Secret Honor
Page 22
“No,” Pamela said, quietly angry. “I won’t forgive you for saying that. That was a terrible thing to say. If I were in your shoes, Enrico, I would thank God that our daughter has found a man like Cletus.”
Enrico Mallín looked at her for a long moment, but in the end decided not to argue the point. “If I offended you, darling,” he said, “I offer my apologies.”
“You had better get used to the idea that Cletus is about to become a member of the family,” Pamela went on, warming to her subject, “and that we’re about to become grandparents, and modify your attitude toward Cletus accordingly.”
With a look of horror on his face that the shameful secret had been blurted out, Enrico Mallín smiled uncomfortably at his son.
“We are going to have to have a man-to-man talk very soon, Enrico,” he said.
“I know Dotty’s pregnant, if that’s what you mean,” Little Henry said. “I mean, everybody knows. I even heard the servants talking about it.”
“We will still have a talk, man to man, my son,” Enrico said.
Twenty minutes later, the Rolls topped a shallow rise in the rolling pampas, and Enrico Mallín could see the road now stretching before them in a nearly straight line for several miles. And a moment after that, a car appeared on the road, heading toward them.
“If I didn’t know better,” Enrico said, gesturing through the windshield at the car, “I’d say that looks like Jorge’s Horch.”
“That’s it.” Pamela said. “He had it repaired.”
“My God, how fast is he going?” Enrico exclaimed, and added: “If I were him, I don’t think I would ever want to see that car again.”
“You’re not him,” Pamela said.
Mallín slowed, pulled to the side of the road, and stopped.
Less than a minute later, the Horch, braking heavily, stopped beside it. Dorotéa Mallín was driving. Clete was in the front seat with her. Enrico Rodríguez was in the backseat.
“Well, hello,” Clete greeted them. “Something wrong?”
“I didn’t want to be run off the road,” Enrico Mallín said. “What’s your hurry? Is something wrong?”
“No,” Clete said, smiling. “We’re just road-testing the car. How does it look, Enrico?”
Among the many things Enrico Mallín did not like about his son-in-law-to-be was that he addressed him by his Christian name.
“It looks splendid,” Enrico said with a somewhat stiff smile.
Enrico got out of the Rolls-Royce and walked up to the Horch, and Little Henry got out immediately and followed him.
“I thought they normally kept you locked in the attic,” Clete said to him, smiling. “Got out on parole, did you?” Then he walked over and kissed Pamela. “No, I don’t want to hear about the plans for the wedding,” he said, “in case you were going to ask.”
Among the many things Enrico Mallín did not like about his son-in-law-to-be was his sense of humor.
“Be careful,” she said. “I still have not completely forgiven you….”
“Forgiven me for what?” Clete asked innocently.
Little Enrico giggled.
You know damned well for what, Enrico Mallín thought. For what you did to my Dorotéa. Taking her innocence and purity. Ruining her life! I will never forgive you!
“How was Uruguay?” Pamela asked.
“The girls bought out a leather store down by the port,” Clete said. “Each now has a lifetime supply of purses.”
“We have to be getting back to Buenos Aires, Cletus,” Pamela said, seeing that her husband was doing everything in his impatience but pawing the ground.
“We’d sort of expected you for supper,” Clete said.
“Out of the question, I’m afraid,” Enrico said. “Thank you just the same.”
“Perhaps something light, if we had it early,” Pamela said, adding, to her husband, “We have to eat.”
He grunted.
“How about in an hour?” Clete said. “I’ve got a little errand to run.”
“We’ll take Dorotéa with us,” Enrico said.
“We want to be alone, Daddy!” Dorotéa said.
“Can I go, Clete?” Little Enrico asked.
Among the many things Enrico Mallín did not like about his son-in-law-to-be was that Little Enrico idolized him.
“No,” Clete said immediately, and somewhat abruptly, but then, when he saw the look of disappointment on the boy’s face, added, “But I’ll tell you what, Enrico Junior, when you get to the house, tell Beth I said to take you for a ride in a Model A. You can drive.”
“Really?”
“Clete,” Enrico Mallín said sternly, “I’m afraid Enrico is a little young for that. He doesn’t know how to drive.”
“He’s fifteen and he can’t drive?” Clete asked incredulously. “He doesn’t look backward.”
“He can’t drive,” Enrico Mallín repeated, somewhat coldly.
