"Precisely," Grner said. "I had a tactical officer at the infan-try school who used to quite unnecessarily threaten us that anyone who fainted on parade would regret it."
Peter now felt quite safe in smiling at Grner, and did so. Grner smiled back.
"The Husares de Pueyrredon, the mounted troopers," he went on, "will line the path of the procession from the point where Avenida Alvear ends at the Recoleta Park, at the foot of this small hill." He pointed again, and resumed walking.
When they reached the foot of the small incline, he stopped and pointed again.
"There is the Basilica of St. Pilar," he said. "Did you have the opportunity to visit churches when you were in Spain?"
"On one or two occasions, Herr Oberst. I am Evangelisch" - Protestant.
"Yes, I know. So am I," Grner said. "And there are not very many of us in Bavaria. The Recoleta Cemetery, where Hauptmann Duarte's remains will be interred, is immediately behind the Ba-silica. What I started to say was that if you visited a Catholic church in Spain, you will feel quite at home in this one. It is jammed with larger-than-life-sized statues of various saints-I have often wondered if the admonition against making even graven images is in the Catholic version of the Ten Command-ments..."
Peter chuckled, and Grner smiled.
"... including one of St. Pilar," Grner continued, "the source of whose prestige in the Catholic faith remains a mystery to me, plus the to-be-expected Spanish Baroque ornamentation covering every inch of the place."
Peter chuckled again as Grner started across the street, and they started walking up a fairly steep hill toward the Basilica.
"How the Husares will keep their mounts' footing on this in-cline," Grner observed, "is fortunately not my problem."
They reached the church and stopped in a small exterior court-yard.
Grner pointed again.
"Following the high requiem mass, the casket will be brought to this point. By that time, the dignitaries-including you and me, of course-will be standing there, against that wall. The Ambas-sador will step forward, and you and I will also step forward, stopping one pace behind him. The Ambassador will then briefly express the condolences of the Fhrer and the German people to the Duarte family and the government of Argentina. He will then take one step backward, and I will take one step forward." "Yes, Sir."
"You will be holding a small pillow on which will rest the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross." "Yes, Sir."
"I will then read the order of the Oberkommando of the Wehrtnacht posthumously awarding, in the name of the Fhrer, the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross to Hauptmann Duarte. I will then take three steps forward to the casket. You will follow me, do a left face to me, and extend the pillow to me. I will take the decoration from the pillow and pin it to the Argentine colors that will be covering the casket."
"Yes, Sir."
"How do you feel about that, Herr Hauptmann?"
"Sir?"
"I personally felt the Knight's Cross was a bit much," Grner said. "It is a decoration that should be won because of outstand-ing valor. A simple Iron Cross would be sufficient, I think."
"Herr Oberst, it is not my place to question the award of a decoration by the Oberkommando of the Wehrmacht."
"Nor mine," Grner said. "But between soldiers..."
Peter did not reply.
"We will then, at my command, do the appropriate facing movement, so that we are facing the casket. On my command, we will take two steps backward and then render the German salute. The Navy somehow gets away with the hand-to-the-temple salute, but those of us in the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe must obey the Fhrer's order to render the German salute. Don't for-get!"
"No, Sir."
"On my command again, we will conclude the salute, do an about-face, and march back to our positions behind Ambassador von Lutzenberger."
"Yes, Sir."
"The casket will then be carried out of this courtyard, to the right and through the main entrance to the cemetery. You will remain behind, and when the last of the dignitaries has left the courtyard, you will enter the cemetery through that gate."
He pointed, then walked to a small iron gate in the wall, which turned out to be locked.
"I will see that it is unlocked," Grner said. "For now, we will enter the cemetery by the main gate."
"Yes, Sir."
"You will pass through that gate and-you will probably have to move quickly-proceed to the Duarte tomb, where you will remain until the casket has been placed inside. After the family has departed, you will remove the Knight's Cross from the casket, return it to its box, and proceed to the Duarte mansion, where, exercising great tact, you will present the decoration to Se¤or Duarte."
"Yes, Sir."
"I say 'exercising great tact' because of the mother. She is, poor lady, not in the best of health, mentally speaking."
Oberst Karl-Heinz Grner made a circling motion with his in-dex finger at his temple.
"I understand, Herr Oberst."
"We will now locate the Duarte tomb for you, and the path from the small gate in the courtyard."
"Yes, Sir."
That took about five minutes. Peter found the cemetery fasci-nating. It was almost literally a city of the dead, with every inch except the walkways covered with elaborate tombs, some small and some as large as small houses. In fact, they all looked like houses. Almost all of them had a glass-covered wrought-iron door, through which small altars could be seen. The altars were usually complete to either a large brass cross or a statue of Christ on His cross, or both. And in each tomb/chapel a casket could be seen, either on the altar itself or in front of it. Several of the caskets were small and white, children's caskets, which made Peter uncomfortable.
