Honor Bound

by W. E. B Griffin

  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 themselves 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 station, 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 casket, 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 probably 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 “Vorwärts!” 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 personnel of the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe, and the Waffen-SS began 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 Wehrmacht, a Waffen-SS Obersturmbannführer (the Waffen-SS equivalent 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 photographers in Wehrmacht uniforms, one still and one motion picture, 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 Argentinean.

  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, Über 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 overdone.

  When the music was finished, the casket was carried back to the goods wagon and placed aboard, with the photographers recording 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 passenger 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 Sûreté Nationale personnel that they might now commence their routine immigration, customs, and security checks of Number 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 conductor 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 Sûreté 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 Perón 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 Perón, 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 Spanish Embassy in Buenos Aires, these men were about to stage a coup d’état. And Frade was reported to be the brains behind the plot, and certainly the financier.

  Colonel Juan Domingo Perón, Portez-Halle had been told, was attached to the Argentinean Embassy in Berlin and would be accompanying the young Argentinean’s body to Lisbon, where it would be put aboard an Argentinean merchant vessel for repatriation. The dead officer was the nephew of el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade. Which probably explained why the Germans were going to all the fuss they were making. They knew who Frade was, too.

  The Foreign Ministry originally intended to send an official of suitable rank—say, a deputy minister—to represent El Caudillo (General Francisco Franco, the Spanish dictator) at the border. But after Portez-Halle had brought up the Perón-Frade-Portez-Halle connection, it was obvious
that he should go. He would, he said, take El Coronel Perón into his home during the layover in Madrid. And have a dinner for him. Considering the importance of Perón’s connection to Frade, it was suggested that El Caudillo himself might come to dinner. Or drop by to show his respect.

  There had not been time, of course, to issue a formal invitation to el Coronel Perón, but Portez-Halle had not considered that a major problem. He would seek him out at the border, identify himself as a friend of Jorge Guillermo Frade, and make the invitation there.

  At that point the plans went awry.

  “I’m not going any further than the border,” Perón told him. “And if it wasn’t for the insistence of the Germans, I wouldn’t have come this far. But I thank you for your most gracious offer of hospitality.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I’d looked forward to it.”

  “It’s simply impossible,” Perón replied, “but I’ll tell you what you could do.”

  “Tell me.”

  “The young Luftwaffe officer, the captain?” Perón went on, just perceptibly nodding his head toward a blond-headed young German around whose neck, Portez-Halle noticed, hung the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross.

  “Yes. That’s Baron von Wachtstein. He’s escorting the remains. He’s a very nice young man. I’m sure he would be most grateful for a hot meal and a warm bed in Madrid. They just took his fighter squadron away from him, and he’s very unhappy about that. I don’t think he should be left alone in Madrid; he takes a drink sometimes when he perhaps should not, if you take my meaning.”

  “It will be my pleasure,” Portez-Halle said.

  “I would be in your debt,” Perón said.

  Once the Paris-Barcelona-Madrid train cleared Spanish customs, changed engines, and got underway, Colonel Portez-Halle went into his luggage, took out a small leather box, and told el Teniente Savorra that he was going to look in on the young German officer.

  As he walked into the Wagons-Lits sleeping car, he wondered idly what had been the peculiarly Teutonic logic behind the decision to send the Wagons-Lits on to Barcelona and Madrid with a lowly captain as its sole passenger. They could more easily have detached the car at the border and sent it back to Paris with all the other German officers. It would make more sense to have one junior officer change cars than ten or fifteen officers, including a German and an Argentinean full colonel. Colonel Portez-Halle had long ago decided he would never understand how the German mind worked. But it was sometimes interesting to try.

  He next wondered if he was going to have to knock at each of the doors in the Wagons-Lits car until he found the young officer. But this didn’t happen. He faintly heard an obscenity, and knowing that would have been impossible through a closed door, he walked down the corridor until he came to an open one. And there was the young officer, attired in his underwear.

  “Guten Tag, Herr Hauptmann,” Colonel Portez-Halle said.

  “Buenas tardes, mi Coronel,” Hauptmann Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein replied, visibly surprised, as he started to rise.

  “Yo soy el Coronel Portez-Halle.”

  “A sus órdenes, mi Coronel. Yo soy el Capitán von Wachtstein.”

  “You speak Spanish very well, Captain.”

  “Gracias, mi Coronel.”

  “I thought perhaps you might like a small taste of brandy.”

  “You’re very gracious,” Peter said. “I was just changing out of my uniform. You’ll have to excuse me. I didn’t really expect visitors.”

  “Colonel Perón asked me to look after you.”

  “Then you are both very gracious,” Peter said.

  “An old friend of the family, I gathered?” Portez-Halle asked as he walked into the compartment, laid the small leather case on the seat, and started to open it.

  “No, Sir,” Peter said. “I met the Colonel when I got involved in all this…” He gestured vaguely in the direction of the goods wagon.

