“I think I would rather be shot than shoot myself,” Peter said.
Boltitz quickly picked up the pistol and pointed it at him.
Peter felt pain in his stomach.
“I don’t really want to shoot you, Peter. Please don’t make me.”
“If I’m a traitor, why should you hesitate?”
“Because then your treason would have to come out. And that would hurt other people besides yourself. Your father, for one. I am unable to believe that he’s aware of your treason. General Galland, for another. He thinks you are an honorable German warrior—”
“So do I,” Peter said. “We just see honor differently. My allegiance is to Germany, not Hitler, not National Socialism.”
“—and it would be very awkward for General Galland if it came out that an officer he personally asked the Führer to have assigned to him was a traitor.”
“Christ!”
“And the child your wife will bear would for all of his life be stigmatized by having a traitor for a father.”
“What are you going to do? Turn me loose?”
“My honor forbids that, although, personally, I would like to. I’ve come to like you, Peter.”
“Oh, shit!”
“There is a path you could take,” Boltitz said.
“Really?”
“Tomorrow you’re going to fly to Montevideo.”
“And I should crash into the River Plate?”
“No. That might be suspicious. If you did that, there wouldn’t be a body. But if you crashed at El Palomar on landing, it would be considered a tragic accident. Do you follow my reasoning?”
After a moment, Peter nodded.
“Do you agree?”
Peter nodded again.
“May I lay the pistol down again?”
Peter shrugged.
“I suppose this might be considered, under the circumstances, absurd, but will you give me your word of honor?”
“You have it, Herr Korvettenkapitän,” Peter said.
Boltitz looked at him for a long moment, then stood up, tucked the pistol into the small of his back, and walked out of the sitting.
When Peter heard the door close, he walked to the nearest toilet and just managed to get to his knees in front of the water closet before he threw up.
[THREE]
The Office of the Ambassador
The Embassy of the German Reich
Avenue Córdoba
Buenos Aires
0950 21 June 1943
“Korvettenkapitän Boltitz is here, Excellency,” Fräulein Ingebord Hassell announced.
“Ask him to come in, please,” von Lutzenberger said. “And please do not disturb us.”
“Jawohl, Excellency,” she said, and pulled the door fully open until there was room for Boltitz to pass her.
“Good morning, Karl,” von Lutzenberger said. “There’s something I want to show you. It’s in my personal safe. Why don’t you have a seat?”
“Thank you, Excellency.”
Von Lutzenberger disappeared from view.
His safe is apparently either under his desk or low on the wall.
Von Lutzenberger reappeared, holding two envelopes in his hand. “You look like you had a bad night, Boltitz, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“I didn’t get much sleep, Excellency,” Boltitz admitted.
“These came on the same plane you did,” von Lutzenberger said. “They are addressed to you, but I’m familiar with their contents.”
He handed him the two envelopes. One bore his name in handwriting, and Karl opened that one first, because he recognized his father’s handwriting. It was a very simple note.
* * *
Berlin
22 May 1943
My Dear Karl:
As you embark on your new assignment I must tell you that I take great pride in knowing that you will faithfully execute without question whatever orders you receive from Admiral Canaris.
May God give you strength in this time of great challenges to Germany. I will pray for you.
With much love,
Father.
* * *
Boltitz glanced up at von Lutzenberger, who was looking at him. He opened the second envelope.
* * *
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht
Office of the Director of Intelligence
Berlin
22 May 1943
Korvettenkapitän Karl Boltitz
Dear Boltitz:
In case there might be some question in your mind concerning your responsibilities in your new assignment:
You are under the direct orders of Ambassador von Lutzenberger and you will comply with his orders as if they had come from me. In this connection, all communications of any kind must be approved by von Lutzenberger before they are forwarded to me or any other of ce.
Heil Hiller!
Canaris
Vizeadmiral
Chief, Intelligence, OKW
* * *
Karl Boltitz looked at Ambassador von Lutzenberger.
He heard his father’s voice in his ears: “The best advice I can give you, Karl, is to listen to what Canaris is not saying.”
Christ, does this mean what I think it does?
“Do you have any questions, Boltitz?”
“No, Excellency.”
“May I have the letters back, please?” von Lutzenberger asked.
Boltitz handed them to him.
Von Lutzenberger carefully burned both and their envelopes. “These did not, if I have to say this, come to me via the diplomatic pouch.”
“I understand,” Boltitz said.
“Major von Wachtstein came to see me this morning before he left for Montevideo. He told me of the chat you two had last night.”
“Yes, Sir?”
