W E B Griffin - Honor 1 - Honor Bound

by Honor Bound(Lit)

  Colonel Juan Domingo Per¢n , Portez-Halle had been told, was attached to the Argentinean Embassy in Berlin and would be ac-companying the young Argentinean's body to Lisbon, where it would be put aboard an Argentinean merchant vessel for repatri-ation. The dead officer was the nephew of el Coronel Jorge Guil-lermo Frade. Which probably explained why the Germans were going to all the fuss they were making. They knew who Frade was, too.

  The Foreign Ministry originally intended to send an official of suitable rank-say, a deputy minister-to represent El Caudillo (General Francisco Franco, the Spanish dictator) at the border. But after Portez-Halle had brought up the Per¢n -Frade-Portez-Halle connection, it was obvious that he should go. He would, he said, take El Coronel Per¢n into his home during the layover in Madrid. And have a dinner for him. Considering the importance of Per¢n connection to Frade, it was suggested that El Caudillo himself might come to dinner. Or drop by to show his respect.

  There had not been time, of course, to issue a formal invitation to el Coronel Per¢n , but Portez-Halle had not considered that a major problem. He would seek him out at the border, identify himself as a friend of Jorge Guillermo Frade, and make the in-vitation there.

  At that point the plans went awry.

  "I'm not going any further than the border," Per¢n told him. "And if it wasn't for the insistence of the Germans, I wouldn't have come this far. But I thank you for your most gracious offer of hospitality."

  "Oh, I'm sorry, I'd looked forward to it."

  "It's simply impossible," Per¢n replied, "but I'll tell you what you could do."

  "Tell me."

  "The young Luftwaffe officer, the captain?" Per¢n went on, just perceptibly nodding his head toward a blond-headed young German around whose neck, Portez-Halle noticed, hung the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.

  "Yes. That's Baron von Wachtstein. He's escorting the re-mains. He's a very nice young man. I'm sure he would be most grateful for a hot meal and a warm bed in Madrid. They just took his fighter squadron away from him, and he's very unhappy about that. I don't think he should be left alone in Madrid; he takes a drink sometimes when he perhaps should not, if you take my meaning."

  "It will be my pleasure," Portez-Halle said.

  "I would be in your debt," Per¢n said.

  Once the Paris-Barcelona-Madrid train cleared Spanish cus-toms, changed engines, and got underway, Colonel Portez-Halle went into his luggage, took out a small leather box, and told el Teniente Savorra that he was going to look in on the young German officer.

  As he walked into the Wagons-Lits sleeping car, he wondered idly what had been the peculiarly Teutonic logic behind the de-cision to send the Wagons-Lits on to Barcelona and Madrid with a lowly captain as its sole passenger. They could more easily have detached the car at the border and sent it back to Paris with all the other German officers. It would make more sense to have one junior officer change cars than ten or fifteen officers, including a German and an Argentinean full colonel. Colonel Portez-Halle had long ago decided he would never understand how the German mind worked. But it was sometimes interesting to try.

  He next wondered if he was going to have to knock at each of the doors in the Wagons-Lits car until he found the young officer. But this didn't happen. He faintly heard an obscenity, and know-ing that would have been impossible through a closed door, he walked down the corridor until he came to an open one. And there was the young officer, attired in his underwear.

  "Guten Tag, Herr Hauptmann," Colonel Portez-Halle said.

  "Buenas tardes, mi Coronel," Hauptmann Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein replied, visibly surprised, as he started to rise.

  "Yo soy el Coronel Portez-Halle."

  "A sus ¢rdenes, mi Coronel. Yo soy el Capitan von Wacht-stein."

  "You speak Spanish very well, Captain."

  "Gracias, mi Coronel."

  "I thought perhaps you might like a small taste of brandy."

  "You're very gracious," Peter said. "I was just changing out of my uniform. You'll have to excuse me. I didn't really expect visitors."

