Secret Honor

by W. E. B Griffin

  Von Stauffenberg shook his head but said nothing.

  “I was about to suggest, Claus, that if Hansel left the car with his friend, Nina could pick it up.”

  “If she drove, there would be questions,” von Stauffenberg said.

  “Would there be a place for it at your home?” the Graf asked. “I don’t see how we could get it back to Wachtstein, and I am determined to keep it out of the hands of some Nazi swine.”

  “She could say that she was taking it to our place for you.”

  “I will prepare a note to that effect,” the Graf interrupted.

  “And once it was there, that would be the end of the problem,” von Stauffenberg said. “Done, Uncle Friedrich.”

  The venison sauerbraten at the Vier Jahrseitzen was as delicious as von Stauffenberg had predicted.

  As they were having their coffee, the Graf called for a sheet of paper, wrote a few words, and handed it to von Stauffenberg.

  * * *

  Der Hotel Vier Jahrseitzen

  München

  16th May 1943

  To whom it may concern:

  Fran Oberstlentnant Nina Grafin von Stauffenberg is, as a personal service to me, taking my Horch automobile to her home, where I will pick it up in the near future.

  Any questions concerning this matter should be referred to the undersigned.

  Karl Friedrich, Graf von Wachstein

  Generalleutnant,

  Oberkommando der Webrmacht

  * * *

  “That should do it,” von Stauffenberg said after he’d read it. Then, with some difficulty, he unbuttoned a breast pocket on his tunic, inserted the note, and, with as much difficulty, buttoned the pocket again. He smiled with satisfaction. “Nina should be here this coming Friday,” he said. “Consider it done, Uncle Friedrich.”

  “I’m grateful,” the Graf said.

  At the airport, a Heinkel bomber was parked in front of the terminal. The pilot—a Luftwaffe Hauptmann—and a crewman were waiting for them. The crewman took the Graf’s luggage from the car and put it aboard the airplane.

  The Graf gave his hand to his son. “Perhaps we will have another chance to be together before you return to Argentina, Hansel,” the Graf said. “It was very good to see you.”

  “It was very good to see you, Poppa,” Peter replied.

  The Graf put out his hand to von Stauffenberg, who shook it as well as he could with his claw. “And it’s always a pleasure to see you, Claus. I’m delighted that you are well on the way to recovery.”

  “The pleasure is, as always, mine, Herr Generalleutnant Graf,” von Stauffenberg said.

  The Graf nodded at both of them, then raised his hand in the Nazi salute. “Heil Hitler!” he barked.

  Peter and von Stauffenberg returned the salute. “Heil Hitler!” they said, almost in unison.

  The Graf turned and marched out to the airplane, where the pilot and the crewman gave the Graf the Nazi salute.

  He climbed aboard, and the pilot and crewman climbed in after him. Peter could not see his father inside the airplane as it taxied to the runway. In his mind he saw his father rendering the Nazi salute he hated. He wondered if that would be his last memory of his father.

  Claus von Stauffenberg was silent most of the way back to Grünwald, but as they turned off the main road, he said, “Peter, keep in mind that we are doing the right thing in the eyes of God, and that, in the final analysis, is all that matters.”

  Peter nodded but didn’t reply.

  Their farewell inside the Recuperation Hospital No. 15 compound was brief. “I’ll give your regards to Nina,” von Stauffenberg said. “And you give ours to…what did you say her name was, Alicia?”

  “I will.”

  “And I thank you for a delightful lunch, Hansel, even if your father paid for it.” He raised his left hand, gave the Nazi salute, and marched inside the villa built by the man who had made a lot of money making candy for children.

  Peter, his eyes watering, wondered if his last memory of Claus von Stauffenberg would be of him giving the Nazi salute with his horribly maimed left hand.

  He got the car moving, and wondered if he remembered where to find the road to Augsburg.

