He promised her his silence.
Shortly afterward, Cletus Frade told Peter that one of his OSS agents had been brutally murdered in Montevideo. The man’s name was Ettinger, a German Jew. While nosing around the Jewish community in Buenos Aires, he had picked up information about some kind of ransoming operation involving concentration-camp inmates. Though he himself did not give the story much credence, Frade had nevertheless reported it to Washington, where there was immediate, almost excited, interest. Ettinger had then gone to Montevideo to see what else he could find out, and had been murdered there.
When Clete then asked Peter if he knew anything about a ransom operation involving the German Embassy in Montevideo, Peter felt no compunction about telling him everything he’d learned from Inge, as well as everything else he had guessed about the operation. He also agreed to see what more he could find out. There was no question of treason here, no question of honor. Goltz and his ilk had no idea what honor was. And if the OSS had learned of the operation through their own sources, Inge could credibly deny leaking the secret.
He had not, of course, told Inge anything about his relationship with Cletus Frade. That made it entirely possible that her enthusiasm in bed was to insure his keeping his mouth shut.
For all of these reasons, but most of all because he needed a rest, Peter insisted—over Inge’s objections—on dinner out. And so there they were at the Restaurant Bernardo.
“That’s a lovely suit,” Inge said, pausing while the tail-coated waiter refilled her wineglass. “New, isn’t it? You got it here? In Buenos Aires?”
“Thank you,” he said. “Yes, it’s new. I found a very nice tailor.”
“And nice wool. And no ration coupon, right? They have so much wool here, they practically give it away.”
“And the same can be said for the beef,” he said, putting his knife to a large, perfectly broiled Bife lomo. “I was thinking a moment ago how much a meal like this costs in Berlin.”
“A fortune,” she said matter-of-factly. “But that won’t bother you, will it? You’re rich.”
“Wha
tever gave you that idea?”
“You remember Oscar, the bartender at the am Zoo?”
He shook his head, “no.”
“Tiny little man, with a head as bald as a baby’s bottom?”
He vaguely remembered a very small, bald bartender. “What about him?”
“I asked him about you,” she said. “When I first saw you.”
“And?”
“He told me who you are,” she said. “A von Wachtstein. More important, the only son of Generalleutnant Graf von Wachtstein, who will one day be the Graf, and come into the von Wachtstein estates in Pomerania, including Schloss Wachtstein, one of the nicest castles in Pomerania.”
“He knew me?”
“That’s his business,” she said. “He’s a terrible snob.”
“And until this moment,” Peter said, “I thought it was love at first sight.”
“That, too.” She giggled. “But it’s good for a girl to know who she’s meeting before she meets him. You can understand that.”
“And how did you meet your late husband—what was his name?”
“Erich.” she said. “Obersturmbannführer der Waffen-SS Erich Kolbermann. You would have liked him, Peter.”
“You met him in the am Zoo? The bartender told you who he was?”
“Actually, it was the Adlon,” she said, either not catching the sarcasm or choosing to ignore it. “Heine, the bartender there, told me that poor Erich—whose family owns a shipyard in Bremen—had arrived from the Eastern front on home leave two days after his wife and children were killed in an air raid.”
“The poor bastard!”
“And I thought the least I could do was offer him what solace I could,” she said.
“Like marrying him?”