“You’re a baron?” one of the women, a brunette with a short haircut and a low bodice, asked.
“Only on odd Thursdays,” Peter said.
“There is a telephone call for you, Herr Baron,” the waiter said. “The house phone is in the lobby, to the right.”
“Who the hell can that be?” Peter asked.
“It’s probably the loving mother of your four precious children,” Willi said.
“You’re married?” the brunette asked, disappointed.
“Only his wife is married,” Boltitz said.
The joke won more laughter than it deserved.
Peter turned and walked toward the lobby door.
“And while he’s lying to his wife about how he plans to spend the evening,” Willi said, “I think I’ll jettison some fuel. Can I trust you, U-boat, not to lose the girls while I’m gone?”
“I’ll do my best,” Karl said.
Charlotte swung on her stool so that her calf pressed against Boltitz’s leg.
Von Wachtstein returned to the bar first.
“Was that your wife, Herr Baron?” the brunette asked.
“He doesn’t have a wife,” Boltitz said.
Peter flashed him a quick, dirty look.
“Actually, it was a sailor,” he said. “A friend of the Herr Korvettenkapitän.”
“Von und zu Waching?” Boltitz asked. “Or the other sailor?”
“Von und zu Waching,” Peter said. “My father’s going to be here in the morning.”
“Your father’s coming?” the brunette asked.
“Generalleutnant Graf von Wachtstein,” Boltitz offered helpfully.
The brunette’s face showed how pleased she was to have snared a Luftwaffe fighter pilot with the Knight’s Cross, whose father was a both a nobleman and a senior officer.
The question, then, is whether Peter will nail her or remain faithful to the nineteen-year-old Argentine he told me about.
And if he does nail the brunette, does that mean he’s not really in love with the Argentine, or simply that he’s a healthy young male who is not about to kick something like the brunette out of bed?
[FOUR]
The Hotel Provincial
Mar del Plata, Argentina
0830 11 May 1943
“What are you doing out of bed?” Señora Dorotéa Mallín de Frade inquired of her husband as she entered the sitting of the hotel suite where they had spent the second and third nights of their marriage.
The question was in the nature of an indignant challenge.