W E B Griffin - Honor 2 - Blood and Honor

by Blood

  Peter heard a noise, and looked at the door to see Karl Nabler starting up the ladder.

  "Have a nice flight, Dieter," Peter said.

  "The station manager, Herr Kapitan, asks when you plan to make your de-parture," Nabler said.

  "Just as soon as we can wind up the rubber bands," Dieter said. He offered his hand to Peter. "I'll tell your father how bravely you are holding up in this hellhole far from the comforts of home," he said. "That is, presuming I can get this overloaded sonofabitch off the ground."

  He held his right arm up vertically from his belt elbow.

  "Heil Hitler!" he said.

  Peter returned the salute.

  "Good flight, Dieter," he said. "Heil Hitler!"

  [TWO]

  The Horse Restaurant

  Avenida del Libertador

  Buenos Aires, Argentina

  1905 14 April 1943

  As they passed the Argentine Army Polo Fields on Avenida del Libertador across from the Hipodromo, Major Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein slid forward on the seat of Gr�ner's Mercedes.

  "G�nther, just this side of the bridge," he ordered. "The Horse. The parking lot is in the back."

  "Jawohl, Herr Major Freiherr!"

  "What's this, Hans?" Standartenf�hrer Josef Goltz asked.

  "A bar I sometimes come to, Herr Standartenf�hrer. It has been my experi-ence that fast horses attract beautiful women."

  "Ah-ha!" Goltz said.

  Peter originally planned to take Goltz to the men's bar at the Plaza Hotel for a drink. The decision to go to The Horse was impulsive.

  He wondered if he was being clever. He didn't know how closely he was being watched by either the Argentine BIS or Oberst Gr�ner's agents, but there was no doubt that he was frequently under surveillance. Given that, if someone had seen him enter The Horse with Cletus Frade, or saw him do that again with Cletus tonight, or at some other time in the future, there would be some confu-sion if he was also seen entering The Horse with Standartenf�hrer Goltz.

  The more likely reason for his change of mind, he decided, was that he sud-denly needed a drink. Maybe two drinks. Not more than two, which would be foolish in Goltz's company. But he wanted a drink, and right then, not fifteen minutes later when they would reach the Plaza Hotel.

  What happened at El Palomar had disturbed him. For one thing, though Kapitan Dieter von und zu Aschenburg was as good and experienced a pilot as Peter knew, he had a very hard time getting Lufthansa flight 666 off the ground. For several very long seconds before the Condor finally staggered into the air, it looked as if he would run out of runway.

  There was no wind; the wind sock hung limply from its pole atop the con-trol tower. Dieter, he had reasoned, was probably counting on some wind for his takeoff roll, and there was none.

  That was bad enough, but when Peter got in the Mercedes beside Goltz he remembered Dieter's gesture, the hand signal to land or be shot down he was likely to get if the Condor was intercepted by one of the B-24s the Americans had given to the Brazilians.

  And that triggered a sudden very clear memory of Hauptmann Hans-Peter von Wachtstein of Jagdstaffel 232 making the same gesture from the cockpit of his Focke-Wulf 190 to a B-17 pilot near Kassel.

  The B-17 had almost certainly been hit by antiaircraft either before or after he dropped his bombs on Berlin. The damage to his fuselage and wings did not come from machine-gun fire. He had lost his port inboard engine-the prop was feathered-and his starboard outboard engine was gone. The starboard wing was blackened from an engine fire.

  He was staggering along at less than a thousand feet, trying to keep it in the air until he was out of Germany. He probably knew that he wasn't going to make it home, but was hoping he could make it to-Belgium or the Netherlands, where there was at least a chance the Resistance would see him go down and take care of him and whoever was still alive in his crew.

  Peter throttled back and pulled up beside him and gave him the land or be shot down signal. By then he had no desire to add one more aircraft to his shot-down list by taking out a cripple.

  The pilot looked at him in horror, then very deliberately shook his head from side to side, asking either for an act of chivalry on Peter's part, or mercy. Peter repeated the land or be shot down signal, and then the question suddenly became moot. The B-17's starboard wing burst into flame and then crumpled, and the B-17 went into a spin. Twenty seconds later, it crashed into a farmer's field and exploded.

  Until Dieter made the land or be shot down signal, Peter had been able to force from his mind the memory of the B-17 pilot slowly shaking his head from side to side. Now it came back.

  The B-17 pilot, he thought, was probably a young man very much like Cletus. Well, maybe not exactly. Cletus was a fighter pilot, but a pilot. A pilot like himself, and Dieter. He had no doubt that Dieter would like Clete if he knew him, and vice versa.

  Why the hell are we killing each other?

  G�nther jumped out from behind the wheel and held the door open for Standartenf�hrer Goltz. Peter stepped out of the other side of the Mercedes and led Goltz into The Horse.

  "One has the choice, Herr Standartenf�hrer: One can sit at the bar, or at a table; or one can go into the balcony. The view is better from the balcony, but at the bar one might have the chance to strike up an acquaintance with one of the natives."

  Goltz thought that over.

