Empire and Honor Read online

  Then I should modestly make sure she understands that I am the heir apparent to what is known as an oil fortune. Which is true.

  But I don’t think she’d believe me, for one thing. And if she did, she’d think I was telling her that to get into her pants.

  I would happily trade my left nut to get into her pants, but I don’t want to do it that way.

  Not that there’s any chance of my getting into her pants under any circumstance.

  Think changing muddy tank tracks and bogie wheels, Stupid!

  “Corn on the cob,” Elsa said. “What’s that?”

  “It’s what it says—corn, which comes out of the field, on the cob.”

  He mimed eating from a corncob.

  “I tried that twice,” she said. “Both times on my honeymoon. First in Vienna and then again in Budapest. It was terrible. Tough.”

  “Well, this corn on the cob comes from the States. Frozen. It’s tender and delicious.”

  She looked him in the eyes and nodded.

  “All right, I’ll trust you,” Elsa said, and took another tiny sip of her Jack Daniel’s.

  —

  “That’s enormous,” she said, when her medium-rare Porterhouse steak was placed before her.

  As hungry as she has to be, it’ll probably be gone in two minutes.

  Fifteen minutes later, by which time Cronley had devoured all of the filet mignon, three-quarters of the Kansas City filet, most of the baked potato, two ears of corn on the cob, and enough of his Jack Daniel’s to permit him to raise it over his head as a signal he wanted a refill, Elsa had eaten only a tiny portion of her filet mignon, and maybe two small mouthfuls of kernels from her corncob.

  “You don’t like the steak?” he asked. “Or the corn?”

  “Oh, it’s wonderful,” she said, and then understood why he had asked.

  “Jimmy,” she said, meeting his eyes, “have you ever been hungry, very hungry, for days at a time?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “No, I haven’t.”

  “Well, when that happens, and then you suddenly come upon all the food you want to eat, and you eat your fill, then you suddenly become very ill.”

  “I didn’t think about that,” Jimmy said, visibly embarrassed.

  “It’s okay. It’s just that what you learn to do when you’ve been very hungry for a week or ten days, and then a feast like this is put before you, is to take tiny bites, and chew them slowly and very well.”

  “I guess I’m stupid.”

  “Naïve. Not stupid. There’s a big difference.”

  The waiter delivered two Jack Daniel’s doubles on the rocks.

  He looked at her glass. It wasn’t empty—but close.

  She must have been sipping steadily and I didn’t notice.

  She looked at the new drinks.

  “Well, I guess I better finish the first one, hadn’t I?” Elsa said.

  Before he could object, she did so.

  “Elsa, watch it. That was a double. It’ll—”

  “Thank you. I appreciate your concern.”

  —

  Thirty minutes later, she had finished all of the filet mignon, eaten most of one ear of corn, perhaps a quarter of the baked potato, and all of her second Jack Daniel’s double on the rocks.

  “And now if you would be so kind, I think my knight in shining armor should escort me to my room.”

  “Would you like some dessert?” he asked.

  “I would love some dessert, but I think it would be ill-advised.”

  —

  In the elevator, she took his arm, and continued to hold it as he led her down the corridor to the door of the Goethe Suite.

  She couldn’t find the key.

  “I must have left it,” she said. “But we can get in through your room, can’t we?”

  “If you’ll be all right here, I’ll go around and let you in.”

  “Whatever,” she said.

  He went to 408a, and then into the Goethe Suite and opened the door for her.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “You’re welcome,” he said.

  She closed the door behind her.

  “Good night, Elsa. Thank you for your company.”

  She chuckled.

  He started back for the door connecting 408a and the Goethe Suite. She followed him.

  “Jimmy,” she said, catching up with him as he started to pull open the door, “do you want to know what I was thinking at dinner and just now in the corridor?”

  “That American corn on the cob is better than the Viennese variety?”

  “That when this Colonel Mattingly shows up to take me wherever he’s going to take me, we’ll never see one another again.”

  “I guess that’s so. It’s a pity.”

  “I was also thinking that I haven’t been with a man since the night before I put Karl on the train that took him to the Eastern Front.”

  Where the hell is this going?

  “I never wanted to be with another man,” Elsa said.

  “I understand.”

  “Until now,” she said, and moved closer to him.

  He was frozen.

  “Don’t I appeal to you? I’m too old?”

  “I don’t want to take—”

  “Take advantage of me? Believe me, my sweet naïve Jimmy, that shoe is on the other foot.”

  Elsa raised her hand to his neck and pulled his face to hers.

  II

  [ONE]

  The Goethe Suite

  Kurhotel Marburg

  Marburg an der Lahn, Germany

  0715 7 October 1945

  Counterintelligence Corps Special Agent James D. Cronley Jr. put his hands under his head and tried to reconstruct exactly what had happened the night before.

  It had not been an exceedingly clear erotic dream ending in a nocturnal emission. The proof of that was the naked woman in bed beside him.

