[ONE]
The Diplomatic Reception Room
The Foreign Ministry of the German Reich
Berlin
1205 30 October 1942
“There he is,” Wilhelm von Ruppersdorf, Deputy Foreign Minister for South American Affairs, said softly to the three men sitting with him at a small table, and rose to his feet.
The others followed suit. Hauptmann Hans-Peter von Wachtstein looked toward the door. A uniformed guard was leading a tall, dark-haired, and dark-skinned man in a business suit across the marble-floored reception area toward them.
Von Ruppersdorf took a few steps forward, smiled, and put out his hand.
“Buenas tardes, mi Coronel,” he said.
Von Ruppersdorf’s Spanish, Peter had learned three quarters of an hour before, was impeccable. He had served for three years at the Embassy in Buenos Aires, he informed Peter then.
The tall, dark-skinned man smiled, showing a handsome set of teeth, and shook von Ruppersdorf’s hand.
“Colonel Perón, may I present Brigadeführer von Neibermann, Oberst Susser, and Hauptmann Freiherr von Wachtstein?” von Ruppersdorf said. “Gentlemen, Colonel Juan Domingo Perón, of the Argentine Embassy.”
Perón shook hands with each of them in turn. He seemed to look askance at Peter, which Peter felt was understandable.
Despite my new shoes and pressed pants, compared to these three, I look like a bum.
Von Ruppersdorf was wearing a morning coat, Brigadeführer von Neibermann was wearing an SS dress uniform, complete to dagger suspended from a silver brocade belt, and Colonel Susser was in the prescribed Luftwaffe walking-out uniform. Peter was wearing a leather uniform jacket which showed signs of having spent some time in a cockpit.
Another usher appeared, carrying five glasses of champagne on a tray. One by one the men took a glass.
“The late Captain Jorge Alejandro Duarte,” Brigadeführer von Neibermann said, raising his glass.
He mispronounced every other syllable, Peter noticed, despite the coaching he’d been given by von Ruppersdorf before they came into the reception room.
“Hear, hear,” Colonel Susser said.
“A tragic loss,” von Ruppersdorf said.
“El Capitán Duarte,” Peter said, raising his glass and then taking a sip.
Not bad, Peter thought. German Sekt, of course, not as good as French champagne, but the Foreign Ministry of the German Reich certainly could not serve French champagne in its reception room.
He was more than a little hung over and as dry as a bone, and had to resist the temptation to drain his glass and hold it up for another. He sensed Colonel Juan Domingo Perón’s eyes on him.
“I would like to apologize for my appearance, mi Coronel,” Peter said. “When I was summoned to Berlin, I had no idea it was to take lunch with a distinguished foreign statesman.”
“I’m not a ‘distinguished statesman,’ Captain,” Perón said with a smile. “Like you, I am a soldier. I am here to learn something about your social services. And if I was looking closely at you, it was to see if that is indeed the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross.”
“Hauptmann Freiherr von Wachtstein received that decoration from the hands of the Führer himself,” Brigadeführer von Neibermann gushed.
“Where did you learn your Spanish, Captain?” Colonel Perón asked Peter, ignoring von Neibermann. “You speak it extraordinarily well.”
“In school, mi Coronel,” Peter replied, “and then I served in Spain.”
“With the Condor Legion,” Brigadeführer von Neibermann furnished.
“You will have no trouble making yourself understood in Argentina, Captain,” Perón said.
“You think the Freiherr would be suitable, then, for the sad duty of escorting the remains of Captain Duarte, mi Coronel?” von Ruppersdorf asked.
“I should think that Captain Duarte’s family—we are acquainted—would be honored that such a distinguished officer would be spared from his duties for the task,” Perón said.
“It is a token of the respect of the government of the German Reich for Captain Duarte,” von Ruppersdorf said. “His loss is deeply regretted.”
“We feel that Captain Duarte fell for the Fatherland,” Brigadeführer von Neibermann said solemnly. “That he was one of us.”
Perón looked at him. Peter saw the sudden hardness in his eyes.
That was going a bit too far, Herr Brigadeführer.
“Did I understand you to say that you know Captain Duarte’s family, Colonel Perón?” von Ruppersdorf asked quickly.
“I am acquainted with his parents,” Perón said. “His uncle, Colonel Jorge Guillermo Frade, is an old friend. We shared a room at the School of Cavalry as lieutenants, and we were at Command College together.”
“I see,” von Ruppersdorf said. “Then this is a personal loss for you, too, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” Perón said simply.
“Would you like another glass of champagne, Colonel?” von Ruppersdorf asked. “Or shall we go into lunch?”
“Two glasses of champagne, except when I am in the company of a beautiful woman, gives me a headache,” Perón said.
“The same thing happens to me,” Peter was astonished to hear himself blurt, “the morning after I have been with a beautiful woman.”
Perón looked at him, astonished. And just at the point where Peter had become convinced that he had really put his foot in his mouth, Colonel Perón laughed. Heartily.
“Are you sure you have no Argentine blood, Captain von Wachtstein?” he asked.