  "1 think the balcony, Hans," he said. "I want to have a word with you that won't be overheard."

  Peter followed him up the stairs to the balcony, where Goltz selected a table by the railing. A waiter appeared immediately and took their order. Resisting the temptation to order a whiskey, Peter ordered a beer. After a moment's inde-cision, Goltz ordered whiskey.

  When the waiter left them, Goltz looked unabashedly at the women at the bar below.

  "The sometimes painful cost of duty," he said. "Look at that one!" "The natives are attractive, aren't they?"

  "Spectacular! I could spend the next three days with my nose buried in those breastworks!" Peter laughed.

  "If it makes you feel any better, Herr Standartenf�hrer," Peter said, "it has been my experience that ninety-nine percent of the native females carry a sign you don't at first notice around their necks reading, 'Look, But Do Not Touch!'"

  "Really?" Goltz replied, sounding genuinely disappointed. "It may be their Spanish heritage," Peter said. "I always thought we were on the wrong side in Spain. I have been reliably informed that the Spanish Communists believed in free love. That was not true of the ladies who sup-ported El Caudillo. (*General Francisco Franco, the Spanish fascist leader, was known as "El Caudillo," "The Leader," much as Adolf Hitler was known as "Der F�hrer.) Like their Argentine cousins, they believed in saving it for the marriage bed."

  "And you couldn't overcome that unfortunate situation?"

  "The competition to fly a Fokker on a supply run to Germany was fero-cious, Herr Standartenf�hrer. The girls who hang around the bar at the Hotel am Zoo, or the Adlon, are far more appreciative of, and generous to, dashing air-men resting from the noble war against the communist menace."

  "I've noticed that. Some of the girls I've seen in the am Zoo and Adlon even seem to prefer shallow young Luftwaffe lieutenants to more senior, and better-looking, SS officers."

  "I am sure the Herr Standartenf�hrer is not speaking from personal experience, about the ladies of the Adlon preferring shallow Luftwaffe lieutenants to senior officers of the SS."

  "'Oh, but I am, Hans." He paused, then asked, "Is that where you previously had the pleasure of Frau von Tresmarck's acquaintance?"

  Well, I guess I was wrong again. He is not a faggot after G�nther's firm young body. So what is that scholarship in the Fatherland all about?

  "My experience, sadly, was the opposite," Peter said. "The one thing wrong with those bars-I hope the Herr Standartenf�hrer will forgive me-is that se-nior officers frequent them. The young ladies prefer senior officers to junior ones."

  "My q
uestion was, was it at the Adlon or the am Zoo that you knew Frau von Tresmarck?"

  "I was hoping that the Herr Standartenf�hrer would forget he had asked the question."

  "That, meine lieber Hans, confirms what I suspected from the smiles on your faces when you met again at the airport," Goltz said.

  "I hope Sturmbannf�hrer von Tresmarck-"

  "I wouldn't worry about him," Goltz said with a smile. "Unless, of course, he smiles warmly at you."

  "I'm not sure I understand the Herr Standartenf�hrer."

  "Oh, I think you do, Hans. You're a man of the world. Von Tresmarck's re-action, I'm sure, is better someone like you, who presumably knows and will follow the rules of the game, than someone else." Then, reacting to the look on Peter's face, he added, "Don't look so surprised. I came to know our Inge rather well myself in Berlin before she married von Tresmarck," Goltz said. "You might even say that I was their Cupid."

  "Excuse me?"

  "A man in Werner's position needed a wife," Goltz said. "And I was very much afraid that our Inge would be caught in one of the periodic sweeps the po-lice made through the Adlon, and places like it, looking for those who could be put to useful work and who don't have permission to live in Berlin. Our Inge would not be happy in jail, I don't think, or, for that matter, running a lathe in some factory."

  "You don't consider improving the morale of lonely officers useful work, Herr Standartenf�hrer?"

  "A commendable avocation, Hans. One I suspect our Inge continues to practice here. How did you pass your time waiting for me?"

  "May I respectfully request that we change the subject, Herr Standartenf�hrer?"

  "After one final word," Goltz said. "A word to the wise. Don't let your... friendship with Inge get out of hand. Moderation in all things, meine lieber Hans."

  "I hear and obey, Herr Standartenf�hrer," Peter said with a smile.

  "I'm not at liberty, at this time, to tell you how, but von Tresmarck is en-gaged in quite important work, and nothing, nothing can be allowed to interfere with that."

  "Jawohl, Herr Standartenf�hrer."

  "Now, we can change the subject," Goltz said. "What shall we talk about?"

  "G�nther said something about a scholarship at Daimler-Benz?" Peter said. "Is that a safe subject?"

  "Oh, he told you about that, did he?"

  Peter nodded.

  "I'm going to arrange that, Hans, to show my appreciation to his family."

  "I don't think I understand, Herr Standartenf�hrer."

  Goltz looked around the balcony to assure himself that no one was close enough to eavesdrop on the conversation.

