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But then what?
Unlike Peter von Wachtstein, who had a marketable skill—he would go to work for SAA as a pilot—and had successfully moved to Argentina most of his family’s portable assets, Karl Boltitz had neither marketable skills nor a nest egg. Karl was a naval intelligence officer, and not only were the vessels of the Kriegsmarine—what was left of them—almost certainly going to be scuttled, but the Kriegsmarine no longer would need an intelligence officer.
Clete knew that, while Boltitz didn’t have a dime, money itself wasn’t a problem. Beth was independently wealthy, although he didn’t think her mother had told her just how wealthy.
The problem was Karl’s honor. He was a proud man. It had never entered Clete’s mind that Karl had considered Beth’s finances when making his first pass at her—or, perhaps more correctly, when she, which seemed entirely likely, had made her first pass at him. But he was entirely capable of being able to refuse to enter a marriage in his penniless status. And even if Beth could get him to the altar, Karl would feel ashamed.
While Boltitz was a very good intelligence officer, the only places where he could use those skills now would be in something like the Gehlen organization or the OSS. But the OSS was going down the toilet, very possibly taking the Gehlen organization with it.
Especially if Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau hears about the Gehlen organization.
Frade had just decided that about the only thing that could be done was for him to talk to Otto Körtig and see if he had any ideas when he became aware that Siggie Stein had joined him at the bar.
Stein came right to the point.
“Colonel, can I go to Germany with you?”
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“Why the hell would you want to do that?” Frade said.
“I’ll tell you, sir. But it doesn’t make much sense, even to me.”
“Give it a shot, Siggie.”
“I started to think about Germany a couple of weeks ago, after I saw that picture of General Patton taking a leak in the Rhine.”
And now you want to take a piss in the Rhine?
Well, why the hell not?
You’re certainly entitled to a little revenge.
“And then Mother Superior told me a story about Nazis in Chile,” Stein said.
“Go over that again, Siggie?”
“Truth being stranger than fiction, we’ve become pretty close. She comes up here a couple of nights a week and we kill a couple of bottles of wine.”
“A couple of bottles of wine? In here?”
“Yeah, Colonel, a couple of bottles of wine. But not here in the bar; we go to the radio room. I moved in there . . .”
The radio room was a small apartment on the upper floor of the Big House.
Frade raised an eyebrow and said, “I didn’t know that you moved out of the BOQ.”
“I think the officers were glad when I did.”
“Polo included?”
Frade sipped his wine and thought, If he’s been looking down his commissioned officer’s nose at Stein, I’ll ream him a new asshole.
“No. Not Major Sawyer. When I moved out of the BOQ, he even asked me if I had a problem. I told him no, that I moved out because I wanted to.”
“Any Kraut officer in particular?”
“It’s not what you’re suggesting, Colonel. Nothing overt. They were just as uncomfortable as officers having me in there as I was at a sergeant being in the BOQ.”
