Death and Honor

[TWO]

There was first a large reception foyer with a fountain in the center. Corridors radiated from the foyer. The Frades led the way down one of them, to a set of double doors Boltitz decided must be just about in the center of the house. He was surprised to see the doors were locked; Frade took a key from his pocket and unlocked them.

A real key, Boltitz thought, one for a pins-and-tumbler lock, not the large key one would expect.

He doesn’t want anyone—servants included—in that room.

Frade waved his wife ahead of him again, and again signaled for Boltitz and von Wachtstein to follow them inside. Señora Frade sat down in a dark red leather armchair.

Boltitz glanced around the room. It is in fact a study. Or maybe a library.

There were no windows. Two of the walls were lined with bookcases. There was a large rather ornate desk, with a high-backed leather chair to one side. An Underwood typewriter sat on an extension shelf.

Two maids scurried into the room with a coffee service as Frade sat down at the desk.

God, that was quick! What do they do, keep coffee ready at all times in case the-master-of-all-he-surveys has a sudden urge for a cup?

Frade pointed somewhat imperiously to two chairs facing a low table, and Boltitz and von Wachtstein sat down. The maids put the service on the low table and Señora Frade began to serve the coffee.

Well, that makes it pretty clear that she’s staying. Which means she does know everything, except what we’re about to tell them.

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.”

“Operation Phoenix can be defined as setting up places where the big shots— maybe even Hitler himself—can hide here when the war is lost?” Frade asked.

“Yes,” Boltitz said simply.

“Did you share any of your suspicions of Peter with von Deitzberg?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“As I told you, I serve Admiral Canaris,” Boltitz said.

“But you were going to tell him after Peter here committed suicide by airplane?”

“No. I thought I had made that clear. Once Peter had done the honorable thing, I would have done what I could to divert any suspicion from him.”

“ ‘The honorable thing’?” Frade parroted sarcastically. “Jesus H. Christ!” Then he asked, “Did you share your suspicions, even hint at them, with anyone else? Anyone?”

“No,” Boltitz said simply, meeting Frade’s eyes.

“Let me turn the question around,” Frade said. “Did anyone, von Deitzberg, what’s that fairy SS guy’s name in Montevideo? Oh, yeah, Sturmbannführer Werner von Tresmarck. Or that fat Austrian diplomat, looks like somebody stuffed him? Gradny-Sawz? Did anyone confide in you their thoughts that Peter was the fox in the chicken coop?”

Despite himself, Boltitz had to smile at the happy Texas cowboy’s characterizations of von Tresmarck and First Secretary of the German Embassy Anton von Gradny-Sawz.

And he knows them, not only by name, but also by their sexual preferences and appearance.

The Americans have really penetrated not only the embassy but Operation Phoenix, and that filthy SS operation ransoming Jews from the concentration camps.

“Both von Tresmarck and Gradny-Sawz, Major Frade,” Boltitz said, “came to me and suggested that since they were not the traitor, it had to be one of the other two. But neither was able to provide anything concrete.”

Frade, obviously in deep thought, said nothing for a long moment.

“Okay,” he said, finally. “Now let’s get to the heart of this. What happened, Captain, to change your mind about all this? When Peter failed to do the honorable thing and kill himself, why didn’t you turn him in?”

“Ambassador Lutzenberger sent for me and showed me two letters,” Boltitz said. “They had been smuggled to him on the last Condor flight. One was from my father and the other from Admiral Canaris. My father said he knew I would follow, without question, whatever orders I received from Admiral Canaris.”

“Why should he bother to tell you that?” Frade asked. “You’re an officer. You obey the orders you’re given, right?”

“My father knew what those orders probably would be. He wanted me to know he knew.”

“Who is your father? Where does he fit in here?”

“My father, Major Frade, is a navy officer. Vizeadmiral Kurt Boltitz.”

“And what were the orders your father the admiral was talking about? Were they in Canaris’s letter?”

“Yes, sir,” Boltitz replied, and heard himself.

I just called him “sir.” And for a second time.

What does that mean? That I have subconsciously recognized his authority over me?

“And they were?” Frade pursued.

“Admiral Canaris’s letter ordered me to accept any order from Ambassador Lutzenberger as if they had come from him,” Boltitz said.

“And then what?”

“Excuse me?”

“What were Lutzenberger’s orders? ‘Leave Wachtstein alone’?”

“He told me he knew I had been to see von Wachtstein, and then that von Wachtstein was then in Montevideo, that he had told him to be careful, and that I should make an effort to know him better, as we had more in common than I might have previously realized.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes, sir”—Christ, I did it again—“but his meaning was clear.”

“What happened to the letters?” Frade asked.

“Ambassador Lutzenberger burned them.”

“You saw that?”

Boltitz nodded.

“And then you went to see Wachtstein and he really let his mouth run?” Frade replied, and then turned to von Wachtstein. “What did you tell him, motormouth? And why?”

“The korvettenkapitän told me he had seen the ambassador, Cletus,” von Wachtstein said, “and what had been said—”

“According to him,” Frade said, pointing at Boltitz, “the ambassador didn’t say very much, just implied that he didn’t think you nose-diving onto the runway was a very good idea.”

Boltitz said: “We both interpreted his remark that I should make an effort to know him better, that we had a good deal in common, to mean that we should confide in each other.”

Frade didn’t reply for a moment.

