Secret Honor (Honor Bound 3)

Before landing, Major Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein made a low pass over the landing strip to make sure one or more five-hundred-kilo cows were not happily munching away on the runway. It was a necessary precaution in Argentina, where cattle roamed freely and landing strips were rarely protected by fences.

There were no cattle.

Three light aircraft were lined up beside the runway. Two were yellow Piper Cubs and the third was a Cessna C-34, a small four-seater. The Cessna, he knew, belonged to Estancia Santo Catalina, and probably the Pipers did, too, although Cletus Frade might have flown one over from his estancia.

He put the Fieseler Storch into a tight 180-degree turn, lined up with the runway, retarded the throttle, cranked down the flaps, and touched down smoothly at about forty knots.

While the Storch was not much of an airplane, compared to the Focke-Wulf 190 fighter he had flown in his last assignment (whose 1,600-horsepower engine propelled it to 418 mph), it was an interesting airplane. If the Piper Cub could be compared to an aerial bicycle, then the Storch was an aerial motorcycle, say a BMW four-cylinder opposed, shaft-driven motorcycle.

By the time he had finished his landing roll and taxied the Storch to park beside the Cessna, three people had come out from the house to greet him. His heart jumped a little when he saw that one of them was Señorita Alicia Carzino-Cormano, although he had in fact expected her to come to the landing strip once she saw the Storch overhead. He had a quick mental image of Alicia two days before, naked in his bed, staring down at him with her large dark eyes, and he was as quickly ashamed of himself.

The others were the Duartes, Señor Humberto and Señora Beatrice Frade de Duarte, both of whom he had more or less also expected. Once Señora de Duarte had learned of his weekend visit to the estancia, he had known she’d be waiting for him anxiously.

He opened the side door of the Storch and climbed out.

“I am so happy to see you, dear Peter…” Beatrice Duarte said, grabbing his arms, pulling him to her, and planting a hard, wet kiss of greeting on his cheek—as opposed to a pro forma smack of lips in the general vicinity of his face, “…and you’re just in time for lunch.”

“It is always a pleasure to see you, Señora,” he said in Spanish. His Spanish was perfect Castilian. He had learned Spanish in Spain when he was nineteen (a fact that he had passed on to Alicia). He had not told her that his instructress had been a twenty-five-year-old redheaded Madrileña, who had come to believe that a young blond German fighter pilot was the answer to her carnal frustration following the death of her husband, who had been killed in action in the Civil War.

He offered his hand to Humberto Duarte, a tall, slender, elegantly tailored man of forty-six years. “Good afternoon, sir,” he said.

“It’s always a pleasure to see you, Peter,” Duarte said.

Peter turned to Alicia. “And an even greater pleasure to see you, Alicia.”

She blushed, gave him a formal kiss on the cheek, and quickly backed away.

Peter inclined his head barely perceptibly toward the Piper Cubs. Alicia moved her head just perceptibly, telling him, no, Clete was not flying one of them.

“You flew?” Humberto said.

“Yes, sir,” Peter said. “With the permission of the military attaché, I am making what they call a ‘proficiency flight.’ At the moment, I am the acting military attaché, so I gave myself permission.”

“Can you really do that?” Alicia asked. “Does the Ambassador know?”

“Actually, no,” Peter confessed said. “It’s a case of what the ambassador doesn’t know can’t upset him.”

“Oh

, you naughty boy, you!” Beatrice cried happily. “He’s just like Jorge, always doing something naughty, isn’t he, Humberto? Isn’t he so like Jorge?”

“Yes, dear,” Humberto said, “he is.”

She sounded as if Jorge, her son, was right around the corner and could be expected to appear at any minute. He was, in fact, dead.

El Captáin Jorge Alejandro Duarte, of the Húsares de Pueyrredón, had been serving with von Paulus’s Army at Stalingrad as an observer when he’d been shot down while making an unauthorized flight in a Storch.

After his death (though it was in fact a consequence of foolishness and not heroism), the Foreign Minister, von Ribbentrop had realized that, if properly handled, the sad occasion might accrue to the public-relations benefit of the Third Reich. Captain Duarte’s corpse would be returned to Argentina accompanied by a suitable Luftwaffe officer. There Duarte would be posthumously decorated with the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross. That could not fail to impress the Argentines: One of their own had laid down his life in their common battle against the anti-Christ Bolshevik Russians.

The commanding officer of Jagdstaffel (Fighter Squadron) 232, stationed on the outskirts of Berlin, met the requirements for a “suitable officer.” Major Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein had not only received the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross from the hands of Adolf Hitler himself, but, as a result of his service with the Condor Legion during the Spanish Civil War, he spoke Spanish fluently. Additionally, he was a Pomeranian aristocrat, whose father, Generalleutnant Graf Karl-Friedrich von Wachtstein, was assigned to the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht.

Major von Wachtstein was summoned to Berlin, and there introduced to an Argentine officer, Colonel of Mountain Troops Juan Domingo Perón. Perón had been in Europe for several years, both as an observer attached to the German and Italian armies, and to study the social programs of Germany and Italy, with an eye to their adaptation in Argentina. He was known to be quite sympathetic to the Axis cause, and more important, was a lifelong friend of Hauptmann Duarte’s uncle, Oberst Jorge Guillermo Frade, who might very well be the next President of Argentina.

At this time, it was felt that Frade, too, was sympathetic to the Axis cause. Not only was he a graduate of the Kriegsschule, but his anti-American sentiments were well known (even if it was not generally known that his anti-Americanism was based on the Americans having forcibly denied him contact with his son).

Coronel Perón liked the young officer at first sight, and agreed that he was just the sort of man to escort the remains of Capitán Duarte to Argentina. This instant favor from such an important Argentine had long-lasting consequences for von Wachtstein. And in the office of Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop, he was told that after the funeral of Captain Duarte he would remain in Argentina as the Assistant Military Attaché for Air at the German Embassy. There his orders would of course be to do whatever the Military Attaché wanted him to do, but he was also expected to ingratiate himself as much as possible with the Duarte family, Oberst Jorge Guillermo Frade, and Oberst Juan Domingo Perón, whose return to Argentina was planned in the near future.

Before leaving for Buenos Aires, Peter met with his father on the family estate in Pomerania. There Generalleutnant von Wachtstein had words for his son that few Germans were speaking openly. There was a growing possibility, he told him, that Germany would lose the war. If that happened, he went on to explain, German currency would be worthless, and the von Wachtstein family could not meet its obligations to the people who lived on their estates and looked to them for protection, as they had for hundreds of years.