Blood and Honor [calibre 2.45.0]

It didn't take Peter long to realize that he simply did not have the courage, the moral fiber, to endure what von Dattenberg had endured, and what he would again endure when his fifteen-day End of Patrol leave was over and he would take his boat out again.

Like Peter, Willi von Dattenberg was a member of the officer class whose family had been either admirals or generals for generations. Willi shared Peter's moral values, including the sense of responsibility he felt for the men placed under his command.

The moral responsibility for the lives of other men was obviously greater for a U-boat commander than it was for a fighter pilot, even for a fighter pilot given command of a Jaeger Squadron. It had occurred to Peter that he was able to discharge his responsibility to the pilots of his squadron—and in the Luftwaffe, only those who flew fought—by doing his best to see they were properly trained and that their equipment was properly maintained.

. He of course regretted the loss of any of his pilots—often he privately wept for them. But—because it was at least partially true—it wasn't hard to rationalize their deaths by thinking it was either simple bad luck or a bad decision on their parts that had caused them to go down.

On the other hand, literally during every waking moment, Willi von Dattenberg was aware that any decision he made was liable to cause not only his own death but the deaths of every member of his crew.

And it was entirely possible that Willi von Dattenberg was now floating around somewhere in the South Atlantic, low on fuel, running out of food, and praying for word over the radio that it was now safe to head for the River Plate estuary for replenishment.

From a ship that his old friend was about to help the Americans sink.

It was his own crew on the Coronel Gasparo, blissfully unaware that they were doing so, who caused Peter to emotionally understand what he was doing, what he would do, what he was honor bound to do, even though that might mean the death of Kapitanleutnant Wilhelm von Dattenberg and any number of other good Germans.

Peter's first reaction to Herr Gustav Loche, G?nther’s father, was unkind, if understandable, given that Peter had been raised to never forget he was a member of the aristocracy. If anything, he thought the father was even more of a fool than the son, a typical member of the German laboring class.

This perception stemmed from the first time Peter met Herr Loche, when he was both embarrassed and repelled by the man's servility. The plump, balding, ruddy-cheeked sausage maker did everything but tug at his forelock as he made it clear that he felt deeply honored to be in the very presence of a man who was not only Baron von Wachtstein but also a hero of German National Socialism who had received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross from the hands of the F?hrer himself.

Loche fancied himself a loyal German, honored to make whatever contribution he could to the furtherance of German Nationalism as defined by Der F?hrer Adolf Hitler. He was thus deeply appreciative of the generosity of an important man like Standartenf?hrer Josef Goltz of the SS-SD, manifested in Goltz's offer to send G?nther to Stuttgart. It never entered his mind that Goltz could entertain an ulterior motive.

Peter's contempt for Herr Gustav Loche grew at first, as the idiot prattled on and on while the Coronel Gasparo moved down the shoreline of the River Plate into the ever-widening mouth of the estuary; but gradually, the contempt turned to pity.

They weren't bad people, he realized, simply stupid. The father obviously loved the son and presumably had Christian morals. For instance, even though it was financially difficult for him—as he proudly informed Peter—he saw to it that G?nther had a Catholic education under the good Jesuit fathers in San Carlos de Bariloche, as opposed to the free, secular education offered by the government.

It therefore followed, Peter reasoned, that Gustav Loche would be outraged if he became aware that the Nazis were rounding up human beings in Russia and forcing them to dig pits, and then standing them on the edge of those pits and shooting them in such a way that their dead and dying bodies fell back into them . . . not to mention gassing women and children by the thousands.

But Loche was unable to accept that anything like this was possible. He regarded as Anglo-American propaganda the stories about concentration camps and death squads and the rest of it that had begun to appear in newspapers and on the radio, ludicrous tales the Allies designed to keep the world in the hands of the Jews from whom the F?hrer intended to rescue it.

Thus it would simply be beyond Gustav Loche's ability to comprehend that the benevolent Standartenf?hrer Goltz was involved in a scheme wherein people who had done nothing to harm Germany (yet were nevertheless being starved to death—or awaiting murder—in Nazi extermination camps) could, on payment of a sum of money, be released. Much less could he realize that the money raised was to be used to buy sanctuary for high-level Nazis so they would escape being called to account for their monstrous crimes when the war was lost.

Neither could Loche believe that the so correct Oberst Gr?ner and the so charming Gradny-Sawz could also be involved in such a fantastically evil undertaking.

Loche saw himself simply as a good, patriotic German doing all he could for the Thousand Year Reich. Of course, in its gratitude for his loyalty, the Thousand Year Reich was going to advance him the money to expand his business, acquire an estancia, and send his beloved son to the Fatherland to further his education.

To his surprise, Peter found with little difficulty the mouth of the harbor at Magdalena, and then the pier of the fisherman—Lothar Steuben, another good, loyal, expatriate German who was going to charter his boat to Oberst Gr?ner. By then Peter had decided that while Loche and his son could not really be held accountable for what they were doing, Standartenf?hrer Goltz—and by extension, all Nazis—could. And there was no longer any question in his mind whether what he would do next was honorable or not.

The problem then became how.

Steuben, a large sunburned man, was a second-generation Argentinian whose family came from near Hamburg. If anything he was more obsequious than Gustav Loche.

He conducted everyone to his small but comfortable home overlooking the harbor. There his wife had laid out coffee and pastry. After introductions—she was a stout woman with blond hair braided and coiled at her ears and she was holding a child on each hip, which made her look like one of the oil paintings Hitler had commissioned to honor Fertile German Womanhood—she shyly inquired if the Herr Baron happened to like sauerbraten, which is what she had prepared for supper. He told her he did.

Despite his promise to contact Peter by six, there was no word from Gr?ner. And there was none by seven, or by eight. By the time the sauerbraten was eaten, Peter began to wonder whether something had gone wrong.

Maybe the Americans decided the smartest thing to do was sink theOceano Pacifico before she got into Argentine waters? The Spanish would howl in outrage, but what could they actually do about it9Send another division to the Eastern Front? Bomb Washington, D.C. ?

At 8:25, the telephone rang.

"Herr Baron Major," Steuben said, handing the telephone to Peter. "It is Herr Oberst Gr?ner."

Peter took the telephone and said one word: "Yes?"

"I doubt if it would do any good, Peter," Gr?ner said. "But when we get off the line, why don't you see if you can't at least ask him to consider the possibility that sometimes people listen to other people's telephone calls?"

"I'll certainly do that."