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

"So did I, until I came here." He paused and shook his head at the failure of Argentines to be logical. "Consecrated ground, they call it. No heathens or Evangelische need apply. The last time I was here—it's over there someplace—I even came across a tomb reserved for Freemasons. I thought the Catholics hated Freemasons about as much as the F?hrer." He smiled. "There is no explanation, except that this is Argentina, and Argentina is like nowhere else in the world."

Finally, they were through, just outside the cemetery's main gate. Gr?ner made Peter recite, in detail, his role in the funeral of Hauptmann Duarte.

I expected this. Sound military practice. You tell someone what you 're going to teach him. You teach him what you want him to know. And then you make him tell you what he has just been taught.

"So, this is done," Gr?ner said. "And what do you suppose we should do now?"

"I have no idea, Herr Oberst," Peter replied.

"What do all soldiers, from private soldiers to Feldmarschalls, do when they have finished their assigned duties and there is no superior officer around?"

"Look for a woman?" Peter blurted.

Gr?ner chuckled. "Close, but I was thinking of finding a beer," he said. “Fortunately, we are close to a place where we can do just that. And who knows, there just might be someone there who catches your eye."

Chapter Fifteen

[ONE]

Restaurant Bavaria

Recoleta Plaza

Buenos Aires

1905 17 December 1942

With Peter moving in step beside him, Oberst Karl-Heinz Gr?ner marched across Recoleta Plaza to a restaurant. A brass sign mounted on the wall identified it as Restaurant Bavaria. Peter stepped ahead of Gr?ner and opened the plate-glass door.

A heavyset, barrel-bellied man in his fifties approached them the moment they were inside. He was wearing a stiffly starched shirt and a suit that looked too tight, and he was immaculately shaved, except for a Hitler-style mustache on his lip.

"Guten Tag, Herr Oberst," he said, with a snap-of-his-neck bow. "What a great pleasure it is to see you."

Gr?ner nodded somewhat imperiously.

"Herr Krantz," he said, "I have told this young gentleman that the imitation schnapps in this pathetic copy of a gasthaus is sometimes drinkable."

"I like to think it is decent."

"This young gentleman is my new assistant, Hauptmann Freiherr von Wachtstein, of the Luftwaffe,” Gr?ner said, waited until Krantz had made his little bow, and then added, "holder of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross."

Krantz snapped his head again.

"A great honor, Sir," he said.

It is apparently true,Peter thought. The Knight's Cross and a Reichsmark will sometimes get you a glass of schnapps.

"Herr Krantz," he said.

Peter looked around the restaurant. It not only had solid, Germanic-appearing furniture, but the walls were decorated with the crests of the German states and some of the larger cities, and with horned rehbock skulls and mounted boar heads. It looked truly German; it could have been in Munich or Frankfurt am Main or Berlin.

"Would the Herr Oberst and the Herr Freiherr prefer a table by the window, or ..."

"One of the rooms upstairs, Krantz, overlooking the Recoleta, would be preferable," Gr?ner said. "1 have told the Freiherr that some of the prettiest women in Buenos Aires march past your windows at this hour. And we are going to have a little private chat."

Krantz led them to the rear of the restaurant and up a flight of stairs, then down a corridor and into a small room with windows overlooking the Recoleta.

"Would this be satisfactory to the Herr Oberst?"

"Thank you, Krantz," Gr?ner said. "This will do."

“Perhaps I might interest the Herr Oberst in something besides a schnapps?"

"With the outrageous prices you charge, schnapps—imitation schnapps is all..."

"The Herr Oberst forgets that I have told him time and time again that his money is not acceptable here," Krantz said.

"How kind of you, Krantz," Gr?ner said, and added to Peter: "Herr Krantz is a good German, Herr Hauptmann. A leader of the German colony here."

Krantz beamed.

"Permit me, Herr Oberst, to send you something of my choice."

"How kind of you, Krantz," Gr?ner said.

Gr?ner disappeared.

"He has been very valuable, helping us get officers from the Graf Spee (The German pocket battleship Graf Spee, under the command of Captain Hans Langsdorff, was engaged in destroying British shipping in the South Atlantic when located and damaged by three British cruisers. She sought refuge in the neutral port of Montevideo, Uruguay. Two British cruisers followed her, and patrolled outside the harbor. A British aircraft carrier and a British battleship were en route to Montevideo when, on 17 December 1940, under British diplomatic pressure, the Uruguayan government insisted on compliance with International Law and that she leave Uruguayan waters after seventy-two hours or be interned. Langsdorff then took her to sea, but rather than risk her capture by the British, blew her up just outside Montevideo. A flotilla of tugs and other small craft hastily organized by the German colony in Buenos Aires carried Captain Langsdorff and his thousand-plus-man crew to Buenos Aires. There, after learning his crew would be interned and that he could do nothing else for them, and to prove that it was fear of British capture of his warship, and not fear of death at the hands of the enemy, that made him scuttle his command, Langsdorff arranged himself so his body would fall on the Graf Spee's battle ensign and shot himself in the temple.) out of the country," Gr?ner said. "You'll become involved in that, of course."

"How many of the Graf Spee's men are here?" Peter asked. He remembered the loss of the Graf Spee and the suicide of her captain, but it never entered his mind to wonder what happened to her crew.

"Eight hundred and something other ranks, and about forty-nine officers," Gr?ner said. "Getting the officers out is a high priority for me, largely because Admiral Canaris has an understandable personal interest."

Admiral Wilhelm Canaris was Chief of German Intelligence (Abwehr).

"Excuse me?"

"Canaris was himself interned here during the First World War, and escaped."

"I didn't know that," Peter confessed.

Strange that I didn't. Admiral Canaris and my father are close. I wonder if Gr?ner knows that. I wonder how much he knows about my father, or for that matter about me. Did they send a copy of my service records over here? Or my Abwehr dossier? More than likely.

Krantz came back, bearing a bottle in his right hand and holding the stems of three glasses between the fingers of his left.

"I know the Herr Oberst likes a little Slivovitz to whet his appetite, and I thought the Herr Freiherr might like a taste."

"Good of you, Krantz," Gr?ner said as Krantz poured the liquor.

"I am chilling some champagne, Argentinean. The German is gone, and I didn't think French appropriate to properly welcome the Herr Freiherr to Argentina. And then with the Herr Oberst's approval, I thought perhaps a nice Schnitzel, mit Kartoffeln und Apfelbrei —breaded veal cutlet, potatoes, and applesauce.

"We place ourselves in your capable hands, Krantz," Gr?ner said.

Krantz picked up his glass and raised it.

"Herr Oberst," he said, "Herr Freiherr, unser F?hrer!"

Gr?ner and Peter stood and made the toast.

"To victory!" Gr?ner said.

"Death to our enemies!" Krantz said passionately.

Cletus Frade is by definition my enemy. But I don't wish to see him dead. I just don't want him to kill me. Why do people who have never worn a uniform— who have never had to kill anyone— seem to be in love with death and killing ?

The Slivovitz burned his throat. But he remembered that his mother liked it. There was a dinner at the Drei Husaren Restaurant in Vienna, near St. Stephen's Cathedral...