Griffin W.E.B.: Honor Bound 04 - Death and Honor

Boltitz surveyed the room. The walls not covered with books were mostly covered with photographs and framed newspaper clippings, all of them of Cletus Frade. One was most of the front page of a newspaper, The Midland Advertiser . There was a picture of Frade, in a flight suit, being decorated. The headline read:

MIDLAND MARINE CLETUS FRADE

BECOMES ACE ON GUADALCANAL.

GETS DISTINGUISHED FLYING CROSS.

I shall have to keep in mind that Señor Frade has a very large ego.

Then Boltitz took a closer look at a large oil portrait. It showed a blond woman holding an infant in her arms.

What next? A statue? Maybe a painted ceiling, like the Sistine Chapel? Showing him being taken bodily into heaven?

Wait a minute . . .

That’s not Señora Frade. At least not the one in here now.

My God, that’s Frade’s mother! He’s the babe in arms.

Which means—why the hell didn’t I figure this out sooner?—this is not his study.

This is—was—Oberst Frade’s study. His father made this—this what? shrine?— to his son!

“That’ll do it. Thank you very much,” Frade said, and the maids quickly left the room. Frade got very quickly out of his chair, went to the door, and threw a dead-bolt lock. Then he went back behind his desk.

“Okay, Peter,” he said, not at all pleasantly. “Take it from the top.”

“Excuse me?”

“From the beginning,” Frade clarified.

“I don’t know where . . .” von Wachtstein said.

“Perhaps, Major Frade, I might be able . . .”

“Okay. Let’s hear what you’ve got to say, Captain,” Frade said.

Boltitz nodded. “I went to Major von Wachtstein’s apartment two days ago— ”

“That would be the twentieth?” Frade interrupted.

“Correct,” Boltitz said. “I had determined that Major von Wachtstein had informed someone—I surmised, correctly, I was to learn, that he informed you, Major Frade—of the time and place where the Océano Pacífico would attempt to land certain matériel near Puerto Magdalena on Samborombón Bay.”

Frade’s face remained expressionless. His wife’s eyes showed concern, even pain.

“As you know, when the Océano Pacífico ’s longboats came ashore, they were brought under fire, which resulted in the deaths of two senior German officers, Standartenführer Goltz of the SS and Oberst Karl-Heinz Grüner, the military attaché of the German embassy here.”

Again there was no expression on Frade’s face. His wife’s face was now pale.

“I thought you were going to tell me why you went to Wachtstein’s apartment, ” Frade said evenly.

“It was a matter of honor among officers,” Boltitz said.

“Honor among officers?” Frade asked. There was a faint but unmistakable tone of incredulity in his voice.

“Certainly, as an officer, the son of an officer . . .”

“I’m supposed to understand, is that what you’re suggesting?” Frade said.

“Yes, sir. It is.”

Frade shook his head in disbelief.

“Go on, Captain,” he said.

“Clete,” von Wachtstein said, “what he did, what he came to offer, was what he thought was an honorable solution to the problem.”

Frade looked sharply at him but said nothing for a moment.

Then, his voice dripping with sarcasm, he said, “Let me guess. He was going to confront you with your sins against your officer’s honor, and then leave you alone in a room with a pistol and one cartridge, right? So you could put a bullet up your nose, then get on a white horse, and ride off to Valhalla?”

“I had hoped you would understand,” Boltitz said.

“It wasn’t a pistol the korvettenkapitän offered, Clete,” von Wachtstein said. “My suicide would have implicated my father. He would have been sent to a concentration camp, if not hung with piano wire from a butcher’s hook.”

“So what did he offer?” Frade asked.

“I was to crash on landing when I came back from Montevideo,” von Wachtstein said.

Frade looked at Boltitz.

“And if he flew into the ground, you were going to keep your mouth shut about your suspicions about him?” he asked.

Boltitz nodded.

“So why aren’t we scraping you off the runway at El Palomar, Peter?”

“Clete!” Dorotea Frade said, either in shock or as warning.

“I reported the korvettenkapitän’s visit to Ambassador Lutzenberger,” von Wachtstein said.

“How much had you told Lutzenberger about what you thought Wachtstein had done?” Frade asked Boltitz. “Before you went to his apartment, I mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Why not?”

“I considered it possible that the ambassador was—”

“The traitor the Sicherheitsdienst was looking for?” Frade interrupted.

Well, Boltitz thought, he knows enough about his enemy to make that distinction. Most people would have simply said “SS,” thinking there was no difference between the SS and the SD; that all in the SS were Secret Police.

Why am I surprised? Von Wachtstein told me he was good, and that the happy Texas cowboy image he presents masks a very professional intelligence officer.

“And I presume still are,” Boltitz said. “I’m not SS-SD, Major Frade.”

“You’re not? Then who do you work for?”

“Admiral Canaris,” Boltitz said.

“For him personally? Or you’re assigned to the Abwehr?”

The Amt Auslandsnachrichten und Abwehr—Abwehr—was the foreign espionage and domestic counterintelligence organization for the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, the supreme headquarters of the armed forces. Its head was Vice Admiral Wilhelm Canaris.

The question is insulting, Boltitz thought, suggesting I am trying to make myself out as more important than I am.

And the anger Frade experienced when von Wachtstein told him that he had admitted his treason, had told me everything, has had more than enough time to dissipate. He is being insulting with the purpose of making me lose my temper and say things I would not ordinarily say.

This happy Texas cowboy is a very dangerous man.

“I have the honor of working directly under Admiral Canaris’s direction, Major Frade.”

“There’s that word again, honor ,” Frade said, and shook his head and chuckled. “Okay. What about Major General von Deitzberg? He’s from the OKW. Where does he fit into your chain of command? You’re telling me you don’t work for him?”

“Von Deitzberg is an SS officer,” Boltitz replied, “an SS-brigadeführer, seconded to the army for this mission. No, I don’t—”

“Define ‘mission,’ ” Frade interrupted, and then before Boltitz could open his mouth, added, “You and the deputy adjutant to Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler didn’t come here just to find out who’s the traitor in your embassy, did you?”

Boltitz locked eyes with Frade and thought, He’s letting me know he knows who von Deitzberg actually is. That’s to impress me.

But how does he know? Did von Wachtstein tell him that, too?

I don’t think von Wachtstein knows any more about von Deitzberg than that he is SS; not that he works for Himmler.

“No,” Boltitz said, looking at his coffee cup and taking a sip. “Of course we did not.”

“Then define your mission in terms of the priorities, one, two, three, et cetera,” Frade ordered.

“You will understand, Major Frade, that this is my assessment of the situation. It was never spelled out, one, two, three, et cetera.”

“Okay, then let’s have your assessment.”

“I would say that Operation Phoenix is of the greatest interest to the senior officers involved,” Boltitz said. “Von Deitzberg, I suspect, but can’t prove, is involved in the ransoming operation of the concentration camp inmates. I have never heard any suggestion there is a Wehrmacht involvement in that. That would be your one and two. Three, which of course has impact on the success of one and two, is discovering the traitor in the embassy.”