Honor Bound (Honor Bound 1)

Peter looked at him.

He reached in his pocket and came out with money.

“I am Hauptmann Freiherr von Wachtstein,” he said. “I am now going to my room, Number 701, where I forgot something. When I return, if there is a glass of orange juice and a coffee cup with a double cognac in it on this table, this is yours.”

“It will be my great pleasure,” the waiter said with a smile.

Why the hell not? He works in a hotel. I am not the first painfully hung-over guest he has seen.

When he returned with his Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross in its proper place on his uniform and walked as straight as he could to the table, even more people smiled at him.

And there was a large glass of orange juice on the table, plus a glass of soda water, and a coffee cup filled to the brim with a dark substance that was not coffee.

If anyone thought it was strange that the young German officer gulped down half the orange juice, mixed the rest of it with coffee poured from his cup, gulped that down, diluted the last of the coffee with soda water, and then gulped that down, he was of course too polite to remark on it.

Three minutes after he returned to the dining room, Hauptmann Freiherr von Wachtstein marched erectly out of the dining room, through the lobby, out the door, and turned left down Avenida Alvear toward the Duarte mansion.

A long line of people sought entrance to the mansion, many with their invitations in their hands. The line stretched from the door out onto Avenida Alvear. Mounted troopers of the Husare de Pueyrredón, already showing signs of the heat, lined the driveway, while policemen—and men in civilian clothing who looked like plainclothes policemen—kept a watchful eye on those waiting to enter the mansion.

I don’t have an invitation. I don’t suppose I need one, but I don’t think I should just go to the head of the line and announce my arrival. I’ll stand in line and see what happens.

Just inside the gate, a large, smoothly shaved man in civilian clothing eyed Peter unabashedly for a full thirty seconds, then walked toward him.

“El Capitán von Wachtstein?”

“Sí.”

“Let this gentleman pass,” the man ordered the policemen. “He is with the family.”

When Peter walked to him, he explained, “Mi Capitán, I am Enrico. If you will come with me, please, Sir, I will take you to el Coronel.”

“Gracias,” Peter said.

Enrico did not look entirely at ease in his blue business suit, and he had the somewhat stiff walk—as if on parade—of the long service sergeant.

Enrico was almost certainly Suboficial Mayor Enrico, Peter thought. Clete told me about him, an old soldier who worked for el Coronel Frade from the time el Coronel was a teniente. They are a type. For twenty-five years, my father had Oberfeldwebel Manntz running his errands, taking care of him, until Manntz’s luck ran out in Norway.

Enrico marched him past the door of the house, where people were checking invitations against a typewritten list, then through the foyer, where the late Capitán Duarte’s casket rested on a catafalque, and into a small sitting room.

“If the Capitán would be so good as to wait here, I will tell el Coronel that you have arrived.”

Enrico headed for a man wearing an ornate uniform that looked like a costume for a Viennese light opera about shenanigans in some obscure Balkan dukedom.

Jesus Christ, he realized somewhat belatedly, that’s Cletus’s father!

Beatrice Frade de Duarte, wearing a black silk dress, a hat with a veil, and a single strand of enormous pearls, saw him first. She came quickly across the room, took his arm, and led him into the presence of Cletus’s father.

“Capitán von Wachtstein,” she said, as if they were at a dress ball, “may I present my brother, el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade?”

“A sus órdenes, mi Coronel,” Peter said, then clicked his heels and bowed, which caused him to feel alarmingly light-headed.

“Capitán von Wachtstein is the officer who brought Jorge home, Jorge,” Señora de Duarte said.

“So I have been informed,” el Coronel Frade said. “Might I have a word with you, Capitán?”

“Of course, mi Coronel.”

Frade took his arm and led him out of the foyer down a corridor into the kitchen. He went to a refrigerator, to