Secret Honor (Honor Bound 3)

Canaris looked closely at him. “You were about to add, Major?”

“That it’s a bit difficult, Herr Admiral, to shoot pictures with a Leica while taking off in a small aircraft from a dirt strip.”

“You couldn’t just…?” Canaris asked, describing a circle with his hands.

I’ll be damned, Boltitz thought. Peter took the aerial photographs I used. Why didn’t that occur to me before?

“Not under the circumstances, Herr Admiral.”

“Which were?”

Peter looked uncomfortable. “Herr Admiral, the Argentines forbid aerial photography. My orders were to do the best I could without giving the Argentines cause to revoke our privilege to fly to Villa General Belgrano.”

“Your orders from whom?”

“Ambassador von Lutzenberger, Herr Admiral.”

“Don’t you—didn’t you—normally get your orders from Oberst Grüner?”

Peter’s answer had to wait until the waiter, with a flourish, served four glasses of Berliner Kindl. When he had gone, Canaris looked at Peter, waiting for him to go on.

“Herr Admiral, in this case,” Peter said, “there was some question whether the photographs should have been taken at all. First Secretary Gradny-Sawz was concerned that the Argentines would revoke our privilege to fly to Villa General Belgrano and brought the matter to the Ambassador for a decision.”

“And why do you think Gradny-Sawz was so concerned about losing the privilege?”

Peter hesitated.

“The first thing that came to your mind, Major!” Canaris said sharply.

“Herr Admiral, Villa General Belgrano is a two-day trip by rail and car from Buenos Aires. Four days round-trip—”

“I know the Luftwaffe doesn’t think much of the Navy, Major,” Canaris interrupted almost rudely. “But most of us really can multiply by two.”

“I beg the Herr Admiral’s pardon.”

“Go on.”

“In the Storch, you can fly there and back in one day.”

“So you’re suggesting that Gradny-Sawz believed his convenience was more important than my request for aerial photographs?”

“Herr Admiral—” Peter began uncomfortably.

Canaris chuckled, and stilled Peter with a raised hand. “Those of us in the services tend to have difficulty finding diplomatic ways to say something awkward, don’t we, Major von Wachtstein?”

“Yes, Sir,” Peter said.

Why is Admiral Canaris so interested in these aerial photographs? Boltitz wondered. And then he remembered what his father had said about listening to what Canaris was not saying. Canaris doesn’t really give a damn about those aerial photographs. So what is he doing? Seeing how von Wachtstein behaves under pressure?

Canaris looked at Boltitz, then back at von Wachtstein. “Did you ever wonder, when you got to Buenos Aires, von Wachtstein, why they had an airplane there and—until you got there—no one to fly it?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“The airplane was Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop’s idea,” Canaris explained. “It was his idea that when the opportunity presented itself, Ambassador von Lutzenberger would make a gift of it to the Argentine Army as a gesture of friendship.”

He looked between Peter and Karl again. “So the airplane was sent to Buenos Aires and parked in a hangar at El Palomar to await the propitious moment to manifest our great respect for the Ejercito Argentine,” Canaris went on. “And then I had a thought, which I shared with Oberst Grüner. Did he think, and more importantly, would Ambassador von Lutzenberger think, that perhaps the aircraft might be more useful to Germany than as a public relations gesture?”

The translation of that, Karl decided, what Canaris was not saying, was that he had somehow talked von Ribbentrop into making a gift of an airplane to Argentina and all along intended that it be used by Grüner.