“In a few minutes, von Wachtstein will land at Montevideo,” von Lutzenberger said. “And he should be back here two hours or so after that. I told him I was counting on him to be careful. I missed him when he was in Germany. He’s our only pilot, you know.”
“Yes, Sir, I know.”
“You really should make an effort, Boltitz, to get to know him well. I think you have much more in common than you may have realized previously.”
“Herr Ambassador—” Boltitz began.
Von Lutzenberger stopped him with an upheld palm. “That will be all, Boltitz. Thank you for coming to see me.”
[FOUR]
The Office of the Director
The Office of Strategic Services
National Institutes of Health Building
Washington, D.C.
1045 22 June 1943
“Got a minute, Alex?” Colonel William Donovan asked, stepping inside the office of the Deputy Director for Western Hemisphere Operations, Colonel Alejandro Graham.
“Truth to tell, Bill, I’m up to my ass in alligators.”
“I really need just a minute.”
“OK.”
“I just had a rather interesting chat with the G-2,” Donovan said.
“Really?”
“Someone has apparently told him we have a team in Argentina headed by someone named Frade.”
“I wonder who told him that? That’s supposed to be Need To Know.”
“That’s what I told him. He was pretty vague about that. He said he was sorry, but I didn’t have the Need To Know who told him that. He sort of hinted it came from the White House.”
“From the White House? That place leaks like a sieve, doesn’t it?”
“I keep telling Roosevelt he should tighten things up,” Donovan said. “But you know how he is.”
“Yes, I do. Is there more?
“Oh, yes. It seems the G-2 sent a new assi
stant attaché for air to Buenos Aires. And this man not only got to meet Frade—your friend Leibermann introduced them—but checked him out in that Lockheed we sent down there by mistake.”
“Really? I’m not sure I’m glad to hear that.”
“And then, the attaché told the G-2, Frade repaid his courtesy by threatening to kill him.”
“Maybe the attaché asked Frade the wrong question,” Graham suggested.
“I have no way of knowing this, of course—and the G-2 said he had never heard the phrase ‘Galahad’—but I think maybe the attaché did ask Frade the wrong question.”
“That does seem likely, doesn’t it?”
“What do you think I should do, Alex?”
“I think I’d tell the G-2 he should tell his man to be careful.”
“I did. I told him that Frade’s already killed six people we know about.”
“I think the figure is four, but who’s counting?” Graham asked. Then, more seriously: “Are you going to have trouble with your friend Franklin about this?”
“I don’t see how he can complain to me that Frade threatened this guy without admitting to me he sent him down there to ask a question he promised me he wouldn’t ask.”
“I don’t know which of the two of you is the more devious,” Graham said. “I say that as a compliment. Now get out of here and let me go back to work.”
Donovan left, and Graham sat at his desk, the events of the last two months whirring through his head.
You dodged the bullet that time, Cletus, he thought. I hope it doesn’t make you cocky. Donovan’s not the kind of man to give up easily. Next time, he may not bother to ask the question at all. Next time, maybe you’ll be the one on the other end of the pistol….
And whose hand would be holding it? A German? An American? An Argentine?
He sighed and shook his head.
One more alligator, he thought. But when you are already up to your ass in alligators, what difference does one more make?
He turned back to his papers and started to read.
*Among the many ways the longtime presence of the British in Argentina was manifested was in the custom among upper-class Argentines of referring to rooms in homes by their English names. The living room, for example, was called “the living”; the dining room, “the dining”; and the foyer, or reception room, as “the reception,” et cetera.
*Ernst Röhm was a member of the Nazi party before Hitler. He formed strong-arm squads of thugs, who wore brown shirts as a uniform and had the mission of protecting Hitler, other senior Nazis, and Nazi party meetings, and of disrupting, usually violently, meetings of Socialists and Communists. In 1921 the Brown Shirts officially became the SA (Sturmabteilung), in effect the private army of the Nazi party. As their commander, Röhm became one of the most powerful and feared men in Germany. Hitler considered him, and the Brown Shirts, a threat to his own power, and in June 1934, on “The Night of the Long Knives,” he had Röhm and several hundred other people assassinated by the SS.
*The Messerschmitt ME-262, developed in great secrecy, was first flown on 18 July 1942. It was powered by two Junkers Jumo turbojet engines, each producing about 2,000 pounds of thrust, which gave it a maximum level speed of approximately 540 mph. It was armed with four 30mm MK 108 cannon and had a range of approximately 650 miles. Adolf Galland, one of the Luftwaffe’s most successful fighter pilots, and a national hero, became Germany’s youngest general officer when he was promoted in 1942 at age thirty. Shot down flying an ME-262 in the last days of the war, he was captured by the English.
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