Secret Honor

by W. E. B Griffin

  “In the General San Martín suite,” he said.

  “How appropriate, Herr Generalmajor,” Inge said. “I can be there in half an hour. Would that be convenient?”

  “That would be perfect,” he said. “How kind of you! I’ll be waiting for you outside.”

  He broke the connection with his finger, held the button down for a moment, and then released it. He waited for the hotel operator to come back on the line, but she didn’t. After a moment, he dialed “O,” and she came on.

  If you can dial “O,” why can’t you dial an entire number?

  “Would you be good enough to send the waiter to my room, Señorita?” he asked politely.

  When the waiter appeared, von Deitzberg told him, man to man, that he intended to entertain a lady at luncheon, and that while he wished to make it a very nice luncheon—“I think it would be best to chill at least two bottles of Champagne”—he didn’t want it interrupted by anyone after it had begun.

  Under those circumstances, the waiter suggested a cold luncheon would perhaps be best. A selection of cheeses and meats and sausages, with a side of smoked salmon for the entrée, and for the postre, a selection of petits fours and other sweets.

  “That’s what we’re after,” von Deitzberg said, and took a wad of money from his pocket and peeled off a very generous tip.

  [FIVE]

  When von Deitzberg went down to the entrance of the Casino twenty minutes later, Ingebord von Tresmarck was already waiting for him at the wheel of a yellow Chevrolet convertible. The top was down.

  She really is an attractive female.

  She waved cheerfully at him, and he smiled and walked down to the car, bent over, and kissed her on the cheek.

  “You are quite as lovely as I remembered, my dear Frau von Tresmarck,” he said, then walked around to the passenger side of the car and stepped in.

  Inge turned on the seat and smiled at him. “Herr Generalmajor, is there anything in particular you’d like to see?” she asked.

  Was there a double entendre in her question? And why do I suspect that her skirt is not accidentally hiked so far up?

  “Why don’t we start by you showing me your house?” von Deitzberg said.

  “If you like,” she said. “It’s just two squares away.”

  He smiled at her, and she put the car in gear and drove off.

  When she raised her hand and pointed to the house, von Deitzberg smiled at her and said, “As long as we’re here, Frau von Tresmarck, why don’t you run in and get Sturmbannführer von Tresmarck’s bank records? The special ones.”

  “Excuse me, Herr Generalmajor?”

  “Stop the car, please,” von Deitzberg ordered.

  Inge pulled the car to the curb in front of the house and looked at him.

  “The special bank records?” she asked, confused.

  “And the rest of the records, as well.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Inge said.

  “By the rest of the records,” von Deitzberg explained patiently, “I mean the books, Frau von Tresmarck, and the deed to the estancia, unless there is more than one deed by now, and the records of the Sturmbannführer’s expenses. I want to take a look at everything.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Inge said.

  He didn’t reply for a moment. “Go get the records, Frau von Tresmarck,” he said, still patiently. “I know they are here, and I know there is no one else in whose care your husband would have dared to place them when he went to Berlin.”

  “I think I may know what you want,” Inge said.

  “Frau von Tresmarck, your husband would not have left his records with you without explaining their importance,” he said, as if admonishing a stubborn child. “You know what records I want. Now please go get them.”

  “Herr von Deitzberg, my husband said I was to give the records to no one.”

  “As well he should have. But obviously, I’m not ‘no one,’ am I, Frau von Tresmarck?”

  “No. Of course not. I meant no disrespect, Herr von Deitzberg.”

  “Go get the records,” he said. “All of them. And then we can have our tour of Montevideo and our lunch.”

  She smiled somewhat uneasily at him and opened the car’s door. “I won’t be a moment,” she said.

  He smiled at her.

  Three minutes later, she came quickly out of the house carrying a soft black leather briefcase.

  “Oh, what a lovely suite,” Frau von Tresmarck exclaimed as she walked into the sitting room. She turned and looked at von Deitzberg, smiled, and walked around, inspecting both the bedroom and the dining room, and then the balcony.

  She walked close to him and smiled. “It really is very nice,” she said. “And lunch is ready, I see.”

  He nodded. “A cold lunch,” he said. “I thought you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Not at all,” she replied, and then added, a little naughtily, “And I saw that someone has turned the bed down.”

  “Take off your clothing, please,” von Deitzberg said.

  She looked at him in surprise, then smiled naughtily. “I’m to be the hors d’oeuvres? Why, Herr von Deitzberg!”

  Von Deitzberg struck her in the face with his fist. The blow came without warning, and was forceful enough to knock her backward onto the floor.

  She looked at him with terror in her eyes, put her hand to her face, and then looked at her fingers, which now had blood on them.

  “I’m not going to tell you again, Frau von Tresmarck,” von Deitzberg said.

