She ran her fingers very softly over the hair on his chest, stopping when she encountered a line of scar tissue.
Peter had told her that he had gotten that falling off his bicycle as a child, but she didn’t believe him. She was sure he’d gotten that scar in the war, just as he’d gotten the longer scars on his lower abdomen and on his right leg in the war.
He never talked to her about the war.
She wondered if Cletus Frade talked to Dorotéa about what he’d done in the war. Or if Peter talked to Cletus about what they’d done in the war. Did they talk about war? Or about women?
When Alicia leaned forward to run her fingers farther down Peter’s chest, her hair fell forward, blocking her view, and she pushed it back and over her shoulders.
Her fingers reached the blond hair at his groin. His thing looked like a long, wrinkled thumb, she thought. And ten minutes ago it had looked like…like a banana, a large banana!
She touched it, and that woke him up.
She quickly removed her hand.
“Sorry, baby,” Peter said.
“For what?”
“I fell asleep.”
“You don’t have to be sorry for falling asleep,” Alicia said.
He raised his hand to her breast, cupped it momentarily, and then put his index finger on her nipple, causing it to stiffen and rise.
“That’s chocolate, right?” he said. “The other one’s vanilla.”
A moment later, he chuckled. “I love it when you blush,” he said.
“I’m not blushing.”
He snorted.
“Precious,” she said. “I have to go.”
“Damn!” he said, and sat up and reached for the wristwatch on the bedside table.
It was American, a Hamilton chronograph, an aviator’s wristwatch. Cletus Frade had one exactly like it, and Dorotéa had noticed that, just as Alicia had noticed Peter’s. Cletus had told Dorotéa that he’d stolen his from the U.S. Marine Corps, and Dorotéa wasn’t sure if that was the truth or not. Peter had told Alicia that he had “found” his American watch, and obviously hadn’t wanted to talk about it, so she hadn’t pressed him.
“It’s six and a half minutes after four,” Peter announced indignantly.
That was the German in him, Alicia thought. She would have said “it’s four” or “a little after four,” not “six and a half minutes after four.”
“I have to go to the house,” she said. “We’re going to Estancia Santo Catalina this morning.”
“What time this morning?”
“Probably in time to have a late lunch at the estancia,” she said, and computed the time. “Leave Buenos Aires at eleven.” She paused. “You are coming out for the weekend?”
“Unless the Ambassador or Gradny-Sawz finds something for me to do,” he replied, and then asked, “So why do you have to leave now? Is Mama sitting up in the foyer waiting for you?”
“She’s sound asleep, but she will know five minutes after she wakes what time I came in. The maid will tell her when she brings her coffee.”
“So if the maid tells her you came home at half past six? Half past seven? What’s the difference?”
“The roof garden at the Alvear closes at half past four. She knows that. She will expect me to be home half an hour after that.”
“That’s,” he consulted the watch again, “fifty-two minutes from now.”
“Yes,” Alicia said, and felt herself blushing again. “I didn’t say I had to leave this instant. Just very soon.”
“Oh, baby!”
“Can you?”
“Of course I can. I’m a fighter pilot.”
Her smile vanished.
“I wonder how often you’ve said that in the past,” she said.
“Once or twice, I admit—”
“Once or twice, hah!”
“Always before I met you,” he said.
“Do you think you’ll hear something today?” she asked.
“That was a quick change of subject,” he said.
“Do you think?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe today. Maybe not until next week.”
“And if they tell you to go to Germany?”
“I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it,” he said.
She felt tears form, and she was not quite able to suppress a sob.
“Honey, don’t do that,” Peter said.
“God, Peter, I’m so frightened!”
He put his arms around her.
“It’ll be all right, baby,” he said.
She held him tightly. He kissed her hair.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Oh, Christ!”
He ran his hand down her spine.
“Señorita, your question has been answered,” he said.
“What?”
He took her hand and guided it to his groin. “Our friend has also waken up,” he said.
