Death and Honor

by W. E. B Griffin

  “We were headed for Santa Catalina,” Hans-Peter von Wachtstein lied to Cletus Frade. “The hydraulic pressure warning light came on. I thought I’d better sit it down and check it out.”

  Frade nodded but said nothing.

  “Don Cletus, may I present Korvettenkapitän Boltitz? Herr Korvettenkapitän, this is Don Cletus Frade.”

  Frade examined Boltitz coldly, said “Mucho gusto” with absolutely no gusto, and did not offer his hand.

  Boltitz clicked his heels and bowed. “Señor Frade.”

  “I’ll have a mechanic look at your aircraft,” Frade said. “And now, if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  “Cletus,” von Wachtstein said. “He knows.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “He knows, Cletus. Just about everything. That’s why I brought him here.”

  “Oh, my God!” Dorotea said, horrified, and looked at her husband.

  What the hell does that mean? Boltitz thought. That she knows what “just about everything” means?

  And if she knows, how many other people know what von Wachtstein has been up to?

  “Shit!” Frade said bitterly, and met Boltitz’s eyes. “Do you speak English, Captain?”

  “Yes, I do,” Boltitz replied in English.

  “Then you just heard how I feel about Peter’s announcement,” Frade said. Then anger overwhelmed him. “Jesus H. Fucking Christ, Peter! What did you do, lose your mind? Why the hell did you tell him anything, much less everything?”

  “Clete!” Dorotea said warningly.

  “Señor Frade,” Boltitz said. “Major von Wachtstein did not betray your confidence. I was sent here to uncover the traitor in our embassy, and I did so.”

  Frade examined him, his eyes revealing his incredulity.

  “I don’t pretend to understand you Germans,” he said. “But do you have any idea at all how close I am to telling Enrico to take you out on the pampas and make really sure you can’t tell anyone what Wachtstein has told you about anything?”

  “Clete, my God!” Dorotea exclaimed. “You can’t mean that!”

  “Put a round in the chamber, Enrico,” Frade ordered. “And don’t take your eyes off him.”

  Enrico said, "Sí, señor,” and pushed the button on the side of the shotgun’s receiver. There was a metallic clacking as a shell was fed to the chamber.

  Boltitz had two chilling thoughts:

  If Frade tells that tough old soldier to shoot me, he will.

  Frade is entirely capable of giving that order.

  “I suggest we go into the study,” Dorotea said. She inclined her head toward the Lodestar. A man wearing mechanic’s coveralls was examining something in the right engine nacelle. This placed him in a position where he could overhear the conversation.

  Yes, she knows, Boltitz thought.

  What the hell is the matter with Frade, making his wife party to business like this? His five-months-or-so pregnant wife?

  Boltitz felt Frade’s unfriendly eyes on him.

  “Does the name El Coronel Alejandro Martín mean anything to you, Captain? ” Frade asked.

  Boltitz nodded.

  Martín was chief of the Ethical Standards Office of the Bureau of Internal Security of the Argentine Ministry of Defense. He was the most powerful man in Argentine intelligence and counterintelligence.

  “Just as soon as that guy with his head in my engine can get to a phone,” Frade went on, “good ol’ Alejandro will be wondering what the two of you were doing here.”

  He raised his voice. “Carlos!”

  He had to call three times before Carlos admitted to having heard him and came trotting over to them.

  “Carlos, this is Major von Wachtstein of the German embassy,” Frade said. “He has some trouble with his hydraulic pressure. Would you please do what you can to make it right?”

  “Yes, sir. Of course.”

  “May I offer you gentlemen a coffee?” Frade said. “Carlos will come to the house when he knows something.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Señor Frade,” von Wachtstein said.

  Frade gestured toward the Horch.

  Boltitz was surprised when Dorotea Frade got behind the wheel. Her husband got in beside her and turned on the seat as von Wachtstein, Boltitz, and Enrico got in. He looked at Boltitz.

  “Captain, I don’t like to kill people unless I have to,” he said, almost conversationally. “Don’t push your luck by doing something stupid.”

