Death and Honor (Honor Bound 4)

“And what were the orders your father the admiral was talking about? Were they in Canaris’s letter?”

“Yes, sir,” Boltitz replied, and heard himself.

I just called him “sir.” And for a second time.

What does that mean? That I have subconsciously recognized his authority over me?

“And they were?” Frade pursued.

“Admiral Canaris’s letter ordered me to accept any order from Ambassador Lutzenberger as if they had come from him,” Boltitz said.

“And then what?”

“Excuse me?”

“What were Lutzenberger’s orders? ‘Leave Wachtstein alone’?”

“He told me he knew I had been to see von Wachtstein, and then that von Wachtstein was then in Montevideo, that he had told him to be careful, and that I should make an effort to know him better, as we had more in common than I might have previously realized.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes, sir”—Christ, I did it again—“but his meaning was clear.”

“What happened to the letters?” Frade asked.

“Ambassador Lutzenberger burned them.”

“You saw that?”

Boltitz nodded.

“And then you went to see Wachtstein and he really let his mouth run?” Frade replied, and then turned to von Wachtstein. “What did you tell him, motormouth? And why?”

“The korvettenkapitän told me he had seen the ambassador, Cletus,” von Wachtstein said, “and what had been said—”

“According to him,” Frade said, pointing at Boltitz, “the ambassador didn’t say very much, just implied that he didn’t think you nose-diving onto the runway was a very good idea.”

Boltitz said: “We both interpreted his remark that I should make an effort to know him better, that we had a good deal in common, to mean that we should confide in each other.”

Frade didn’t reply for a moment.

“What you’re asking me to believe, Captain, is that all it took to get you to change sides, to become a traitor to Germany, to turn your back on that code of honor you keep throwing at me, was a quick look at the letters Lutzenberger showed you. That’s a hell of lot to ask me to swallow. Even if you believe, right now, what you’re telling me, how do I know that you won’t change your mind again tomorrow? Or, more likely, when you get back to Germany? You are going back to Germany?”

“Yes, of course, I’m going back—”

“Clete,” von Wachtstein interrupted, “as embarrassing as it is for me to bring this up, you have benefited from the code of honor the korvettenkapitän and I believe in.”

Frade glared at him for a moment, then shrugged, and smiled, and said, “Touché, Peter. I guess you told him about that, too?”

“He asked me how I had come to be close to you,” von Wachtstein said.

“Look at me, Captain,” Frade ordered. When his eyes were locked with Boltitz’s, he asked: “In that circumstance, knowing that it was the intention of your military attaché to . . . hell, the word is assassinate . . . to assassinate an enemy officer—this one—would you have done what Peter did? Warn me?”

“I’d like to think I would have,” Boltitz said. “Assassination is not something to which an honorable officer can be a party.”

Frade shrugged.

He looked at his wife. “I’m probably losing my mind, but I’m tempted to believe him.”