“No, Sir,” Peter said. “I am a pure-blooded Pomeranian, two-legged variety.”
Perón laughed again, delightedly, and touched Peter’s arm.
“You will fit right in in Buenos Aires, Captain,” Perón said.
[TWO]
1420 Avenue Alvear
Buenos Aires, Argentina
1430 31 October 1942
The chauffeur of the 1941 Buick Roadmaster station wagon, a heavyset man in his forties, glanced at the man in the front seat beside him and saw that wherever his attention was, it was not on the Avenue Alvear.
“Mi Coronel,” he said, “the gates are closed.”
Jorge Guillermo Frade, who was wearing a gray linen suit and a soft straw snap-brim hat, looked out the window and saw that was indeed the case. The twenty-foot-high double cast iron gates in front of his sister’s house were unquestionably closed. He also glanced around and realized that Enrico, on seeing that the gates were closed, had elected to stop right where he was, in the middle of the Avenue Alvear, to wait until the problem was solved for him. At least four cars behind him were blowing their horns.
“Make the turn, Enrico,” Frade said softly. “Pull as far onto the sidewalk as you can, so as not to block traffic, and then leave the car, enter through the small gate, and either open the driveway gates or have someone open them for you.”
“Sí, mi Coronel.”
Enrico is not stupid, Frade thought. It is simply that he has not mastered—never will be able to master—Buenos Aires traffic. He can alone and without difficulty maneuver a troop, a squadron, the entire regiment of the Husare di Pueyrredón at the gallop in a thunderstorm, but a closed gate, one that he cannot leap over or go around, is simply beyond his understanding. As is the notion that it is not acceptable behavior to simply stop in the middle of a busy street because you don’t know what to do next.
Enrico made the turn, sounded the horn to warn pedestrians on the sidewalk, and stopped the Buick with its nose no more than six inches from the massive gate. He applied the parking brake, turned off the engine, and stepped out of the car.
As soon as he was out, Frade slid across the seat, turned on the ignition, and started the engine. He saw Enrico enter the courtyard inside the fence and move immediately to the gate. There was an enormous brass padlock and a chain holding the gate closed. Enrico threw up his hands in disgust, then trotted toward the twenty-foot-high double doors of the mansion.
Maybe they’re not here? Is it possible they would have gone off to their estancia without telling anyone? After Jorge was killed, anything is possible. So what will I do? It’s three hundred kilometers out there!
He saw Enrico banging the cast iron clapper on the door.
If there is a clapper, use that. Doorbells sometimes do not work.
The door was opened by Alberto, Beatrice and Homer’s butler. Enrico pointed indignantly toward the closed gates and the Buick sitting outside them. Alberto looked stricken, then disappeared into the house, leaving the door open.
A moment later, one of the other servants appeared, this one in an apron. He was armed with an enormous key for the enormous padlock.
His name is Roberto…Ricardo…and he is Alberto’s nephew, Frade remembered. Or a second cousin, something like that.
Between the two of them, they got the gates open, and Frade drove inside.
When he left the car, Alberto was standing there.
“My apologies, mi Coronel,” he said. “We did not know you were coming, and we are not receiving.”
“It’s all right,” Frade said. “My sister is at home?”
“I have told the Señora you are here. You will be received in the library, mi Coronel.”
Frade walked into the house. There was a huge foyer, furnished with heavy, leather-upholstered furniture, tables along the walls, and a fountain, not presently in use, in the center. The floor was marble.
He walked into the library, which was carpeted and quite dark. Alberto followed him in, turning on lights and opening the curtains on two windows which looked out onto the garden.
“May I take your hat, mi Coronel?” Alberto asked. “And may I bring you something?”
Frade handed him the hat.
“I would like a drink,” he said. “I know where it is. Would you get me some ice? And some agua mineral con gas?”
While Alberto left to fetch ice and soda water, Frade went to what appeared to be—and had once been—an ancient chest of drawers and tugged on one of the pulls. The entire front opened to him, after which he slid out a tray that held half a dozen bottles of spirits and as many large, squat crystal glasses. He took a bottle of Dewar’s scotch and poured three fingers’ worth in a glass.
He looked at it a moment, then took a healthy swallow, grimacing slightly as the whiskey passed down his throat. Then he refilled the glass to a depth of two fingers and waited for Alberto to bring the ice and soda.
When his sister and her husband walked into the library, he was sitting in a chair apparently taking his first sip of a drink. No one spoke. He rose as Beatrice came toward him, took two steps toward her, and kissed her on the cheek. A real kiss—he could taste her face powder.
Beatrice is still a handsome woman, Frade thought. She looks ghastly right now, but even so, she seems much younger than Humberto…and they are what? Forty-six. Beatrice is actually six months older than Humberto, now that I think about it.
“People mean well,” Humberto Valdez Duarte, his brother-in-law, a tall, slender man, said as he put out his hand. “But they—we closed the gate, hoping they would think we were gone away, or take the suggestion that we are not receiving.”
“I understand,” Frade said.
“What is that you’re drinking, Jorge?” Beatrice asked, then went on without giving him a chance to reply. “Will you have something to eat?”