  “I fully understood that I would be putting my life in your hands when I came here, Major Frade,” Boltitz said.

  "’Major’ ?” Frade parroted, disgustedly. “Jesus Christ, Peter, you really had diarrhea of the mouth, didn’t you?”

  He turned away from the backseat as the Horch began to move slowly, first making a wide turn on the tarmac, then turning onto a road lined with eucalyptus trees. There was grass between the trees. It was being patiently mowed by workmen swinging scythes. As the car passed them, they stopped and took off their hats in deference to Don Cletus, his lady, and their guests.

  Frade replied with a casual wave of his hand and sometimes by calling out a workman’s name, as if greeting a friend.

  The tree-lined road was almost a kilometer long. Then it opened onto the manicured garden surrounding the house Boltitz had seen from the air. From the ground, the house was larger than it appeared from above.

  As Señora Frade pulled the Horch up before the door of the house— beside a Buick convertible—the door opened and a middle-aged man in a crisp white jacket came out. He walked quickly—but too late—to open Señora Frade’s door.

  “Antonio,” Frade ordered. “Have coffee brought to the study, then see that we’re not disturbed.”

  "Sí, señor.”

  Frade added: “And when the mechanic comes here, keep him waiting on the porch.”

  He waved his wife ahead of him into the house, and started to follow her, gesturing for Boltitz and von Wachtstein to follow them.

  [TWO]

  There was first a large reception foyer with a fountain in the center. Corridors radiated from the foyer. The Frades led the way down one of them, to a set of double doors Boltitz decided must be just about in the center of the house. He was surprised to see the doors were locked; Frade took a key from his pocket and unlocked them.

  A real key, Boltitz thought, one for a pins-and-tumbler lock, not the large key one would expect.

  He doesn’t want anyone—servants included—in that room.

  Frade waved his wife ahead of him again, and again signaled for Boltitz and von Wachtstein to follow them inside. Señora Frade sat down in a dark red leather armchair.

  Boltitz glanced around the room. It is in fact a study. Or maybe a library.

  There were no windows. Two of the walls were lined with bookcases. There was a large rather ornate desk, with a high-backed leather chair to one side. An Underwood typewriter sat on an extension shelf.

  Two maids scurried into the room with a coffee service as Frade sat down at the desk.

  God, that was quick! What do they do, keep coffee ready at all times in case the-master-of-all-he-surveys has a sudden urge for a cup?

  Frade pointed somewhat imperiously to two chairs facing a low table, and Boltitz and von Wachtstein sat down. The maids put the service on the low table and Señora Frade began to serve the coffee.

  Well, that makes it pretty clear that she’s staying. Which means she does know everything, except what we’re about to tell them.

  Boltitz surveyed the room. The walls not covered with books were mostly covered with photographs and framed newspaper clippings, all of them of Cletus Frade. One was most of the front page of a newspaper, The Midland Advertiser . There was a picture of Frade, in a flight suit, being decorated. The headline read:

  MIDLAND MARINE CLETUS FRADE

  BECOMES ACE ON GUADALCANAL.

  GETS DISTINGUISHED FLYING CROSS.

  I shall have to keep in mind that Señor Frade has a very large ego
.

  Then Boltitz took a closer look at a large oil portrait. It showed a blond woman holding an infant in her arms.

  What next? A statue? Maybe a painted ceiling, like the Sistine Chapel? Showing him being taken bodily into heaven?

  Wait a minute . . .

  That’s not Señora Frade. At least not the one in here now.

  My God, that’s Frade’s mother! He’s the babe in arms.

  Which means—why the hell didn’t I figure this out sooner?—this is not his study.

  This is—was—Oberst Frade’s study. His father made this—this what? shrine?— to his son!

  “That’ll do it. Thank you very much,” Frade said, and the maids quickly left the room. Frade got very quickly out of his chair, went to the door, and threw a dead-bolt lock. Then he went back behind his desk.

  “Okay, Peter,” he said, not at all pleasantly. “Take it from the top.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “From the beginning,” Frade clarified.

