Chapter Two
[ONE]
Schloss Wachtstein
Pomerania
8 October 1942
"You are talking treason, you realize," Generalmajor Graf Karl-Friedrich von Wachtstein said softly, without emotion. The short, slight, nearly bald fifty-four-year-old very carefully placed his crystal cognac snifter on the heavy table in his library, men leaned back in his chair, raised his eyes to Generalmajor Dieter von Haas, and waited for his old friend to reply.
"I am talking about saving Germany, Karl," von Haas said.
"The Austrian Corporal is protected by a regiment, each of whose members devoutly believes he is the salvation of Germany."
"He will destroy Germany, and you know it."
' 'You are not the first to come to me, Dieter,'' von Wachtstein said.
"I am ashamed that I was not."
"I told them all the same thing: I believe any attempt to assassinate Hitler is doomed to failure."
"So is Freddy von Paulus's mission at Stalingrad," von Haas interrupted.
"And that in the unlikely happenstance that such an attempt did succeed," von Wachtstein went on, ignoring him, "we might notGermany might notbe at all better off. His successor would be Hermann Goering. We would exchange a psychopath for a drug addict. And upon the death of Herr Schicklgruber, the slime around him ... and I include the entire inner circle... would immediately put into operation their own plans to get rid of Hermann. There would be chaos."
"Wouldn't anything be better than what we have now, Karl?" von Haas asked.
"I'm not at all sure," von Wachtstein said.
"I thank you for hearing me out, Karl."
"I have not turned you down," von Wachtstein said.
"That's what it sounded like."
"I have a condition ... a price."
Von Haas could not quite mask his astonishment. And obviously to find time to carefully consider his reply, he leaned forward and picked up the bottle of Remy Martin and poured from it carefully into his glass.
"There would be, of course," von Haas began carefully, "a substantial realignment of the General Staff. I feel sure..."
"My God, Dieter!" von Wachtstein flared. "Have we grown so far apart that you really believed I was thinking of a promotion?"
Von Haas met his eyes.
"Karl!" he said, and shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
"I have given two sons to this war," von Wachtstein said. "I am thinking of the third. I am thinking of the family. This insanity will pass. I want a von Wachtstein around when it does."
"Peter," von Haas said.
"Peter," von Wachtstein repeated, nodding his head. "I have been thinking about honor. As strange and alien a concept as that has become. I have concluded that Peter has made all the contribution to this war, save giving his life, that honor demands."
"The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross," von Haas said.
"From the hands of the Austrian Corporal himself," von Wachtstein said. "He was in Spain with the Condor Legion, in Poland, Russia, and France. He has been five times shot down, and twice wounded."
"What do you want for him?"
"I want him out of the war and out of Germany."
"I don't quite understand."
"I want him assigned to some procurement mission, or some embassy as a military attach?. To some neutral country. Not Italy or Hungary or Japan. He speaks Spanish. Somewhere in Latin America."
"That will be difficult to arrange," von Haas said, thinking aloud.
"Dieter, if you don't have anyone high up in the Foreign Ministry, your coup doesn't have a chance. And I am not as important to your plans as you have suggested I am."
"I will see what can be arranged, Karl."
"You will arrange it, or this conversation never took place."
"Where is he now?"
"He commands a Jaeger squadron near Berlin. Focke-Wulf 190s."
"Oberstleutnant?"First Lieutenant.
Hauptmann"Captain.
"He's young to be a Hauptmann."
"He was eighteen when he went to Spain as a Feldwebel" a sergeant.
"After," von Haas chuckled, "he was sent down from Marburg, ('Philip's University, in Marburg an der Lahn, in Hesse. It was to Marburg that the Russian and East European royalty sent their children to be educated, and at Marburg that Roentgen discovered the X ray.)
I recall."
"You and I, Dieter, came very close to being sent down from
Marburg," von Wachtstein said. ;
"They were better times, weren't they?" von Haas said. He looked at his watch. "It's a long drive to Berlin. I'd better be going."
Von Wachtstein stood up.
"Understand, Dieter, that my desires for Peter are not wishful thinking. Your telling me that you're sorry, you tried, but it couldn't be arranged will not be enough."
"I understand," von Haas said, and put out his hand.
"What do they say in Spanish? 'Vaya con Dios'? Vaya con Dios, Dieter. Go with God."
Von Haas met his eyes, nodded, and turned and walked out of the room.
[TWO]
The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel
Los Angeles, California
12 October 1942
When Lieutenant Cletus Howell Frade, USMCR, stepped out of the tub onto a bath mat, the telephone was ringing.
He walked quickly, naked and dripping, into the bedroom to answer it, wondering both who it could be and how long the telephone had been ringing. It had been a long time since he'd had access to either unlimited hot water or privacy; he'd been in the shower for a long time.
He picked up the telephone on the bedside table.
"Hello?"
"¿El Teniente Frade?"
"S?, yo soy el Teniente Frade."
"Yo soy Graham, Teniente, Coronel A. F. Graham."
"Yes, Sir?"
"Are you alone, Lieutenant?" Graham asked, in Spanish.
"S?, mi Coronel."
"I'd like a word with you. Have you been drinking?"
"Not yet, mi Coronel."
Hell of a question,Clete thought, and a reply that was a little too flip for a lieutenant talking to a colonel.
"See if you can hold off for half an hour or so," Colonel Graham said, a chuckle in his voice. "I should be there by then. Nine twenty-one, right?"
"Yes, Sir."
The telephone went dead. Clete put the handset back in the cradle and walked toward the bedroom.
Jesus, did he speak Spanish to me?
I'll be damned if he didn't. That entire conversation was in Spanish. Pretty good Spanish at that. What the hell was that all about?
Clete dried himself slowly and carefully, partly to take advantage of the stack of thick, soft towels the hotel had so graciously provided for his comfort, and partly because his long exposure to soap and hot water had softened and loosened the scabsperhaps twenty-five of themon his legs and chest.
An incredible number of insects lived on Guadalcanal, and each variety there became addicted to Cletus's blood. Sometimes, it seemed as if they fought among themselves for the privilege of taking their dinner from him and leaving behind a wide variety of irritations. These ranged from small sting marks to thumbnail-size suppurating ulcers.
After he finished drying, Clete walked on the balls of his feet from the bathroom to the wood-and-canvas rack beside the chest of drawers that supported his suitcase. He took from it his toilet kitonce a gleaming brown leather affair, now looking like something a mechanic was about to discard. From this he took a jar of gray paste. Despite the assurances of the Medical Corps, U.S. Navy, that the stuff was the very latest miracle medicine to soothe what the doctors somewhat euphemistically called "minor skin irritations," he suspected that it was Vaseline.