.”

  Von Haas could not quite mask his astonishment. And obviously to find time to carefully consider his reply, he leaned forward and picked up the bottle of Rémy Martin and poured from it carefully into his glass.

  “There would be, of course,” von Haas began carefully, “a substantial realignment of the General Staff. I feel sure…”

  “My God, Dieter!” von Wachtstein flared. “Have we grown so far apart that you really believed I was thinking of a promotion?”

  Von Haas met his eyes.

  “Karl!” he said, and shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

  “I have given two sons to this war,” von Wachtstein said. “I am thinking of the third. I am thinking of the family. This insanity will pass. I want a von Wachtstein around when it does.”

  “Peter,” von Haas said.

  “Peter,” von Wachtstein repeated, nodding his head. “I have been thinking about honor. As strange and alien a concept as that has become. I have concluded that Peter has made all the contribution to this war, save giving his life, that honor demands.”

  “The Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross,” von Haas said.

  “From the hands of the Austrian Corporal himself,” von Wachtstein said. “He was in Spain with the Condor Legion, in Poland, Russia, and France. He has been five times shot down, and twice wounded.”

  “What do you want for him?”

  “I want him out of the war and out of Germany.”

  “I don’t quite understand.”

  “I want him assigned to some procurement mission, or some embassy as a military attaché. To some neutral country. Not Italy or Hungary or Japan. He speaks Spanish. Somewhere in Latin America.”

  “That will be difficult to arrange,” von Haas said, thinking aloud.

  “Dieter, if you don’t have anyone high up in the Foreign Ministry, your coup doesn’t have a chance. And I am not as important to your plans as you have suggested I am.”

  “I will see what can be arranged, Karl.”

  “You will arrange it, or this conversation never took place.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “He commands a Jaeger squadron near Berlin. Focke-Wulf 190s.”

  “Oberstleutnant?”—First Lieutenant.

  “Hauptmann”—Captain.

  “He’s young to be a Hauptmann.”

  “He was eighteen when he went to Spain as a Feldwebel”—a sergeant.

  “After,” von Haas chuckled, “he was sent down from Marburg, * I recall.”

  “You and I, Dieter, came very close to being sent down from Marburg,” von Wachtstein said.

  “They were better times, weren’t they?” von Haas said. He looked at his watch. “It’s a long drive to Berlin. I’d better be going.”

  Von Wachtstein stood up.

  “Understand, Dieter, that my desires for Peter are not wishful thinking. Your telling me that you’re sorry, you tried, but it couldn’t be arranged will not be enough.”

  “I understand,” von Haas said, and put out his hand.

  “What do they say in Spanish? ‘Vaya con Dios’? Vaya con Dios, Dieter. Go with God.”

  Von Haas met his eyes, nodded, and turned and walked out of the room.

  [TWO]

  The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel

  Los Angeles, California

  12 October 1942

  When Lieutenant Cletus Howell Frade, USMCR, stepped out of the tub onto a bath mat, the telephone was ringing.

  He walked quickly, naked and dripping, into the bedroom to answer it, wondering both who it could be and how long the telephone had been ringing. It had been a long time since he’d had access to either unlimited hot water or privacy; he’d been in the shower for a long time.

  He picked up the telephone on the bedside table.

  “Hello?”

  “¿E1 Teniente Frade?”

  “Sí, yo soy el Teniente Frade.”

  “Yo soy Graham, Teniente, Coronel A. F. Graham.”

  “Yes, Sir?”

  “Are you alone, Lieutenant?” Graham asked, in Spanish.

  “Sí, mi Coronel.”

  “I’d like a word with you. Have you been drinking?”

  “Not yet, mi Coronel.”

  Hell of a question, Clete thought, and a reply that was a little too flip for a lieutenant talking to a colonel.

  “See if you can hold off for half an hour or so,” Colonel Graham said, a chuckle in his voice. “I should be there by then. Nine twenty-one, right?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  The telephone went dead. Clete put the handset back in the cradle and walked toward the bedroom.

  Jesus, did he speak Spanish to me?

  I’ll be damned if he didn’t. That entire conversation was in Spanish. Pretty good Spanish at that. What the hell was that all about?

  Clete dried himself slowly and carefully, partly to take advantage of the stack of thick, soft towels the hotel had so graciously provided for his comfort, and partly because his long exposure to soap and hot water had softened and loosened the scabs—perhaps twenty-five of them—on his legs and chest.

  An incredible number of insects lived on Guadalcanal, and each variety there became addicted to Cletus’s blood. Sometimes, it seemed as if they fought among themselves for the privilege of taking their dinner from him and leaving behind a wide variety of irritations. These ranged from small sting marks to thumbnail-size suppurating ulcers.

  After he finished drying, Clete walked on the balls of his feet from the bathroom to the wood-and-canvas rack beside the chest of drawers that supported his suitcase. He took from it his toilet kit—once a gleaming brown leather affair, now looking like something a mechanic was about to discard. From this he took a jar of gray paste. Despite the assurances of the Medical Corps, U.S. Navy, that the stuff was the very latest miracle medicine to soothe what the doctors somewhat euphemistically called “minor skin irritations,” he suspected that it was Vaseline.

