“That was, honestly, darling, his idea.”
“And when he proposed, it took you all of ten seconds to make up your mind, right?”
“Closer to fifteen,” she said, chuckling. “I didn’t want to appear too eager.”
“You’re really something, Inge,” Peter said, smiling at her. “I like you.”
“After what we’ve been doing, I should certainly hope so.”
He smiled at her. She ran her bare foot up his trouser leg.
“Have you thought about getting your money out of Germany?” Inge asked conversationally.
“They put people who get caught doing that in Sachsenhausen,” he said. “And confiscate all their property.”
“I got some of mine—Erich’s—out,” she said. “Werner helped me. Maybe he’d help you.”
“Why would he want to do that?”
“Well, maybe you could be very nice to him,” she said. “I saw the way he looks at you.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Inge!”
“I’m just trying to figure a way to make you see that you, me, and lots of money in Brazil is a very interesting thought,” she said. “I like you, Peter, but I don’t have enough money for both of us.”
“Going to Brazil is out of the question for me, Inge,” he said seriously. “You’d better understand that.”
“It is possible,” she said, ignoring him, “that when you get to Berlin—” She interrupted herself. “You really didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Standartenführer Goltz, did you?”
“I didn’t even know where we were going, much less what he and Grüner were trying to do. I was just taken along because of my strong back to carry the crates.”
“That’s a little hard to believe, darling,” she said. “You and Goltz seemed pretty chummy.”
“I probably shouldn’t tell you even this much,” he said, thinking he better tell her something.
“But you will?” she asked, rubbing her foot against his calf again. “Because you know it will earn you a prize just as soon as we get back to the house?”
“Oh, God, Inge!”
“What were you about to say?” she asked, chuckling.
He proceeded with what he considered his own “official” version of the truth: “Goltz told me that since I was a pilot, I probably knew enough navigation to take a boat from El Tigre—”
“From where?”
“It’s a port in Buenos Aires. Like Venice, lots of streams and boats, but without the old buildings.”
“I’ve always wanted to see Venice,” Inge said. “It’s supposed to very romantic.”
“Anyway,” Peter went on, “Goltz had bought a boat in El Tigre, a little one. And with Grüner’s driver and his father—they’re Germano-Argentines—as my crew, I took the boat down the coast to Samborombón Bay. Goltz told me I didn’t need to know what was going on. When I got to this little port, I spent the night in the house of another Germano-Argentine. Goltz showed up in the middle of the night, and the first thing in the morning, I took him out to a Spanish ship anchored in the bay. The idea was to use the boat I had to make the landing, but the captain of the ship took one look at it and decided it was useless to land on a beach.
“That was the first I had heard of a beach. They loaded some crates into one of the lifeboats from the ship, and we went ashore. I still don’t know where we were. Grüner was waiting for us. The minute Goltz and I got out of the boat, people started shooting at us. I have no idea who. Grüner and Goltz were killed; I almost was. I put their bodies into the lifeboat and went back to the ship.
“They took the bodies aboard the ship, and I took the little boat I’d come down the coast in back to El Tigre. I still don’t know what the hell was going on, except that they were trying to smuggle whatever was in the crates into Argentina, and got caught.”
Inge looked at him thoughtfully, as if trying to make up her mind whether or not to believe him.
“Werner thinks the OSS has a spy in the German Embassy,” she said finally.