“The scotch is fine, thank you,” he said.
“We went to eight o’clock mass,” Beatrice said.
“Did you?”
“At Our Lady of Pilar,”* Humberto said, evenly, but looking at Frade.
Christ, I know what’s coming.
“And then afterward, we went to Recoleta,” Beatrice went on.
There is a dreamy quality to her voice, and to the way she behaves. I hope to God she doesn’t become addicted to whatever she’s taking.
“We visited the Duarte tomb,” Beatrice went on, “and of course ours. I left flowers on Mommy’s casket and Daddy’s.”
“I haven’t been there in almost a year,” Frade said, thinking aloud.
“Humberto said I shouldn’t ask you, because you wouldn’t know,” Beatrice said, “but I have been wondering, Jorge, do you think there was a mass when they buried our Jorge?”
“I don’t know about a mass, Beatrice, but I’m sure there was a priest. They have chaplains in the German Army, as we do. Beatrice…”
“And I would really like to know, Jorge,” Beatrice said, looking at him, “whether you think—after this horrible war, of course—there are chances of our bringing him home, to put him to rest in Recoleta, with the Duartes?”
“Actually, Beatrice, that’s why I’m here,” Frade said.
“Excuse me?”
I don’t think she will understand what I have to tell her. Thank God Humberto is here.
“There has been a radio message, Beatrice. Do you remember Juan Domingo Perón? El Coronel Juan Domingo Perón?”
She considered that a full fifteen seconds before shaking her head no. There was confusion all over her face.
“He and I were lieutenants together. And then we were at the Command College. He’s in Germany, studying welfare and retirement, and social services for the poor.”
Beatrice laughed brightly.
“Whatever are you talking about, Jorge?”
“It appears that the Germans are arranging to send Jorge home, Beatrice,” Frade said. “Perón was called to the Foreign Ministry and introduced to—actually, he was asked to approve of—the German officer who will escort the remains.”
“The Germans are sending Jorge home?” Beatrice asked.
“Odd, that you were told and not me,” Humberto said.
Frade was genuinely fond of his brother-in-law—despite his penchant for taking offense when none was intended. He was annoyed with him now, but kept that from his voice when he replied.
“I’m sure there will be a formal notification. Probably by the German ambassador. But Perón knew Jorge was my nephew, and he sent unofficial word to me through our military attaché. By radio. The mail service is nonexistent these days. Rather than telephoning, someone from the Defense Ministry took it all the way out to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo. As soon as I received it, I brought it here.”
“When are they sending Jorge home?” Beatrice asked.
“I don’t know that yet, Bea,” Frade said gently. “I’m sure as soon as the details are known, you will be informed.”
“We can have a mass, a high requiem mass, at Our Lady of Pilar,” Beatrice said. “I’ll have to tell the Bishop.”
“There will be time for that, mi amor,” Humberto said.
“And Jorge, there are still those lovely cedar caskets at San Pedro y San Pablo? Aren’t there?”
Years and years before, their father somehow came onto a stock of cedar. He had a cabinet maker at the estancia turn it into caskets. It was not, Frade thought, the only odd thing the old man did after he turned sixty. But at least half a dozen cedar caskets remained stored in the rafters of the old carriage house. All that had to be done to them was to outfit the interior.
“Yes, there are,” Frade said.
“That will make it nice,” Beatrice said. “We will put Jorge in with the Duartes, but in a casket from Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.”
God, she’s out of her mind. If she had had more than the one child, she would be far better off.
“Yes,” Frade agreed, “that would be nice.”
“I must talk to the Bishop and see what is involved,” Beatrice said.
“Beatrice, it’ll wait until tomorrow,” Humberto said.
“Nonsense,” she said. “I’ve known him since he went into the seminary. He’ll have time for me.”
She walked out of the room.
When he was sure she was out of earshot, Frade asked, “What is she taking?”
Humberto shrugged helplessly.
“I don’t know. Something the doctor gives her.”
“She is not herself,” Frade said.
“Of course she’s not herself,” Humberto snapped. “She’s lost her only child in a war he had no business being involved in.”
“That’s not what I mean, Humberto,” Frade said.
“When she doesn’t take her pills, she weeps. For hours, she weeps,” Humberto said.
“She is your wife,” Frade said.
“Meaning what?” Humberto snapped.
“Meaning that while I am concerned to see her drugged that way, it is not really any of my business.”
“The doctor comes every day,” Humberto said. “I can only presume he knows what he is doing. And of course it’s your business. She’s your sister. You love her.”
“I wept when I heard what happened to Jorge,” Frade said. “I have some small idea of what you are going through.”
Tears welled in Humberto’s eyes.
“Why don’t you make yourself a drink?” Frade asked.
“Yes,” Humberto agreed quickly. “Will you have another?”
Frade shook his head no, and murmured, “No, gracias.”
When Duarte was at the chest-of-drawers bar, with his back to Frade, he said, “Jorge, I want you to know how much I appreciate everything you have done. I don’t know how we would have managed without you.”
“I have done nothing,” Frade said.