  [THREE]

  Pier 3

  The Port of Montevideo, Uruguay

  0830 16 May 1943

  When the motor vessel MV Colonia tied up, without assistance, at the pier after an overnight voyage from Buenos Aires, three automobiles from the German Embassy were lined up on the pier. One of the three was Ambassador Joachim Schulker’s Mercedes.

  Two days before, the diplomatic courier from Buenos Aires had carried a letter from Ambassador von Lutzenberger announcing that Generalmajor Manfred von Deitzberg wished to make an unofficial personal visit to Uruguay, accompanied by Herr Erich Raschner of his staff. During his visit, the Herr Generalmajor would require suitable separate accommodations, preferably at the Casino de Carrasco, for himself and Herr Raschner, and the use of two automobiles, with trustworthy drivers. Since Herr Raschner had important matters to discuss with Herr Konrad Forster, the Commercial Attaché, every effort should be made to make Councilor Forster available from the time Herr Raschner and Generalmajor von Deitzberg arrived in Montevideo at 0830 16 May 1943.

  Forster’s Opel Kadet was the third car in line, behind the small, black embassy Mercedes assigned to Fraülein Gertrud Lerner. Ambassador Schulker had intended for one of the Embassy’s junior officers to drive the Mercedes, but when he spoke to Fräulein Lerner, her normally blank face had mirrored her heartbreak at being denied what she considered her right to render service to the distinguished visitors, so she was at the wheel of the car.

  His own car was driven by Manuel Ortiz, a Uruguayan who had worked for the German Embassy for nearly twenty years. Schulker had decided that if Manuel did not meet von Deitzberg’s criteria for a reliable driver, he would call the embassy and have Ludwig Dolmer, the administrative officer, meet them at the Casino de Carrasco to chauffeur von Deitzberg around.

  On the deck of the MV Colonia, Generalmajor Manfred von Deitzberg stood with his hands on the rail, watching the docking process. Erich Raschner stood beside him. Von Deitzberg had risen early, shaved, and dressed very carefully in a new double-breasted faintly striped dark-blue woolen suit. It was cut in the English manner—the tailor had tactfully said “Spanish,” but von Deitzberg knew an English-cut suit when he saw one. It was one of three suits the tailor had run up for him in a remarkable nine days as a service to Ambassador Manfred Alois Graf von Lutzenberger.

  The suits were remarkably inexpensive considering the quality of the cloth and the workmanship—about the equivalent of one hundred American dollars each. Not that cash was a problem. Before leaving Berlin, von Deitzberg had drawn for his personal expenses the equivalent of five thousand American dollars from the SS’s confidential special fund. He had already ordered three more suits on a rush basis, and had strongly suggested to Raschner that he have some suits made for himself. Someone in his position really should not look like a policeman. With fine clothing available inexpensively and without the clothing coupons necessary in Berlin, there was no reason he had to.

  Von Deitzberg had also bought three pairs of high-quality shoes at amazingly low prices. As he put on a pair of new black wing tips this morning, it occurred to him that custom-made shoes would almost certainly be available in Buenos Aires; he would look into that when he returned to the city.

  “It would seem, Erich, that we are expected,” von Deitzberg said, taking his hand from the rail to point vaguely at the cars lined up on the wharf.

  Raschner grunted.

  “And I did make the point, I hope, that I don’t want…What’s his name? Forster? The Gestapo man?”

  “Hauptsturmführer Forster, Konrad,” Raschner furnished.

 
“…to get the idea that we are any more interested in Frau von Tresmarck than we are in anyone else.”

  “I understand,” Raschner said. “It won’t be a problem. I’ll ask him for a roster of embassy personnel, and get that to you immediately. Her address and telephone number should be on that.”

  “My primary interest in Forster, really, is to see how much he knows about Operation Phoenix. And, even more important, if he knows anything, or even suspects anything—has even heard rumors—about our arrangement with von Tresmarck.”

  “I understand,” Raschner repeated, just a trifle impatiently. He had heard all this the night before, standing on the stern of the Colonia after dinner.

  “The trouble with the Gestapo, Erich, is that they are accustomed to looking into whatever they want to look into, and I don’t want Forster looking into von Tresmarck’s operation.”

