Empire and Honor

by W. E. B Griffin

  “And the second reason?” Frade asked.

  “I want Peter to have a word with von Dattenberg for me.”

  “He’s there?” von Wachtstein asked, in surprise.

  “He—and the rest of his crew—will be there by the time we get there.”

  Von Wachtstein looked at his wristwatch.

  “Another two problems, Bernardo,” von Wachtstein said. “If we left right now—and we can’t—it would be dark by the time we got there.”

  “I’d hoped you could pick me up at Jorge Frade very early tomorrow morning,” Martín said.

  “You didn’t have to drive all the way out here to ask me that,” von Wachtstein said. “And you know it. But I said ‘two problems.’ By now, Bernardo, they know. Somebody is sure to have told them.”

  What von Wachtstein did not say—did not have to say, because Martín had known almost from the first—was that for most of the time he had been a decorated hero of the Luftwaffe he had also been a traitor to der Führer and the Thousand-Year Reich by being Frade’s—the OSS’s—mole in the German embassy.

  “I’m counting on that,” Martín said.

  “What the hell does that mean?” Frade challenged.

  “You’re the one who told me that the most amazing thing you found in Berlin was that there were absolutely no Nazis and everybody hated Hitler.”

  “Touché, mi General,” Frade said, with a chuckle.

  “Why should the internees be any different, Peter?” Martín asked. “What nine out of ten of them are doing now is trying—desperately—to figure out how they can avoid getting shipped back to Germany and can stay, settle down, permanently in Villa General Belgrano. If you were popular delivering the payroll and their mail, wait until you see how they love you when they learn you’re a close friend of the head of the BIS.”

  “Beware, Hansel,” Frade said. “El General has some Machiavellian plan in mind.”

  “I’m just a simple airplane pilot . . .” von Wachtstein began.

  That caused Frade to snort.

  “. . . so you’ll have to explain that to me,” von Wachtstein finished.

  “There are several things I’d like to learn in Villa General Belgrano,” Martín said. “One: Who has been aiding the escape of the Graf Spee officers?”

  “Would you be surprised to learn that it was my beloved Tío Juan?” Frade asked sarcastically.

  “Not at all,” Martín said, ignoring the sarcasm. “But I just left President Farrell, and if I had photographs of Perón rowing SS-Brigadeführer Ludwig Hoffmann ashore in the San Matias Gulf, he wouldn’t take any action against him if it looked to him—and it would—that it might set off a civil war. But if I can learn who actually had done the work for Perón, that’s something else.”

  “How so?” von Wachtstein asked.

  “If somehow that proof—and it would have to be incontrovertible—somehow came into the hands of the American ambassador and he presented it to the Foreign Ministry . . .”

  “That won’t work, Bernardo,” Frade said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you couldn’t give it to Ambassador Alexander. I would have to.”

  “All right. You developed the intelligence. You give it to your ambassador. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Ambassador Alexander came to see me. After he told me that our meeting never took place, he told me that I was never to go anywhere near the embassy.”

  “Because of your Operation Ost?”

  Frade nodded.

  “It would be bad enough if we were caught bringing Gehlen’s people—some of whom are really nasty Nazis—here. Imagine the damage if it came out after we were self-righteously demanding the Argentine government stop doing the same thing.”

  Martín exhaled audibly.

  “You’re right,” he said finally.

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky and the people who want to take out Juan Domingo will,” Frade said.

  “You don’t mean that,” Martín said.

  “I don’t know if I do or not,” Frade said.

  “And you weren’t listening to what I said about starting a civil war,” Martín said.

  “I don’t want a civil war,” Frade said.

  “I was in Spain for theirs,” von Wachtstein said. “No, you don’t.”

  “So, what do we do?” Frade asked.

  “I don’t know, but I still think going to Villa General Belgrano—having Peter fly me there—and seeing what we can find out is a good idea.”

  Frade nodded.

  “Hansel,” he said, “do not, repeat not, let Bernardo fly.”

