Secret Honor (Honor Bound 3)

Oberkommando der Webrmacht

* * *

“That should do it,” von Stauffenberg said after he’d read it. Then, with some difficulty, he unbuttoned a breast pocket on his tunic, inserted the note, and, with as much difficulty, buttoned the pocket again. He smiled with satisfaction. “Nina should be here this coming Friday,” he said. “Consider it done, Uncle Friedrich.”

“I’m grateful,” the Graf said.

At the airport, a Heinkel bomber was parked in front of the terminal. The pilot—a Luftwaffe Hauptmann—and a crewman were waiting for them. The crewman took the Graf’s luggage from the car and put it aboard the airplane.

The Graf gave his hand to his son. “Perhaps we will have another chance to be together before you return to Argentina, Hansel,” the Graf said. “It was very good to see you.”

“It was very good to see you, Poppa,” Peter replied.

The Graf put out his hand to von Stauffenberg, who shook it as well as he could with his claw. “And it’s always a pleasure to see you, Claus. I’m delighted that you are well on the way to recovery.”

“The pleasure is, as always, mine, Herr Generalleutnant Graf,” von Stauffenberg said.

The Graf nodded at both of them, then raised his hand in the Nazi salute. “Heil Hitler!” he barked.

Peter and von Stauffenberg returned the salute. “Heil Hitler!” they said, almost in unison.

The Graf turned and marched out to the airplane, where the pilot and the crewman gave the Graf the Nazi salute.

He climbed aboard, and the pilot and crewman climbed in after him. Peter could not see his father inside the airplane as it taxied to the runway. In his mind he saw his father rendering the Nazi salute he hated. He wondered if that would be his last memory of his father.

Claus von Stauffenberg was silent most of the way back to Grünwald, but as they turned off the main road, he said, “Peter, keep in mind that we are doing the right thing in the eyes of God, and that, in the final analysis, is all that matters.”

Peter nodded but didn’t reply.

Their farewell inside the Recuperation Hospital No. 15 compound was brief. “I’ll give your regards to Nina,” von Stauffenberg said. “And you give ours to…what did you say her name was, Alicia?”

“I will.”

“And I thank you for a delightful lunch, Hansel, even if your father paid for it.” He raised his left hand, gave the Nazi salute, and marched inside the villa built by the man who had made a lot of money making candy for children.

Peter, his eyes watering, wondered if his last memory of Claus von Stauffenberg would be of him giving the Nazi salute with his horribly maimed left hand.

He got the car moving, and wondered if he remembered where to find the road to Augsburg.

[THREE]

Pier 3

The Port of Montevideo, Uruguay

0830 16 May 1943

When the motor vessel MV Colonia tied up, without assistance, at the pier after an overnight voyage from Buenos Aires, three automobiles from the German Embassy were lined up on the pier. One of the three was Ambassador Joachim Schulker’s Mercedes.

Two days before, the diplomatic courier from Buenos Aires had carried a letter from Ambassador von Lutzenberger announcing that Generalmajor Manfred von Deitzberg wished to make an unofficial personal visit to Uruguay, accompanied by Herr Erich Raschner of his staff. During his visit, the Herr Generalmajor would require suitable separate accommodations, preferably at the Casino de Carrasco, for himself and Herr Raschner, and the use of two automobiles, with trustworthy drivers. Since Herr Raschner had important matters to discuss with Herr Konrad Forster, the Commercial Attaché, every effort should be made to make Councilor Forster available from the time Herr Raschner and Generalmajor von Deitzberg arrived in Montevideo at 0830 16 May 1943.

Forster’s Opel Kadet was the third car in line, behind the small, black embassy Mercedes assigned to Fraülein Gertrud Lerner. Ambassador Schulker had intended for one of the Embassy’s junior officers to drive the Mercedes, but when he spoke to Fräulein Lerner, her normally blank face had mirrored her heartbreak at being denied what she considered her right to render service to the distinguished visitors, so she was at the wheel of the car.

His own car was driven by Manuel Ortiz, a Uruguayan who had worked for the German Embassy for nearly twenty years. Schulker had decided that if Manuel did not meet von Deitzberg’s criteria for a reliable driver, he would call the embassy and have Ludwig Dolmer, the administrative officer, meet them at the Casino de Carrasco to chauffeur von Deitzberg around.

On the deck of the MV Colonia, Generalmajor Manfred von Deitzberg stood with his hands on the rail, watching the docking process. Erich Raschner stood beside him. Von Deitzberg had risen early, shaved, and dressed very carefully in a new double-breasted faintly striped dark-blue woolen suit. It was cut in the English manner—the tailor had tactfully said “Spanish,” but von Deitzberg knew an English-cut suit when he saw one. It was one of three suits the tailor had run up for him in a remarkable nine days as a service to Ambassador Manfred Alois Graf von Lutzenberger.

The suits were remarkably inexpensive considering the quality of the cloth and the workmanship—about the equivalent of one hundred American dollars each. Not that cash was a problem. Before leaving Berlin, von Deitzberg had drawn for his personal expenses the equivalent of five thousand American dollars from the SS’s confidential special fund. He had already ordered three more suits on a rush basis, and had strongly suggested to Raschner that he have some suits made for himself. Someone in his position really should not look like a policeman. With fine clothing available inexpensively and without the clothing coupons necessary in Berlin, there was no reason he had to.