  "Colonel Per¢n asked me to look after you."

  "Then you are both very gracious," Peter said.

  "An old friend of the family, I gathered?" Portez-Halle asked as he walked into the compartment, laid the small leather case on the seat, and started to open it.

  "No, Sir," Peter said. "I met the Colonel when I got involved in all this..." He gestured vaguely in the direction of the goods wagon.

  "Then I must have misunderstood," Portez-Halle said. He took two small crystal glasses from the case, then a flat-sided crystal flask.

  "Are you familiar with our brandy?"

  "At one time I was so fond of it. Sir, that it was said I grew too familiar with it."

  Portez-Halle glanced at him and smiled. The Argentinean was right; this was a nice young man, and his behavior suggested that he was accustomed to dealing with senior officers. He could also smell cognac on his breath. Per¢n had been right about that too. Alcohol had ruined the career of more than one fine young officer of Portez-Halle's acquaintance.

  "You served with the Condor Legion, I gather?"

  "Yes, Sir."

  The least I can do for someone who risked his life to spare Spain from the communists is take him into my home overnight and keep him from temptation.

  Portez-Halle poured brandy into both glasses, handed one to Peter, then raised the other.

  "Por Capitan Duarte. Que Dios lo tenga en la gloria." (Freely: "May he rest in peace.") "El Capitan Duarte," Peter said politely. "You knew him well?" Portez-Halle asked. "I never knew him at all. All I know about him is that he was shot down at Stalingrad flying a Fieseler Storch that he should not have been flying in the first place, and that he was apparently well-connected."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "They're sending his body home, they relieved me of my com-mand of a fighter staffel to go with it, and you saw that business at the border. They did just about the same thing when we left Berlin."

  "Colonel Per¢n suggested that you yourself are 'well-connected.' "

  "My father is Generalmajor Graf von Wachtstein, if that's what you mean."

  "Why do I have the feeling, Captain, that you are not partic-ularly pleased with the assignment?"

  "I am an officer. I go where I am sent, and do what I'm told to do."

  "That doesn't answer my question."

  "Just before you came, mi Coronel, I was asking myself the same question. I concluded that only a fool would be unhappy with this assignment. I'm going to a neutral country where it is highly unlikely that I will be asked to lay down my life for the Fatherland."

  "And did you decide whether or not you were such a fool?" Portez-Halle asked with a smile.

  "I am not a fool," Peter said.

  "You'll be staying in Argentina?"

  "You caught me in the midst of my metamorphosis between soldier and diplomat," Peter said. "I was, more than symboli-cally, changing into civilian clothing to go with my new diplomatic passport. I am being assigned to the German Embassy in Buenos Aires as the assistant military attach‚ for air."

  "An important stepping-stone in a career," Portez-Halle said. "I was once an assistant military attach‚ In Warsaw, 1933-34. It was said that it would round out my experience."

  "That has been mentioned to me," Peter said.

  "What is your schedule in Madrid?"

  "I change trains to Lisbon."

  "Is someone meeting you?"

  "I was told someone from our Embassy will meet the train, arrange for the casket to be taken care of overnight, get me a hotel for the night, and then put both of us aboard the Lisbon train in the morning."

  "It would give me great pleasure, Hauptmann von Wachtstein, if you would permit me to have you as my guest at my home while you are in Madrid."

  "That's very gracious, but unnecessary, Sir."

  "It would be my pleasure."

  And, Portez-Halle had a sudden pleasant inspiration, I wil
l send a letter with you to Jorge Guillermo Frade. You will meet him, of course; but he would be likely to dismiss you as unimportant. I will write dear old Jorge that our mutual friend el Coronel Juan Domingo Per¢n considers von Wachtstein to be a charming young officer-and I agreed-and that he was chosen to accom-pany the remains both because of his distinguished war record and because his father is a major general.

  Frade will like that. And it will let him know that I did my best to pay our most sincere respects to the late Captain Duarte-both personally and as the special representative of El Caudillo.

