Secret Honor

by W. E. B Griffin

  “I was thinking of your mother,” the Graf said. “And your brothers.”

  Peter didn’t reply. Is he implying that I should have been thinking of them too?

  “Eighty thousand hectares?” the Graf asked incredulously, and went on before Peter could reply. “Your American friend, you mean?”

  “No,” Peter said. “His is even larger, and he has three or four of them. I was thinking of the estancia of a young lady I know.”

  “How well?”

  “Sir?”

  “How well do you know the young lady?”

  “Very well, Poppa. I want to marry her.”

  The Graf raised an eyebrow in surprise but said nothing.

  Frau Brüner came in with a large china tureen and ladled onto their plates thick pea soup with chunks of ham floating in it.

  “My favorite, Frau Brüner,” the Graf said. He put a spoon to his plate, tasted the soup, and nodded his approval.

  Frau Brüner beamed.

  “Eat your soup, Hansel,” the Graf ordered.

  Frau Brüner waited for Peter’s reaction, then left the room.

  “Have you actually proposed marriage to this young woman?” the Graf asked.

  “Not formally. But it is understood between us.”

  “Was that the honorable thing to do?”

  “This is the girl for me, Poppa.”

  “That’s not what I asked. Does she understand your prospects? Have you considered that?”

  “She knows everything,” Peter said.

  “You told her?”

  His tone made it very clear the Graf was surprised and disappointed.

  “It’s like…I don’t quite know how to explain this, Poppa…it’s like one enormous family down there. Alicia’s mother—”

  “Alicia? That’s a very pretty name.”

  “Alicia’s mother, Señora Carzino-Cormano—”

  “The family is Italian?” The Graf’s tone suggested he didn’t like that either.

  “Not the way you suggest. They’re like Americans down there. They immigrated from all over Europe, they intermarried. They don’t think of themselves as Germans, or Italians, or English, or whatever, but as Argentinians.”

  “But they speak Spanish?”

  “Yes, but they’re not like the Spaniards. They’re Argentine.”

  “Interesting. What about her mother?”

  “Señora Carzino-Cormano had a very close relationship with Oberst Frade….”

  “Indeed? With the approval of their respective mates? That sounds Italian.”

  “Both mates, Poppa, were dead.”

  “But they didn’t marry?”

  “They had their reasons, one of which has to do with Argentine inheritance laws.”

  “She was, in other words, his mistress?”

  “Are you determined to disapprove of these people, Poppa?”

  “I would like to know about the family of a girl my son wishes to marry.”

  “There are two Carzino-Cormano daughters. One of them had an understanding with Hauptmann Duarte, who was killed at Stalingrad. That’s how I came to meet Alicia.”

  “I see.”

  “When I went to Oberst Frade for help, I presume he confided in Señora Carzino-Cormano.”

  “Everything?”

  “I suppose everything. They were like husband and wife.”

  “Except they weren’t married.”

  “It would have been impossible for Oberst Frade to help me—help us—Poppa, without her knowing. They’re helping me because they know that I could not honorably permit Cletus Frade to be murdered.”

  “The more people who know a secret, Hansel, the less chance there is to keep it a secret.”

  “I trust these people with my life, Poppa.”

  “You don’t have much choice, do you?”

  Peter met his father’s eyes for a long moment. “You would like Alicia, Poppa. You would like all of them.”

  “If you say so,” the Graf said. “What was—what is—the reaction of your Alicia to what you’re doing?”

  “She’s frightened.”

  “She should be.”

  “She wants me to go to Brazil and turn myself in as a prisoner of war.”

  “That may be the wise thing to do. That’s possible?”

  “And what would happen to you?”

  “What will probably happen to me anyway.”

  “Alicia understands why I can’t go to Brazil,” Peter said.

  “My feeling, Hansel, presuming you find yourself back in Argentina, is to tell you to go to Brazil. That way, you will survive. The von Wachtstein family would survive. And so would our money. After the war, you could deal with the problems of our people here.”