“Well, then, it’s high time he learned. And Beth can teach him.”
Among the many things Enrico Mallín did not like about his son-in-law-to-be was his presumption that he had the right to offer Little Enrico things—potentially dangerous things—without first seeking his approval.
“See you at the house in forty-five minutes,” Clete said, and gestured for Dorotéa to get moving.
There was the sound of gunfire as they approached the radio station.
Clete knew what it was, and smiled.
Dorotéa looked at him in alarm and saw the smile. “What in the world is that?” she asked.
“An old Texas custom,” he said. “Good ol’ boys whiling away a dull Sunday afternoon, ventilating tin cans.”
In a locked room in one of the outbuildings near the garage, Clete had come across small-arms ammunition—enough, in his professional judgment as a Marine officer, to supply a battalion about to land on a hostile beach.
He presumed his father had cached the ammunition there before the coup d’état. Whatever the reason, he had shown it to Chief Schultz, who had loaded a dozen cases of .45 ACP pistol ammunition—1,200 rounds per case—onto his Model A pickup and taken it to the radio station.
The marksmen turned out to be Chief Schultz and three of the men of Ashton’s Western Hemisphere Team 17—Staff Sergeant Jerry O’Sullivan, a radar operator, a wiry little man with sharp features and intelligent eyes; Technical Sergeant Ferris, a trimly built man who ran the generator powering the radar and was the team’s armorer; and the team’s executive officer, First Lieutenant Madison R. Sawyer III, a large, good-looking, well-muscled young man.
O’Sullivan and Ferris were in casual civilian clothing, purchased for them by Ashton in Pila, the nearest town. Like the chief, Sawyer was wearing the billowing shirt, trousers, and boots of a gaucho.
If Sawyer was aware that he looked ridiculous popping to attention dressed that way and crisply saluting Clete, it didn’t show on his face. “Good afternoon, Sir!”
Clete returned the salute, pretending not to see that Sergeants Ferris and O’Sullivan were shaking their heads in disbelief at Sawyer’s parade-ground behavior.
“I was hoping to see you, Sawyer,” he said. “Everybody’s here?”
“Stein has the duty, Sir,” Sawyer said.
Sergeant Siegfried Stein’s family had fled Hitler’s Germany in 1935; he now had a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Chicago. He was the radar expert.
By “has the duty,” Sawyer meant that Stein was at the radar site, where the equipment was turned on once every two hours or so—never at a precise interval, but long enough to scan Samborombón Bay looking for a ship that might be a German submarine-replenishment vessel.
The crack he had made about good ol’ boys whiling away a dull Sunday afternoon had been right on th
e money, Clete thought. Not only had they been ventilating tin cans—there was a pile of bullet-riddled cans twenty-five yards from the main building—but they had also been having a beer-and-beef barbecue.
“Gentlemen, I don’t believe you know my fiancée. This is Dorotéa Mallín. Honey, the big gaucho is Lieutenant Madison Sawyer; the ugly Irishman is Sergeant Jerry O’Sullivan; and that’s Sergeant Bill Ferris.”
He waited until they had all gone through the polite motions with her, then added, “And in answer to the question that everybody’s too polite to ask, yes, she knows what you’re doing out here besides drinking beer.”
“Speaking of which?” Sawyer asked.
“Yes, indeed. Thank you very much. I was afraid you were never going to ask.”
“I’ll go get a glass for the lady,” Ferris said.
“Don’t bother,” Dorotéa said. “I like it from the bottle.”
“How did things go yesterday, skipper?” the chief asked.
“Like you know what through a goose,” Clete said. Dorotéa looked at him curiously. “I turned him over to Whatsisname—”
“Stevenson? Ralph Stevenson? Our guy in Montevideo?”
“Right. And Stevenson said he could get him to Pôrto Alegre with no trouble. From there, he should be able to travel to Rio de Janeiro in a matter of hours.”
“Stevenson is a good man,” Schultz said.
“We need to get a message out right away—” Clete said, and then interrupted himself. “If there had been anything for me, I guess you would have told me?”
“Nothing, skipper.”
“OK. Message Graham that I took Ashton to Montevideo in the Lodestar and turned him over, without incident, to Stevenson, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Aye, aye, Sir,” the chief said. “You mean right now, or will it wait until the next scheduled call? That’s in about an hour.”