  [FIVE]

  General Villa Belgrano

  Córdoba Province, Argentina

  1520 13 October 1945

  Oberleutnant zur See Rudolf Wechsler and Oberfähnrich zur See Erwin Vogel, who were interned members of the Panzerschiff Graf Spee, sat drinking beer at an outside table of the Café Wietz. They watched as the flaming red Storch taxied to the far end of the ad hoc runway—the road—turned, accelerated toward them, then took off.

  In the U.S. Navy, Wechsler would have been a lieutenant (junior grade) and Vogel a chief petty officer. But they had other, secret, ranks as well. When they had been interned Wechsler had held the rank of obersturmführer of the Sicherheitsdienst and Vogel had held that of an SS-sturmscharführer.

  On the Graf Spee, they had looked for any signs of disloyalty to the Führer or talk of defeatism. They had continued to do so in internment. Wechsler had been promoted to SS-obersturmführer and Vogel had been commissioned as an untersturmführer for their services in helping Graf Spee officers escape and return to Germany. And they had, of course, continued to look for disloyalty and defeatism among their former shipmates.

  They had passed this information to the resident Sicherheitsdienst officer, SS-Oberst Karl-Heinz Grüner, the military attaché of the German embassy, whenever Major von Wachtstein had come to General Villa Belgrano.

  Or they thought they had.

  Now they knew better. Von Wachtstein had probably—laughing while he did—tossed their reports out of the Storch and Grüner had never seen them.

  “Gottverdammter Verräter,” Vogel said, sliding his beer mug on the table.

  “Von Wachtstein certainly is a traitor,” Wechsler agreed. “But we don’t know that von Dattenberg is, do we?”

  “With respect, he was ordered to scuttle his U-boot and instead surrendered it,” Vogel said. “And he was not loaded onto that Storch in handcuffs, was he?”

  “True,” Wechsler agreed. “In any event, we have to bring this to Brigadeführer Hoffmann’s attention. And we can’t use the telephone to do that. So you’ll have to drive to San Carlos de Bariloche.”

  [SIX]

  Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo

  Near Pila

  Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

  1910 13 October 1945

  “Well, we won’t have to go all the way to Estancia Santa Catalina,” Peter von Wachtstein’s voice announced in Fregattenkapitän von Dattenberg’s headset over the Storch’s intercom. “There they are.”

  Von Wachtstein pointed out the left window.

  Von Dattenberg looked where he pointed.

  A very large convertible sedan, roof down, was speeding along a macadam road that cut through the grassland of the Pampas. At first they couldn’t see it very well, but that quickly changed as the Storch sort of dived at it.

  “What is that, a Rolls-Royce?” von Dattenberg asked.

  “My mother-in-law’s,” von Wachtstein confirmed. “Apparently, they’re already on their way to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.”

  “How can you tell they’re going there?”

  “That’s the only place the road goes, Willi.”

  They were now much closer to the ground—dangerously close, in the non-professional opinion of von Dattenberg—and moving very slowly. It was possible to see the occupants of the vehicle. There was a woman in the front seat beside the driver, and two younge
r women in the backseat.

  One of the younger women in the back waved as the plane passed.

  “That’s my wife, Willi. The woman beside her is my sister-in-law, Elsa. You knew her, right? Karl’s widow? She just got here.”

  Von Wachtstein stood the Storch on its wing, made a 180-degree turn, and flew over the Rolls again, this time approaching it from the rear.

  The woman in the front seat stood and, holding on to the windshield that was between the front and rear seats, shook her fist at the Storch.

  “And the formidable one is Claudia, my mother-in-law,” von Wachtstein said, laughing. “She doesn’t like to be buzzed. When we get to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, I’ll tell her you were flying.”

  He retracted the flaps, added several hundred feet of altitude, and flew down the road.

  —

  Doña Claudia Carzino-Cormano, a svelte woman in her late fifties who wore her luxuriant gray-flecked black hair pulled tight on her skull, had just about regained control of her temper in the fifteen minutes it took the Rolls to drive to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo from where it had been intercepted on the road.

  She descended graciously—even regally—from the front seat of the Rolls and advanced on the party waiting for her, embracing first Doña Dorotea Mallín de Frade and then Doña Dorotea’s husband.