  “I can’t do that, Poppa.”

  “If things go wrong, unless you go to Brazil, it will be the end of the von Wachtsteins. It is a question of obligation, Hansel.”

  “I can’t do that, Poppa.”

  “Our assets would be safe with your friends?”

  “Of course.”

  “And if neither of us is around when this is over, then what?”

  “Alicia knows how I feel about the estate, and our people. And so does Cletus. They would—”

  “It would be better if you went to Brazil,” the Graf interrupted.

  “If I went to Brazil, you would go to Sachsenhausen or Dachau,” Peter said. “How could you help deal with the problem of our Führer from a concentration camp?”

  The Graf met his eyes for a moment. “That, of course, is a consideration,” he said, finally.

  Frau Brüner came into the dining room with another china tureen, this one full of pork and sauerkraut.

  “We will talk more on the way to Munich,” the Graf announced. “This is the time for us to think and pray over our possible courses of action.”

  “I am not going to Brazil, Poppa,” Peter said.

  The Graf looked at his son, and after a moment nodded. “There are a number of problems here that I will have to deal with tomorrow,” he said. “And there will be time to think.”

  After spending most of the next day dealing with the problems of the estate, the Graf, in the late afternoon, announced that he was “going to visit with the men in the hospital.”

  “You don’t have to join me, Hansel,” the Graf said. “You weren’t responsible for sending them to war.”

  “Neither were you, Poppa,” Peter protested. “You were simply doing your duty.”

  “The whole point of this, Hansel, is that I forgot my duty is to God first, and then to Germany. Like the others, I put my duty to the state—to Hitler—first, ignoring that it contradicted the laws of God and was bad for Germany.” He met Peter’s eyes. “The men in here, Peter, did their duty to Germany as they saw it. I didn’t. I can’t tell these men I’m sorry, obviously, but perhaps if I visit them, they will at least think that a German officer appreciates what they have done and that they are not forgotten.”

  “I’ll go with you, Poppa.”

  “Where is your Knight’s Cross?”

  “In my luggage.”

  “Wear it, please.”

  Peter nodded.

  The wards were as depressing as Peter thought they would be.

  The three, enormous, high-ceilinged rooms on the lower floor of the Schloss had at other times been party rooms. Not something out of a Franz Lehar operetta, with elegantly uniformed Hussars and elegantly gowned and bejeweled women waltzing to The Blue Danube, but parties for the people in the village.

  There they had celebrated “the-harvest-is-in,” the birthdays of his father and mother, the weddings of villagers, birthday parties for octogenarians, and sometimes, in the cas
e of village elders who had been close to the von Wachtsteins, there had been a little bite to eat and a glass of beer after their funerals.

  The people of the village had come to the Schloss in their Sunday best to dance to a five-piece band—piano, accordion, tuba, trumpet, and drum—gorge themselves on food laid out on ancient plank tables, and drink beer from a row of beer kegs on another table.

  Somebody always got drunk and caused trouble. Fathers went looking for their nubile daughters who’d sought privacy with their young men in dark and distant parts of the Schloss. There was usually at least one fistfight. And always there was a good deal of singing.

  The three stone-floored rooms branching off the entrance lobby were now lined with white metal hospital beds, one row against each wall, another row in the middle. Each bed was separated from its neighbor by a wall locker and a small table.

  Peter quickly saw that most of the men in the long lines of beds had been injured beyond any hope of recuperation. They had lost limbs, or their sight, or been badly burned, sometimes in a horrible combination of mutilations.

  They should call this place War Cripples Warehouse No. 15, Peter thought, not Recuperation Hospital No. 15.

  The Graf stopped at each and every bed and said a variation of the same words to each man: “I hope you’re feeling better.”…“Are they treating you all right?”…“Is there anything you need?”

