The Honor of Spies (Honor Bound 5)

He and the five men following him were wearing brown coveralls over their black SS uniforms. It was Hauptsturmführer Schäfer’s intention, should anything go wrong—and it looked at this moment as if that had happened—to shed the coveralls, which would permit him and his men to claim the protection of the Geneva Convention and POW status.

He wasn’t sure if that was the case.

How did the Geneva Convention feel about armed soldiers of a belligerent power being discovered—possibly after having taken some lives—roaming around a neutral country?

At the very least, Schäfer had decided, it would buy them some time until SS-Brigadeführer von Deitzberg and the Argentine oberst, Schmidt, found out they had been arrested and could start working on getting them freed.

He could now see the end of the row of grapevines. There was nothing in it. He held up his hand for the men behind him to stop, then gestured for them to move to the left and right, into the spaces between adjacent rows of vines.

A minute later, he heard the soft chirp of a whistle, telling him that one of his men had found something.

Reminding himself that stealth was still of great importance, he moved quietly through two rows to the left.

One of his troopers pointed to the end of that row.

Another of his men was standing there holding what looked like an American Thompson submachine gun. His legs straddled a body on the ground.

Schäfer ran down the path to him.

The man came to attention when Schäfer got close.

“Report!” Schäfer snapped.

“I had no choice, sir. He was coming through the vines toward me. When he came into this one, I shot him.”

Something will have to be done with the body. I can’t just leave it here.

It will fit in the trunk of one of the cars.

But what if one of the gendarmes at one of their checkpoints doesn’t just wave us through in the belief that a sedan belonging to the 10th Mountain Regiment poses no threat to anything?

How the hell would I explain a body?

He pointed to one of his men. “In the back of one of the cars is a shovel,” Schäfer ordered. “Go to it, get the shovel, and come back here. The rest of you move the body farther away from the road. Move quickly!”

“That’s deep enough,” Schäfer announced. “It only has to serve for a short time. Put him in it, and then start spreading the earth around.”

“Tamp it down. I don’t want anybody looking down the row and wondering why it’s not level.”

Schäfer handed the Thompson, which he had decided was not nearly as good a submachine gun as the Schmeisser, to one of his men and then stepped gingerly onto the tamped-down dirt on the grave.

“Hände hoch!” a voice barked.

This was immediately followed by a very loud burst of automatic weapons fire. The man holding the Thompson fell backward, still holding the Thompson.

Schäfer now saw that a very large man was pointing a Thompson at him.

And then a smaller man who appeared to be wearing an American uniform—there were chevrons on the sleeve of his shirt that looked American—pushed down the barrel of the larger man’s submachine gun.

“Enrico,” the smaller man flared, “you stupid sonofabitch!”

Then he turned to Schäfer and repeated, “Hände hoch!” and then added, in fluent German, “My friend would like nothing better than to shoot all of you.”

Schäfer now saw there were half a dozen men, in addition to the big one who had fired the Thompson and the little one, the sergeant obviously in charge, in the passage between the rows of vines, three on each side of the grave.

They were all in civilian clothing. Three of them held Thompsons and the rest had Mauser cavalry carbines.

Schäfer raised his hands over his shoulders.