Secret Honor (Honor Bound 3)

He had the chart laid out on his lap, with their intended course marked on the celluloid with a grease pencil.

Out to sea, then a turn right, and up the North Atlantic 250 miles off the Moroccan coast, then another right turn straight into Lisbon. An X about halfway on the grease-pencil line indicated the Point of No Return, beyond which they would be closer to Lisbon than to Dakar.

“The Americans sometimes come this far offshore—but not often,” the pilot explained, “but they’re looking for surface shipping and submarines, which means they seldom fly higher than twenty-five hundred or three thousand meters, and usually lower. And they’re usually in something we can outrun—B-24s, B-17s, sometimes B-26s, and sometimes a twin-engine Navy amphibian.

“But they have radios, and if they spot us, they just get on the radio and give our position. There’s Amis, and even some English, all over the area around the mouth of the Mediterranean. So the trick is not to get spotted. The way to do that is to fly high—not so high as to make contrails, but higher than they usually fly. They’re generally looking down, for subs and shipping, and for our boys, who’re doing the same thing.

“The nightmare is that we get spotted by a Mustang patrol. They’ve got droppable auxiliary tanks and can range pretty far. And we can’t outrun a Mustang.”

“There’s not much that can,” Peter agreed.

“I’ll keep you posted,” the pilot said, and Peter knew his invitation to visit the cockpit had expired.

The steward came down the aisle to Peter, who was dozing, spread out over two seats. He had made a bed, or sorts, from the cushions of the empty seats.

“The Captain has sent for you, Herr Major.”

We changed course ninety degrees thirty minutes ago. Which either means we are within Portuguese airspace, and have made it, or there are a couple of Mustangs chasing us.

“Thank you,” Peter said, got up, and walked with difficulty—his right leg was painfully asleep—to the cockpit.

The pilot handed him the celluloid-covered chart and pointed to a spot, their location, off a town called Faro, on the coast of Portugal, right above the Spanish border. It was not on the grease-pencil course marked on the chart.

“I don’t like to fly the same course every time. Or, for that matter, twice in a row. So I took a chance the Amis would be working off the Morocco coast. I guessed right. No Amis. We should be on the ground in forty-five minutes. It’ll be a short stop, just for fuel, and then on to Madrid, where we’ll spend the night.”

Portuguese immigration officials and a representative of Lufthansa came aboard the Condor as soon as it had parked in front of the terminal.

The man from Lufthansa, a tall, muscular blond who looked healthy enough to be wearing a uniform (which made Peter wonder if he might also be the local Gestapo representative), informed them that after their passports had been examined, they would be taken to the transient lounge while the Condor was being serviced. This would probably take no more than an hour.

As they descended the portable stairway, Peter saw Portuguese policemen lining their path to the terminal building.

An In Transit lounge had been set up in the terminal to take care of international passengers who were only passing through Portugal and thus would have no reason to require customs and immigration.

Inside, just after he had spotted and started toward the men’s room, Peter

saw two well-dressed men in the lounge. Neither of them—they were both blond and fair-skinned—looked Portuguese.

[TWO]

1610 8 May 1943

When Korvettenkapitän Karl Boltitz had been introduced to SS-Obersturmbannführer Karl Cranz in Berlin, Boltitz had not been at all surprised that he was outranked by the SS officer who would accompany him to Spain, but he had been surprised by Cranz the man.

For one thing, he was affable, even charming. Boltitz’s experience with the Gestapo—at all levels—had taught him that they were usually surly and suspicious; and as their rank rose, so did their arrogance.

Cranz, a tall, slender blond-haired man of maybe thirty-five, had taken him from Himmler’s office to the Hotel Adlon, then had suggested that since they were about to spend so much time together, they might as well be on an informal, first-name basis.

As they talked, though Cranz had looked with obvious approval at the young women at the bar, he identified himself as the last faithful husband in Berlin, and showed Boltitz, with obvious pride, photographs of his wife and three children.

Their dinner together was quite pleasant—and Cranz grabbed the check. During the meal, he expressed apparently genuine admiration for those who’d served in U-boats, and he confessed relief that at least one of them spoke Spanish fluently enough to talk easily to Kapitän de Banderano in Cadiz.

Boltitz was of course aware that the charm and affability were almost surely part of Cranz’s professional technique (to put the enemy, so to speak, at ease), and reminded himself to be careful. But he was nevertheless relieved that he would not have to spend the next two or three weeks with a typical Gestapo asshole.

During most of their train trip across Germany, France, and Spain, Cranz kept himself occupied by burying his nose in a book; then, in Madrid, he quickly got rid of the resident Gestapo agent and took Boltitz on a two-hour shopping trip for clothing and toys for his family.

They traveled from Madrid to Cadiz, accompanied by a consular officer from the embassy, to make the arrangements to transfer the bodies of Oberst Grüner and Standartenführer Goltz from the Océano Pacífico to the hands of a local undertaker. After the bodies had been placed in sealed caskets, arrangements would be made to transport the caskets out of Spain, through France, and finally to Berlin.

Once that was accomplished, Cranz took Boltitz on another shopping expedition, and then they returned to Madrid. That night, over dinner in a first-class restaurant, and well into their second bottle of wine, Cranz asked for the first time, conversationally, what Boltitz thought “went wrong” in Argentina.