  “Just like your father, Cletus, always showing off,” Doña Claudia said. “Even when you’re endangering your life and those of others.”

  “With God and Dorotea as my witness, Claudia,” Frade, smiling broadly, replied, “that was not me in the Storch. It was our Hansel.”

  “And you know he hates being called Hansel,” Doña Claudia said.

  She turned to Peter, giving him first her hand and then her cheek to kiss.

  “I don’t believe for a moment that was you, darling,” she said.

  “Momma, I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Peter said.

  “The hell you don’t! You’re as bad as Cletus,” she snapped.

  “And that’s bad,” Frade said. “Shame on you, Hansel!”

  “Momma, may I present my old friend Fregattenkapitän Wilhelm von Dattenberg?” Peter said.

  “Welcome to Argentina,” Doña Claudia said.

  Von Dattenberg took the extended hand, bowed, and clicked his heels. “An honor, madam.”

  “You’re going to have to break that habit,” Clete said, and when von Dattenberg looked at him in confusion, mockingly bowed far deeper than von Dattenberg and clicked his heels.

  Von Dattenberg nodded.

  Von Wachtstein frowned, but decided to let it ride.

  “Willi, this is Alicia,” Peter said.

  “Peter’s told me so much about you,” Alicia said. “Welcome to Argentina.”

  “The baroness is as gracious as she is beautiful,” Willi said.

  “Beautiful yes, baroness no,” Peter said.

  Von Dattenberg looked at him in confusion.

  “Unfortunately, with Karl and Kurt dead in Russia,” Peter said evenly, “when those swine murdered my father in the execution hut in Berlin-Ploetzensee, I became the Graf von Wachtstein. This flower of Argentina is the Gräfin von Wachtstein.”

  “And I am His Magnificence Grand Duke Cletus the First of San Pedro y San Pablo,” Frade said. “The blonde is the Grand Duchess Dorotea, and the fat little boy—by the way, his diaper needs changing—she’s holding is His Royal Highness, Prince Cletus Junior.”

  Everyone looked at him in shock.

  “Cletus,” Doña Dorotea said, “that’s not funny. It’s cruel.”

  Frade was unrepentant.

  “And the last time the Graf von Wachtstein here visited the family castle it looked to me—five to one—as if he was going to be nailed to the castle door to make it easier for the Red Army to skin him alive . . .”

  “My God, Cletus!” Doña Claudia said, horrified.

  “. . . to send the message to his loyal subjects that the old days were gone, and the Soviets were now in charge. And if my little brother hadn’t pulled Elsa there”—he pointed to her—“from a mile-long parade of refugees, she’d still be in Germany, wondering where she could find a crust of bread.” He paused, then concluded, “This is Argentina, and this is now. And I’ve heard all I want about who ranks where in the Almanach de Gotha.”

  “Cletus!” Doña Claudia said furiously. “You owe Peter and Fregattenkapitän von Dattenberg an apology and—”

  “And that’s my point,” Frade interrupted her. “He’s no longer a fregattenkapitän, Claudia.”

  “—and one to the Baroness von Wachtstein,” Claudia finished.

  “Do you think of yourself as the Baroness von Wachtstein, Elsa?” Frade asked evenly.

  Elsa met his eyes and shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t. I thought about that last night at dinner, and at breakfast this morning. Looking at all that food, I realized that I had stopped thinking of myself as anything like that from the moment Jimmy took me to dinner in the American officers’ club in Marburg an der Lahn.”

  She stopped and looked at von Dattenberg.

  “Yes, Willi, where you and Kurt and Peter went to university. Jimmy took me to dinner in the Kurhotel. Remember that?”

  “Jimmy?” Claudia asked. “Who’s Jimmy?”

  “He’s sort of my little brother, Claudia,” Frade said.

  “Of course,” von Dattenberg said. “I remember it well.”

  “Jimmy first got me some clean clothing—that uniform I was wearing when I arrived here—and then took me to dinner. It was more food than I’d seen in years. A huge steak and a baked potato and corn on the cob. The only reason I didn’t gorge myself was that I knew what would happen if I did.”