When Oberst Grner saw him looking into the tombs, he ex-plained:
"The most recently deceased has his casket left on or in front of the altar until the next death in the family, whereupon it is placed in what for a better word I think of as the basement of the tomb. There are three, four, as many as six subterranean levels, I'm told."
"Fascinating."
"Bizarre, is more like it. Catholic bizarre, plus Spanish bizarre. Incredible!"
Something else raised Peter's curiosity as they walked through the cemetery, a tomb with no Catholic symbols or pious words- the burial place of an atheist and his family? He asked Grner about it: "I thought only Catholics could be buried in a Catholic cemetery."
"So did I, until I came here." He paused and shook his head at the failure of Argentines to be logical. "Consecrated ground, they call it. No heathens or Evangelische need apply. The last time I was here-it's over there someplace-I even came across a tomb reserved for Freemasons. I thought the Catholics hated Freemasons about as much as the Fhrer." He smiled. "There is no explanation, except that this is Argentina, and Argentina is like nowhere else in the world."
Finally, they were through, just outside the cemetery's main gate. Grner made Peter recite, in detail, his role in the funeral of Hauptmann Duarte.
I expected this. Sound military practice. You tell someone what you 're going to teach him. You teach him what you want him to know. And then you make him tell you what he has just been taught.
"So, this is done," Grner said. "And what do you suppose we should do now?"
"I have no idea, Herr Oberst," Peter replied.
"What do all soldiers, from private soldiers to Feldmarschalls, do when they have finished their assigned duties and there is no superior officer around?"
"Look for a woman?" Peter blurted.
Grner chuckled. "Close, but I was thinking of finding a beer," he said. "Fortunately, we are close to a place where we can do just that. And who knows, there just might be someone there who catches your eye."
Chapter Fifteen
[ONE]
Restaurant Bavaria
Recoleta Plaza
Buenos Aires
1905 17 December 1942
With Peter moving in s
tep beside him, Oberst Karl-Heinz Grner marched across Recoleta Plaza to a restaurant. A brass sign mounted on the wall identified it as Restaurant Bavaria. Peter stepped ahead of Grner and opened the plate-glass door.
A heavyset, barrel-bellied man in his fifties approached them the moment they were inside. He was wearing a stiffly starched shirt and a suit that looked too tight, and he was immaculately shaved, except for a Hitler-style mustache on his lip.
"Guten Tag, Herr Oberst," he said, with a snap-of-his-neck bow. "What a great pleasure it is to see you."
Grner nodded somewhat imperiously.
"Herr Krantz," he said, "I have told this young gentleman that the imitation schnapps in this pathetic copy of a gasthaus is sometimes drinkable."
"I like to think it is decent."
"This young gentleman is my new assistant, Hauptmann Freiherr von Wachtstein, of the Luftwaffe," Grner said, waited until Krantz had made his little bow, and then added, "holder of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross."
Krantz snapped his head again.
"A great honor, Sir," he said.
It is apparently true, Peter thought. The Knight's Cross and a Reichsmark will sometimes get you a glass of schnapps.
"Herr Krantz," he said.
Peter looked around the restaurant. It not only had solid, Ger-manic-appearing furniture, but the walls were decorated with the crests of the German states and some of the larger cities, and with horned rehbock skulls and mounted boar heads. It looked truly German; it could have been in Munich or Frankfurt am Main or Berlin.
"Would the Herr Oberst and the Herr Freiherr prefer a table by the window, or..."
"One of the rooms upstairs, Krantz, overlooking the Recoleta, would be preferable," Grner said. "1 have told the Freiherr that some of the prettiest women in Buenos Aires march past your windows at this hour. And we are going to have a little private chat."
Krantz led them to the rear of the restaurant and up a flight of stairs, then down a corridor and into a small room with windows overlooking the Recoleta.
"Would this be satisfactory to the Herr Oberst?"
"Thank you, Krantz," Grner said. "This will do."
"Perhaps I might interest the Herr Oberst in something besides a schnapps?"
"With the outrageous prices you charge, schnapps-imitation schnapps is all..."
"The Herr Oberst forgets that I have told him time and time again that his money is not acceptable here," Krantz said.
"How kind of you, Krantz," Grner said, and added to Peter: "Herr Krantz is a good German, Herr Hauptmann. A leader of the German colony here."
Krantz beamed.
"Permit me, Herr Oberst, to send you something of my choice."
"How kind of you, Krantz," Grner said.
Grner disappeared.