  She looked into his eyes and saw something that quickly made her avert her eyes. She put her fingers to the buttons of her blouse, saw the blood on them, and licked them clean. Then she began to unbutton the blouse.

  Von Deitzberg walked to the desk, placed the black briefcase on it, and sat down.

  Inge shrugged out of the blouse and laid it on the carpet beside her. She looked at him. He was carefully removing large envelopes from the briefcase. She lifted herself to her feet, unbuttoned the skirt, and stepped out of it. She glanced quickly at him again, then pulled her slip over her head. She was afraid to look at him, but somehow she sensed that he wasn’t even watching her. She unfastened her stockings from the garter belt and removed them. As she did so, she tasted blood on her lip, proved this by putting her fingers to her mouth, and then bent over, took a handkerchief from her purse, and wiped her nose, mouth, and fingers with it.

  She looked at him once again. Now he had one of the files open on the desk and was flipping through it. She put the bloody handkerchief in her purse. “May I go to the rest room and clean my face?” she asked after a moment.

  He raised his eyes from the file. “No,” he said, and dropped his eyes back to the file.

  She stepped out of the garter belt, looked at him again, exhaled audibly, and reached behind to the clasp of the brassiere. She took that off and dropped it onto the skirt. Then she slid her underpants off and stepped out of them. She put her left arm across her breasts and covered her pubic area with her right hand.

  Von Deitzberg looked at her. “Put your hands to the side,” he ordered matter-of-factly, and then demonstrated by extending both his arms from his body so that they were midway between vertical and horizontal.

  She complied. Tears ran down her cheeks.

  He returned his attention to the documents on the desk.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” she asked, plaintively, a long moment later.

  He raised his eyes, looked at her from forehead to toes, and then returned his attention to the documents without speaking.

  Five minutes later, he closed one of the file folders and looked at her again from head to feet. “Feel a little humiliated, do you, Inge?” he asked.

  “What is it you want?” she asked.
>
  “That’s the whole idea,” von Deitzberg said conversationally. “To humiliate the person being interrogated, to deprive him—or her—of his—or her—dignity.”

  He let that sink in.

  “You’re a more than ordinarily attractive female, Inge. One might even say beautiful. That was my reaction to you when I saw you in your car, when you gave me a look at your legs. You were then in charge, so to speak. Or at least thought you were.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Right now you are a naked female, and frankly, your body isn’t nearly as attractive as I expected. Your breasts are starting to sag, and there is too much flesh between your legs.”

  Her lips quivered.

  “More important, I think you’re getting the idea just how vulnerable you are, how completely you are at my mercy.”

  “What is it you want from me?”

  “That standard line from any film about a court trial, ‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.’”

  “I would have answered anything you asked me,” she said. “You didn’t have to do this.”

  “I think I did. Otherwise I wouldn’t have done it,” he said matter-of-factly. “Please turn around, Inge. Turn completely around.”

  She looked at him for a moment, then complied.

  When she had completed the turn, he let her stand there for a long moment. Then he said, “Your buttocks are beginning to sag, Inge. You are losing the charms of youth.”

  Inge could not entirely restrain a sob.

  “You might actually have trouble picking up officers in the Adlon Hotel Bar if I sent you back to Berlin, Inge. Moot question. If I send you back to Germany, you won’t get anywhere near the Adlon Bar.”

  “I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” Inge said. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “First question. How much do you know about the special operation your husband has been conducting?”

  “He’s been conducting two special operations,” Inge said.

  “Very good, Inge. That suggests you are willing to tell me the whole truth. What are the two operations?”

  “One is Operation Phoenix.”

  “Which is?”

  “He has opened bank accounts and bought an estancia—a farm.”

  “I know what an estancia is. To what end?”

  “To provide a refuge for our leaders if the war doesn’t go as well as they think it will.”

  “And the second operation Werner is involved in?”

  “Jews give him money to get people out of concentration camps in Germany.”

  “And how is that done?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t know. I just know that it happens, and that the money goes into accounts at the Banco de Río Plate and the Banco Ramírez. Different accounts than the money used for Operation Phoenix. I know which ones—”

  “So do I,” von Deitzberg cut her off. “Who besides Werner has access to those accounts, the special accounts?”

  “Just me.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Tell me about Werner’s friends,” von Deitzberg said. “Is there anyone in particular?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Stimulate your memory,” he ordered. “Jog your brain. Jump up and down.”

  “What?”

  “Jump up and down,” he said. “Until I tell you to stop.”

  “He is closer to the imobilerio, the real estate—”

  “I really hoped that I would not have to strike you again,” von Deitzberg said, and rose from behind the desk.

  Inge began to jump, awkwardly, up and down.

  He kept her at it until her face was flushed with the exertion, then waved his hand to signal her to stop. “When you do that, your breasts flop up and down,” he observed. “It’s not attractive.”

  She looked at him and shook her head, but said nothing.