  One moment he had been standing by the door between the Goethe Suite and Room 408a with Frau von Wachtstein—with whom he had been absolutely determined not to get a half inch out of line even if she had had a good deal more Jack Daniel’s than was good for her—and the next moment they were on her bed, with her uniform skirt above her waist and his trousers at his ankles.

  They had subsequently divested themselves of their clothing and had at it again.

  And then again.

  Was it three times total—or four?

  He looked down at her again. She was more beautiful, he decided, than she had been in the wildest of his fantasies about her. And she was sound asleep.

  Not surprising.

  After what happened—it was four times! No, five!—she would probably sleep all day.

  Moving as carefully as he could, he eased out of the bed and walked on his toes toward the connecting door.

  “Jimmy,” Elsa said, her voice soft and sleepy, “where are you going?”

  “To muss my bed, so the chambermaid doesn’t get any ideas.”

  “Then come back . . .”

  I will come back if I have to crawl through the fires of hell on my hands and knees.

  “Sixty seconds,” he said, and went through the door.

  He jerked the cover from his bed, tried to muss the sheets, didn’t like the result, and then jumped on the bed with both feet, marched around it, and then finally punched the pillows until they appeared to have been used.

  When he went back to the bedroom of the Goethe Suite, Elsa lifted the sheet so that he could slide in beside her.

  —

  “Well, what should we do now?” Jimmy said, when he had regained his breath.

  “After we have a shower, you mean?” Elsa asked.

  “After we have a shower?”

  She smiled. “That might be interesting. And after we have a shower, how does breakfast sound?”

  “I think ham and eggs seems like a very good idea,” he said. “And after that?”

  “I came to Marburg because I had friends here. A
girl I went to school with, and her family. I’d like to see if I can find them. Would you help me?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “Then let’s have our shower,” Elsa said, and got quickly out of bed and walked naked to the bathroom.

  Jimmy quickly followed.

  —

  Jimmy lay on the bed and watched as she took the lingerie from the PX out of its bag and cut the labels off the black brassiere and the see-through matching panties. She dropped the towel she had wound around herself in the bathroom and started to pull the panties on. Then she sensed his eyes on her.

  “Stop looking,” she ordered. “You’re embarrassing me.”

  “No, I’m not. You want me to look.”

  She met his eyes.

  “Otherwise,” he said, “you wouldn’t have flipped the sheet off you”—he demonstrated with his sheet—“when I came back in here from the other room.”

  “Guilty,” she said, after a moment, finished pulling the panties on, and then reached for the black brassiere.

  “If I told you I loved you, what would you say?” Jimmy asked.

  “That you’re very sweet and very young and that you weren’t paying attention to what I said last night.”

  “What you said when last night?”

  “That when this Colonel Mattingly shows up to take me wherever he’s going to take me, we’ll never see one another again.”

  “That was before what happened last night happened,” Jimmy argued. “I gather you don’t believe in love at first sight?”

  She walked to the bed and sat beside him.

  “I believe in lust at first sight,” she said. “And that you shouldn’t do anything about it unless you know that it’s only going to be for a day, or two, and then you will never see the man ever again.”

  He didn’t reply.

  “And I also believe that you can’t count, sweet Jimmy. I’m thirty-two, and that’s much too old for you.”

  Again he didn’t reply.

  “Jimmy, please don’t ruin what we have.”

  “I don’t want it to end,” he said, finally.

  “There’s nothing either of us can do about that.”

  She ran her fingertips down his cheeks.

  “Can we change the subject?” she asked.

  “Why not?”

  “What do you know, or think, is going to happen when this Colonel Mattingly comes and takes me wherever he’s going to take me?”

  “I don’t know what I’m talking about,” he said. “But it seems pretty obvious my government is grateful for what your father and the other general—”

  “Generalleutnant Graf Karl-Friedrich von Wachtstein,” she furnished. “My husband’s father.”

  “What’s a Graf?”

  “A title of nobility. A count—or an earl, as the English rank their nobility.”

  “Does it come with a crown? Or a castle?”

  “No crown, Jimmy, at least in recent times. But there is a castle, Schloss Wachtstein.”

  “What about you? Were you a princess in a castle?”

  “No. My father was a simple soldier.”

  “I thought he was a general.”

  “He was.”

  “Generals are not simple soldiers.”

  “What does Colonel Mattingly have in mind for me?” she said, changing the subject.

  “I’m crushed. I’ve been lying here thinking, ‘Jimmy Boy, here you are sitting with a princess in her see-through underwear. You’re a long way from the ol’ F-Bar-Z.’ And now you tell all you are is an Army brat.”

  “You’re making me blush.”

  “I like it when you blush.”

  “Even though I didn’t understand half of what you said.”

  “The see-through underwear part?”

  “What’s the F-Bar-Z?”

  “The name of the ranch, outside Midland, Texas.”

  “An ‘Army brat’?”

  “An officer’s daughter. There were a lot of them around A&M.”

  “And what’s A&M?”

  “My university. Texas Agricultural and Mechanical University.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, when I married Karl, I became a Baronin, a baroness.”

  “So, at least, here I am, sitting around with a baroness in her see-through underwear.”

  She shook her head. But she smiled as she touched her fingertips to his face.