“But you have, dear Jorge,” Humberto said, turning and walking to Frade and handing him a drink. “And we both know it.”
Frade put his arm around Humberto’s shoulders and hugged him.
“And what of your boy?” Humberto asked. “I realize I do not have the right to ask, but…”
“My latest information is that he has entered the Marine Corps…”
“The what?”
“The Marine Corps. They are soldiers, an elite force. He will be trained as a pilot. Presumably, he will soon go to the war. As I understand it, the Marine Corps is fighting the Japanese in the Pacific.”
“I will pray for him,” Humberto said. “Now, after what has happened to my Jorge, I will pray very hard for your boy.”
With a masterful effort, Colonel Jorge Guillermo Frade controlled his voice and replied, “Thank you, dear Humberto.”
[THREE]
3470 St. Charles Avenue
New Orleans, Louisiana
1615 1 November 1942
It was growing dark enough for people to turn their headlights on, and it was raining hard, the drops drumming on the convertible’s roof. It hadn’t been raining long enough, though, for the rain to clean the road grime from the windshield, and it was streaked.
As he drove down St. Charles Avenue past the Tulane University campus, Clete noticed a couple walking slowly through the rain, sharing the man’s raincoat. He had done that himself, more than a few times, when he was at Tulane.
They’re in love, he thought, or at least in lust.
He’d noticed similar couples on the Rice University campus in Houston. And he’d admired a spectacular brunette in Beth’s sorority house, when he was taking tea with the house mother—a “ceremony” that gave Beth and Marjorie the chance to show off their brother, the Marine Aviator Hero fresh home from Guadalcanal.
He even went back to his hotel and put his uniform on for that. Protesting, of course, and telling himself at the time that he was doing it only to indulge Beth and Marjorie, who actually wept when they saw him standing in the foyer of the sorority house. They were going to miss their father at least as much as he did, he told himself then. And since there was little else he could do for them, putting on his uniform so they could display their Brother the Hero seemed not so much of a sacrifice.
When the brunette proved to be fascinated with Marine Green and Wings of Gold, it seemed for a moment to be a case of casting bread upon the water. But he didn’t pursue it. For one thing, he wanted to spend as much time alone with the girls as he could; and for another, they had enough trouble without being labeled as the sisters of that awful fellow who took Whatsername out and tried to jump Whatsername’s bones in the backseat of his Buick.
Perhaps he’d have a chance in New Orleans to make a few telephone calls and do something about his celibacy. It was a very long time since he’d even been close to a woman. On the ’Canal, he thought a good bit about a nurse he’d “met” in San Diego…that is to say, he walked into the hospital cafeteria and the nurse who thirty minutes before had drawn his blood asked him to share her table. She was also a brunette, deeply tanned, and magnificently bosomed. Her uniform was very tightly fitted; and if you looked—and he had—you could see a heavenly swell at the V neck of her whites.
There hadn’t been time to pursue that—he’d boarded the Long Island the next morning.
He hadn’t even gotten close to a woman at Pearl Harbor.
He switched on the turn signal, waited for a St. Charles Street trolley to clatter past in the opposite direction, and headed up St. Charles. Then he turned off the street onto the drive of a very large, very white, ornately decorated three-story frame mansion.
No car was parked under the portico, which probably meant that his grandfather, Cletus Marcus Howell, was not yet home from the office. He glanced at his watch; he’d probably be home any minute. That meant he would be greatly annoyed when he drove up and found another car occupying the space where he intended to park the car and get into his house without getting rained upon.
Clete stopped under the portico and stared unhappily at the garage, a hundred yards behind the house. The three doors of the former carriage house were closed. Unless things had changed, they were closed and locked. He couldn’t get inside even if he drove there. All he would do was get wet.
“To hell with it!” he said aloud, then turned off the key and opened the door. He reached across the seat and picked up his Stetson, put it on, and got out. He was wearing khaki trousers and boots and a faded, nearly white shirt frayed at the neck. The sheepskin coat was in the backseat. After a moment, he remembered that, and reached in and got it.
The Buick would eventually go into the carriage house. Despite the best efforts of New Orleans’ best exterminators, there were rats in there, and he didn’t want them eating the jacket. Or gnawing through the Buick’s roof to get at the sheepskin.
Was all that concern about the old man’s convenience the normal behavior of a Southern gentleman? Or am I still afraid of him?
He was almost to the mahogany-and-beveled-glass door when it swung open to him.
“Welcome home, Mr. Cletus,” Jean-Jacques Jouvier greeted him enthusiastically. The old man’s silver-haired, very-light-skinned Negro butler was wearing a gray linen jacket, which meant it was not yet five. At five, Jean-Jacques would change into a black jacket.
“J.J., it’s good to see you,” Clete said, and wrapped his arm around his shoulders. This seemed to make J.J. uncomfortable, which was surprising, until Clete looked past him into the downstairs foyer and noticed Cletus Marcus Howell, Esquire, standing there with his hands locked together in front of him.
“Welcome home, my boy,” Cletus Marcus Howell said.
