“A second set of prints should be sent to Fregattenkapitän von und zu Waching at the Abwehr,” Boltitz interrupted. “Is there any reason why this can’t be done by eight in the morning?”
“No, I can’t think of any.”
The desk clerk now had two room keys in his hand.
Boltitz put his hand out for them. The desk clerk looked to the Gestapo agent for directions. The Gestapo agent nodded, and the desk clerk dropped the keys into Boltitz’s hand.
“Good,” Boltitz said. He looked at the Gestapo agent. “Fregattenkapitän von und zu Waching and Obersturmbannführer Cranz will be expecting those photographs at eight in the morning.”
“I understand,” the Gestapo agent said.
“Thank you for your cooperation,” Boltitz said.
The Gestapo agent nodded but didn’t speak.
Boltitz walked back to the lobby bar with irreverent thoughts running through his head: What Cranz and von und zu Waching—for that matter, Himmler and Canaris—are liable to see in the photographs are two heroic Luftwaffe pilots sleeping off a drunk. Alone.
Well, at least they’ll have proof that I’ve been doing my job.
What a despicable way to earn your living, hanging around a hotel lobby, waiting for the opportunity to photograph officers in bed with some slut!
Where do they recruit Gestapo agents? In a sewer?
Major Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein and Hauptmann Wilhelm Johannes Grüner were no longer at the table where Boltitz had left them.
They were now at the bar, with the young women who had been smiling at them before and a Wehrmacht General Staff Oberstleutnant and an SS-Hauptsturmführer.
To the visible annoyance of the Army and the SS men, the young women seemed far more fascinated with the two fighter pilots (one of whom had the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross hanging around his neck) than with them.
If one is a nice German girl, one does not go to bed with a young man one has met thirty minutes before in a bar. Unless, of course, he is a hero, in which case one is not a slut but a patriotic German woman making her contribution to the Final Victory.
Grüner saw him. “U-boat!” he cried. “You’re back! We thought you’d submerged!”
Boltitz dangled the hotel keys in front of him.
“How the hell did you get those?” Willi asked. “They told me there wasn’t a room in the house.”
“Never underestimate the submarine service, Willi,” Boltitz said.
“Ladies, may I present Korvettenkapitän Boltitz?” Willi said.
The young women all offered their hands. One of them, a tall, buxom woman with dark red hair who looked Hungarian, held on to Boltitz’s hand far longer than the circumstances demanded. “And does the Korvettenkapitän of the Submarine Service have a first name?” she asked.
“He does,” Boltitz said. “It’s Karl, and Karl suggests that it might be very pleasant to go upstairs and sip Champagne while we watch the people walk up and down the Kurfürstendamm.”
“That would be very nice,” the red-haired woman said. “My name is Charlotte.”
She gave him her hand again.
The waiter appeared. “Major Freiherr von Wachtstein?”
Peter nodded.
“You’re a baron?” one of the women, a brunette with a short haircut and a low bodice, asked.
“Only on odd Thursdays,” Peter said.
“There is a telephone call for you, Herr Baron,” the waiter said. “The house phone is in the lobby, to the right.”
“Who the hell can that be?” Peter asked.
“It’s probably the loving mother of your four precious children,” Willi said.
“You’re married?” the brunette asked, disappointed.
“Only his wife is married,” Boltitz said.
The joke won more laughter than it deserved.
Peter turned and walked toward the lobby door.
“And while he’s lying to his wife about how he plans to spend the evening,” Willi said, “I think I’ll jettison some fuel. Can I trust you, U-boat, not to lose the girls while I’m gone?”
“I’ll do my best,” Karl said.
Charlotte swung on her stool so that her calf pressed against Boltitz’s leg.
Von Wachtstein returned to the bar first.
“Was that your wife, Herr Baron?” the brunette asked.
“He doesn’t have a wife,” Boltitz said.
Peter flashed him a quick, dirty look.
“Actually, it was a sailor,” he said. “A friend of the Herr Korvettenkapitän.”
“Von und zu Waching?” Boltitz asked. “Or the other sailor?”
“Von und zu Waching,” Peter said. “My father’s going to be here in the morning.”
“Your father’s coming?” the brunette asked.
“Generalleutnant Graf von Wachtstein,” Boltitz offered helpfully.
The brunette’s face showed how pleased she was to have snared a Luftwaffe fighter pilot with the Knight’s Cross, whose father was a both a nobleman and a senior officer.
The question, then, is whether Peter will nail her or remain faithful to the nineteen-year-old Argentine he told me about.
And if he does nail the brunette, does that mean he’s not really in love with the Argentine, or simply that he’s a healthy young male who is not about to kick something like the brunette out of bed?
[FOUR]
The Hotel Provincial
Mar del Plata, Argentina
0830 11 May 1943
“What are you doing out of bed?” Señora Dorotéa Mallín de Frade inquired of her husband as she entered the sitting of the hotel suite where they had spent the second and third nights of their marriage.
The question was in the nature of an indignant challenge.