  “Then I must have misunderstood,” Portez-Halle said. He took two small crystal glasses from the case, then a flat-sided crystal flask.

  “Are you familiar with our brandy?”

  “At one time I was so fond of it, Sir, that it was said I grew too familiar with it.”

  Portez-Halle glanced at him and smiled. The Argentinean was right; this was a nice young man, and his behavior suggested that he was accustomed to dealing with senior officers. He could also smell cognac on his breath. Perón had been right about that too. Alcohol had ruined the career of more than one fine young officer of Portez-Halle’s acquaintance.

  “You served with the Condor Legion, I gather?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  The least I can do for someone who risked his life to spare Spain from the communists is take him into my home overnight and keep him from temptation.

  Portez-Halle poured brandy into both glasses, handed one to Peter, then raised the other.

  “Por Capitán Duarte. Que Dios lo tenga en la gloria.” (Freely: “May he rest in peace.”)

  “El Capitán Duarte,” Peter said politely.

  “You knew him well?” Portez-Halle asked.

  “I never knew him at all. All I know about him is that he was shot down at Stalingrad flying a Fieseler Storch that he should not have been flying in the first place, and that he was apparently well-connected.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “They’re sending his body home, they relieved me of my command of a fighter staffel to go with it, and you saw that business at the border. They did just about the same thing when we left Berlin.”

  “Colonel Perón suggested that you yourself are ‘well-connected.’”

  “My father is Generalmajor Graf von Wachtstein, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Why do I have the feeling, Captain, that you are not particularly pleased with the assignment?”

  “I am an officer. I go where I am sent, and do what I’m told to do.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “Just before you came, mi Coronel, I was asking myself the same question. I concluded that only a fool would be unhappy with this assignment. I’m going to a neutral country where it is highly unlikely that I will be asked to lay down my life for the Fatherland.”

  “And did you decide whether or not you were such a fool?” Portez-Halle asked with a smile.

  “I am not a fool,” Peter said.

  “You’ll be staying in Argentina?”

  “You caught me in the midst of my metamorphosis between soldier and diplomat,” Peter said. “I was, more than symbolically, changing into civilian clothing to go with my new diplomatic passport. I am being assigned to the German Embassy in Buenos Aires as the assistant military attaché for air.”

  “An important stepping-stone in a career,” Portez-Halle said. “I was once an assistant military attaché. In Warsaw, 1933–34. It was said that it would round out my experience.”

  “That has been mentioned to me,” Peter said.

  “What is your schedule in Madrid?”

  “I change trains to Lisbon.”

  “Is someone meeting you?”

  “I was told someone from our Embassy will meet the train, arrange for the casket to be taken care of overnight, get me a hotel for the night, and then put both of us aboard the Lisbon train in the morning.”

  “It would give me great pleasure, Hauptmann von Wachtstein, if you would permit me to have you as my guest at my home while you are in Madrid.”

  “That’s very gracious, but unnecessary, Sir.”

  “It would be my pleasure.”

  And, Portez-Halle had a sudden pleasant inspiration, I will send a letter with you to Jorge Guillermo Frade. You will meet him, of course; but he would be likely to dismiss you as unimportant. I will write dear old Jorge that our mutual friend el Coronel Juan Domingo Perón considers von Wachtstein to be a charming young officer—and I agree—and that he was chosen to accompany the remains both because of his distinguished war record and because his father is a major general.r />
  Frade will like that. And it will let him know that I did my best to pay our most sincere respects to the late Captain Duarte—both personally and as the special representative of El Caudillo.

  “Well then, Sir, thank you very much.”

  VI

  [ONE]

  The Office of the Ambassador

  The Embassy of the German Reich

  Avenida Córdoba

  Buenos Aires, Argentina

  1615 7 November 1942

  Ambassador von Lutzenberger would have been hard-pressed to decide which of the two men now standing before his desk he disliked more. One of them at a time was pressing enough, and the two of them together would almost certainly ruin his dinner.

  Anton von Gradny-Sawz, First Secretary of the Embassy of the German Reich to the Republic of Argentina, was a tall, almost handsome, somewhat overweight forty-five-year-old with a full head of luxuriant reddish-brown hair. He was sure he owed this to his Hungarian heritage. As he sometimes put it, flashing one of his charming smiles, he was a German with roots in Hungary who happened to be born in Ostmark—as Austria was called after it was absorbed into Germany after the Anschluss of 1938. He would often add that a Gradny-Sawz had been nervously treading the marble-floored corridors of one embassy or another for almost two hundred years.

  Oberst Karl-Heinz Grüner, the Military Attaché, was a tall, ascetic-looking man who appeared older than his thirty-nine years…and who loathed Gradny-Sawz both personally and professionally. Die grosse Wienerwurst (the Big Vienna Sausage), as he and von Lutzenberger both thought of him, not only had an exaggerated opinion of his own professional skill and importance but also tended to interfere with Oberst Grüner’s sub rosa function in the Embassy as the representative of the Abwehr—the Intelligence Department of the German Armed Forces High Command.