Cletus Marcus Howell was tall, pale, slender, and sharp-featured. He wore a superbly tailored dark-blue, faintly pinstriped three-piece suit, with a golden watch chain looped across his stomach.
“Let me have your things, Mr. Cletus,” Jean-Jacques said. Clete handed the Stetson and the sheepskin jacket to him, then started toward his grandfather.
“Grandfather,” Clete said.
“You could have telephoned,” the old man said as Clete approached.
“I hoped to be here before you came home from the office.”
“I telephoned to Beth,” the old man said. “She told me when you left Houston. I arranged to be here for your arrival.”
Clete put out his hand, and the old man took it. And then, in an unusual display of emotion, took it in both his hands.
“You don’t look as bad as Martha and Beth said you did,” the old man said. “Both used the same term, ‘cadaver.’”
“How is your health, Grandfather?” Clete asked, aware that the old man was still holding on to his hand.
“I am well, thank you,” the old man said, and then, as if suddenly aware of his unseemly display of emotion, let Clete’s hand go. “Why don’t we go into the sitting room and ask Jean-Jacques to make us a drink.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. He turned on his heel and marched across the foyer through an open double sliding door to the sitting room. It was a formal sitting room, furnished sometime before the War of Rebellion and unchanged since…with one exception: over the fireplace, the oil painting, from life, of Bartholomew Fitzhugh Howell (1805–1890), who had built the house in 1850, had been replaced by an oil painting of equal size, painted from a photograph, of Eleanor Patricia Howell Frade (1898–1922), who had been both born in the house and buried from it.
Clete followed him. The old man walked to a cigar humidor on a marble-topped cherry table, opened it, and took from it a long, thin, nearly black cigar.
“Will you have a cigar, Cletus?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Would you like me to clip it for you?”
“Yes, thank you.”
The old man took from the table an old-fashioned cigar cutter—something like a pair of scissors—walked to the fireplace, carefully clipped the cigar’s end, let the end drop into the ashes of the fire, and then walked to Clete and handed it to him.
“You will excuse my fingers,” he said.
“Certainly.”
“It was cold, the radio said it was going to rain, and you always like a fire, so I asked Jean-Jacques to have the houseman lay one.”
“That was very thoughtful of you,” Clete said.
Jean-Jacques produced a flaming wooden match. Clete set his cigar alight while the old man repeated the end-clipping business over the fireplace with another cigar from the humidor. Jean-Jacques went to him and produced a fresh flaming match. When the old man’s cigar was satisfactorily ignited, he asked,
“What may I bring you gentlemen?”
“Ask Mr. Cletus, Jean-Jacques,” the old man replied. “He is the returning prodigal; we should indulge him.”
“Oh, I don’t see how you could call Mr. Cletus a prodigal, Mr. Howell,” Jean-Jacques said.
“You have not been in contact with a certain Colonel Graham, Jean-Jacques,” the old man said. “Prodigal is the word. You’re familiar with the Scripture, Jean-Jacques?”
“‘There is more joy in heaven…’?”
“Precisely,” the old man said. “Cletus?”
“What I really would like, J.J.—”
“I wish you would not call him that,” the old man interrupted. “It’s disrespectful. I’ve told you that.”
“Mister Howell, Mister Cletus can call me anything he wants to call me, unless it’s dirty.”
“Not under my roof he can’t,” the old man said.
“Jean-Jacques, could you fix me a Sazerac?”
“I certainly can, it will be my pleasure. And Mr. Howell, what for you?”
“I’ll have the same, please, Jean-Jacques.”
“And will you be taking dinner here, Mr. Howell?”
“That has not been decided, Jean-Jacques,” the old man said.
“Yes, Sir,” the butler said, nodded his head in what could have been a bow, turned, and walked out of the room.
The old man watched him go, then turned to Clete.
“One of your men is here,” he said. “The Jew. I understand there is a certain secrecy involved, and I didn’t want Jean-Jacques to hear me tell you.”
“His name is Ettinger, Grandfather. Staff Sergeant Ettinger. He lost most of his family to the Nazis.”
If Cletus Marcus Howell sensed reproof in Clete’s voice, he gave no sign.
“Then there should be no question in his mind, wouldn’t you agree, about the morality of going down there and doing whatever Colonel Graham wants you to do to the Argentines?”
“The Germans killed his family, Grandfather, not the Argentines.”
“The Argentines are allied, de facto if not de jure, with the Germans. Two peas from the same pod. Certainly, you must be aware of that.”
Clete didn’t reply.
“Anyway, Staff Sergeant Ettinger is in the Monteleone. He arrived yesterday, and telephoned. I told him you were due today or tomorrow, and would contact him. Then I called one of the Monteleones, Jerry, I think, and told him I would be obliged if he would see that Staff Sergeant Ettinger is made comfortable.”
“That was gracious of you, thank you.”
“Simple courtesy,” the old man said. “I was going to suggest, now that you’re here, that we take him to dinner. Would that be awkward? If it would, we could have him here.”
“Why would it be awkward?”
“As I understand it, there is a line drawn between officers and enlisted men.”