  He returned to the bathroom and with a practiced skill applied just enough of the greasy substance to protect each “minor skin irritation” without leaving enough residue to leave greasy spots on his clothing. He then returned to his toilet kit, carried it back into the bathroom, and shaved—in the process slicing the top off several “minor skin irritations.” He dealt with these new wounds by applying small pieces of toilet paper to his face. When he examined himself in the mirror, he concluded that if he was going to look like a properly turned out officer of the U.S. Marine Corps, he’d need a haircut.

  He went back into the bedroom and dug into a large brown Kraft paper bag, taking from it a bra
nd-new T-shirt and cotton boxer shorts.

  The Public Affairs Officer Escort had taken Clete and the other “heroes” to the Officers’ Sales Store almost directly from the Martin Mariner that had flown them from Espíritu Santo to Pearl Harbor. There, the Escort Officer suggested that they might wish to acquire new linen. Clete Frade bought six sets of underwear, six khaki shirts, six pairs of cotton socks, and two field scarves, which was what the Corps called neckties. And then, because the very idea that anyone would sleep in anything but his underwear or his birthday suit seemed absurd, he bought two sets of what their label identified as “Pajamas, Men’s, Cotton, Summer.”

  Since there was no room in his one suitcase for his new acquisitions, he carried them in the paper bag the rest of the way—on a Pan American Clipper from Pearl Harbor to San Diego, and then on a chartered Greyhound bus from ’Diego to Los Angeles.

  The new T-shirt was usable as is, and he put it on, but the boxer shorts reflected the Naval Service’s fascination with fastening small tags to garments with open staples. He sat down on the bed and removed eight of them—he counted—from various places on his shorts. He had just pulled the shorts on when there was a knock at the door.

  It was a bellman, carrying a freshly pressed uniform. Clete went to the bedside table, opened the drawer where he had placed his wallet, his watch, and his Zippo lighter and cigarettes, and found a dollar bill. He gave it to the bellman, then hung the uniform on the closet door. When he turned, he noticed for the first time on the bedside table on the other side of the bed, an eight-by-ten-inch official-looking envelope. It wasn’t his, and he was sure that it hadn’t been there when he’d gone into the bathroom for his shower.

  He picked it up. It contained something other than paper, something relatively heavy. He opened the flap and dumped the contents on the bed. Insignia spilled out: two sets of first lieutenant’s silver bars and a new set of gold Naval Aviator’s wings—and bars of ribbons, representing his decorations. There was the Distinguished Flying Cross, with its oak-leaf cluster signifying the second award; the Purple Heart Medal with its oak-leaf cluster; and the ribbons representing the I-Was-There medals: National Defense, and Pacific Theatre of Operations, the latter with two Battle Stars. The ribbons were mounted together.

  The Public Affairs people again, Clete thought. The Corps doesn’t want its about-to-go-on-display heroes running around with single ribbons pinned unevenly, one at a time, to their chests; they should be mounted together. And God knows, I have never polished my first john’s bars from the day I got them. And my wings of gold are really a disgrace, when viewed from the perspective of some Corps press agent; they’re scratched, bent, and dirty.

  I wonder if this stuff is a gift from the Corps, or whether they will deduct the cost from my next pay.

  Clete dropped the brand-new set of glistening gold wings on the bed, then picked up the telephone.

  “Room Service,” he ordered when the operator came on the line.

  “Room Service,” a male voice said.

  “This is Lieutenant Frade in nine twenty-one,” he said. “I would like a bottle of sour-mash bourbon, Jack Daniel’s if you have it, ice, water, and peanuts or potato chips, something to nibble on.”

  His voice was soft, yet with something of a nasal twang. Most people he’d met in the Corps thought he was a Southerner, a Johnny Reb, but some with a more discerning ear heard Texas. Both were right. Clete Frade had been raised in New Orleans and in the cattle country (now cattle and oil) around Midland, Texas. He’d spent his first two years of college at Texas A&M, and then, when his grandfather had insisted, finished up (Bachelor of Arts) at Tulane.

  “Lieutenant,” Room Service said, hesitantly, “you understand that only the room is complimentary?”

  “I didn’t even know that,” Clete said. “But if you’re asking if I expect to pay for the bourbon, yes, of course I do.”

  And I damned sure can afford it. There’s four months’ pay in Sullivan’s boots.

  Sullivan was—had been—First Lieutenant Francis Xavier Sullivan, of Cleveland, Ohio, and the 167th Fighter Squadron, U.S. Army Air Corps. The Corps and the Navy had flown Grumman Wildcats off Henderson Field and Fighter One on the ’Canal. The Army Air Corps, those poor bastards, had flown Bell P-39s and P-40s. The story was, and Clete believed it, that the P-39s and P-40s had been offered to, and rejected by, both the English and the Russians before they had been given to the Army Air Corps and sent to the ’Canal. They were both essentially the same airplane, a weird one, with the engine mounted amidships behind the pilot. The one good thing they had was either a 20- or a 30-mm cannon that fired through the propeller hub. But they were not as fast or as maneuverable as the Wildcat, which meant they were not even in the same league as the Japanese Zero. And in a logistical foul-up that surprised Clete not at all, they had been sent to the ’Canal with the wrong oxygen-charging apparatus, so they could not be flown over 12,000 feet.