  “I don’t know where . . .” von Wachtstein said.

  “Perhaps, Major Frade, I might be able . . .”

  “Okay. Let’s hear what you’ve got to say, Captain,” Frade said.

  Boltitz nodded. “I went to Major von Wachtstein’s apartment two days ago—”

  “That would be the twentieth?” Frade interrupted.

  “Correct,” Boltitz said. “I had determined that Major von Wachtstein had informed someone—I surmised, correctly, I was to learn, that he informed you, Major Frade—of the time and place where the Océano Pacífico would attempt to land certain matériel near Puerto Magdalena on Samborombón Bay.”

  Frade’s face remained expressionless. His wife’s eyes showed concern, even pain.

  “As you know, when the Océano Pacífico’s longboats came ashore, they were brought under fire, which resulted in the deaths of two senior German officers, Standartenführer Goltz of the SS and Oberst Karl-Heinz Grüner, the military attaché of the German embassy here.”

  Again there was no expression on Frade’s face. His wife’s face was now pale.

  “I thought you were going to tell me why you went to Wachtstein’s apartment, ” Frade said evenly.

  “It was a matter of honor among officers,” Boltitz said.

  “Honor among officers?” Frade asked. There was a faint but unmistakable tone of incredulity in his voice.

  “Certainly, as an officer, the son of an officer . . .”

  “I’m supposed to understand, is that what you’re suggesting?” Frade said.

  “Yes, sir. It is.”

  Frade shook his head in disbelief.

  “Go on, Captain,” he said.

  “Clete,” von Wachtstein said, “what he did, what he came to offer, was what he thought was an honorable solution to the problem.”

  Frade looked sharply at him but said nothing for a moment.

  Then, his voice dripping with sarcasm, he said, “Let me guess. He was going to confront you with your sins against your officer’s honor, and then leave you alone in a room with a pistol and one cartridge, right? So you could put a bullet up your nose, then get on a white horse, and ride off to Valhalla?”

  “I had hoped you would understand,” Boltitz said.

  “It wasn’t a pistol the korvettenkapitän offered, Clete,” von Wachtstein said. “My suicide would have implicated my father. He would have been sent to a concentration camp, if not hung with piano wire from a butcher’s hook.”

  “So what did he offer?” Frade asked.

  “I was to crash on landing when I came back from Montevideo,” von Wachtstein said.

  Frade looked at Boltitz.

  “And if he flew into the ground, you were going to keep your mouth shut about your suspicions about him?” he asked.

  Boltitz nodded.

  “So why aren’t we scraping you off the runway at El Palomar, Peter?”

  “Clete!” Dorotea Frade said, either in shock or as warning.

  “I reported the korvettenkapitän’s visit to Ambassador Lutzenberger,” von Wachtstein said.

  “How much had you told Lutzenberger about what you thought Wachtstein had done?” Frade asked Boltitz. “Before you went to his apartment, I mean?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Why not?”

  “I considered it possible that the ambassador was—”

  “The traitor the Sicherheitsdienst was looking for?” Frade interrupted.

  Well, Boltitz thought, he knows enough about his enemy to make that distinction. Most people would have simply said “SS,” thinking there was no difference between the SS and the SD; that all in the SS were Secret Police.

  Why am I surprised? Von Wachtstein told me he was good, and that the happy Texas cowboy image he presents masks a very professional intelligence officer.

  “And I presume still are,” Boltitz said. “I’m not SS-SD, Major Frade.”

  “You’re not? Then who do you work for?”

  “Admiral Canaris,” Boltitz said.

  “For him personally? Or you’re assigned to the Abwehr?”

  The Amt Auslandsnachrichten und Abwehr—Abwehr—was the foreign espionage and domestic counterintelligence organization for the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, the supreme headquarters of the armed forces. Its head was Vice Admiral Wilhelm Canaris.

  The question is insulting, Boltitz thought, suggesting I am trying to make myself out as more important than I am.

  And the anger Frade experienced when von Wachtstein told him that he had admitted his treason, had told me everything, has had more than enough time to dissipate. He is being insulting with the purpose of making me lose my temper and say things I would not ordinarily say.