“It’ll wait until then,” Clete said.
“I’ll do you a draft,” the Chief said, and walked into the house.
“May I offer something to eat, Miss Mallín?” Sawyer asked politely.
“First of all, call me Dorotéa. And, no, thank you, we’re going to eat just as soon as we get to the main house,” Dorotéa said. “But do you suppose I could try that?”
“Try what?”
“One of those,” she said, pointing to the .45 pistols on the table. “I’ve never fired a gun.”
Sawyer looked at Clete, who nodded his permission.
“Baby, they make a lot of noise and they kick like a mule,” Clete said.
“Forewarned is forearmed, right?” she said.
Sawyer picked up one of the pistols and began a lecture on the Pistol, Caliber .45 Model 1911A1, worthy of the Infantry School.
Her first shots went as wild as Clete thought they would, but within five minutes, she hit her first tin can, and turned to smile proudly and happily at Clete.
A moment later the Chief touched Clete’s arm and handed him a sheet of typewriter paper.
“I included our routine crap, OK, skipper?”
* * *
PRIORITY
TOP SECRET LINDBERGH
DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN
FROM TEX
MSG NO 106 TIME TIME GREENWICH 2 MAY 1943
TO AGGIE
BACARDI SUCCESSFULLY EXFILTRATED BY TEX IN PARROT TO CARE OF COUTH 1 MAY
BACARDI ETA CARIOCA VIA BIRDCAGE 4 MAY
URGENTLY REQUIRE SIX EACH REPEAT SIX EACH PART NUMBER 23-34567
FOUR EACH REPEAT FOUR EACH PART NUMBER 23 8707
FOUR EACH REPEAT FOUR EACH PART NUMBER 23 8710
ABOVE NOT REPEAT NOT AVAILABLE LOCAL ECONOMY
NO FISHING LUCK AT ALL
ACKNOWLEDGE
TEX
* * *
“Parrot” was the code name of the Lodestar. “Couth” was Mr. Ralph Stevenson, the Cultural Attaché of the American Embassy in Montevideo. “Carioca” was Rio de Janeiro. And “Birdcage” was the U.S. Army Air Corps base in Pôrto Alegre, Brazil. “No Fishing Luck” meant that no ship even suspected of being a German replenishment vessel had appeared on the radar screen.
“‘Urgently require,’ Chief?” Clete asked.
“If I don’t say ‘urgently’ they’ll send it in time for Christmas 1945. There’s no problem with the radar, skipper. Stein is just being careful. Even Urgent, though, it takes two weeks at least to fly parts down in the diplomatic pouch to the Embassy, and a couple of more days before Lieutenant Pelosi can get them out here.”
Clete nodded his understanding.
“Looks fine, Chief,” he said. “Send it.”
“Aye, aye, Sir.”
“Hey, honey, we have to get back,” Clete called to Dorotéa.
With obvious reluctance, she laid the .45 down.
VIII
[ONE]
The Embassy of the German Reich
Avenue Córdoba
Buenos Aires, Argentina
0815 3 May 1943
The moment Ambassador von Lutzenberger appeared for work, Fräulein Ingebord Hassell followed him into his office. He sat down at his desk and then looked up at her.
“Excellency,” Fräulein Hassell said, “there is a Most Urgent, Most Secret from Berlin.”
“Who did the decryption?”
“I did, Excellency.”
He held his hand out for it. She gave it to him, took a step backward, and folded her hands over her stomach, awaiting her orders.
* * *
CLASSIFICATION: MOST URGENT
CONFIDENTIALITY: MOST SECRET
DATE: 24 APRIL 1943
FROM: FOREIGN MINISTER
TO: IMMEDIATE AND PERSONAL ATTENTION OF THE REICH AMBASSADOR TO ARGENTINA BUENOS AIRES
HEIL HITLER!
RECEIPT OF YOUR MOST SECRET OF 20 APRIL 1943 IN RE THE DEATHS OF STANDARTENFÜHRER GOLTZ AND OBERST GRÜNER IS ACKNOWLEDGED AND HAS BEEN RECEIVED WITH THE GRAVEST CONCERN. THE SITUATION IS BEING EVALUATED AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS OF THE GOVERNMENT.