The General Belgrano Suite was in the center of the top—fifth—floor of the hotel. It consisted of a bedroom, a sitting, a dining, and a maid’s room (where Enrico Rodríguez had insisted on sleeping). It was furnished with what Clete considered typical Argentine furniture: large, heavy, dark, and uncomfortable—particularly the bed.
Its windows overlooked the promenade, a wide concrete walk that separated the curved-front hotel from the beach and the South Atlantic Ocean.
Cletus Frade, who was wearing the red silk bathrobe he had found in his father’s closet still in its Sulka Rue de Castiglione Paris wrappings, turned from the window to look at his wife. She was wearing a white lace negligee that did virtually nothing to conceal the details of her anatomy.
“I tried very hard not to wake you, baby,” he said, genuinely contrite. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“And what have you been doing?”
“I’ve been looking out the window,” he said, indicating the window.
“And what did you see?”
“The waves are still going up and down,” he said. “Aside from that, not much is happening out there.”
That wasn’t exactly true.
Leaning against the wall of the promenade was a man in a snap-brim hat and a business suit, looking up from his newspaper from time to time toward the General Belgrano Suite. Clete was sure he was in the service of the Bureau of Internal Security.
Enrico Rodríguez was leaning on the same wall, ten feet from the BIS agent, keeping him under surveillance. His broad smile indicated that he found the very idea of keeping a man on his honeymoon under surveillance ludicrous.
Dorotéa walked to the window, pushed the curtain aside, and looked for herself.
“Who’s the man in the suit? One of Coronel Martín’s men?”
“Probably,” Clete said.
“That’s ridiculous,” Dorotéa said. “Is that going to happen all the time?”
“I don’t know,�
�� Clete said. “Probably.”
“They obviously think you’re up to something,” she said.
“I’m not,” Clete said.
“I know,” she said. “You promised to tell me if you were, and I trust you.”
“My orders, baby, are not to fall out of the marriage bed,” he said. “And to keep my eyes and ears open. That’s all.”
“So you told me,” she said. “And I trust you.”
“Just so I understand, you trust me, right?”
“Are you getting a little bored, my precious?”
“I may not be very bright,” Clete said, “but I am smart enough to know that the wise bridegroom on his honeymoon does not tell his bride he’s bored.”
“That, of course, means you are, my precious,” Dorotéa said. “I rather hoped you would be.”
“Excuse me?”
“Why don’t we get out of here? We could be in Buenos Aires in time for a late lunch. I could do what I have to do this afternoon. We could have a nice dinner—maybe at the Yacht Club—and then we could drive home in the morning.”
Clete was surprised at the emotion he felt when Dorotéa referred to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo as “home.” He put his arms around and hugged her. “Why go to Buenos Aires? Why don’t we just go home, baby?”
“There are some things at Mother’s I want to take home,” she said. “And then I have to see my obstetrician.”
She did it again. Not “things at my house,” but “things at Mother’s.” And whatever it is, she wants to take it “home.”
Clete hugged her a little more tightly.
Obstetrician? What the hell is that all about?
“You want to see your obstetrician? Honey, is everything all right?”
“As far as I know.”
“Then why do you have to see your obstetrician?”
“I’ve never seen him.”
“You told me you’d been to the doctor.”
“I went to Dr. Schimmer, our family doctor,” Dorotéa explained. “And he said I should go to see Dr. Sarrario—he’s the obstetrician; he delivered me and Little Henry—as soon as I could.”
“Why haven’t you been to see him before now?”
“Before now, I didn’t have this,” she said, holding up her left hand, now adorned with a wedding band. “I couldn’t go to Dr. Sarrario in the family way without being married.”
“And you don’t think he’ll be able to guess that you got pregnant a couple of months ago?”
“Of course he will, but now that I’m married, he won’t say anything.”
He laughed. “And with a little bit of luck, he will spread the word that for a premature child, our baby was born remarkably large and healthy?”
“Of course he will. That’s understood,” Dorotéa said. “I like it when you say ‘our baby.’”
“Yeah, me too.”
She gave him what she intended to be—and Clete initially accepted as—a very tender kiss and nothing more. But somehow things got out of control, and it was twenty minutes later when Clete opened the window, put his fingers in his mouth, and summoned Enrico with a shrill and piercing whistle.
He smiled when he saw the whistle had startled the people walking along the promenade, including Coronel Martín’s BIS agent, who immediately looked up at the hotel in something close to alarm, saw Clete, and then pushed himself off the railing and turned around and began to study the waves lapping at the beach.
[FIVE]
The Hotel am Zoo
The Kurfürstendamm, Berlin
1230 11 May 1943
When Generalleutnant Graf Karl-Friedrich von Wachtstein caught sight of his youngest son coming down the stairway into the lobby of the hotel, his first thought was that—to judge from his pallor and bloodshot eyes—Hansel had spent the previous evening in the arms of Bacchus, and probably in those of one of the young women who frequented the hotel’s bar.
His second thought was that he was a fine-looking young officer. And his third thought was that Major Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein was his only remaining son and thus the last of the von Wachtstein line.
Peter spotted his father and walked quickly up to him. He gave the Nazi salute, muttered “Heil Hitler!”, and then gave his father the military salute.