  “You were telling me about the imobilerio,” he said. “Whose name is?”

  “Nunzio. Alfredo Nunzio.”

  “And would you say, Inge, that Señor Alfredo Nunzio and your husband are lovers?”

  “I think so,” she said.

  “Do you think that, as lovers are wont to do, Werner may have shared secrets with his beloved Alfredo?”

  “I don’t think so,” Inge said.

  “Why not?”

  “Werner is too smart for that,” Inge said.

  “Because he is aware of the consequences?”

  “Yes.”

  “Inge, what I’m wondering now is what you thought when Werner was ordered to Berlin.”

  “I was frightened,” she said.

  “For yourself? For your husband?”

  “For myself,” Inge said.

  “Good girl, Inge! I’m actually starting to think that you understand the importance of telling me the truth, not what you think I want to hear.”

  “I am.”

  “Now tell me about your friends,” von Deitzberg said. “Anyone special?”

  “No.”

  “You said that so quickly, I’m tempted not to believe you.”

  “There is no one special,” she said. “I understand the necessity for discretion.”

  “This is not Berlin, Inge. There is no Hotel Adlon, no Hotel am Zoo. So where do you find your lovers?”

  “I…sometimes meet people at social events, diplomatic receptions, that sort of thing.”

  “And where do you go with these people you meet?”

  “Usually here,” she said. “They take a room here in the Casino.”

  “These people include diplomats?”

  “Two or three times.”

  “Is that discreet? For the wife of a senior German official?”

  “I’m very careful.”

  “Have you become friendly with any German officer?”

  There was a just-perceptible hesitation. “Just once.”

  “And who was he?”

  “He wasn’t from here. He’s assigned to the embassy in Buenos Aires.”

  “And his name?”

  “Major von Wachtstein.”

  “Major Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein,” von Deitzberg said.

  “I knew him in Berlin,” she said.

  “One of the handsome dashing aviators at the Hotel am Zoo?”

  She nodded.

  “And the circumstances of your touching reunion with an old lover from Berlin?”

  “He came here with Standartenführer Goltz.”

  “You know that Standartenführer Goltz is dead?”

  She nodded.

  “Von Wachtstein came here with Goltz?”

  She nodded again.

  “And the two of you jumped into bed? Was that discreet on either your part or his?”

  “He knew what Werner is, of course.”

  “How did he know that?”

  “I presume Standartenführer Goltz told him.”

  “Why should he do that?”

  “They were close.”

  “Would you say that von Wachtstein knew about Operation Phoenix?”

  “I’m sure he does.”

  “And the special operation?”

  “I don’t know about that. I don’t know how much Standartenführer Goltz told him.”

  “Did you discuss anything about it with him?”

  “Of course not. Or about Operation Phoenix. I just had the feeling von Wachtstein knows about Operation Phoenix. I don’t know if he knows about the other thing.”

  “Would you be surprised if he did?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised one way or the other.�
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  “How often were you together with von Wachtstein?”

  “Twice. The first time he came to Montevideo with Standartenführer Goltz, and then when he came here to take Werner to Buenos Aires—after whatever happened to Goltz.”

  “What do you know about what happened to Goltz?”

  “The gossip is he was murdered.”

  “Under what circumstances?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Your husband didn’t talk to you about this?”

  She shook her head.

  “Did he tell you that what happened to Standartenführer Goltz was one of the reasons he was recalled to Berlin?”

  “No. But I knew that’s what it had to be.”

  “You’re a very bright girl, Inge. You are also skilled in the art of self-preservation. You see things as they are.”

  “I try to,” she said.

  “Your nipples are standing up,” von Deitzberg said. “Does that mean you are sexually aroused? Or that you’re feeling a little chill?”

  Inge sucked in a breath but didn’t answer.

  Von Deitzberg rose from behind the desk, walked around it, and leaned back against it. “That raises a question, Inge,” von Deitzberg said. “Given these facts. You understood that your husband was under suspicion—of what doesn’t matter—and was being called to Berlin. You surely had to consider the possibility that he had done something wrong and would not be coming back here. You also understood that you possess information that is dangerous for you to possess. And that you would be suspected of complicity in whatever your husband had done wrong—”

  “I have done nothing wrong!” Inge said.

  “And you had access to all the money in the special accounts in the Banco de Río Plate and the Banco Ramírez,” von Deitzberg went on. “Frankly, Inge, were I in your shoes, I would have at least considered taking the money from those accounts and disappearing.”

  “I did,” Inge said.

  “Thank you for your honesty,” von Deitzberg said. “But you didn’t, when there was time to do so. Why not?”

  “Because I knew there was nowhere I could go that the SS couldn’t find me,” Inge said.

  “That was a wise decision, Inge,” von Deitzberg said. “There is no place in the world where you could hide from us.”