W E B Griffin - Honor 1 - Honor Bound

by Honor Bound(Lit)

  When Colonel Baxter F. Newton-Haddle called him in for what he called a "pre-mission briefing," he told him he was to report for duty in New Orleans in civilian clothing. He asked him if that was going to pose any problem. Pelosi said, "No, Sir."

  Tony Pelosi liked and admired Colonel Newton-Haddle. For one thing, the Colonel was also a paratrooper. Paratroopers are special people. In the briefing Colonel Newton-Haddle gave when they first came to the Country Club, he told them about what the people in OSS did-like making night jumps into France and Italy and connecting up with the resistance and showing them how to blow up bridges and tunnels. Doing those kinds of things would maybe make being in the OSS OK. But what he was about to do now was go into some goddamned South American neutral coun-try where a bunch of taco eaters in big hats sat around in the shade playing guitars.

  Colonel Newton-Haddle didn't tell him much about what he was supposed to do in Argentina, except they had to "take out" a ship, some kind of a freighter that was supplying German sub-marines. He explained that the ship would be neutral. By "take out" Colonel Newton-Haddle obviously meant "blow up," or at least put a hole in it large enough to sink it.

  That bothered Tony Pelosi. It wasn't a warship, but a civilian freighter. If there were people on it, they would be civilians; and if they were on the ship when he set off his charges-as sure as Christ made little apples-some of them would get hurt, get killed. German sailors were one thing, civilian merchant seamen another.

  When he was in OCS, he'd studied the Geneva Convention long enough to know that if they were caught trying to blow a hole in a civilian merchant ship, they would not be treated like prisoners of war, but like criMi¤als, maybe even pirates. If they were caught after they blew it up, and civilians had been killed, they might be put on trial in some taco eaters' court for murder.

  This wasn't what he had had in mind when he volunteered for the OSS. Parachuting into France to show the French underground how to blow up the Nazi submarine pens at St. Lazaire was one thing; sneaking into some South American neutral country pre-tending to be a civilian and blowing up a civilian ship was dif-ferent.

  Anyway, when Colonel Newton-Haddle asked him if civilian clothing was going to pose a problem, he said "No, Sir," because he didn't think it would be. But when he got home, went to his room and locked the door so nobody in the family would see him and ask what he was doing, and tried to put on his civilian clothes, none of them fit.

  The first thing he thought was that the goddamned dry cleaners had shrunk them. That had happened before. But not even his shirts fit, and the dry cleaner couldn't have fucked them up, be-cause his shirts had been washed and ironed in the house by the maid.

  After a while, though, what happened finally hit him: All the physical training he'd gone through, first basic training, then Of-ficer Candidate School, and then jump school had really changed his body. He had real muscles now. That was why his jackets were too tight at the shoulders and he couldn't even button his shirt collars.

  It didn't matter as long as he could wear his uniform. Colonel Newton-Haddle not only told him that he could wear his uniform at home, because that would keep people from asking questions about how come he wasn't, but that he should. And there wasn't a hell of a lot wrong with wearing the parachute wings and jump boots; that went with being an officer of the 82nd Airborne Di-vision. He wore his uniform the two times he went out with his brothers, Angelo, Frank, and Dominic. And if it weren't for Dom-inic, he knew damned well he could have gotten laid. But you don't try to get laid when you're out with a brother who is a priest and who is out drinking with you only because of a special dispensation from the pastor of his parish, because he told him you were going overseas.

  Colonel Newton-Haddle had also told him he should explain to his family that he was going on temporary duty with a special engineer unit, and gave him an address in Washington where they could write to him. But he was not to tell them anything about going to Argentina; that was classified. So he hadn't. An order is an order.

  So what he did was wear his uniform all the time he was home. And then, along with his uniforms, he packed a sports shirt, a pair of pants, a two-tone (yellow sleeves and collar, blue body) zipper jacket with "Pelosi & Sons Salvage Company" lettered on the back, and a pair of shoes. They got him a compartment on the Crescent City Limited, and he decided to just wait until he was almost in New Orleans to change into the civilian stuff. The OSS gave him a check for two hundred dollars to buy civilian clothing; he'd do that in New Orleans. And he'd ask what he should do with his uniforms; he didn't think they'd want him to take them down to South America.

  Two things went wrong with that plan. First of all, he wasn't all alone in the compartment. He thought he would have it all to himself, but when he got on the train there was already a guy in it. He was an expediter for the Western Electric Company, what-ever the fuck that meant. So Tony had to come up with a bullshit story about having just been discharged from the 82nd Airborne because of a bad back he got jumping. Even when he showed the guy the draft card Colonel Newton-Haddle gave him that said he was an honorably discharged veteran, he didn't think the Western Union guy believed him. And he sure gave him a funny look when he started changing out of his uniform and putting on the Cicero Softball League jacket.

  He really hated taking off his uniform, especially the jump boots. You had to earn jump boots, and he really liked the way they felt, as well as the way they looked (he'd polished them so you could actually see your face reflected in the shine of the toes). He wondered when the hell he would ever be able to put them on again.