The Graf raised his right arm from the elbow in a sloppy Nazi salute.
“Poppa!” Peter said.
“It’s good to see you, Hansel,” the Graf said, putting out his hand.
They shook hands.
The Graf turned to the officer standing beside him, an erect, tall, dark-haired Hauptmann. “I don’t believe you know my aide, do you?” the Graf asked. “Hauptmann Sigmund von und zu Happner.”
“A very great honor, Herr Baron,” von und zu Happner said, popping to attention, clicking his heels, and nodding his head in a bow.
Peter gave him his hand. “Hello,” he said.
“The ever-efficient Ziggie has found a compartment for us on the three-oh-five to Wachtstein…from here, right, Ziggie?” The Graf made a vague wave in the general direction of the am Zoo railroad station.
“Yes, Herr Generalleutnant.”
“And once you go to the station and get the tickets, Ziggie, you are also on leave,” the Graf said.
“The Herr Generalleutnant is very kind, but I am perfectly willing to stay with you, Sir.”
“Hansel and I are going home, where we are going to drink beer and eat sausages and do nothing that will require your services. Go see your family, Ziggie. I’ll meet you here a week from today, or get other word to you.”
“If the Herr Generalleutnant—”
“Go get our tickets, Ziggie,” the Graf interrupted.
“Jawohl, Herr Generalleutnant.”
Von und zu Happner came to attention again, clicked his heels, and walked away from them.
“Very efficient young man,” the Graf said. “And a devout National Socialist. He was recommended to be my aide by Generaloberst Jodl. His mother is Jodl’s cousin.”
Their eyes met.
Peter wondered if Jodl had simply been seeking a posting for his cousin’s son far from the sound of guns, or whether Jodl wanted someone he could trust watching Generalleutnant von Wachtstein. Or perhaps both.
This is not the time or the place to ask.
“I thought perhaps we would spend a couple of days at Wachtstein, and then perhaps go to Munich. Claus von Stauffenberg is in a hospital there.”
“How is he?” Peter asked.
“His recovery has been slow, I’m afraid,” the Graf said. “The question before us now is how do we pass the time until our train leaves? Would you like a glass of beer?”
“There are two people I would like you to meet,” Peter said.
“Here?”
“One of them is Korvettenkapitän Boltitz. He works for Admiral Canaris. The other is an old comrade, Hauptmann Willi Grüner. I had the unfortunate duty yesterday of having to inform Willi that his father has given his life for the Fatherland. There was some communications problem.”
The Graf asked only, “Where are these officers?”
“I thought we could have lunch together. They should be here any minute.”
The Graf nodded. “Would you like a glass of beer?” he asked. “Whenever I fly, I seem to dehydrate.”
Peter waved his father ahead of him toward the lobby bar.
They found an empty banquette, and a waiter quickly appeared.
“Two Berliner Kindl, please, Herr Ober,” the Graf ordered.
“Jawohl, Herr Generalleutnant.”
Willi Grüner came into the bar first, moments before Karl Boltitz.
“I have your photograph in my office, Hauptmann,” the Graf said. “It was taken, I b
elieve, the day after you and Hansel were commissioned.”
“Yes, Sir,” Willi said.
The Graf waved him into the banquette.
“Please accept my condolences on the loss of your father,” the Graf said. “Hansel just informed me.”
“That’s very kind of you, Sir. Thank you.”
“Korvettenkapitän Boltitz, Herr Generalleutnant,” Karl said, rendering a bent-elbow Nazi salute.
“I believe I have the privilege of your father’s acquaintance,” the Graf said, returning the salute. “Vizeadmiral Boltitz?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“I’m always happy to meet a friend of my son who is the son of one of my friends,” the Graf said.
“Thank you, Sir.”
Unfortunately, Karl thought, I am not his friend. I am an intelligence officer who has been forced to conclude that your son may well be a traitor.
“Hansel tells me that you work for Admiral Canaris,” the Graf said. “I knew him years ago, but unfortunately, even at Wolfsschanze, I hardly ever get to see him.”
“The Admiral is a very busy man, Herr Generalleutnant.”
The waiter appeared with two large glasses of beer.
“What will you gentleman have?” the Graf asked.
“The same,” Willi and Karl said on top of each other.
“Are you stationed in Berlin, Hauptmann Grüner?”
“I am—or was—outside Berlin. I had Hansel’s old squadron, Sir, but I’ve been transferred.”
“Oh? And where are you going now?”
“With all respect, Sir, I’m not allowed to say.”
So he does have something to do with a state secret, Karl thought. Last night, I thought he was just being clever about that. I’ll have to find out what that is.
Hauptmann von und zu Happner came into the bar and found them. Introductions were made.
“Will you have a beer, Ziggie, before you go home?” the Graf asked.
“If the Generalleutnant is sure that—”
“We’ve been over that, Ziggie,” the Graf interrupted.
“Then I will decline with thanks, Herr Generalleutnant. There’s a train to Dresden in about twenty minutes.”
“Have a nice time, Ziggie. Please present my regards to Frau von und zu Happner.”
Secret Honor Page 42