By the time they staggered off to bed, they were friends.
But this truce ended very early the next morning when an Argentine officer, learning that the two enemies were under the same roof on Libertador, appeared to remove von Wachtstein from the difficult situation before one tried to kill the other.
Later, when von Wachtstein learned that it was Oberst Gainer's intention to "eliminate" Cletus Howell Fradeby then identified as an OSS agentvon Wachtstein, after a painful moral battle with himself, decided he could not stand silently by and watch it happen. He warned Clete that an attempt would be made on his life.
Clete, forewarned, was able to deal with the assassins when they came to the Libertador house. The equation, so far as Clete was concerned, was simple. He owed von Wachtstein his life, and told him so.
Shortly afterward, Peter received from his father the letter in which he told him that he was required by honor to join the small group of German officers who saw it as their duty to kill Adolf Hitler, and that he had done so. From the tone of the letter, it was clear that Generalleutnant von Wachtstein fully expected to lose his life and was prepared for that.
Peter was not surprised. He had by then already smuggled into Argentina the equivalent of half a million dollars in Swiss francs, English pounds, United States dollars, and Swedish kroner. His father had given him this money to safeguard in Argentina until the war was over. When his father did this, he explained that "a friend" in Argentina would not only help him invest the money, but would also receive more money from other sources to be safeguarded.
The friend turned out to be Ambassador Manfred Alois Graf von Lutzenberger. Soon after he was so identified, the Ambassador informed Peter that getting money to Argentina was only the beginning of the problems they faced. Protecting the money and investing it was very risky. All over Argentina there were Nazi sympathizers who would quickly report anything suspicious to Gr?ner and his operatives. In Nazi Germany, illegal foreign financial transactions were considered treason. The penalty for treason was the execution of the traitor, all members of his immediate family, and the confiscation of all lands and property of whatever kind.
Reluctantly, but with no other choice that he could see, Peter went to Clete for assistance. And Clete in turn went to his father, carrying with him Generalleutnant von Wachtstein's letter to Peter. The letter so moved el Coronel Frade that he wept. And he immediately enlisted his brother-in-law, Humberto Valdez Duarte, Managing Director of the Anglo-Argentine Bank, to deal with the secret investment and safekeeping of the money.
"Saying I'm sorry about your father seems pretty damned inadequate, Cletus."
Clete shrugged his understanding.
"Tell me what you know about what happened," he said.
"I didn't know about the details," Peter said. "But I was aware that something like that was going to be attempted. I tried to tell your father that. . . . I'm terribly sorry, Clete."
"Why?"
"I suppose I don't enjoy the complete confidence of Oberst Gr?ner," Peter said. "Oh, you mean why did they . . . ?"
"Kill my father?"
"The order came from Berlin. Both Gr?ner and the Ambassador tried to stop it. Gr?ner for professional reasonshe knew how angry your father's friends would be. Von Lutzenberger? I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he happily went along with Gr?ner's objection that it would cause trouble. What I thinkand this is only a guessis that there were several reasons for the assassination. One, they didn't want your father to become President of Argentina. Two, they couldn't let the destruction of the Reine de la Mer go unavenged. You were in America . . . your father was here. What do they call that, 'two birds with one stone'?"
"Christ!"
"Three," Peter went on, "they wanted to punish your father for changing sides, to make the point that traitors can expect to be punished. Four, they wanted to frighten the Grupo de Oficiales Unidos, make the point that they have the ability to assassinate anyone who gets in their way."
"But Gr?ner gave the order, right?"
"Gr?ner carried out the order."
"What's the difference?"
Peter shrugged.
"I'm going to get that sonofabitch," Clete said evenly.
"If you could get him, which might not be easy to do . . ."
"I'm going to get that sonofabitch!"
". . . all that will happen is that they will send somebody else in, even before they persona non grata you out of Argentina," Peter said. "As a matter of fact, there's already somebody here."
"Excuse me?"
"I spent most of the day with Standartenf?hrer Josef Goltz."
"What's a Standartenf?hrer?"
"Colonel, in the SS," Peter said. "We had a Lufthansa Condor flight today . . ."
"I saw it. It was making its approach as we came in," Clete said. "Good-looking plane."
". . . and he was on it. I thought it was significant that he left Berlin right after we cabled them about what had happened to your father."
"You think he's the man who ordered"
"I don't know that," Peter said. "It's possible. He's some sort of a big shot, I know. Just before he came here he was at Wolfsschanze . . ."
"Where?"
"Hitler's headquartersit means 'Wolf's Lair'near Rastenburg, in East Prussia. That it even exists is supposed to be secret. And he's Sicherheitsdienst."
"What does that mean?"
"The SicherheitsdienstSDis the secret police, the elite of the SS. Sicherheitsdienst plus Wolfsschanze adds up to two Very Important Nasty People."
"How do you know he was at... what did you call it?"
"Wolfsschanze," Peter supplied. "Because he brought me a letter from my father. My father's stationed at Wolfsschanze. A letter and some major's insignia.
"What's he doing here?"
"I don't know. I know he's meeting with the Ambassador, Gr?ner, and Gradny-Sawz tomorrow morning," Peter said. "And I know he wants to go to UruguayMontevideoas soon as he can. He wants me to fly him there in our Storch, but he doesn't like the idea of going direct, over the Rio de la Plata."
"I know the feeling," Clete said. "Every time I'm out of sight of land, I imagine my engine is making strange noises."
"I didn't like crossing the English Channel," Peter said. "Anyway, I suspect, as anxious as this guy is to get there, he'll tell me to take the over-solid-earth route."
"Why is he so anxious to get to Montevideo?"
Peter shrugged.
"He didn't say," he said, then changed the subject: "Clete, I have a real problem."
"What's that?"
"You remember that letter I got from my father? The one your father translated for you?"
"What about it?"
"Don't bother to tell me I should have burned it," Peter said.
"It's still around?" Peter nodded. "Why, for Christ's sake? If Gr?ner gets his hands on that. . ."
"I won't blame it on your father," Peter said. "But he ... I didn't want to burn it. Your father thought it would be a good thing to have after the war."