  The pilots flying them fought, in other words, with one hand tied behind them. And one by one they were shot down, Francis Xavier Sullivan among them.

  Clete and F.X. made a deal. If Clete didn’t come back, F.X. could have Clete’s two bottles of Jack Daniel’s sour-mash bourbon; and if F.X. didn’t come back, Clete could have F.X.’s Half Wellington boots, which, conveniently, fit him perfectly. The second part of the deal was that each had promised the other—presuming, of course, that one of them came through—that he would visit the other’s family and tell them a bullshit story about how the fallen hero had died—“quickly, without pain, he really didn’t know what hit him.”

  F.X. went in while supporting the Marine Raiders on Edson’s Ridge. He got his P-40 on the ground in more or less one piece, and he was alive when it caught fire. The Raiders heard him screaming until finally, mercifully, the sonofabitch blew up.

  Clete went to F.X.’s tent while F.X.’s Executive Officer was inventorying his personal gear. About the only thing that wasn’t worn out, or covered with green mold, was the boots. F.X. had spent a lot of time caring for his boots. They would, he claimed, get him laid a lot when they were given a rest leave in Australia. F.X. had heard that from a fellow who’d flown with the Eagle Squadron of the Royal Air Force before the United States had gotten into the war; women liked men who wore boots.

  Clete was tempted not to claim the boots, but decided in the end that a deal was a deal. F.X. damned sure would have claimed the Jack Daniel’s.

  While he waited for the bourbon, he pinned the new insignia to his new shirt and freshly pressed tunic. The new shirt, being new, was not stiff with starch. Before long, he knew, it would look limp and floppy, not shipshape.

  Is there a regulation someplace that orders shirts to be washed and starched before wear? I wouldn’t be a damned bit surprised.

  There was a knock at the door. When he opened it, a different bellman pushed in a tray on wheels; the tray held a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, a battered silver bowl full of ice, a silver pitcher that presumably contained water, and two glass bowls, one filled with mixed nuts and the other with pretzels. There was also a newspaper, which Clete thought was a nice touch.

  He took the bill from the bellman and signed it. When he turned back to the bellman, he was holding the newspaper open, so that it was ready to read when Clete took it.

  “Welcome home, Lieutenant,” the bellman said, meaning it.

  “Thank you,” Clete said. “It’s good to be home.”

  “You’re here,” the bellman said, pointing at the photograph on the front page of the Los Angeles Times. It showed a dozen Marines standing by the Greyhound bus in front of the hotel. The headline above them read:

  Guadalcanal Heroes Receive

  Key to City From Mayor

  Clete looked at his photograph.

  My God, I look like a cadaver! Do I really look that bad, or is it just the photograph?

  “Thank you,” Clete said.

  The bullshit begins.

  After he joined the other
returning pilots back on Espíritu Santo—in the absence of more deserving heroes, he decided, he was apparently a last-minute addition to the roster—and they were waiting for further air transportation, via Pearl Harbor, T.H., to U.S. Navy Base, San Diego, California, there was a lot of talk, naturally, about why they were being sent home.

  No one believed that their pleasure, or comfort, or even physical well-being had anything to do with it. The Marine Corps did not act that way. It was certainly not a reward for a job well done, either.

  All they’d been told, probably all that anyone knew, was that the orders came as a radio message from Eighth & I.

  It wasn’t until they were actually given their orders at Espíritu (a twenty-copy stack of mimeographed paper), minutes before they boarded the Martin Mariner, that the words “War Bond Tour” came up. And these gave Clete little more information than Dawkins had already told him:

  The following officers, the orders read, are detached from indicated organizations and temporarily attached to the USMC Public Affairs Office, Federal Building, Los Angeles, Cal., for the purpose of participating in a War Bond Tour.

  That 1/Lt Frade, C. H., USMCR was detached from VMF-229 was sort of a joke, for little—if anything—of Marine Fighter Squadron Number 229 remained to be detached from. After Clete wrecked his Wildcat, VMF-229 was down to two airplanes and four pilots. There were almost no mechanics, or clerks, or cooks either. As more of VMF-229’s Wildcats and their pilots had been shot down, crashed, or simply disappeared than had been replaced, the mechanics and clerks had been transferred to other squadrons.

  What, exactly, a baker’s dozen of battered fighter pilots who resembled not at all the handsome Marine aviators of the movies and recruiting posters could possibly have to do with a War Bond Tour was something of a mystery, until one of them realized that they all had one thing in common besides membership in the Cactus Air Force and their surprising presence among the living. They each—he polled the jury to make sure—had shot down at least five Japanese aircraft. They were all aces. Two were double aces, and one was working hard on being a triple.

  “They’re putting us on fucking display, is what they’re doing!” one of them announced in disgust.