“What you’re asking me to believe, Captain, is that all it took to get you to change sides, to become a traitor to Germany, to turn your back on that code of honor you keep throwing at me, was a quick look at the letters Lutzenberger showed you. That’s a hell of lot to ask me to swallow. Even if you believe, right now, what you’re telling me, how do I know that you won’t change your mind again tomorrow? Or, more likely, when you get back to Germany? You are going back to Germany?”

“Yes, of course, I’m going back—”

“Clete,” von Wachtstein interrupted, “as embarrassing as it is for me to bring this up, you have benefited from the code of honor the korvettenkapitän and I believe in.”

Frade glared at him for a moment, then shrugged, and smiled, and said, “Touché, Peter. I guess you told him about that, too?”

“He asked me how I had come to be close to you,” von Wachtstein said.

“Look at me, Captain,” Frade ordered. When his eyes were locked with Boltitz’s, he asked: “In that circumstance, knowing that it was the intention of your military attaché to . . . hell, the word is assassinate . . . to assassinate an enemy officer—this one—would you have done what Peter did? Warn me?”

“I’d like to think I would have,” Boltitz said. “Assassination is not something to which an honorable officer can be a party.”

Frade shrugged.

He looked at his wife. “I’m probably losing my mind, but I’m tempted to believe him.”

“Peter does,” Dorotea Frade said. “I guess I do, too.”

Frade exhaled audibly.

“I’m going to have to think this over,” he said, and looked at Boltitz. “In other words, the jury is still out, Captain Boltitz.” He moved his look to von Wachtstein. “I was about to say watch your back, Peter. But since you already trust this guy, I don’t suppose that’s necessary, is it?”

“The korvettenkapitän is a brother officer, Clete,” von Wachtstein said. “And we have decided that what our fathers have decided, that our code of honor dictates that our duty is to Germany, not to Hitler and National Socialism. So, yes, Clete, I trust the korvettenkapitän.”

Frade was silent again for a long moment.

“Okay,” he said. “You were headed for Santa Catalina, right?”

Von Wachtstein nodded.

“How long had you planned on staying there?”

“I’d hoped to spend the night,” von Wachtstein said.

“Spoken like a true newlywed,” Frade replied. “Okay. Whatever is wrong with that ugly little airplane of yours is fixed. Get in it, go there, and tell either your mother-in-law or your bride that Dorotea and I accept their kind invitation for cocktails and dinner.”

Boltitz wondered what that was all about when Frade, as if reading his mind, went on: “That may—but probably won’t—explain your presence here to El Coronel Martín. It’s worth a shot.”

“I’ll take you to the airstrip,” Dorotea said.

“No,” Frade said flatly. “Have Antonio take them in one of the Model A’s. And while Carlos is being helpful, one of you say something—in German— about not liking me and/or how unfortunate it was that you had to stop here.”

“In German?” Boltitz blurted.

“Good ol’ Carlos speaks German, but thinks I don’t know,” Frade said.

He walked to the study door, unlocked its dead bolt, and held it open.

Von Wachtstein offered him his hand as he walked past.

“Keep your goddamn mouth shut, Peter,” Frade said, but he took the hand and touched von Wachtstein’s shoulder affectionately.

Boltitz offered Frade his hand.

Frade took it, and held on to it longer than Boltitz expected. When he looked curiously at Frade, Frade said, “Am I going to have to count my fingers when I let go, Captain?”

“No,” Boltitz said. “But I think you will anyway.”

Frade nodded at him. There was the hint of a smile on his lips.

Both men had just about the same thought: Under other circumstances, we probably would become friends.

After his wife passed through the door, Frade threw the dead bolt again.

He went to the desk, took a sheet of paper, and rolled it into the Underwood.

He patted his hands together for a moment, mentally composing the message, and then typed it rapidly.

URGENT

TOP SECRET LINDBERGH

DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN

FROM TEX

TO AGGIE

IN POSSESSION OF NEW INFORMATION REGARDING GALAHAD CONNECTIONS. I AM UNWILLING TO TRANSMIT EXCEPT PERSONALLY TO YOU. SITUATION HERE PRECLUDES MY LEAVING HERE. ACKNOWLEDGE. ADVISE.

TEX

Aggie was United States Marine Corps Reserve Colonel A. F. Graham, deputy director of the Office of Strategic Services for Western Hemisphere Operations. Like Marine Corps Major Cletus H. Frade, Graham was a former member of the Corps of Cadets at the Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College at College Station, Texas, and thus an Aggie.

When he finished typing, Frade went to the door, unbolted and opened it, and handed the sheet of paper to Enrico, who was sitting in an armchair with his Remington in his lap.

“Take this out to El Jefe right away,” Frade ordered. “Tell him to encrypt it and get it out as soon as possible.”

El Jefe—“the chief ”—was Chief Radioman Oscar J. Schultz, USN, who had been drafted into the OSS off the destroyer USS Alfred Thomas, DD-107, when she had called at Buenos Aires three months before. Schultz had been her chief radioman and cryptographer. He now operated a radio and radar station in a clump of trees on the monte of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo several miles from the main house.

“I will send Rodrigo,” Enrico protested.

“You will take it,” Frade said firmly, and then smiled. “I won’t leave the house, Enrico. I promise. I give you my word of honor as an officer and gentleman, and you know how important that is to me.”

The sarcasm went over Enrico’s head.

“I will send Rodrigo here, then I will go,” he said. And then he asked a question. “Am I going to be permitted to kill the other young German bastard?”

“Not just yet,” Frade said.