  This happy Texas cowboy is a very dangerous man.

  “I have the honor of working directly under Admiral Canaris’s direction, Major Frade.”

  “There’s that word again, honor,” Frade said, and shook his head and chuckled. “Okay. What about Major General von Deitzberg? He’s from the OKW. Where does he fit into your chain of command? You’re telling me you don’t work for him?”

  “Von Deitzberg is an SS officer,” Boltitz replied, “an SS-brigadeführer, seconded to the army for this mission. No, I don’t—”

  “Define ‘mission,’ ” Frade interrupted, and then before Boltitz could open his mouth, added, “You and the deputy adjutant to Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler didn’t come here just to find out who’s the traitor in your embassy, did you?”

  Boltitz locked eyes with Frade and thought, He’s letting me know he knows who von Deitzberg actually is. That’s to impress me.

  But how does he know? Did von Wachtstein tell him that, too?

  I don’t think von Wachtstein knows any more about von Deitzberg than that he is SS; not that he works for Himmler.

  “No,” Boltitz said, looking at his coffee cup and taking a sip. “Of course we did not.”

  “Then define your mission in terms of the priorities, one, two, three, et cetera,” Frade ordered.

  “You will understand, Major Frade, that this is my assessment of the situation. It was never spelled out, one, two, three, et cetera.”

  “Okay, then let’s have your assessment.”

  “I would say that Operation Phoenix is of the greatest interest to the senior officers involved,” Boltitz said. “Von Deitzberg, I suspect, but can’t prove, is involved in the ransoming operation of the concentration camp inmates. I have never heard any suggestion there is a Wehrmacht involvement in that. That would be your one and two. Three, which of course has impact on the success of one and two, is discovering the traitor in the embassy.”

  “Operation Phoenix can be defined as setting up places where the big shots— maybe even Hitler himself—can hide here when the war is lost?” Frade asked.

  “Yes,” Boltitz said simply.

  “Did you share any of your suspicions of Peter with von Deitzberg?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “A
s I told you, I serve Admiral Canaris,” Boltitz said.

  “But you were going to tell him after Peter here committed suicide by airplane?”

  “No. I thought I had made that clear. Once Peter had done the honorable thing, I would have done what I could to divert any suspicion from him.”

  “ ‘The honorable thing’?” Frade parroted sarcastically. “Jesus H. Christ!” Then he asked, “Did you share your suspicions, even hint at them, with anyone else? Anyone?”

  “No,” Boltitz said simply, meeting Frade’s eyes.

  “Let me turn the question around,” Frade said. “Did anyone, von Deitzberg, what’s that fairy SS guy’s name in Montevideo? Oh, yeah, Sturmbannführer Werner von Tresmarck. Or that fat Austrian diplomat, looks like somebody stuffed him? Gradny-Sawz? Did anyone confide in you their thoughts that Peter was the fox in the chicken coop?”

  Despite himself, Boltitz had to smile at the happy Texas cowboy’s characterizations of von Tresmarck and First Secretary of the German Embassy Anton von Gradny-Sawz.

  And he knows them, not only by name, but also by their sexual preferences and appearance.

  The Americans have really penetrated not only the embassy but Operation Phoenix, and that filthy SS operation ransoming Jews from the concentration camps.

  “Both von Tresmarck and Gradny-Sawz, Major Frade,” Boltitz said, “came to me and suggested that since they were not the traitor, it had to be one of the other two. But neither was able to provide anything concrete.”

  Frade, obviously in deep thought, said nothing for a long moment.

  “Okay,” he said, finally. “Now let’s get to the heart of this. What happened, Captain, to change your mind about all this? When Peter failed to do the honorable thing and kill himself, why didn’t you turn him in?”

  “Ambassador Lutzenberger sent for me and showed me two letters,” Boltitz said. “They had been smuggled to him on the last Condor flight. One was from my father and the other from Admiral Canaris. My father said he knew I would follow, without question, whatever orders I received from Admiral Canaris.”