She held him.
“If I could see your face, would you be blushing?” he asked.
“Shut up, Peter,” she said, and lay back on the bed, pulling him down on top of her.
Major Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein, now wearing a shirt and trousers, knocked at the bathroom door.
“I’m brushing my hair,” Alicia called softly, and he pushed open the door.
She was standing in front of the mirror in her underwear. She smiled at him. “You didn’t have to get up,” she said.
“I’m going to drive you home,” he said.
“I’m going to take a taxi,” she said. “We’ve been through this before.”
“Christ, you’re as hardheaded as you are beautiful.”
She smiled at him. “I’ve explained the rules to you,” she said. “I pretend to have been dancing with friends at the Alvear roof garden, and Mother pretends to believe me.”
“You’ve had a lot of experience with this sort of thing, right?”
Her smile vanished, replaced by a look of hurt and anger. “You know better than that,” she said.
He knew better than that. Alicia had been a virgin.
“Just a little joke,” he said.
“I don’t like your sense of humor,” Alicia said, and began to furiously brush her hair.
After a moment she said, “I learned the rules from Isabela.”
Isabela was the older of the Carzino-Cormano girls.
“And has el bitcho been dancing at the Alvear tonight, too?”
“Don’t call her that, Peter, I’ve asked you.”
It had been loathing at first sight when Isabela and Cletus Frade had met. Clete had dubbed her “el bitcho.” Though it was neither Spanish nor English, the term had immediately caught on. Alicia often caught herself thinking of Isabela that way, and she had even overheard one of the maids calling her that to another maid.
“Has she?” he pursued.
“I don’t know what she did last night. She’s been…” Alicia stopped herself just in time from saying “bitchy,” “…difficult about the wedding. She really doesn’t want to participate.”
Alicia finished brushing her hair and started to make up her face.
“I like to watch you standing there in your underwear, doing that,” Peter said.
She smiled at him. “Go back to bed,” she said.
“Not alone,” he said.
“Sweetheart, I have to go.”
“I’ll put you in a cab,” he said.
She nodded.
[THREE]
The Embassy of the German Reich
Avenue Córdoba
Buenos Aires
0915 29 April 1943
“And a very good morning to you, Fraülein Hassell,” Peter von Wachtstein said to the Amb
assador’s secretary as he entered the Ambassador’s outer office. He was wearing a well-cut, nearly black pin-striped double-breasted suit, a stiffly starched white shirt, and a striped silk necktie. She was a middle-aged spinster in a black dress, and wore her graying hair drawn tight and gathered in a bun at the nape of her neck.
“His Excellency wanted to see you the moment you arrived at the Embassy,” Fräulein Ingebord Hassell said, sounding to Peter much like a scolding schoolteacher.
“And here I am,” Peter said.
“It’s sixteen past nine,” she said. “He sent for you at eight twenty-five.”
“I was caught in traffic,” Peter said. “May I go in?”
“One moment, please, Herr Major,” she said.
She pushed the TALK lever on her intercom box. “Excellency, Major Freiherr von Wachtstein is here.”
“Send him in, please, Fräulein Hassell,” the ambassador replied. “And would you bring us some coffee?”
“Jawohl, Excellency,” she said, and glared at Peter. “One day, you’re going to try his Excellency’s patience too much.”
“Oh, I hope not,” Peter said.
He walked to the Ambassador’s door, knocked, and then entered without waiting for a reply. “Heil Hitler!” he barked so that Fräulein Hassell would hear him, but he did not give the requisite salute.
“Heil Hitler,” the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Führer of the German Reich to the Republic of Argentina replied.
Manfred Alois Graf von Lutzenberger was a very slight man of fifty-three who wore his thinning hair plastered across his skull. He signaled for Peter to come in. “I sent for you forty-five minutes ago,” he said.
“My apologies, Excellency, I was caught in traffic.”