  And then his goddamned civilian shoes were too small. He couldn't figure that out. As far as he knew, there were no muscles in the feet, so they shouldn't have grown the way his back and arms and neck had. But he could barely get the goddamned things on his feet; and when he did, it hurt him even to walk around the compartment. And when he walked three cars down to the dining car to have breakfast, his feet hurt him so much he didn't believe it.

  When he got back to the compartment, he took off his shoes. And when they pulled into the train station in New Orleans, he took his socks off and put the shoes back on without them.

  Fuck how it looks. If I wear the socks, I'll never make it all the way down the platform and into the station.

  Halfway down the platform, Tony saw Staff Sergeant Ettinger waiting for him, just inside the station at the end of the platform. Ettinger was wearing a three-piece suit, and he was talking to a tall guy wearing a cowboy hat, boots, and a sheepskin coat.

  The shit-kicker probably asked him a question or something.

  When Ettinger saw him, he smiled and waved, and Tony walked up to him.

  "What do you say, Ettinger?" Tony said.

  "Nice trip, Tony?"

  "It was all right."

  Tony saw the cowboy looking at his bare ankles.

  Fuck you, Tex! Anybody wearing beat-up boots like yours is in no position to say anything about anybody else.

  "Tony, this is... Mr. Frade," Ettinger said.

  Mr. Frade? This cowboy is Lieutenant Frade? A Marine offi-cer?

  "Good morning, Sir," Lieutenant Pelosi said.

  " 'Morning," Clete replied. "Pelosi, from here on in, you can belay the 'Sir' business."

  "Excuse me?"

  "We're supposed to be civilians. Civilians don't say 'Sir.' I'm Clete. He's David. What's your first name?"

  "Anthony, Sir," Tony said. Then, "Sorry."

  "That all your luggage, Anthony?"

  "Yes, S- Yeah."

  "We're parked out in front," Clete said, then laughed. "What did you do, Anthony, forget your socks?"

  "My shoes are too small."

  "Well, then, we better stop on the way to the hotel and find you some that fit," Clete said. "Our mentors, who got here at seven this morning, are already convinced that David and I are retarded; if you showed up in bare feet, that would be too much for them."

  Ettinger laughed.

  Tony Pelos
i had no idea what a "mentor" was, but he was goddamned if he was going to ask.

  [THREE]

  The Franco-Spanish Border

  1525 3 November 1942

  Train Number 1218 of the Soci‚t‚ Nationale des Chemins de Fer Francais (Paris-Barcelona-Madrid) would be late crossing the border, but there was nothing the officials of the French National Railroad could do about it. It had been requested of them by the representative of the German Rail Coordination Bureau: (a) that a goods wagon then sitting in Paris (number furnished herewith), a Grande Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits sleeping car with crew, and a first-class passenger car be attached to Number 1218; and (b) that Number 1218's schedule be "adjusted" to permit a fifteen- to thirty-minute ceremony at the Spanish border; and (c) that officials of the Spanish National Railroad be informed of the change of schedule.

  At 1455, fifteen minutes before Number 1218 was due, the gate (an arrangement of timbers and barbed wire) across the tracks on the Spanish side of the border was moved aside by Spanish Bor-der Police. A moment later a tiny yard engine pushed a passenger car of the Spanish National Railroad across what everybody called "No-Man's-Land" to the similar gate across the tracks on the French side of the border.

  After a minute's conversation between French and Spanish of-ficials, the French gate was opened and the yard engine pushed the Spanish passenger car approximately 300 meters farther into the Border Station, where it stopped. About forty rifle-armed members of the Guardia Nacional, all wearing their distinctive stiff black leather hats, debarked from the passenger car and formed two ranks on the platform. A moment after that, two of-ficers of the Guardia Nacional came down from the passenger car, together with four more enlisted men, two of whom carried flags on poles.

  One of the flags was that of Spain. The other was unusual. But it was finally identified by one of the French customs officials as the flag of Argentina. The men carrying the flags arranged them-selves before the members of the Guardia Nacional, and the two Guardia Nacional enlisted men who had gotten off the train last took up places beside them.

  At 1505, five minutes early, Number 1218 moved into the sta-tion, on a track parallel to the one where the Spanish National Railways car had stopped. The members of a small Luftwaffe band, equipped primarily with trumpets and drums, descended from the passenger car and formed up quickly under the direction of their bandmaster. They were followed by a mixed detachment of Luftwaffe, Waffen-SS, and Wehrmacht troops, three of each under the command of a Luftwaffe captain. They formed up and were marched back to the goods wagon, from which four of their number removed two sawhorses.

  They set up the sawhorses on the platform between the Guardia Nacional and the band. The sawhorses were then covered with a pleated black material which concealed them. They then returned to the goods wagon, from which they removed a very heavy cas-ket, across which the flag of Argentina was draped diagonally.

  The flag had three broad stripes running horizontally, first light blue, then white, then again light blue. In the center of the white central stripe was the face of maybe the sun-god. It was golden and smiling. Radiating from it were red streaks, which were prob-ably intended to represent sunbeams.

