Alicia finished brushing her hair and started to make up her face.
“I like to watch you standing there in your underwear, doing that,” Peter said.
She smiled at him. “Go back to bed,” she said.
“Not alone,” he said.
“Sweetheart, I have to go.”
“I’ll put you in a cab,” he said.
She nodded.
[THREE]
The Embassy of the German Reich
Avenue Córdoba
Buenos Aires
0915 29 April 1943
“And a very good morning to you, Fraülein Hassell,” Peter von Wachtstein said to the Amb
assador’s secretary as he entered the Ambassador’s outer office. He was wearing a well-cut, nearly black pin-striped double-breasted suit, a stiffly starched white shirt, and a striped silk necktie. She was a middle-aged spinster in a black dress, and wore her graying hair drawn tight and gathered in a bun at the nape of her neck.
“His Excellency wanted to see you the moment you arrived at the Embassy,” Fräulein Ingebord Hassell said, sounding to Peter much like a scolding schoolteacher.
“And here I am,” Peter said.
“It’s sixteen past nine,” she said. “He sent for you at eight twenty-five.”
“I was caught in traffic,” Peter said. “May I go in?”
“One moment, please, Herr Major,” she said.
She pushed the TALK lever on her intercom box. “Excellency, Major Freiherr von Wachtstein is here.”
“Send him in, please, Fräulein Hassell,” the ambassador replied. “And would you bring us some coffee?”
“Jawohl, Excellency,” she said, and glared at Peter. “One day, you’re going to try his Excellency’s patience too much.”
“Oh, I hope not,” Peter said.
He walked to the Ambassador’s door, knocked, and then entered without waiting for a reply. “Heil Hitler!” he barked so that Fräulein Hassell would hear him, but he did not give the requisite salute.
“Heil Hitler,” the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Führer of the German Reich to the Republic of Argentina replied.
Manfred Alois Graf von Lutzenberger was a very slight man of fifty-three who wore his thinning hair plastered across his skull. He signaled for Peter to come in. “I sent for you forty-five minutes ago,” he said.
“My apologies, Excellency, I was caught in traffic.”
Fräulein Hassell scurried into the room with a tray holding coffee and sweets.
Von Lutzenberger waited until Fräulein Hassell had left and closed the door behind her, then pointed to the chair beside his desk, an order for Peter to sit down. “Traffic, eh? I thought perhaps you might have overslept.” He pushed a sheet of paper across the desk to Peter.
“I wonder what Untersturmführer Schneider did from ten-fifteen to four A.M.,” Peter said.