  Raschner had heard this the night before too. “My feeling is that the man with the most to gain and the least to lose by ‘cooperating’ with the Argentines is Gradny-Sawz,” he said. “And we already know that his loyalty is to whichever side he thinks will win.”

  “So you said,” von Deitzberg said. “And you may well be right; you usually are.”

  “I’ll find out what Forster knows,” Raschner said.

  “Ah, they are about to put the gangplank in place,” von Deitzberg said. “Shall we go?”

  [FOUR]

  The San Martín Suite

  The Casino de Carrasco

  Montevideo, Uruguay

  1015 16 May 1943

  Manfred von Deitzberg was sitting on the balcony of the suite when he heard the somewhat tinny doorbell sound. The suite, on the top floor of the right wing of the five-story building, looked out over the Rambla and the beach.

  The Rambla was a wide, attractive, four-lane avenue. A graceful promenade of colored blocks separated it from the beach. The beach was nice, not spectacular, but at least as wide and clean as a North Sea beach, and far superior to the touted—for reasons von Deitzberg could not understand—beaches of the French Riviera. The water was disappointing. Rather than blue, it looked muddy, even dirty. Von Deitzberg, curious, had asked the room-service waiter about it when he brought his coffee and sweet rolls.

  The water out there, the waiter explained, was not, as von Deitzberg thought, the South Atlantic Ocean, but rather the River Plate. It was, in fact, still the river’s mouth—an incredible 230 kilometers wide. The blue waters of the South Atlantic, the waiter told him, finally overwhelmed the silted waters of the river at Puente del Este, some 100-odd kilometers north of Montevideo.

  When the bell sounded, von Deitzberg was in his shirt-sleeves, with his feet up on a small table. He was smoking a cigarette and had almost finished the really nice sweet rolls. He went into the sitting room of the four-room suite—according to Schulker, it was the best in the Casino—and retrieved the jacket to his new suit and put it on.

  “Just a moment,” he called toward the door, and went quickly into the bedroom to check his appearance in a full-length mirror on the door.

  Very pleased with his appearance, he went to the door and pulled it open.

  Raschner stood there with a slight man in his thirties wearing a too-tight suit and wire-framed glasses. He bore more than a slight resemblance to Heinrich Himmler. “Councilor Forster,” Raschner said.

  Von Deitzberg motioned the two of them into the sitting room and closed the door.

  Forster came to attention, and his right arm shot out in the Nazi salute. “Heil Hitler!” he nearly shouted. “Hauptsturmführer Forster at your orders, Herr Oberführer!”

  Von Deitzberg did not return the salute. “Do not use my SS rank again,” he said coldly, and added, “Wait here.” He took Raschner’s arm and led him out onto the balcony.

  “I now understand why he’s in the dark about von Tresmarck,” Raschner said. “If we are to believe him, he is the only loyal man in the embassy.”

  Von Deitzberg chuckled. “Maybe he is,” he said.

  “He’s an idiot,” Raschner said. “They must have sent him here to get rid of him. Or does he have highly placed friends we don’t know about?”

  “Not as far as I know, and I think I would,” von Deitzberg said.

  “He told me he has strong suspicions that von Tresmarck is queer.”

  “Only suspicions?” von Deitzberg said, unable to restrain a smile.

  “His investigation is continuing,” Raschner said sarcastically.

  “Does he have names?”

  “He has a dossier,” Raschner said, holding his hands three inches apart to indicate the thickness of the dossier. “He can’t wait to show it to me.”

  “You better have a look at it, Erich,” von Deitzberg said. “You have the embassy roster for me?” Raschner took an envelope from his suit pocket and handed it to him. “What do you think he knows about Operation Phoenix?” von Deitzberg asked.

  “He further suspects that von Tresmarck has been investing in the local economy; in fact, that the local real estate man is one of his good friends. He even has a price on a farm that he thinks von Tresmarck has bought.”

  “So he’s not entirely stupid, eh?”

