Griffin W.E.B. - Honor Bound 01 - Honor Bound

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. Per?n 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 Capitan Duarte. Que Dios lo tenga en la gloria." (Freely: "May he rest in peace.") "El Capitan 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 Per?n 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 attach? for air."

"An important stepping-stone in a career," Portez-Halle said. "I was once an assistant military attach? 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 Per?n considers von Wachtstein to be a charming young officer — and I agreed—and that he was chosen to accompany the remains both because of his distinguished war record and because his father is a major general.

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."

Chapter Six

[ONE]

The Office of the Ambassador

The Embassy of the German Reich

Avenida Cordoba

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 Gr?ner, the Military Attach?, 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 Gr?ner's sub rosa function in the Embassy as the representative of the Abwehr—the Intelligence Department of the German Armed Forces High Command.

His Excellency, Manfred Alois Graf von Lutzenberger, Ambassador of the German Reich to the Republic of Argentina, was a slight, very thin, fifty-three-year-old who wore what was left of his thinning hair plastered across his skull. Von Lutzenbergers, he often thought when he had to deal with Gradny-Sawz, had been treading without nervousness the marble-floored corridors of one embassy or another since 1660, when Friedrich Graf von Lutzenberger had arranged Prussia's full independence from Polish suzerainty for Friedrich Wilhelm, the Great Elector. That was nearly three hundred years ago. When, in other words, Gradny-Sawz's ancestors in Hungary were just learning how to ride horses using saddles, and Gr?ner's antecedents were sleeping with their milch cows in some stone-and-thatch cottage in a remote meadow in the Bavarian Alps.

"Your Excellency, there has been a cable from the Foreign Ministry vis-a-vis the Duarte remains," Gradny-Sawz began. "I thought Oberst Gr?ner should be brought into this as soon as possible."

"That's the Argentinean boy who was killed at Stalingrad?" von Lutzenberger asked.

"Yes. His remains are to be placed aboard the General Belgrano of the Lineas Maritimos de Argentina y Europa at Lisbon. They are being accompanied by a Hauptmann von Wachtstein of the Luftwaffe. The Belgrano is scheduled to sail from Lisbon for Buenos Aires at 0700, Lisbon time, November 8."

"Have you a first name on von Wachtstein?"

"I have it here somewhere," Gradny-Sawz said, and began to search in his pockets for a notebook.

"I don't have his first name at hand, Sir," Gr?ner said. "But he is the son of Generalmajor Graf von Wachtstein."

"How did you come by that information?"

"In a cable informing me that he is being assigned to me as my Deputy for Air," Gr?ner said.

"Hans-Peter are his Christian names, Your Excellency," Gradny-Sawz announced, reading from his leather-bound notebook. “He has been awarded, personally, from the hands of the F?hrer, the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross."

"How interesting," the ambassador said. "I'm sure there is a reason why it was impossible to consult with me—or, for that matter, you, Gr?ner—before this gentleman was assigned to us."

Both Gr?ner and Gradny-Sawz smiled uneasily, but said nothing. Ambassador von Lutzenberger frequently complained that the Foreign Ministry did not consult with him as often as was necessary.