"He has been very valuable, helping us get officers from the Graf Spee (The German pocket battleship Graf Spee, under the command of Captain Hans Langsdorff, was engaged in destroying British shipping in the South Atlantic when located and damaged by three British cruisers. She sought refuge in the neutral port of Montevideo, Uruguay. Two British cruisers followed her, and patrolled outside the harbor. A British aircraft carrier and a British battleship were en route to Montevideo when, on 17 De-cember 1940, under British diplomatic pressure, the Uruguayan government insisted on compliance with International Law and that she leave Uruguayan waters after seventy-two hours or be interned. Langsdorff then took her to sea, but rather than risk her capture by the British, blew her up just outside Montevideo. A flotilla of tugs and other small craft hastily organized by the German colony in Buenos Aires carried Captain Langsdorff and his thousand-plus-man crew to Buenos Aires. There, after learning his crew would be interned and that he could do nothing else for them, and to prove that it was fear of British capture of his warship, and not fear of death at the hands of the enemy, that made him scuttle his command, Langsdorff arranged himself so his body would fall on the Graf Spee's battle ensign and shot himself in the temple.) out of the country," Grner said. "You'll become involved in that, of course."
"How many of the Graf Spee's men are here?" Peter asked. He remembered the loss of the Graf Spee and the suicide of her captain, but it never entered his mind to wonder what happened to her crew.
"Eight hundred and something other ranks, and about forty-nine officers," Grner said. "Getting the officers out is a high priority for me, largely because Admiral Canaris has an under-standable personal interest."
Admiral Wilhelm Canaris was Chief of German Intelligence (Abwehr).
"Excuse me?"
"Canaris was himself interned here during the First World War, and escaped."
"I didn't know that," Peter confessed.
Strange that I didn't. Admiral Canaris and my father are close. I wonder if Grner knows that. I wonder how much he knows about my father, or for that matter about me. Did they send a copy of my service records over here? Or my Abwehr dossier? More than likely.
Krantz came back, bearing a bottle in his right hand and hold-ing the stems of three glasses between the fingers of his left.
"I know the Herr Oberst likes a little Slivovitz to whet his appetite, and I thought the Herr Freiherr might like a taste."
"Good of you, Krantz," Grner said as Krantz poured the liquor.
"I am chilling some champagne, Argentinean. The German is gone, and I didn't think French appropriate to properly welcome the Herr Freiherr to Argentina. And then with the Herr Oberst's approval, I thought perhaps a nice Schnitzel, mit Kartoffeln und Apfelbrei-breaded veal cutlet, potatoes, and applesauce.
"We place ourselves in your capable hands, Krantz," Grner said.
Krantz picked up his glass and raised it.
"Herr Oberst," he said, "Herr Freiherr, unser Fhrer!"
Grner and Peter stood and made the toast.
"To victory!" Grner said.
"Death to our enemies!" Krantz said passionately.
Cletus Frade is by definition my enemy. But I don't wish to see him dead. I just don't want him to kill me. Why do people who have never worn a uniform-who have never had to kill anyone- seem to be in love with death and killing ?
The Slivovitz burned his throat. But he remembered that his mother liked it. There was a dinner at the Drei Husaren Restaurant in Vienna, near St. Stephen's Cathedral...
"How long have you been in Argentina, Herr Krantz?" he asked.
"I was born here," Krantz replied. "My father was brought here as a small child."
That explains your bellicosity, doesn't it? You've never heard a bomb fall, or the screams of the dying, or seen the body of the enemy burned to a crisp.
"But you have visited Germany?"
"Only once, as a child. I intend to go after the war."
This man is an amiable idiot. Still, Grner says he's useful. What's the matter with you, anyway? All this man is doing is being polite and patriotic. No. Polite and treasonous. If he was born here, doesn't that make him an Argentinean, not a German? He owes his allegiance to Argentina, not Der Fhrer.
"One more," Krantz said, refilling his and their glasses. "What is it they say? A bird who flies with only wing does so badly?''
Grner and Krantz drank theirs at a gulp. Peter returned his glass to the table barely touched. He didn't like Slivovitz, and he was concerned about alcohol loosening his tongue-Krantz was sending champagne, and there would probably be more than one bottle. It was entirely likely that the purpose of Grner's friend-liness was to feel him out. Ambassador von Lutzenberger warned him to be careful around him.
Krantz finally left.
"No more of this for you?" Grner asked as he picked up the Slivovitz bottle.
"Thank you, no, Herr Oberst."
"You don't like it, or you're a little afraid of drinking with your new commanding officer?"
"A little of both, Herr Oberst."
"Good for you. In my line of work, alcohol is a dangerous thing. And I suppose the same is true with flying
."
"We have a saying in the Luftwaffe, Herr Oberst, that there are old cautious pilots, somewhat fewer old bold pilots, and no old drunken pilots at all."
Grner smiled his appreciation of that.
"In my line of work-it will now to some degree be your line of work as well-a tongue loosened by alcohol is a dangerous thing. One is often possessed of knowledge that should not be shared with others."
"I'm sure that's true, Herr Oberst."
W E B Griffin - Honor 1 - Honor Bound Page 45