“Well, I’ve never paid much attention to that line. And I would guess that Ettinger will be in civilian clothing.”
“We could take him to Arnaud’s,” the old man said. “It’s right around the corner from the Monteleone, and it has a certain reputation.”
In other words, unless absolutely necessary, no Jews in the house. Not even Jews who are bound for Argentina to kill Argentineans.
“Arnaud’s would be fine. It’s been a long time.”
“When we have our drink, you can call him,” the old man said. “Do I correctly infer that you are no longer wearing your uniform?”
“Yes. I have a new draft card, identifying me as someone who has been honorably discharged for physical reasons.”
“Have you your uniform?”
“It’s in the car. They are in the car.”
“Your dress uniform among them?”
“Yes.”
“And your decorations?”
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
“I thought I would have your portrait made,” the old man said. “In uniform. I thought it could be hung in the upstairs sitting room beside that of your uncle James.”
“I’m not sure there would be time.”
“I don’t mean to sit for a portrait,” the old man said impatiently. “That’s unnecessary. They can work from photographs. Your mother’s portrait was prepared from snapshots.”
“Yes, I know.”
“When you know something of your schedule, we’ll make time for a photographer. It will only take half an hour or so.”
“If you’d like.”
Jean-Jacques returned, carrying a silver tray on which were four squat glasses, two dark with Sazeracs, two of water, and two small silver bowls holding cashews and potato chips.
Clete and the old man took the Sazeracs. Jean-Jacques set the tray down on a table.
“Just a moment, please, Jean-Jacques,” the old man said. Then he turned toward the oil portrait of the pretty young woman in a ball gown hanging over the fireplace.
“If I may,” Cletus Marcus Howell said, raising his glass toward the portrait. “To your mother. May her blessed, tortured soul rest in God’s peace.”
“Mother,” Clete said, raising his glass.
“And may your father receive his just deserts here on earth,” the old man added.
Clete said nothing. He sometimes felt a little disloyal that he couldn’t share the old man’s passionate loathing for his father. Based on his grandfather’s frequent recounting, over the years, of that chapter of Howell family history, he understood the old man’s hatred: He held el Coronel Frade accountable for the death of his only daughter. But Clete’s mother died when he was an infant, and he had no memories of his father.
That’s about to change. I’ll certainly meet him in Buenos Aires. And he probably won’t have horns and foul breath. But he is obviously a sonofabitch of the first water. I’ve never known the old man to lie. And Uncle Jim and Aunt Martha have silently condemned him as long as I can remember. Both believed, and practiced, the principle that unless you can say something nice about someone, you say nothing. Anytime I asked them about my father, they answered with evasion and a quick change of subject.
If nothing else, it should be interesting to finally see the man—how does the Bible put it?—from whose loins I have sprung.
Been spranged?
He smiled, just faintly, at his play on words.
Clete saw in the old man’s eyes that he had seen the smile, and hoped it wouldn’t trigger anything unpleasant. The old man looked at him intently for a moment, then turned to the butler.
“Jean-Jacques, would you please call the Monteleone and see if you can get Mr. Ettinger on the line for Mr. Cletus?”
Clete took a healthy sip of his Sazerac.
It is true, he thought, that the only place you can get one of these is here. Strange but true. You can take all the ingredients with you, right down to Peychaux’s Bitters—as I did to Pensacola—but when you make one, it’s just not a Sazerac.
He looked up at his mother’s portrait and had a thought that disturbed him a little: Jesus, she looks just like the brunette in Beth’s sorority house, the one I think I could have jumped.
“I have Mr. Ettinger for you, Mr. Cletus,” Jean-Jacques said, handing him the telephone.
“Ettinger?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“This is Clete Howell.”
“Yes, Sir. I was told that you would be arriving about now.”
“Is there anyone else there?”
“No, Sir. There was a telegram several hours ago, saying that the…people from Virginia…will be here tomorrow morning. And I was told that Lieutenant Pelosi will be on the Crescent City Limited tomorrow. He’ll be coming here. I don’t know about the others.”
“Have you made plans for dinner?”
“No, Sir.”
“Good, then you can have it with my grandfather and me. Would eight be convenient?”
“Sir, I don’t want to impose.”
“You won’t be. Can you be in the lobby at eight, or maybe outside, if it’s not raining?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“You have civvies?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Wear them,” Clete said.
“I was told to, Sir.”
“And one more thing, Ettinger…David…from here on out, we will dispense with the military courtesy.”
“Yes, S—All right,” Ettinger said.
Clete thought he heard a chuckle.
“Eight o’clock,” he said, and hung up.
Cletus Marcus Howell nodded his approval.
“Jean-Jacques, would you please tell Samuel we will need the car at seven-forty? And then call Arnaud’s and tell them I will require a private dining room, for three, at about eight?”
“Yes, Sir,” Jean-Jacques said.
“And finally, Mr. Cletus has left his luggage in his car. Would you bring it in and unpack it for him, please? And, as soon as you can, see to having his dress uniform pressed, or cleaned, or whatever it takes?”
