W. IV - Honor Bound 05 - The Honor of Spies

A sympathetic Himmler had ordered an underling to see what was available for Oberst Gruner at Bad Tolz, and four days later newly commissioned SS-Untersturmfuhrer Schneider had boarded a Lufthansa Condor in Berlin. Thirty-eight hours later, he reported to Gruner in Buenos Aires.

To keep his new typist/classified file clerk happy--Schneider had immediately made it clear that he believed his Argentine assignment was to assist Gruner in high-level intelligence activities--Gruner had permitted Schneider to think of himself as an unofficial member--or perhaps a probationary member--of the SS-Sicherheitsdienst, or Secret Service.

Whenever he saw Schneider chafing at the bit over his clerical functions, Gruner ordered him to secretly surveille certain members of the embassy staff, most of them unimportant except for First Secretary Anton von Gradny-Sawz.

This was because Gruner neither liked von Gradny-Sawz nor fully trusted him. He didn't think men who had changed sides could ever be fully trusted.

Von Gradny-Sawz's primary--if not official--function around the embassy was what Gruner and Ambassador von Lutzenberger thought of as "handling the canapes"; neither was willing to trust von Gradny-Sawz with anything important, but he was good with the canapes.

As von Gradny-Sawz was fond of saying, his family had been serving the diplomatic needs of "the state" for hundreds of years. The implication was the German state. The actuality was that von Gradny-Sawz had been in the diplomatic service of the German state only since 1938.

Before then--before the Anschluss had incorporated Austria into the German Reich as Ostmark--von Gradny-Sawz had been in the Austrian Foreign Service. The ancestors he so proudly spoke of had served the Austro-Hungarian Empire for hundreds of years.

Having seen the handwriting on the wall before 1938, von Gradny-Sawz had become a devout Nazi, made some contribution to the Anschluss itself, and been taken into the Foreign Service of the German Reich.

Ambassador von Lutzenberger, who understood how sacred the canape-and-cocktails circuit was to the diplomatic corps, had arranged for von Gradny-Sawz's assignment as his first secretary. Von Gradny-Sawz could charm the diplomatic corps while he attended to business.

The secret reports on von Gradny-Sawz that Schneider gave to Gruner showed that the first secretary divided his off-duty time about equally between two different sets of friends. The largest group was of deposed titled Eastern European blue bloods, a surprising number of whom had made it to Argentina with not only their lives but most of their crown jewels. The second, smaller group consisted of young, long-legged Argentine beauties whom von Gradny-Sawz squired around town, either unaware or not caring that he looked more than a little ridiculous.

SS-Oberst Gruner was now gone, lying in what Schneider thought of as a hero's grave in Germany beside his deputy, SS-Standartenfuhrer Josef Luther Goltz. They had been laid to eternal rest with all the panoply the SS could muster, after they had given their lives for the Fuhrer and the Fatherland on the beach of Samborombon Bay while trying to secretly bring ashore a "special shipment" from a Spanish-registered ship in the service of the Reich.

Specifically, both had been shot in the head by parties unknown, although there was little doubt in anyone's mind that Cletus Frade of the American OSS had at least ordered the killings, and more than likely had pulled the trigger himself.

Schneider had gone first to Ambassador von Lutzenberger and then, when SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer Karl Cranz had arrived in Buenos Aires to replace Gruner, to Cranz offering to personally eliminate Frade, even if this meant giving his own life to do so.

Both told him, in effect, that while his zeal to seek vengeance for the murders of Gruner and Goltz was commendable and in keeping with the highest traditions of SS honor, the situation unfortunately required that everyone wait until the time was right to eliminate Frade.

They told him the greatest contribution he could make to the Final Victory of the Fatherland was to continue what he was doing with regard to handling the classified files, the dispatch and receipt of the diplomatic pouches, and the decryption of the coded messages the embassy received from the Ministry of Communications after they had received them from the Mackay Cable Corporation.

Neither told him that was sort of a game everyone played. The Mackay Corporation was an American-owned enterprise. They pretended that they did not--either in Lisbon, Portugal, or Berne, Switzerland--make copies of all German traffic and pass them to either the OSS or the U.S. Embassy. And the Germans pretended not to suspect this was going on.

Important messages from or to Berlin were transmitted by "officer courier," which most often meant the pilot, copilot, or flight engineer on the Lufthansa Condor flights between the German and Argentine capitals.

And when these messages reached the Buenos Aires embassy, they were decoded personally by Ambassador von Lutzenberger or Commercial Attache Cranz, not Schneider. Schneider had no good reason--any reason at all--to know the content of the messages.

Cranz picked up the message and read it:

Cranz looked at von Lutzenberger.

"You said Schneider had this waiting for you when you came in this morning?"

Von Lutzenberger nodded.

"A Condor arrived in the wee hours," he said. "Our Johann met it, and the courier gave him that."

"When did you start letting 'Our Johann' decode messages like this?"

"It came that way," von Lutzenberger said, and handed Cranz two envelopes. "The outer one is addressed to 'The Ambassador'; the inner one said 'Sole and Personal Attention of Ambassador von Lutzenberger.' "

"Interesting," Cranz said as he very carefully examined both envelopes.

"It could be that they were preparing to send it as a cable, and then for some reason decided to send it on the Condor," von Lutzenberger suggested.

Cranz considered that for a long moment.

"If a Condor was coming, that would keep it out of the hands of Mackay," Cranz said, and then wondered aloud, "Not encrypted?"

Von Lutzenberger shrugged.

"Maybe there wasn't time; the Condor may have been leaving right then. And that brings us to the question: 'What the hell is this all about?' "

"Questions," von Lutzenberger corrected him. " 'Who is this senior officer?' 'What is he going to do once he gets here?' And most important: 'What are we going to do about this?' "

Cranz nodded, signifying he agreed there was more than one question.

"Was there anybody interesting on the Condor?"

"Businessmen, two doctors for the German Hospital. No one interesting."

"Which means the Condor could have been held at Tempelhof."

"Unless that might have delayed the Condor a day, and they wanted to get this to us as soon as possible."

"Which brings us back to: 'What are we going to do about it?' " Cranz said.

"Unless you have some objection, or better suggestion, what I'm going to do is tell Schneider that he is to tell no one anything about the message for me. Then I'm going to call Gradny-Sawz in here as soon as he comes to work, show him this, and tell him that he is to tell no one about it, and that he is responsible for getting the identity card, the driver's license, et cetera, and the apartment."