  "Well then, Sir, thank you very much."

  Chapter Six

  [ONE]

  The Office of the Ambassador

  The Embassy of the German Reich

  Avenida Cordoba

  Buenos Aires. Argentina

  1615 7 November 1942

  Ambassador von Lutzenberger would have been hard-pressed to decide which of the two men now standing before his desk he disliked more. One of them at a time was pressing enough, and the two of them together would almost certainly ruin his dinner.

  Anton von Gradny-Sawz, First Secretary of the Embassy of the German Reich to the Republic of Argentina, was a tall, almost handsome, somewhat overweight forty-five-year-old with a full head of luxuriant reddish-brown hair. He was sure he owed this to his Hungarian heritage. As he sometimes put it, flashing one of his charming smiles, he was a German with roots in Hungary who happened to be born in Ostmark-as Austria was called after it was absorbed into Germany after the Anschluss of 1938. He would often add that a Gradny-Sawz had been nervously treading the marble-floored corridors of one embassy or another for almost two hundred years.

  Oberst Karl-Heinz Grner, the Military Attach‚, was a tall, as-cetic-looking man who appeared older than his thirty-nine years... and who loathed Gradny-Sawz both personally and profes-sionally. Die grosse Wienerwurst (the Big Vienna Sausage), as he and von Lutzenberger both thought of him, not only had an ex-aggerated opinion of his own professional skill and importance but also tended to interfere with Oberst Grner's sub rosa function in the Embassy as the representative of the Abwehr-the Intel-ligence Department of the German Armed Forces High Com-mand.

  His Excellency, Manfred Alois Graf von Lutzenberger, Am-bassador of the German Reich to the Republic of Argentina, was a slight, very thin, fifty-three-year-old who wore what was left of his thinning hair plastered across his skull. Von Lutzenbergers, he often thought when he had to deal with Gradny-Sawz, had been treading without nervousness the marble-floored corridors of one embassy or another since 1660, when Friedrich Graf von Lutzenberger had arranged Prussia's full independence from Po-lish suzerainty for Friedrich Wilhelm, the Great Elector. That was nearly three hundred years ago. When, in other words, Gradny-Sawz's ancestors in Hungary were just learning how to ride horses using saddles, and Grner's antecedents were sleeping with their milch cows in some stone-and-thatch cottage in a remote meadow in the Bavarian Alps.

  "Your Excellency, there has been a cable from the Foreign Ministry vis-a-vis the Duarte remains," Gradny-Sawz began. "I thought Oberst Grner should be brought into this as soon as possible."

  "That's the Argentinean boy who was killed at Stalingrad?" von Lutzenberger asked.

  "Yes. His remains are to be placed aboard the General Bel-grano of the Lineas Maritimos de Argentina y Europa at Lisbon. They are being accompanied by a Hauptmann von Wachtstein of the Luftwaffe. The Belgrano is scheduled to sail from Lisbon for Buenos Aires at 0700, Lisbon time, November 8."

  "Have you a first name on von Wachtstein?"

  "I have it here somewhere," Gradny-Sawz said, and began to search in his pockets for a notebook.

  "I don't have his first name at hand, Sir," Grner said. "But he is the son of Generalmajor Graf von Wachtstein."

  "How did you come by that information?"

  "In a cable informing me that he is being assigned to me as my Deputy for Air," Grner said.

  "Hans-Peter are his Christian names, Your Excellency," Gradny-Sawz announced, reading from his leather-bound note-book. "He has been awarded, personally, from the hands of the Fhrer, the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross."

  "How interesting," the ambassador said. "I'm sure there is a reason why it was impossible to consult with me-or, for that matter, you, Grner-before this gentleman was assigned to us."

  Both Grner and Gradny-Sawz smiled uneasily, but said noth-ing. Ambassador von Lutzenberger frequently complained that the Foreign Ministry did not consult with him as often as was nec-essary.