“Mr. Cletus’s car is in the carriage house, Mr. Howell,” Jean-Jacques said. “His luggage is in his room. Antoinette’s already taking care of his laundry, and she heard what you said about painting Mr. Cletus’s picture, so she’s already working on the uniform.”
“Thank you.”
“Can you think of anything else, Cletus?”
“I think I would like another Sazerac, Jean-Jacques, if you could find the time.”
“If you fill yourself with Sazeracs, Cletus, you won’t be able to appreciate either the wine or the food at Arnaud’s.”
“Grandfather, I am prepared to pay that price.”
“You might as well fetch two, please, Jean-Jacques,” the old man said.
“Yes, Sir,” Jean-Jacques said. He turned and started out of the room. When his face was no longer visible to the old man, he smiled and winked at the young one.
[FOUR]
Schloss Wachtstein
Pomerania
1515 1 November 1942
Generalmajor Graf Karl-Friedrich von Wachtstein, wearing a leather overcoat over his shoulders, walked into the library and found his son slumped in an armchair facing the fireplace, a cognac snifter in his hand.
“It’s a little early for that, isn’t it, Peter?” he asked, tossing the overcoat and then his brimmed uniform cap onto a library table.
Hauptmann Hans-Peter von Wachtstein turned and looked at his father but didn’t reply or stand up. After a moment, he said, “I’ve just come from turning over my staffel.”
“You’re celebrating, then? Peter, I really wish you hadn’t started drinking,” the Graf said.
“I’m all right, Poppa. A little maudlin, perhaps, but sober. I was just telling myself I should be celebrating. But it doesn’t feel that way.”
“My father once told me that the best duty in the service is as a Hauptmann, in command of a company. In your case, a staffel. Giving up such a command is always difficult. Perhaps you should consider that it was inevitable…”
“Inevitable?”
“You would have had to turn it over when your majority comes through; and that should be, I would think, any day now. With a little luck, before you go to Argentina.”
“I had the most disturbing feeling, as a matter of fact,” Peter said, “particularly afterward, when we all had a cognac in the bar, that it was a funeral, or a wake, that we were all seeing each other for the last time.”
“I’ve had a bad day, a bad week, myself,” Graf von Wachtstein said.
“I brought Karl’s car out here,” Peter said, changing the subject. “I didn’t know what to do with it. I thought perhaps you might want to use it.”
The Graf picked up the bottle of cognac and found a glass.
“Now that I think about it,” Generalmajor von Wachtstein said, “one of these might be in order.” He raised the glass. “To your new assignment.”
“Thank you. Did you hear what I said about the Horche?”
“I might as well use it, I suppose,” the Graf said. “Otherwise it will be taken for the greater good of the German Reich. Ferrying some Nazi peasant’s mistress to the opera, for example.”
Peter grunted. “You must have had a bad week.”
“The Luftwaffe has not been able to—will not be able to—provide von Paulus’s troops at Stalingrad with a tenth of the supplies he needs. But when this is brought to the attention of the Austrian Corporal, he replies, in effect, ‘Nonsense, Goering has given me his word, the supplies will be delivered.’”
“And you were the bearer of those bad tidings?”
“No. Fortunately not. Unser Führer is made uncomfortable by people like me. I have been reliably informed that he has said that the Prussian officer class are defeatists to the last aristocrat.”
Peter laughed. “Aren’t you? Aren’t we? There’s no way we can win this war, Poppa.”
“I really hope you are careful to whom you make such observations.”
“I’m talking to you, Poppa. The war was lost when we were unable to invade England,” Peter said. “Perhaps before that, when we were unable to destroy the Royal Air Force.”
“I think we should change the subject,” Graf von Wachtstein said. “Have they told you when you’re going?”
“They are having trouble with the corpse,” Peter said. “Or the casket for the corpse. They have to line it with lead, which apparently comes in sheets. But the Foreign Ministry can’t seem to find any lead in sheets. They are working on the problem; I have been told to hold myself in readiness.”
“And are you ready?”
“There is of course a rather detailed list of the uniforms a military attaché is required to have. I have been given the necessary priorities for such uniforms. Unfortunately, priority or no priority, there does not seem to be the material available in Berlin. The Foreign Ministry is working on the problem.”
“Perhaps you could have them made in Buenos Aires. It is a major city; there are military tailors, I’m sure. And God knows, they have woolen material. We buy it from them by the shipload. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if someone were making woolens dyed to Luftwaffe specifications there.”
“Dress-uniform specifications?” Peter asked. It struck him as unlikely.
“If I were a Luftwaffe procurement officer,” Generalmajor von Wachtstein said, “I think I would make sure that when unser grosse Hermann wanted yet another dress uniform, the material would be available.” Unser grosse Hermann—Our Big Hermann—was Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, Commander of the Luftwaffe, and a man who was more than generously large.
Peter chuckled.
“Buttons and insignia might be a problem,” Generalmajor von Wachtstein went on, in his usual thorough manner. “Make sure you take that sort of thing with you. Including major’s insignia.”
“Jawohl, Poppa.”