Fräulein Hassell scurried into the room with a tray holding coffee and sweets.
Von Lutzenberger waited until Fräulein Hassell had left and closed the door behind her, then pointed to the chair beside his desk, an order for Peter to sit down. “Traffic, eh? I thought perhaps you might have overslept.” He pushed a sheet of paper across the desk to Peter.
“I wonder what Untersturmführer Schneider did from ten-fifteen to four A.M.,” Peter said.
“His duty to his ambassador, von Wachtstein,” von Lutzenberger said. “Making a report that will also be of great interest when the people arrive from Berlin.”
Peter looked at von Lutzenberger with that question in his eyes.
“Not a word,” von Lutzenberger said. “But it will come, Peter, as inevitably as the sun rises.”
* * *
SECRET
ATTENTION OF AMBASSADOR AND FIRST SECRETARY ONLY
SURVEILLANCE REPORT VON WACHTSTEIN, MAJOR FREIHERR HANS-PETER
PERIOD 1735 28 APRIL 1943 TO 0630 29 APRIL 1943
28 APRIL
1700 SURVEILLANCE COMMENCED
1735 OFFICER LEFT THE EMBASSY IN PERSONAL AUTO
1758 OFFICER ARRIVED AT HIS APARTMENT
1805 OFFICER TELEPHONED 78342 AND SPOKE WITH SEÑORITA ALICIA CARZINO-CORMANO, ARRANGING RENDEZVOUS WITH CARZINO-CORMANO AT RESTAURANT MÜNCHEN RECOLETA FOR 1930
1915 OFFICER TOOK TAXICAB TO RESTAURANT MÜNCHEN
1932 OFFICER ARRIVED RESTAURANT MÜNCHEN, MET CARZINO-CORMANO
2115 OFFICER DEPARTED RESTAURANT MÜNCHEN WITH CARZINO-CORMANO IN TAXICAB
2148 OFFICER ARRIVED HIS APARTMENT WITH CARZINO-CORMANO
2215 ALL VISIBLE LIGHTS IN APARTMENT EXTINGUISHED.
29 APRIL
0353 LIGHT, MASTER BEDROOM ILLUMINATED
0430 OTHER APARTMENT LIGHTS ILLUMINATED
0442 OFFICER APPEARED WITH CARZINO-CORMANO IN APARTMENT LOBBY AND PLACED CARZINO-CORMANO IN TAXICAB
0600 SURVEILLANCE TERMINATED
SUMMARY:
DURING THE SURVEILLANCE PERIOD, OFFICER MET WITH ONE (1) PERSON, CARZINO-CORMANO AND MADE ONE (1) TELEPHONE CALL, TO CARZINO-CORMANO.
HEIL HITLER!
SCHNEIDER, UNTERSTURMFÜHRER, SS-SD
* * *
Peter nodded.
“When do you next plan to see Señor Duarte?” von Lutzenberger asked. “I have something I want you to give him.”
“I’ve been invited to the Carzino-Cormano estancia for the weekend. I’m sure he’ll be there.”
“Well, as we have had no word from Berlin, I think you should accept the invitation. Don’t go out there before I give you what I have.”
“No, Sir.”
“That will be all, Peter, thank you.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Peter made it as far as opening the door when von Lutzenberger called out to him, loud enough for Fräulein Hassell to hear.
He turned.
“I expect you to be in the Embassy during normal duty hours, von Wachtstein. If traffic is a problem, then leave your apartment earlier.”
“Jawohl, Excellency!”
[FOUR]
El Club De Belgrano
Barrancas Del Belgrano, Buenos Aires
1315 30 April 1943
The dark blue 1939 Dodge four-door sedan turned left off Avenida Libertador onto Calle José Fernandez and drove up its steep—for Buenos Aires—incline to the first corner. There the driver tried, and failed, to make a very sharp left turn into the drive of the Belgrano Club. He had to back up twice before he was lined up in the drive and the porter could open the gate.