  “You’re not going to tell me, are you?” she then said, pulling back her hand.

  “Tell you what?”

  “What Colonel Mattingly is going to do with me.”

  “All I can do is guess, Baroness. I think the government, my government, is grateful for what your father and the count tried to do with Hitler, and are going to try somehow to show that gratitude. Let you go to the States. Something like that.”

  “I’d like that, to go to the States,” Elsa said softly.

  “There’s an easy way to have that happen, without Mattingly. Let me arrange it.”

  “How in the world could you do that?”

  “You ever hear that money is grease?”

  “No. And I have no idea what it means.”

  “With money, anything is possible.”

  “I’ve heard that.”

  “I’ve got a lot of money.”

  She looked at him.

  He went on: “There are four sections of land on the F-Bar-Z. A section is a square mile, or six hundred forty acres. One of the sections is mine—my grandfather put it in my name when I was born. When I came here, I was curious about how that would match up with your land measurement. I found out. Six hundred forty acres is two hundred fifty-eight point nine nine eight eight hectares. Call it two hundred fifty-nine hectares.”

  “That’s enormous. I don’t think there was that much land around Schloss Wachtstein. And your family owns four of these sections?”

  She believes me. So far.

  “Yeah, and I’m an only child, so presumably one day all four sections will be mine. But right now, I own just the one.”

  He let that sink in, then added: “But what’s important, Elsa, is that on the section I own there are fifty-one horsehead pumps sucking West Texas sweet crude oil out of the ground and, after the Texas Railroad Board takes its cut, into my bank account.”

  “What are you saying, Jimmy?”

  “That you’re sitting here in your transparent underwear with a rich guy who’s in love with you. You don’t need this Colonel Mattingly. I can take care of you. I will take care of you.”

  “Oh, Jimmy!” she said, and touched her fingertips to his face again.

  “Okay?”

  “I want you to promise me something.”

  “Anything.”

  “I want you to promise me you’ll never tell what you just told me to another German girl, German woman, after I’m gone.”

  “Why should I? And what do you mean, after you’re gone?”

  “I’m going with Colonel Mattingly, wherever he takes me. Understand that. And after I’ve gone, the next time you’re with a German girl, or a German woman, I don’t want you to say one word about your ranch. My God, my sweet Jimmy, don’t you have any idea how many thousands of women there are in Germany even worse off than I am? I at least have my engagement ring and the necklace. And my brother-in-law survived, and apparently has some connection with Colonel Mattingly.

  “These women have nothing. No husbands. No families. Many of them have children to support. If they’ll go to bed with an American soldier for a Hershey bar, to stay alive, what do you think they’d do to get an American officer to take care of them? A rich, young, foolish American officer?”

  “I’m not a fool, Elsa!”

  “Oh, my sweet Jimmy, you are! My God, what have I done to you?”

  “Aside from making me fall in love with you, you mean?”

  She took a deep breath.

  “Now listen to me very carefully, Jimmy. Unless you promise me right now—and mean it—that y
ou stop this nonsense about being in love with me, and never bring it up again, I’m going to call Major Connell and tell him that you’re making unwanted advances to me.”

  “You wouldn’t do that.”

  Oh, shit—yes, she would!

  “Yes, I would, sweet Jimmy. And I want you to promise what I said before, never to tell the next German girl you get into your bed anything about being in love or your ranch.”

  “Fuck you,” he said, without thinking about it.

  Elsa pushed herself off the bed and walked around to the other side of it. She picked up the telephone on the bedside table.

  “Okay, okay,” Jimmy said.

  She put the handset back in its cradle.

  “Have I your promise?” she asked. “Your word as an officer and a gentleman?”

  “I’m not an officer and a gentleman. I got my commission from A&M.”

  She shook her head and smiled.

  “Yes or no?” she asked.

  “Okay.”

  “Not good enough, sweet Jimmy. Say it.”

  “I promise. Okay?”

  “Say, ‘You have my word, Frau von Wachtstein.’”

  “Damn it! Okay. You have my word, Elsa.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Why did you . . .”

  “Take you into my bed?”

  He nodded.

  “I told you,” she said. “I hadn’t been with a man since the night before I sent my husband off to die for the fatherland on the Eastern front. And I knew the young American who looks like an SS recruiting poster would be out of my life in two or three days.”

  “It meant nothing to you?”

  She considered her response and then walked back around the bed and sat down next to him before giving it.

  “I probably shouldn’t tell you this,” she said, “but I’ll never forget you, sweet Jimmy.”

  She ran her fingertips tenderly over his face, then softly kissed him on the lips.

  “Now get up, get dressed, and then feed me breakfast before we see if we can find my friends.”

  She got up and walked to the closet where her uniform was hung.

  Jimmy wondered if he would ever see her in her underwear again.

  [TWO]

  233 Heinrichstein Strasse

  Marburg an der Lahn, Germany

  1030 7 October 1945

  The house was large and in good shape, and the first thing Lieutenant Jim Cronley thought when he saw it was that it had most likely been requisitioned by the Army.