  Well, they swallowed that whole, von Lutzenberger thought, a trifle smugly. I asked who von Wachtstein was; when told, I was annoyed that no one informed me about his assignment here. Therefore, they don't have any idea that his father and I are connected.

  "There is a question of protocol, Your Excellency, that I thought you should resolve," Gradny-Sawz said.

  "Which is?"

  "On the one hand, Hauptmann Duarte was the only son of Humberto Valdez Duarte, the banker. Under those circumstances, one would think that as First Secretary, I would deal with the family, as I did when we learned of Captain Duarte's tragic death. On the other hand, Captain Jorge Duarte's mother-Beatrice Frade de Duarte-is the sister of Oberst Jorge Guillermo Frade; I think it reasonable to presume he was named for him. Under those circumstances, considering Frade's importance, perhaps Grner would be the man to handle things."

  Ambassador von Lutzenberger focused on Gradny-Sawz's mo-tives in raising the question, rather than on the question itself, the answer to which seemed self-evident. The more important an in-digenous official was, the more senior the Embassy official should be. In the diplomatic hierarchy, a first secretary was far senior to a military attache1.

  And Gradny-Sawz certainly knew this.

  So why was he raising the question? In terms of real power, so far as von Lutzenberger was concerned, the two were about equal, and thus equally dangerous. In addition to being his man in Argentina, Grner was a close personal friend of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the Abwehr. One did not cross Canaris, or his friends, without good reason.

  Gradny-Sawz's influence, above and beyond that which went with his rank in the Foreign Ministry, came from his early and close ties to the inner circle of the Nazi party. The National So-cialists had been desperate early on for the support of the aris-tocracy. It lent them, they believed, a respectability they would otherwise not have had. Gradny-Sawz's early support of the Nazis had been a clever career move. He had nothing, really, to lose by announcing his conviction that Adolf Hitler and his National So-cialists were the one hope of das deutsche Volk, and that Austria should "return" to the German fatherland.

  He could have been discharged from the Austrian Foreign Min-istry, of course-and certainly should have been-for bad judgment, or disloyalty. But he was only a minor functionary at the time, and he didn't need a job. The Gradny-Sawz estates in Hun-gary were extensive; and in those days he had dual citizenship; he might even have been able to buy his way into the Hungarian Foreign Service.

  But he bet on the right horse. The National Socialists came to power; and in 1938 Austria became Ostmark. And the Nazis re-warded their friends: Gradny-Sawz was "absorbed" into the German Foreign Ministry and assigned to the Embassy in Paris as Third Secretary for Commercial Affairs. In 1941, he was as-signed to Buenos Aires as First Secretary.

  A colleague in the Foreign Ministry took von Lutzenberger aside during a visit to Buenos Aires and warned him that Gradny-Sawz had friends at the highest levels in the Sicherheitsdienst- the German Secret Service-and it could be presumed that he was reporting to them whenever Embassy personnel-the Am-bassador included-strayed from his notion of the correct Na-tional Socialist path.

  Gradny-Sawz reveled in high-level social intercourse.

  Ordinarily, Die grosse Wienerwurst would be doing whatever he could to make sure Grner did not usurp this privilege. He would not be asking me whether I think Grner should be brought into the
matter. The question then becomes, why?

  Because he is afraid that something is going to go wrong. What, I have no idea, for what can possibly go wrong with a funeral, however grotesquely medieval it will be here in Catholic Argentina?

  Perhaps he is concerned that he will somehow offend Colonel Frade. Or a member of his family. And he wants to see that Grner is the one who will be in hot water if it does. Or else he wants to be able to say, if something goes wrong, that I ordered him to deal with the Duartes and/or Colonel Frade.

  Gradny-Sawz, I know, belongs to the School of Diplomatic Practice that holds that one cannot endanger one's diplomatic career if one avoids any situation of conflict, however unimpor-tant.