If he had turned a block earlier and come down Arribeños, the passenger in the rear seat of the car thought, he could have done this a lot easier.
The Belgrano Club occupied most of a block in Barrancas del Belgrano, an upper-class district of Buenos Aires—a district that looked, its Deutsche-Argentinishe residents often commented, much like the Zehlendorf district of Berlin. Its tree-shaded streets were lined with large villas, and here and there a luxurious apartment building.
Once inside the compound, the driver (following the directions of his passenger) drove past the buildings housing the swimming pool and the restaurant, and finally stopped by the door to the men’s dressing room, near the tennis courts.
The driver jumped from behind the wheel, came to attention by the rear door, and pulled it open.
A tall, fair-haired, light-skinned man in his middle thirties, wearing a well-cut gray business suit and a snap-brim felt hat, stepped out and looked at the driver, then at his watch.
There is time.
“Manuel,” he said kindly. “A little less militarily, if you would. We’re in civilian clothing.”
“Sí, mi Coronel,” Sargento Manuel Lascano said, still at attention.
Though Sargento Lascano was also wearing a business suit, he had spent five of his twenty-three years in the Army, and almost all of that in the infantry, and almost all of that in remote provinces. Two weeks earlier (after selection by the man in the well-cut suit as the most promising among ten candidates), he had been transferred to the Edificio Libertador Headquarters of the Ejército Argentino (Argentine Army) for “special duty.”
The criteria for selection had been high intelligence, an absolutely clean service record, a stable marriage, a simple background, and, importantly, a reputation for keeping his mouth shut.
“And when we’re in civilian clothes, Manuel,” Coronel Bernardo Martín said, “please try to remember not to call me ‘coronel.’”
“Sí, Señor,” Sargento Lascano said.
“You’ll get used to it all, Manuel,” Martín said, meaning it. He had already decided that he had made the right choice in Sargento Lascano. Lascano didn’t know much about what was expected of him, but he wanted the promised—“if this works out, Sargento”—promotion to Warrant Officer, which meant he wanted to learn. So far, it hadn’t been necessary to tell him anything twice.
Teaching him, Martín thought, is like writing on a clean blackboard.
&
nbsp; “When you drop me off at a place like this,” Martín said, “try to find a parking place that leaves the door I went in visible. Try to be inconspicuous, but failing that, park where you have to, and if anyone questions you, show them your identification and tell them you’re on duty.”
That morning, when he had reported to Coronel Martín for duty, Sargento Lascano had been issued a leather-bound photo identification card identifying him as an agent of the Bureau of Internal Security. He had also been issued a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol manufactured in Argentina under license from Colt Firearms of Hartford, Connecticut, USA, and a shoulder holster.
“Sí, Señor.”
“I’ll probably be about fifteen minutes, Manuel,” Martín said. “With a little luck, ten.”
“Sí, Señor.”
Martín entered the men’s locker room, resisted the temptation to have a beer at the bar just inside, and went to his locker and stripped off his clothing.
The man he was looking for was not in the locker room.
I’m going to need a shower anyway. Why not?
Five minutes later, he came out of the tile-walled shower room, a towel around his waist. The man he was looking for, middle-aged, muscular, balding, was now in the locker room, sitting by his open locker, also wearing only a towel.
“Well, look who’s here,” Santiago Nervo said, almost sarcastically cordial. “Buenas tardes, mi Coronel.”
Commissario Santiago Nervo was, more or less, Martín’s peer in the Policía Federal, in charge of their Special Investigations Division.
Martín did not particularly like him, and he was sure that Nervo felt much the same way about him. Policemen don’t like soldiers, particularly soldiers in the intelligence business, which they believe should be their responsibility. And intelligence officers don’t like policemen whose jurisdiction sometimes conflicts with their own.
“Putting on a little weight, aren’t you, Santiago?” Martín said, offering his hand.
Secret Honor Page 9