  In the opinion of most of the French Railway officials, it was not a very civilized flag. Perhaps the sort of thing one might expect of some far-off former colony which now imagined itself to be a nation, but not civilized. Provincial people like that never knew when to stop; they could be counted on, so to speak, to try to gild the lily.

  The casket-carrying detachment arranged themselves around the casket, four men to a side, one man at the head. The Luftwaffe captain placed himself at the foot of the casket, ordered "Vor-warts!" and somewhat awkwardly (it was extraordinarily heavy), the casket was carried down the platform and installed on the sawhorses.

  As soon as this was accomplished, officers and enlisted per-sonnel of the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe, and the Waffen-SS be-gan to debark from the passenger and Wagons-Lits cars-enlisted and officers from the former, and from the latter officers only, including a Luftwaffe Oberst, an Oberstleutnant from the Wehr-macht, a Waffen-SS Obersturmbannfuhrer (the Waffen-SS equiv-alent of an Oberstleutnant, or lieutenant colonel), a Luftwaffe Hauptmann, and then a tall, thin, olive-skinned man wearing a uniform no one could recall ever seeing before.

  It was decided that he must have something to do with the casket covered with the smiling sun-god flag, and that he therefore must be an Argentinean. It was also noticed that the Luftwaffe Hauptmann in his dress uniform had the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross hanging around his neck. One didn't see too many of those.

  The officers and men who had debarked from the passenger car formed a double rank facing the Guardia Nacional. Two pho-tographers in Wehrmacht uniforms, one still and one motion pic-ture, and a Wehrmacht lieutenant armed with a clipboard now appeared.

  At this point, two more uniformed officers descended from the Spanish National Railways car that had been pushed backward into the border station. One was a coronel, the other a teniente. They were photographed and filmed as they walked across the platform and exchanged military salutes and then handshakes with the German officers and with the one who was probably an Ar-gentinean.

  All the officers then formed in a line, facing the flag-covered casket. The Luftwaffe colonel looked at the officer commanding the mixed detachment of German Armed Forces personnel. He in turn looked at the bandmaster, who raised his drum major's baton.

  "Achtung!" the officer commanding the mixed detachment barked, and everybody came to attention, including the members of the Guardia Nacional.

  The bandleader moved his drum major's baton downward in a violent motion. The strains of "Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles" erupted from the band. The officers in the rank, except the Wehrmacht Oberstleutnant and the Luftwaffe captain with the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, extended their arms in the locked-elbow, fingers-together, flat salute of the Third Reich. The Oberstleutnant and the Hauptmann rendered the old-fashioned hand salute.

  The German national anthem was followed by those of Spain and Argentina. And most of the French Railway officials agreed that the Argentinean anthem, like the sun-god flag, was a bit over-done.

  When the music was finished, the casket was carried back to the goods wagon and placed aboard, with the photographers re-cording the event for posterity. The Spanish personnel returned to their passenger car and boarded it, and it immediately moved back across the border.

  The German military personnel, except the officers, reboarded the first-class car. The officers entered the railroad station, where refreshments had been laid out for them. Number 1218 then backed out of the station to the yard, where the first-class pas-senger car was detached for subsequent attachment to Number 1219 (Madrid-Barcelona-Paris), which was due at the border crossing at 1615. Number 1218 then returned to the place where it had originally stopped, and the word was given first to the Feldgendarmerie and then to the French Immigration et Douane and Sfirete Nationale personnel that they might now commence their routine immigration, customs, and security checks of Num-ber 1218's passengers.

  A few minutes later, the Luftwaffe captain with the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross came out of the station alone. He had with him not only his cognac snifter, but a bottle of cognac. He boarded the Wagons-Lits car.

  At 1550, only twenty-five minutes behind schedule, the con-ductor signaled Number 1218's engineer that he could proceed through No-Man's-Land to Spanish customs. They were only five minutes behind the regular schedule. The ceremony had not taken as long as they had planned for. They probably wouldn't have been late at all, perhaps even a few minutes early, had not the Suretd Nationale grown suspicious of some travel documents and checked them out. They discovered four more Jews trying to reach Spain on forged travel documents and passports.

  [FOUR]

  So far as he could recall, el Coronel Alejandro Manuel Portez-Halle of the Office of Liaison of the Royal Army to the Foreign Ministry had never
heard the name of el Coronel Juan Domingo Per¢n of the Argentinean Army, until three days before when this rather absurd business of the Germans sending a body home to Argentina came up.

  This was both surprising and rather embarrassing-he had spent enough time in Argentina over the years to learn at least the names of the more important Argentinean officers. On the other hand, the Foreign Ministry seemed to know a great deal about el Coronel Juan Domingo Per¢n , including the fact that he was quite close to el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade. Portez-Halle had come to know Frade rather well when he'd been in Argentina. He'd even spent some time on Frade's estancia, San Pedro y San Pablo, shooting partridge and wood pigeon. In the evenings, over cigars and surprisingly first-rate Argentinean brandy, they'd shared stories of their days as junior officers.

  Frade was important because of his connection with the Grupo de Oficiales Unidos. According to the latest word from the Span-ish Embassy in Buenos Aires, these men were about to stage a coup d'‚at. And Frade was reported to be the brains behind the plot, and certainly the financier.