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

Baron von Deitzberg was suffering from what August Muller, M.D., described as "a pretty bad cold, plus maybe a little something else."

Doctor Muller was on the staff of the German Hospital. A Bavarian, he had been in Argentina for ten years. More important, he was a dedicated National Socialist, two of whose sons had returned to the Fatherland and were now serving in the SS.

For these reasons, Dr. Muller could be trusted to understand that there were reasons why SS-Brigadefuhrer von Deitzberg was secretly in Argentina under the name of Jorge Schenck and, of course, why von Deitzberg could not go to the German Hospital, where questions would certainly be asked.

Dr. Muller would treat the brigadefuhrer in his apartment and would tell no one he was doing so.

Von Deitzberg was not surprised he was ill. He was surprised that it took so long--until he was in his new apartment--for it to show up. He believed he had contracted some illness--probably more than one; Dr. Muller's "a little something else"--on U-405 during that nightmare voyage.

And he knew where he had caught Dr. Muller's "pretty bad cold." Fifty meters from the shore of Samborombon Bay, the rubber boat in which von Deitzberg was being taken ashore had struck something on the bottom. Something sharp. There had been a whooshing sound as the rubber boat collapsed and sank into the water.

The water was not much more than a meter deep. There was no danger of anyone drowning, and--giving credit where credit was due--the U-405's sailors quickly got von Deitzberg and his luggage ashore. By then, however, von Deitzberg was absolutely waterlogged and so were the two leather suitcases he'd bought on his last trip to Argentina, and of course their contents.

The result had been that von Deitzberg had been soaking wet during the four-hour trip in First Secretary Anton von Gradny-Sawz's embassy car from the beach to his new apartment. There was simply nothing that could be done about it.

By the time they reached the apartment, von Deitzberg had been chilled and was sneezing. Von Gradny-Sawz obligingly arranged for an Old Hungarian Solution to the problem--a hot bath, then to bed after drinking a stiff hooker of brandy with three tablespoons of honey--and said when he returned in the morning he would have with him Dr. Muller. "To be sure things were under control," he'd said.

Von Deitzberg almost refused the physician's services--the more people who knew about him being in Buenos Aires, the greater the chances the secret would get out--but after von Gradny-Sawz had explained who Dr. Muller was, he agreed to have him come.

Dr. Muller was there at nine the next morning, oozing Bavarian gemuetlichkeit and medical assuredness. By then von Deitzberg's eyes were running, his sinuses clogged, he was sneezing with astonishing frequency and strength, and he was running a fever. He was delighted to have the services of a German physician, even one who proudly proclaimed himself to be a "herbalist," a term with which von Deitzberg was not familiar.

He soon found out what it meant.

As soon as von Gradny-Sawz had returned from the nearest pharmacy and greengrocer with the necessary ingredients, Dr. Muller showed one of the petit-hotel's maids--actually, she was the daughter of one of the maids; he later learned she was fifteen and that her name was Maria--how to prepare a number of herbal remedies.

He started with showing Maria how to peel and chop four cloves of garlic and then put them in a cup of warm water, making a remedy that von Deitzberg was to take three times a day.

Dr. Muller then showed Maria how to chop ten grams of ginger into small pieces, which were then to be boiled in water and strained. Von Deitzberg was to drink the hot, strained mixture two times a day.

Maria and von Deitzberg were then introduced to the medicinal properties of okra. She was shown how to cut one hundred grams of the vegetable into small pieces, which were then to be boiled down in half a liter of water to make a thin paste. During the boiling process, von Deitzberg was to inhale the fumes from the pot. The boiled-down okra, when swallowed, Dr. Muller said, was certain to relieve von Deitzberg's throat irritation and to help his dry cough.

And finally came turmeric: Half a teaspoon of fresh turmeric powder was to be mixed in a third of a liter of warm milk, and the mixture drunk twice daily.

This was von Deitzberg's fourth day of following the herbal routine.

Dr. Muller further counseled von Deitzberg that, in order to keep his strength up, he was to eat heartily, even if he had to force himself to do so.

Von Deitzberg had little appetite from his first meal, and that hadn't changed much either. The meals were delivered from a nearby restaurant. Breakfast was rolls and coffee. Lunch was a cup of soup and a postre , which was Spanish for "dessert." Dinner was the only real meal he could force down, and he had trouble with that.

The appetizer was invariably an empanada, a meat-filled pastry. One bite of one of them was invariably quite enough. The first entree had been a pink-in-the-middle filet of beef accompanied by what the Argentines called papas fritas. The second day had been baked chicken accompanied by mashed potatoes; and the third, a pork chop that came with papas fritas.

None of them seemed, in von Deitzberg's judgment, to be the sort of thing someone in his delicate condition should be eating. But Dr. Muller's orders were orders, and von Deitzberg tried hard to obey. He had to get well, and as quickly as possible. He had a great deal of work to do, and the sooner he got at that, the better.

The postres , however, were something else. They immediately reminded von Deitzberg of Demel, the world-famous pastry shop in Vienna to which his grandfather had taken him when he was a boy.

If anything, the pastry chef here in Argentina had used more fresh eggs and more butter and more confectioners' sugar than even Demel would have used. There of course were very few confectioners' fresh eggs, hardly any butter, and no confectioners' sugar at all these days in Berlin, even in the mess of Reichsfuhrer-SS Himmler.

On the first day, von Deitzberg had sent Maria back to the restaurant for an additional postre, and then, on second thought, told her to fetch two. Dr. Muller had told him he had to eat to keep up his strength. Maria had since routinely brought two postres with his lunch, and three for his dinner.

Many were new to him, and they were invariably really delicious. One became his favorite: pineapple slices with vanilla ice cream, the whole covered with chocolate syrup. He sometimes had this for both lunch and dinner.

On two of the four nights he had been in the apartment--the first night, he had simply collapsed and slept until von Gradny-Sawz showed up with Dr. Muller the next morning--something occurred that hadn't happened to him in years: On both nights, following an incredibly realistic erotic dream, he awakened to find he had had an involuntary ejaculation.

His first reaction--annoyance and chagrin--was quickly replaced by what he perceived to be the reason. It was clearly a combination of his condition--whatever gottverdammt bug he had caught on the gottverdammt U-405--and Dr. Muller's herbal medications to treat it.

And then his mind filled with both the details of the erotic dreams and the facts and memories on which the dreams were obviously based, and he allowed himself to wallow in them.

His carnal partner in the dreams had been Frau Ingeborg von Tresmarck, a tall slim blonde who was perhaps fifteen years younger than her husband--Sturmbannfuhrer Werner von Tresmarck--who was the security officer of the Embassy of the German Reich in Montevideo, Uruguay.

One of the things von Deitzberg thought he would probably have to do while in South America was eliminate Werner von Tresmarck, and possibly Inge as well, as painful as that might be for him in her case.