AT THE REQUEST OF GENERALFELDMARSCHALL KEITEL, REICHSFÜHRER-SS HIMMLER HAS SECONDED SS-OBERFÜHRER MANFRED VON DEITZBERG TO THE OBERKOMMANDO DER WEHRMACHT, WHERE HE WILL SERVE AS GENERALMAJOR OF THE GENERAL STAFF. FELDMARSCHALL KEITEL, REICHSLEITER BORMANN, REICHSFÜHRER HIMMLER AND I ARE AGREED THAT GENERALMAJOR VON DEITZBERG WILL SUPERVISE THE INVESTIGATION OF THIS INCIDENT. VON DEITZBERG WILL PROCEED TO BUENOS AIRES IN THIS CAPACITY ON THE NEXT LUFTHANSA FLIGHT. DEPUTY FOREIGN MINISTER GEORG VON LÖWZER AND STANDARTENFÜHRER ERICH RASCHNER WILL TRAVEL TO BUENOS AIRES AT THE SAME TIME.
ADDITIONALLY, WITH THE CONCURRENCE OF ADMIRAL CANARIS, I HAVE DESIGNATED KORVETTENKAPITÄN KARL BOLTITZ AS NAVAL ATTACHÉ AND HE WILL PROCEED TO BUENOS AIRES AS SOON AS CERTAIN ADMINISTRATIVE MATTERS CAN BE CONCLUDED.
THE PRESENCE IN BERLIN OF FIRST SECRETARY GRADNY-SAWZ, MAJOR FREIHERR VON WACHTSTEIN AND STURMBANNFÜHRER VON TRESMARCK OF THE EMBASSY OF THE GERMAN REICH IN MONTEVIDEO WILL BE REQUIRED IN THIS REGARD. YOU ARE DIRECTED TO ADVISE THE GERMAN AMBASSADOR IN MONTEVIDEO, AND TO ARRANGE FOR THESE OFFICERS THE HIGHEST PRIORITY FOR TRAVEL TO BERLIN ON THE NEXT LUFTHANSA FLIGHT.
IT IS PRESENTLY INTENDED THAT THESE OFFICERS WILL BE RETURNED TO THEIR POSTS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.
AT THE DIRECTION OF THE FÜHRER.
VON RIBBENTROP, FOREIGN MINISTER OF THE GERMAN REICH.
* * *
If she were a man, von Lutzenberger thought for the five hundredth time, she would make an excellent Stabsfeldwebel—Regimental Sergeant Major.
He read it carefully, without expression.
It was more or less what von Lutzenberger had expected. The only good news was that he himself had not been ordered to Berlin—an order that would have carried with i
t the powerful suggestion that he was being held responsible for the deaths of Goltz and Grüner, or, worse, the failed attempt to smuggle the Operation Phoenix “special cargo” into Argentina.
That good news could change, of course, when Gradny-Sawz, von Tresmarck, and von Wachtstein were questioned by the SS—probably by Himmler himself.
He thought a moment about the specific ways the good news could become bad.
Gradny-Sawz, for starters, now believed that von Wachtstein had nothing to do with how the Americans learned the details of the “special shipment” landing; but if it looked to him as if he were himself under deep suspicion, a man who had betrayed his country would have no compunctions about throwing someone to the wolves—anyone: von Tresmarck, von Deitzberg, von Wachtstein, or even Ambassador Graf Manfred Alois von Lutzenberger.
As for von Tresmarck, von Lutzenberger knew very little about him except that he was SS, and that meant that he would be perfectly willing to point his finger at anyone at all, to divert it from being pointed at him.
It was bad news pure and simple that von Ribbentrop was sending von Löwzer, a dangerous man and, even worse, a devout Nazi.
It was even worse news that they had chosen to send von Deitzberg, a far more dangerous Nazi, even though it had to be expected that the hierarchy would send someone from the SS to conduct an investigation.
The naval officer was obviously one of Canaris’s agents, and was probably going to take over Grüner’s Abwehr intelligence functions. And von Deitzberg’s deputy, Raschner, was almost certainly going to take over Grüner’s Sicherheitsdienst responsibilities.
Somebody—probably Canaris—had recognized that it had been a mistake for Grüner to serve as both the senior Sicherheitsdienst officer and the Abwehr’s resident agent under cover of his military attaché function. Not only was it too much responsibility for one man, but the Abwehr liked to keep an eye on the Sicherheitsdienst, and vice versa, and that was impossible if both offices were held by the same man.