Victory and Honor (Honor Bound 6)
“I wou
ld say that what calls for a celebration,” Father Welner said, “is that you pulled it off.”
“Pulled what off?” Clete asked.
“Bringing Karl and Peter here, of course,” Welner said. “I really didn’t think you stood much of a chance.”
“Oh, ye of little faith!” Clete said. “What I’m wondering, Father, is who had the big mouth and told you—and the general—about it. I just don’t think your being here is a coincidence.”
“I did,” Dorotea said simply. “I told both of them. I thought they might be able to help.”
Clete looked at his wife. She was not only more intimately involved with his OSS activities than anyone suspected—except perhaps Martín and Welner—but she was very good at it.
If she told them not only that I had gone to Washington, but why, she had her reasons. What the hell could they be?
“How the hell could they have helped?” Frade asked, more confused than annoyed or angry.
“Perhaps she had this in mind, Cletus,” the priest said, handing him an envelope. “There was no question in Dorotea’s mind that you would succeed.”
Clete opened the envelope. It held two booklets called libretas de enrolamiento. One was in the name of Kurt Boltitz and the other in that of Peter von Wachtstein, both of whom, according to the LE, had immigrated to Argentina in 1938.
“Karl,” Frade called out, “make Hansel stop forcing himself on that poor woman, and the both of you come over here.”
When they had, Clete handed them the identity documents.
“Say ‘thank you’ to Dorotea,” Clete said. “But not to either of these two, for I’m sure neither of them would break the—at least—ten laws of the Argentine Republic somebody had to break to get these.”
Boltitz and von Wachtstein had known Martín officially when they had been respectively the naval attaché and the assistant military attaché for air of the embassy of the German Reich.
Martín offered his hand to Boltitz and said, “Karl.”
Boltitz replied, “Alejandro.”
Martín then did the same thing to von Wachtstein.
Neither said “thank you,” but profound gratitude could be seen in the eyes of the Germans.
“How good are those, Alejandro?” Frade asked.
“They will withstand all but the most diligent scrutiny,” Martín said, and then added: “We’ll get into that when we talk.”
“Okay.”
“It would be better if we talked now,” the priest said.
Clete looked between the two Argentines and his wife.
“Here?”
“Why don’t we go to the house on Libertador San Martín?” Dorotea suggested. “The men could have a shower, and then we could talk over lunch. Everyone else can go to Doña Claudia’s house and we can all get together later.”
Clete looked at his wife and thought: Why do I think this has been the plan all along?
Beth Howell was visibly—and vocally—distressed at being separated from Boltitz. But aside from her exception, Dorotea’s plan went unchallenged.
The men, plus Dorotea, went to what Cletus thought of as “Uncle Willy’s house by the racetrack”—it was across Avenida Libertador General San Martín from the Hipódromo de Palermo—in a four-car convoy. Martín’s official Mercedes led the way, followed by Tony Pelosi’s U.S. Embassy 1941 Chevrolet, then by Father Welner’s 1940 Packard 280 convertible—a gift from el Coronel Jorge G. Frade—and finally by the enormous Horch touring car that had been el Coronel Frade’s joy in life and in which he had been assassinated.
Their route took them past the German Embassy on Avenida Córdoba, causing Clete to wonder if Martín had done so intentionally. There were two soldiers standing in front of the gate. They were wearing German-style steel helmets and German-style gray uniforms and were holding German 7mm Mauser rifles in what the Marine Corps would call the Parade Rest position.