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Damn it. I don’t need that story getting around.
Change the subject.
“So, what are you going to do on the Kurfürstendamm, Peter?” Mattingly asked, quickly changing the subject.
“I’m looking for a couple friends of mine. Have you been over there? Seen the notes pinned to the wooden fence around the ruins of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche?”
Boltitz nodded.
Mattingly shook his head.
“People looking for people—family, friends—leave notes there,” von Wachtstein explained for Mattingly’s benefit. “You put the name of the person you’re looking for, and your name and address, on a card and pin it to the fence and hope that the other guy sees it. I’ve been doing that since the first time we flew in here. And every time since, I go look, and if necessary put up a new card.”
“Who are you looking for?” Mattingly asked.
“Two Luftwaffe buddies. Actually one buddy and my—our—old commanding officer. Former Oberstleutnant Dieter von und zu Aschenburg and former Hauptmann Wilhelm Johannes Grüner, also known as Wild Willi.”
“There’s an Argentine connection, Bob,” Boltitz said thoughtfully. “Grüner’s father was Oberst Karl-Heinz Grüner, the military attaché—and Sicherheitsdienst man—in the embassy.”
“The father arranged the assassination of Clete’s father and the several failed attempts to kill Cletus,” Peter added.
“And he’s a friend of yours?” Mattingly asked softly.
Peter shook his head. “Not the father. But Dieter and I went to flight school together and flew as corporals in the Condor Legion in Spain. Hauptmann von und zu Aschenburg was our squadron commander. We were pretty close.”
“You have some reason to think they survived the war?”
“I have a lot of reasons to think they probably didn’t,” Peter said.
“What happened to the father?” Mattingly asked. “Is he now interned in Argentina?”
“Enrico Rodríguez shot him on the beach of Samborombón Bay,” Peter said. “While he was trying to unload crates of money from a Spanish freighter.”
“And if you find either one of them, then what?”
“Then I take them to Argentina,” Peter said.
Which brings us back to that, Mattingly thought, just before the kitchen door opened and one of the Second Armored Division sergeants entered.
“What is it, Sergeant?” Mattingly asked impatiently.
“Colonel, I thought I should tell you about this before I just ran him off.”
“Ran who off?”
“There’s a Kraut out there asking if we have a Kraut named Wachheim or something like that working here. . . .”
“Wachtstein?” Peter asked.
“Right. Working here. This guy was hanging around yesterday and the day before.”
“Please show the Kraut in, Sergeant,” von Wachtstein said.
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant replied.
The sergeant turned and ordered, “In here, Fritz!”
A moment later, he motioned into the kitchen a tall, gaunt, balding, blond, fair-skinned man in his forties who was dressed in the ragged remains of an insignia-less Luftwaffe uniform.
