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?”