Death and Honor

[TWO]

El Palomar Airfield Campo de Mayo Military Base Buenos Aires Province, Argentina 1035 23 July 1943

“Tell me something about the radio in the Storch, von Wachtstein,” Cranz said as they walked up to the aircraft.

“What would you like to know, Herr Standartenführer?”

“How do they work? What do they do?”

“Well, this one has the latest equipment. There’s a transmitter-receiver—”

“Which does what?”

“Permits me to communicate with the control tower here, to get permission to taxi, to take off and land, to check the weather, things like that.”

“Can you communicate with anyone else?”

“If there were other German aircraft here, and within range, I could talk to them.”

“Not to an Argentine aircraft?”

“We use different frequencies, Herr Standartenführer. Theoretically, yes; actually, no.”

“Anything else?”

“It has an RDF receiver, Herr Standartenführer. That round antenna on top?” He pointed to it and, when Cranz nodded, went on: “It rotates. There’s a control in the cockpit, and a dial. First you tune in the frequency of the airfield. You hear a Morse code signal. Here, that’s PAL: Dit dah dah dit. Dit dah. Dit dah dit—”

“I know Morse code, von Wachtstein.”

“Yes, sir. I should have known that. No offense intended, sir.”

“None taken. And?”

“When I hear that repeated, I rotate the antenna. Signal strength is shown on a dial. When the dial shows the strongest signal strength, it does so on a compass. That shows me the direction of the field.”

“Very interesting.”

“It’s effective, sir.”

“Just as soon as we get into the air, von Wachtstein, I want you to turn off the transmitter-receiver.”

“Jawohl, Herr Standartenführer.”

Jesus Christ! He thinks I’m going to get on the radio and tell somebody where we’re going!

“Does that answer your question, Herr Standartenführer?”

“Yes, it does, thank you. I have one more.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Will our route take us over your wife’s farm? Let me rephrase: Is it necessary that we fly over your wife’s farm, or that of your friend Frade?”

“I had planned to fly down National Route Three, Herr Standartenführer. It goes all the way to Necochea. My mother-in-law’s estancia touches Route Three.”

I don’t think he’s angling for an invitation to call on Doña Claudia.

“Can you avoid doing so?”

“Certainly, Herr Standartenführer.”

“Do so,” Cranz ordered curtly.

“Jawohl, Herr Standartenführer!”

Does he really think I’ll try something to tell somebody what’s going on?

He’s too smart for that.

Then is he trying to scare me?

If so, why?

What the hell is going on here?

Jesus Christ!

My vivid imagination has just gone into high gear:

When we get to the beach at Necochea, he’s going to use that Luger on me.

“As you suspected all along, Herr Reichsprotektor, von Wachtstein was our traitor. As soon as he learned where the special cargo was to be brought ashore, he attempted to tell our enemies again. I would have preferred that he could have been brought for trial before a People’s Court—traitors don’t deserve an Officer’s Court of Honor—but with the safety of the special cargo at risk, I decided it was necessary to eliminate him then and there. And did so. Heil Hitler!”

Von Wachtstein began his preflight walk-around inspection of the Storch.

You’re paranoid, Hansel! Absolutely out of your fucking mind!

Maybe not.

Or I am paranoid—which really wouldn’t surprise me—but that doesn’t mean that Herr Standartenführer Cranz isn’t prepared to kill me to make himself look good with Himmler . . . and incidentally get rid of someone who really might be a traitor.

Which of course I am.

As he worked the rudder back and forth with his hand, he glanced at Cranz, who was watching him with some interest.

Well, one thing is for sure. He’s not going to shoot me while we’re in the Storch. He doesn’t know how to fly, and the Herr Standartenführer is very good at protecting his ass.

If I live through this, I will have to remember to get my PPK out of the damn drawer and start carrying it with me.

Why didn’t I think of that before? I know these people are murderers.

Clete goes around armed to the teeth, as if he’s on the way to that gunfight in the Wild West. What was it called—“The Easy Corral”?

No. The O.K. Corral. That’s it. The O.K. Corral.

What the hell is a corral?

Just when the elapsed-time clock mounted at the top of the Storch’s windscreen showed that they had departed El Palomar two hours and fifty-five minutes earlier, Major von Wachtstein felt something push at his shoulder. He turned and saw that Standartenführer Cranz was holding a celluloid-covered map out to him.

He took it and saw that it was another Argentine Army Topographic Service map, this one of a smaller scale. It was centered on Necochea and showed little else. Arrows indicated that some place called General Alvarado was to the north, near the Atlantic Ocean, and a place called Energia was to the south, what looked like a kilometer or two inland from the ocean.

The reason it doesn’t show much more than a couple of dirt roads is that there probably isn’t anything else down there.

What the hell. You don’t want anybody around when you’re trying to smuggle things ashore.

A long oblong had been drawn with a grease pencil on the celluloid covering the map. It was labeled Landeplatz 1,200 M. It was located, von Wachtstein estimated, about three hundred meters from the ocean, at right angles to it.

He looked over his shoulder at Cranz, and gestured to him that he should put on his headset.

Cranz nodded, and thirty seconds later, “Hello, hello, hello. Can you hear me?” came over von Wachtstein’s earphones.

“I hear you clearly, Herr Standartenführer.”

“Can you locate the airfield?”

“I will have to fly much lower, Herr Standartenführer.”

“Then do so,” Cranz ordered impatiently.

Reasoning that an SS-standartenführer was certainly a courageous man— at least in his own mind—von Wachtstein dropped the nose of the Storch almost straight down, and allowed the airspeed indicator to get very, very close to the red line before pulling out at about three hundred feet.

The wind whistled interestingly—it sounded like a woman screaming in pain—as it whipped around the gear and fuselage of the Storch at close-to-tearing-the-wings-off speed.

Five minutes later, after dropping even lower—so low that he had to go around, rather than over, various clumps of trees on the pampas—he thought he saw what had to be the so-called airfield. In the middle of nowhere, there were four Ford ton-and-a-half trucks parked in a line about three hundred meters from the South Atlantic.

Two men stepped in front of the line of trucks and began to wave their arms.

“I believe that’s it, Herr Standartenführer,” von Wachtstein said, pointing. “To our left.”

“Are you going to have enough runway to land?”

I can land this thing, if I have to, in about two hundred meters at forty kph.

“I believe I can manage, Herr Standartenführer. I presume that someone has walked the landing area to make sure there are no obstructions.”

There was a perceptible hesitation before Cranz, without much conviction in his voice, said, “I’m sure that’s been done, von Wachtstein.”

Von Wachtstein flew the length of the makeshift runway, could see nothing on it, and noted nothing that suggested strong crosswinds.

“It would have been helpful, Herr Standartenführer, if someone had thought to erect a windsock,” he said, then stood the Storch on its wingtip, leveled out, and landed.