Griffin W.E.B. - Honor Bound 02 - Blood and Honor

"It will also tip the Germans that we know about the money," Clete challenged.

"Why? So far as they're concerned, the money will have safely arrived, still in its crates, wherever they take it."

"They will wonder how someone just happened to be taking pictures where they were landing the money," Clete argued.

"Look," Graham said, "an amateur photographer is walking along the beach and happens to see the strange activity of people unloading crates from a boat and takes pictures of it with his Brownie. If Lieutenant Sawyer's photographs don't naturally look like the work of an amateur photographer, they can be made to look that way." He paused, then went on. "Actually, Leibermann has a local cop on his payroll who can turn them in. That's just between us."

"Why don't we just tell Leibermann's cop what's about to happen? Let them grab the money?"

"I thought about that. I decided that one cop stumbling across the unloading would not arouse undue suspicion; a dozen cops waiting for the boat would."

Clete shrugged. He could not fault Graham's logic.

"There are several problems involved with getting Lieutenant Sawyer to the proper place at the properly appointed time in the properly appointed uniform—civilian clothing—to take his pictures," Graham said. "For one thing, he's in Argentina illegally. For another, despite his protestations to the contrary, the Germans are liable to see him. He would not be able to defend himself, because I don't want him carrying a weapon."

"I could send Enrico with him," Clete thought aloud. "Enrico and Rudolpho."

"Se?or Clete?" Enrico asked, having heard his name.

Clete switched to Spanish.

"This morning, Enrico, you and Rudolpho are going to go riding along the beach."

"Where will you be, Se?or Clete?"

"I'll be flying the airplane," Clete said. "And you can't go with me." He waited to deal with the expected objections to that; and when—surprising him—there were none, went on. "You will take el Teniente Gorilla with you. He will be taking photographs of the Germans unloading crates from a boat."

"And what do we do about the Germans?"

"Nothing, absolutely nothing. We don't even want them to see you. If they do see you, you're to leave immediately. But I don't want them to see you. This is very important. What I want you to do is put el Teniente Gorilla in a position to take his photographs, and when he's finished, bring him back here. Only if necessary, and I mean absolutely necessary, are you to use your guns to protect el Teniente Gorilla. No dead Germans, you understand, Enrico?"

“S?, Se?or Clete," Enrico agreed with obvious reluctance.

"If you do what Se?or Clete asks you to do, Suboficial Mayor," Graham said, "it will result in the deaths of far more Germans than the ones you will see on the beach."

Enrico considered that idea and seemed to like it.

“S?, mi Coronel," he said.

"Unless anyone has anything else?" Graham asked, looking around the room, and then finished, "I think we should, quickly, take advantage of Dorotea's buffet breakfast."

[TWO]

Aboard Motor Vessel Comerciante del Oceano Pacifico

Samboromb?n Bay

River Plate Estuary, Argentina

0810 19 April 1943

Capitan Jose Francisco de Banderano, master of the Oceano Pacifico, was, of course being generously compensated for his services—as was his crew. There had been a generous sign-on bonus, and a promise of an equal amount at the conclusion of the voyage, even if the ship was lost. In addition, each month an amount equal to, and in addition to, his monthly pay would be delivered to his wife, in cash—and thus tax-free. If things should go really wrong, his wife would receive a generous death benefit, plus a pension for the rest of her life. The German Naval Attach? in Madrid had made similar provisions for every member of his crew.

But the generous pay was not the reason he had accepted the commission. He believed in the German cause.

Like his father and grandfather before him, Capitan de Banderano was a graduate of the Spanish Royal Navy Academy. He graduated at eighteen, was appointed a midshipman, and then, on attaining his twenty-first birthday, was commissioned a Lieutenant in the Royal Spanish Navy.

By the time the Communists started the revolution, he had risen to Lieutenant Commander and was in command of the frigate Almirante de Posco. Before the revolution, he hoped to rise in rank to Capitan—as his father had—or possibly even to Almirante—as his grandfather had.

The revolution changed all that. He was early on detached from the Almirante de Posco to serve on the staff of General Francisco Franco, El Caudillo, when that great man saw it as his Christian duty to expel the godless Communists from Spain and restore Spain to her former greatness.

As the Civil War dragged on and on, his duties had less and less to do with the Navy, but they took him to all fronts and gave him the opportunity to see what the Communists had in mind for Spain. And they were godless, the Antichrist. He saw the murdered priests and the raped nuns.

Hitler, "Der F?hrer," and Benito Mussolini, "El Duce," were deeply aware of the nature of the Communists, and of the threat communism posed to the very survival of Christian civilization; and they sent help. Der F?hrer more than El Duce, to be sure, but both came to the aid of a Christianity that once again had infidel hordes raging at her gates.

Without the help German weapons provided to General Franco's army, without the aerial support of the German Condor Legion, it was entirely possible that the war could have been lost.

The English and the Americans remained "neutral," but that in practice meant they were helping the loyalists. The Americans even sent soldiers, formed into the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, to aid the Communists.

Capitan de Banderano was frankly baffled by the behavior of the English and the Americans. The usual answer to this conundrum was that they were not Roman Catholic, and their "churches" had been infiltrated and corrupted by Communists; but he thought that was too simple an answer. A large number of the Germans who came to help Spain were Protestant. He also thought the other answer was too simple: that the Jews controlled both England and America.

Too many good Spanish Jews had fought as valiantly as anyone on the side of El Caudillo to believe that all Jews were allied with the Antichrist.

But whatever their reasons for opposing Hitler, for refusing to accept that the war Hitler was waging against the Communists was their own war, the fact was that England and America were fighting Germany, and that was sufficient cause for him to do whatever he could to oppose them.

The notion of violating the Rules of Warfare by violating Argentine neutrality would have deeply offended him before the Civil War. Now it seemed only right. The actions of the English during the Civil War were blatantly antagonistic to neutrality. And later, the actions of the Americans after the beginning of the current war, but before they themselves joined the hostilities, were equally contrary to neutrality.

There was no command for Capitan de Banderano in the post-Civil War Royal Spanish Navy. Spain was destitute—and not only because the Communists stole literally tons of gold, almost the entire gold stocks of the kingdom, and took it to Russia. There was hardly enough money to operate—much less construct—men-of-war. The once proud Spanish navy was on its knees, again, thanks to the Communists.

Thus, his service during the Civil War was rewarded with a command in the Spanish merchant navy. He saw with his own eyes and heard with his own ears American Navy ships roaming the North Atlantic searching for German submarines—which had every right under international law to sink vessels laden with war materiel and bound for England. When the American ships found one, they reported their positions by radio, in the clear. "In the clear" meant that radios aboard English men-of-war were given the positions of their enemy by "neutral" American men-of-war.