“Don’t mock me, Peter, please. These details are important. The last thing we want is to have you sent back here because the military attaché decides you are unsuitable for the assignment.”
“Sorry,” Peter said, genuinely contrite. “I’m sure there will be tailors. Oberst Perón painted a fascinating picture of Buenos Aires for me.”
“Who?”
“Argentine Oberst Juan Domingo Perón. He’s attached to their embassy over here studying our welfare programs. He’s a friend of the family of the Duarte fellow. I met him at the Foreign Ministry, and I’ve had dinner with him. He called me up.”
Generalmajor von Wachtstein nodded, then dismissed the Argentine officer as unimportant.
“Peter, we have to talk about money,” he said.
“A delicate subject, Poppa. One the son is glad the father brought up first. From what I’m told, Buenos Aires is a very expensive place to live. It was put to me that I would have difficulty making ends meet, and that it was hoped I could somehow augment my pay.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” his father said. “But tell me about it. Would that be permitted?”
“I think encouraged,” Peter said.
“Did you have the feeling there would be a limit on how much money you could take to Argentina?”
“I had the feeling that the more you’d be willing to give me, the better they would like it.”
“Pay attention to me,” the Graf said sharply.
“Sir?” Peter responded, surprised at his father’s tone, and baffled by his question.
“There is money, Peter. A substantial amount here, most of it in English pounds and Swiss francs, and an even more substantial amount in Switzerland, in a bank. Actually, in two banks.”
Peter was now genuinely surprised. Simple possession of currency of the Allied powers or neutral countries was a serious offense. Maintaining bank accounts out of Germany was even more stringently forbidden.
“This war will pass,” the Graf said, now sure that he had his son’s attention. “This government will pass. We, you and I, will pass. What is important is that the family must not die, or that we, the family, don’t lose our lands. We have been on these lands for more than five hundred years. My duty—our duty—is to see that we do not lose them. If we lose the war, and I agree we cannot win it, we will lose our lands…unless there is money. Not German money, which will be devalued and useless, but the currency of the victors, or a neutral power. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“First, the money in Switzerland. The accounts there are numbered. I am going to give you the numbers. You must memorize the numbers. When you are settled in Argentina, I want you to have the money transferred there from Switzerland, secretly, and put somewhere safe, where we will have access to it after the war.”
“How will I do that?”
“Von Lutzenberger will probably be able to help, but we can’t bank on that.”
“Ambassador von Lutzenberger?” Peter asked. Someone had given him the name of the German Ambassador to Argentina during the last couple of days, but he hadn’t expected to hear it from his father.
“He’s a friend,” his father said. “But you would do well to consider him your last reserve, Peter, not to be used until you are sure you can’t deal with a situation by yourself, without help.”
“But he knows about your money?”
His father nodded, then corrected him. “Not my money, Peter. Von Wachtstein money. Money that has come down to us from our family, with the expectation that it will be used wisely and for the family.”
Peter nodded, accepting the correction.
“A good man. We were at Marburg together. And he has as much to risk as we do. But keep in mind, Peter, that a situation may come where he will have to make a sacrifice for the common good, and you might be that sacrifice.”
“How is it you never told me about any of this?”
“Because your possession of the knowledge would place you in jeopardy. If they found out you .knew about it, you would be as culpable as I am. Your Knight’s Cross notwithstanding, you would wind up in a concentration camp.”
Peter blurted what came into his mind: “But what if you had died? What would have happened to the money then?”
“Dieter von Haas and I have an arrangement. If anything happened to me, he would have told you. If anything happens to him, I will inform Frau von Haas of the similar arrangements he has made.”
Peter looked at his father for a long moment.
“I’m not good at memorizing numbers,” he said. “I never have been.”
“Then write the numbers down, make them look like telephone numbers or something. And then, to be sure, construct a simple code,” the Graf von Wachtstein said, a touch of impatience in his voice. “One or two digits up from the actual numbers. Something like that.”
“Yes,” Peter said simply.
“About the cash here,” the Graf went on. “Do you think you will be searched when you leave the country?”
Peter thought about that for a moment.
“No,” he said. “The body will be accompanied by an honor guard as far as the Spanish border. I don’t think anyone will search me. And the moment I cross the border, I will have diplomatic status.”
He looked at his father.
When I leave here, he thought with a sudden chilled certainty, I will never see him again.
“I think it would be best if you took the money with you when you return to Berlin tomorrow. They may solve the problem of sheet lead for the casket, and you might not be able to come back here. And I wouldn’t want to be seen passing anything to you at the train station. Do you have someplace safe to keep it? Where are you staying in Berlin?”
“With a friend, in Zehlendorf.”
“Better than a hotel,” the Graf said. “Well, I’ll write the numbers down for you, and while you’re copying them into a code, I’ll get the money. And then we’ll see about finding something to eat.”
“You know what I would like for supper, Poppa?” Peter said. “I’d like to go into the gasthaus in the village and have sausage and potatoes and beer.”
Generalmajor Graf Karl-Friedrich von Wachtstein looked at his son. His left eyebrow rose.
“Yes, Peter, I think I would too,” he said after a moment.