  Peter walked two steps behind his father and—with an effort—smiled and gave to each what he hoped was a crisp nod.

  Peter thought: Some of them wouldn’t know if their visitor was the Führer himself.

  But some actually tried to come to attention in their beds, as a soldier is supposed to do when spoken to by an officer.

  The tour went on and on, but finally it was over and they went back up the stairs to the family apartments. Peter went directly to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a stiff drink of cognac.

  “I’ll have one of those, too, I think, please,” the Graf said.

  Peter poured a drink for his father, and then another for himself. They touched glasses without comment.

  “Oberstleutnant Reiner and some members of his staff will be dining with us,” the Graf announced.

  Peter nodded.

  What the hell is that all about? Because he feels it’s expected of him? Or because he doesn’t want to be alone with me again at dinner, as we were last night, with the ghosts of the family looking over our shoulders?

  Dinner was very good, roast wild boar with roasted potatoes and an assortment of preserved vegetables, everything from the estate. Peter wondered what the patients of Recuperation Hospital No. 15 were having, then wondered who was asking. Flight Corporal Peter Wachtstein (for he had not used the aristocratic ‘von’ until he was commissioned)? It had been Pilot Cadet Wachtstein and Flight Corporal Wachtstein and even Flight Sergeant Wachtstein, winner of the Iron Cross First Class. As far as he knew, he had been the first von Wachtstein ever to serve in the ranks (much to his father’s embarrassment).

  Or was it Major von Wachtstein asking? He had learned as an enlisted man that a good way to judge an officer was by how deeply he was concerned with the men in the ranks, and had tried to remember that, and practice it, when he had become an officer.

  Or was it Baron Hans-Peter von Wachtstein, the Graf-to-be?

  Their guests at dinner were four doctors in addition to Oberstleutnant Reiner, as well as the two senior nurses and two administrative officers, all of whom seemed very impressed with the privilege of dining with the Herr Generalleutnant Graf von Wachtstein and the heir apparent.

  The Graf made polite small talk, and took nothing to drink but a sip of wine. A glare from him when Peter reached yet again for a wine bottle was enough to make it Peter’s last glass of wine.

  That night, Peter had a little trouble getting to sleep. His mind was full of Alicia, and memories of his mother and brother, and the uncomfortable feeling that this might be the last night that anyone named von Wachtstein would ever sleep in Schloss Wachtstein.

  They left early the next morning. Frau Brüner packed a large wicker basket with ham and cheese sandwiches, cold chicken, and a bottle of wine and two of beer. They drove as far as Frankfurt an der Oder the first day. There were virtually no private automobiles on the highway, and they passed through Feldgendarmerie checkpoints every twenty-five kilometers or so.

  They spent the night with an old friend of his father’s, Generalleutnant Kurt von und zu Bratsteiner, who was in the process of reconstituting an infantry division that had suffered heavy losses in the East. They had dinner in the officer’s mess, and Peter noticed that his father and his old friend carefully avoided talking about what was happening in Russia, what had happened to von Arnim in Tunisia, or what was likely going to happen in the future.

  In the morning, very early, they set out again, the gas tank of the Horch full, and with four gasoline cans in the trunk.

  To Peter’s surprise, his father had very little to say between Wachtstein and Frankfurt an der Oder.

  And about all he said between Frankfurt an der Oder and Munich was that General von und zu Bratsteiner had learned unofficially that the Wehrmacht had not yet contained the rebellion of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto. “Putting the rebellion down will apparently take more troops than was originally anticipated,” the Graf said without emphasis. “It is apparently also going to be necessary to bring in tanks and more artillery. The issue is not in doubt, of course. It’s just going to be more expensive than anyone would have believed.”

  “What’s going to happen to the Jews when it is over?”

  “Well, inasmuch as they are not entitled to treatment as prisoners of war, I would suppose that Reichsprotektor Himmler will order the survivors transported to the concentration camps in the area. There are six, if memory serves: Auschwitz, Birkenau, Belzec, Chemlno, Maidanek, and Sobibor.”