  “And he suspects von Tresmarck has bank accounts he hasn’t listed with the embassy.”

  “They say there is nothing more dangerous than a zealous stupid man,” von Deitzberg said, as much to himself as to Raschner. And then he added, “Does he have any idea where von Tresmarck is getting the money?”

  “I’ve only been with him an hour,” Raschner said. “But if you’re really asking, does he know about the concentration-camp connection, I don’t think so.”

  “Or he can have decided he knows something he doesn’t think you should.”

  “That’s possible.”

  “Spend as much time with him as you think necessary,” von Deitzberg ordered. “The priorities—in this order—are who knows about the special business; Operation Phoenix; and—in connection with number two—who here in Uruguay knew about the details—for that matter, the operation itself—of landing the stuff from the Océano Pacífico.”

  Raschner nodded.

  Von Deitzberg went on: “Going further on that, find out what he knows about what happened on the beach at Samborombón Bay, and, as important, where he got that information.” Raschner nodded again. Von Deitzberg waved him back into the suite.

  Hauptsturmführer Konrad Forster was standing where they had left him, in the center of the sitting room. When he saw them, he came to attention.

  “We have a somewhat delicate situation here, Hauptsturmführer,” von Deitzberg said. “Herr Raschner and myself have been sent by Reichsprotektor Himmler himself to look into certain matters here and in Buenos Aires. These matters concern a state secret of great importance. That state secret is none of your concern. Or that of Ambassador Schulker.”

  “Jawohl, Herr Oberfu…Generalmajor.”

  “The very next time you use either my or Herr Raschner’s SS rank, Hauptsturmführer Forster, I will see that you are relieved of your duties here and assigned to the East,” von Deitzberg said matter-of-factly.

  “It will not happen again, Herr Generalmajor,” Forster said.

  “Herr Raschner and I believe that you, quite innocently, may possess certain information of value to our inquiry, acquired during the course of your normal duties. As Ambassador Schulker may also. Consequently, Raschner will interview you at length, and I will interview the Ambassador and some others. The questions we put to you may not seem to make much sense, but you will not only answer them as fully as possible, but volunteer any other information you have that may have a bearing. Do you understand me?”

  “I understand you, Herr Generalmajor.”

  “To avoid drawing attention to these interviews, I would rather not conduct them i
n the embassy. Have you a secure room in your quarters?”

  “I have a small office in my home, Herr Generalmajor.”

  “And it is secure?”

  “Yes, Herr Generalmajor.”

  “And where is your home?”

  “Not far from here, Herr Generalmajor.”

  “Very well,” von Deitzberg said. “Go with the Hauptsturmführer now, Herr Raschner. Take as much time as required. Telephone me here when you have something to say.”

  “Jawohl, Herr Generalmajor,” Raschner said.

  He made a gesture with his hand toward the door.

  “Heil Hitler!” Forster said, giving the Nazi salute.

  Von Deitzberg returned the salute with a casual movement of his right arm, but said nothing.

  He waited until the door had closed, and then took the envelope Raschner had given him, found the number he wanted, and walked to the telephone. He dialed the number but got nothing more than a series of clicks and a dial tone. He dialed “O” and the hotel operator came on. She explained that it was not possible to dial directly from a telephone in the suite. Von Deitzberg wondered why they bothered to install telephones with dialing mechanisms if they didn’t work, but politely gave her the number he wanted.

  A soft-speaking woman answered.

  “Señora von Tresmarck, por favor.”

  She came on the line a moment later.

  “This is Generalmajor von Deitzberg, Frau von Tresmarck. How nice to hear your voice again.”

  “What a pleasant surprise, Herr Generalmajor. Ambassador Schulker told me you would be visiting. Will I see you while you’re here?”

  “That’s actually why I’m calling, Frau von Tresmarck,” he said. “I have a little time to spare. I was rather hoping you could give me a little tour of Montevideo, and afterward we could have luncheon.”

  “It would be my pleasure,” Inge said. “You’re at the Casino?”