  "One of the reasons I'm here, von Wachtstein, is that Admiral Canaris wants to bring the officers from the Graf Spee back to Germany. It is a matter of personal importance to him. You know, of course, that the Admiral was him-self interned here during the First World War and escaped?"

  "Yes, I do, Herr Standartenf�hrer. When we learned I was coming here, my father told me that story."

  "Your father and the Admiral are quite close, I understand?"

  "I don't think close, Herr Standartenf�hrer. They know each other, of course, but I don't think they could be called close friends."

  Why do I think that question wasn't idle curiosity?

  "Anyway, the preliminary thinking-Oberst Gr�ner and I were talking about this earlier today-is that the repatriation of the Graf Spee officers will be accomplished in three stages. First, get them out of their place of imprisonment, which should not pose much of a problem. Second, find a location where they can be kept safely until transportation can be arranged for them. And, of course, third, getting them from their refuge out of the country and to the Fatherland."

  "There's a lot of them," Peter said. "That will have to be quite an opera-tion."

  "There's something near two hundred of them. That's the second problem. Obviously they can't all be moved at once. So we're thinking right now that we will move them in groups of, say, twenty or twenty-five. A single truckload, in other words."

  "Herr Standartenf�hrer, excuse me, but my understanding is that the offi-cers have given their parole. They were offered the choice: They would be con-fined under guard. Or they would give their parole that they would not attempt to escape, and thus would undergo their internment in a hotel, without guards."

  "That was in 1939, von Wachtstein," Goltz responded. "The situation is dif-ferent in 1943."

  "I understand, Herr Standartenf�hrer. But once the first group of officers disappears, I was wondering whether the Argentine authorities will then place all the others under greater restrictions."

  "We'll have to deal with that when it happens," Goltz said impatiently. "Oberst Gr�ner did not seem to consider that an insurmountable problem."

  "I was trying to be helpful, Herr Standartenf�hrer."

  "I understand, Hans," Goltz said.

  We're now back to "Hans," are we?

  "I had a long chat with our friend G�nther over the weekend. I learned that not only is he a good National Socialist, but that his father and many of his fa-ther's friends are also."

  "That has been my impression, too, Herr Standartenf�hrer."

  "I also learned that his father has a small estancia near a place called San Carlos. Are you familiar with San Carlos?"

  "No, Herr Standartenf�hrer, I am not."

  "San Carlos de something..."

  "San Carlos de Bariloche. Yes, Herr Standartenf�hrer, I know it. It is com-monly called simply 'Bariloche.' It's in the foothills of the Andes."

  "Near the Chilean border," Goltz said.

  "There's a very fine new hotel there," Peter said. "Strange name: Llao Llao. But a first-class hotel. I had a chance to visit there. Hauptmann Duarte's father has an interest in it, and he-"

  "I want to talk to you about your relationship with the Duarte family, Hans, but right now-"

  "Excuse me, Herr Standartenf�hrer."

  "The Loche family has a small estancia near San Carlos de Bariloche. They manufacture some of their sausage products there. The sausage is transported to Buenos Aires, and elsewhere-"

  "In their truck, which could carry, say, twenty or twenty-five people with-out attracting any attention at all?"

  "Oberst Gr�ner said you were a bright and perceptive young officer," Goltz said approvingly, and then went on: "If Herr Loche is willing to assist the Fa-therland, his estancia would offer a good refuge for the Graf Spee officers until arrangements for their movement to the Fatherland can be arranged. Perhaps through Chile."

  "Fascinating."

  "Since this operation has approval at the highest echelons-I have been told the F�hrer is personally aware of it-there is no question regarding money. We will generously compensate Herr Loche for the use of his truck, and for the room and board of the officers while they are under his care."

  "And also arrange a scholarship for G�nther to Daimler-Benz," Peter said.

  "And G�nther's presence in Germany might reinforce Herr Loche's patrio-tism, if you take my meaning. Gr�ner tells me the Argentine counterintelligence people... What do they call themselves?"

  "The BIS. Bureau of Internal Security."

  "... the BIS is not as incompetent as generally believed. If they should ask questions of Herr Loche, it is important for him to give the right answers. Or the wrong ones, which would depend on your perspective, as we talked about this morning."

  "Excuse me?"

  "You said, 'under the right' circumstances the Brazilians might actually be able to shoot down the Condor. The semantics are interesting, wouldn't you say?"

  "I'm sure the Standartenf�hrer took my meaning correctly this morning."

  "Of course," Goltz said, smiling. "Now, you're going to have a role in this..."

  "I would be honored, Herr Standartenf�hrer."

  "... but just what role has not been decided. I'm having dinner with Herr Loche tomorrow, and I'll broach the subject to him then. If that goes well, p
er-haps it would be a good idea for you to visit Bariloche.... You said you've been there. How did you travel?"

  "By train, Herr Standartenf�hrer."

  "Well, perhaps you might drive to Bariloche, reconnoiter the road, examine the facilities at the Loche farm...."

  "I understand, Herr Standartenf�hrer."

  "As I say, I have not yet had a chance to make firm decisions."

  "I will hold myself in readiness, Herr Standartenf�hrer."