  “And what will happen to them there?”

  “They will be exterminated,” the Graf said. “Men, women, and children.”

  “My God!”

  “On arrival at the camps,” the Graf went on unemotionally, “a medical doctor—sometimes an SS medical officer, but as often as not an Army doctor—will make a cursory examination to determine which prisoners are fit for labor. They are segregated from the others. Since there is no point in feeding anyone who cannot contribute his or her labor to the State, the unfit prisoners and the children are immediately exterminated.”

  “The children too?” Peter asked softly.

  The Graf ignored him and went on: “At one time—and today in the East—extermination was accomplished by having the prisoners dig a mass grave. Then they were—are—forced to kneel at its edge. When they received a pistol shot to the back of the head, their bodies fell into the grave.

  “But German science has been applied to the problem. German efficiency. In the Dachau and Auschwitz camps, extermination has been modernized. Those to be exterminated are stripped of their clothing and herded into rooms marked ‘Shower Baths.’ The doors are then locked and a poison gas—it’s called Zyklon-B—is introduced by way of the showerheads. As many as a hundred and fifty people can be exterminated in fifteen minutes.

  “The gas is then evacuated, and other prisoners are sent in to remove gold teeth fillings from the mouths of the corpses, and to shear the women’s hair. This is used primarily to stuff mattresses, but sometimes to make wigs.”

  “Oh, my God!” Peter said.

  “And then the corpses are taken to furnaces specially designed for the purpose and incinerated.”

  “Poppa, you’re sure of this?”

  “Of course I’m sure. And it cannot be argued that the blood is only on the hands of the Nazis, Hansel. It is on the hands of the army. We put the Austrian Corporal in power.”

  “But how could you have known?”


  “We didn’t want to know, Hansel. That’s our guilt.” He looked at his son. “Whenever I waver in what I now know is my duty, Hansel, I think of children being led to the slaughter.”

  [TWO]

  Recuperation Hospital No. 3

  Munich, Germany

  1015 16 May 1943

  Starting at breakfast in the Hotel Vier Jahrseitzen, where they had spent the night, and continuing in the Horch as they drove to the Munich suburb of Grünwald, Generalleutnant Karl Friedrich Graf von Wachtstein delivered to Major Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein a detailed briefing concerning what he could expect to find at Recuperation Hospital No.3.

  The briefing contained as many details as an operations order for a regimental assault on an enemy fortress, and was very much in character for Peter’s father, a reflection of his many years as a planning and operations officer of the General Staff Corps. Minute details are the stock-in-trade of a planning and operations officer; nothing that can possibly be included in an operations order is ever omitted.

  Peter had a hard time restraining a smile.

  The Graf began with a description of the terrain, informing Peter—quite unnecessarily; he had been to Grünwald before—that Grünwald was an upper-class suburb of Munich, much as Zehlendorf was of Berlin. “It contains a large number of substantial villas,” the Graf pronounced, “most of them built before the First World War by successful businessmen and merchants of Munich, and a number built in the late 1930s for actors, writers, producers, and the like—people connected with the motion picture studios, which were built at the same time.”

  Peter knew that, too. There was a small hotel on Oberhachingerstrasse in Grünwald, called “The Owl,” where young women connected with the movie business could be found. Many of them were as fascinated with Luftwaffe fighter pilots as were the girls in the bars of the Hotels Adlon and am Zoo in Berlin, and as willing to hop into their beds.

  Peter had not infrequently arranged to be “forced to land for necessary repairs” at Munich late enough in the day that the “repairs” to his aircraft would require a night in Munich.

  “When recuperation hospitals became necessary to care for officers whose condition did not require all the facilities of a general hospital,” the Graf went on, “private homes with adequate space were requisitioned—those that were not needed to house other military facilities, and were located where the patients would not be visible to the public….”