  “I don’t understand,” Claudia said.

  “If you’ve been starving for a while,” Frade expained, “and then eat a good meal, and quickly, the body reacts.”

  He mimed throwing up.

  “Good God, Cletus!” Claudia snapped.

  “He’s right,” Elsa said. “So Jimmy waited patiently until I’d eaten maybe half of what I was served. And then we went to the basement of the hotel and Jimmy burned the clothing I had been wearing. When there was nothing left of it but ash, I told Jimmy, ‘So ends my old life, and begins my new one.’”

  She raised her eyes to von Dattenberg.

  “Willi, I can’t tell you how glad I am that you came through, and to see you here. But please don’t call me baroness. That was in another life, a long time ago.”

  Doña Claudia wrapped her arms around her.

  “I still don’t understand any of this,” Claudia said. “I didn’t know until just now, Cletus, that you have a little brother.”

  “If I explained it to you, Claudia, I’d have to kill you,” Frade said.

  “Goddamn it, Clete!” Doña Dorotea said furiously.

  “What I think we should do now,” Frade said, “is open some wine. But before we do that, I’m going to take Willi with me and get him out of his sailor suit.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I didn’t tell you, Willi,” Peter said, “but you’ve just escaped from Villa General Belgrano.”

  “But I gave my parole to General Martín,” von Dattenberg protested.

  “He’s released you from it,” von Wachtstein said. “He’s the one who told me to tell you you’ve escaped.”

  VI

  [ONE]

  Kloster Grünau

  Schollbrunn, Bavaria, Germany

  1400 15 October 1945

  Second Lieutenant James D. Cronley Jr., First Sergeant Tiny Dunwiddie, and former Oberst Ludwig Mannberg were sitting around the large table that normally served as the commanding officer’s desk. It was literally covered with stacks of files.

  Mannberg had suggested that “care be exercised” to make sure that as few people as possible knew what they were doing with the files. Tiny had instructed Technical Sergeant Abraham L. Tedworth that no one—not even “H
onest Abe” himself—was to open the office until permission had been granted over the telephone.

  All three of them looked up with mingled surprise, concern, and annoyance when they heard the door open without so much as a knock.

  A moment later, all three sprang to attention.

  Colonel Robert Mattingly was the intruder.

  “At ease, gentlemen,” he ordered, slapping his gloves against his leg. “But the next time I arrive—even unannounced—please have the band waiting to play ‘Hail to the Chief.’”

  Mattingly had added an Air Corps pilot’s leather jacket to his usual somewhat spectacular uniform. That had not been a surprise; very little of his uniform was authorized in the first place.

  Jesus Christ, Cronley thought, he looks like Clark Gable—or at least some other movie star.

  Mattingly walked to each of them and offered his hand.

  “I suspected that you would be sitting here twiddling your thumbs hoping for something to do to pass the time, so I brought you an L-4 full of more documents concerning the passengers of U-405. Plus an enormous stack of same that I held, not without discomfort, in my lap in my puddle jumper.”

  “We have a plethora of information, Colonel,” Mannberg said in precise, British-accented English. “What we have been doing, so to speak, is separating the wheat from the chaff.”

  “That was the original intention, but there has been a change of strategy,” Mattingly announced. “I will explain. I have always held the thought of how nice it would be if we could enlist General Martín in our cause.”

  “The man who heads the . . . ?” Mannberg began to ask.

  “The Argentine Bureau of Internal Security, the BIS,” Mattingly furnished. “He has been cooperating for a long time. If he was going to betray us, he would already have done so. I think he believes, either professionally or philosophically, that allowing these people to establish themselves in Argentina is not in Argentina’s best interests. And Colonel Frade trusts him completely.

  “How nice it would be, I thought, if we could show the general our appreciation for his past services by giving him access to our intelligence—including of course that of the South German Industrial Development Organization regarding the Nazis who have made it safely to Argentina. Doing so would, I thought, encourage him to continue, perhaps even with enthusiasm, his cooperation in the future.