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“Are you going to tell my aunt Wilhelmina you came to gloat over me?”
“Well, Herr Sturmführer, since we have you in here, I think I’m entitled to gloat. Odessa has lost the services of a valuable member. Whether or not I tell my mother that I’ve paid you a visit depends on how you react to the offer I’m about to make.”
Stauffer didn’t reply.
“I’m sure Brigadeführer Franz von Dietelburg has told you about our Operation Ost—”
“Who?”
“I’m sure you remember him. He was Himmler’s adjutant, the officer who ordered you to Strasbourg.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“One more display of that SS arrogance, Luther, and I will leave you to Colonel Fortin, who wants to shoot you in the elbow and knees with a .22 and then see how well you can swim.”
Stauffer didn’t reply.
“I don’t think of you as anything other than one more despicable SS officer, Stauffer. And the offer I came here to make has nothing to do with the unpleasant fact that my mother is your father’s sister. Do you understand that?”
Stauffer, after a moment, nodded.
“As I was saying, Herr Sturmführer, I’m sure Brigadeführer von Dietelburg has told you about Operation Ost. We do what von Dietelburg is doing and what you failed to do—send Nazi swine to South America so that they can escape the noose. Or a swim in the Rhine.
“Do you know where Paraguay is, Herr Sturmführer?”
“Of course.”
“There is a colonel named Stroessner in Paraguay. There’s a president, but he serves because Colonel Stroessner permits him to. Stroessner, who was born in Paraguay to German immigrant parents, is a devout believer in National Socialism. Not Nazism. He believes Hitler, Göring, Himmler, and company betrayed National Socialism and are the cause of the failure of the Thousand-Year Reich.
“We send the Nazis—and their families—we took to South America to Paraguay, to Colonel Stroessner. He sets them up on farms, or in business. In a new life, in other words. We are comfortable in doing this because we know that these Nazis will be stood against a wall and shot in a public ceremony if Colonel Stroessner finds out—or even deeply suspects—that they are holding their breath waiting for Nazism to rise phoenixlike from the ashes.
“Are you following me, Herr Sturmführer?”
“I don’t know why you’re telling me this.”
“Because—I’m a little surprised, Herr Sturmführer, that you haven’t figured this out—because I’m offering you—and of course your devoted wife—the opportunity to go to Paraguay. In exchange for telling me where I can find Brigadeführer von Dietelburg.”
“I don’t know where he is. And if I did, why should I trust you?”
“Because the only other option you have is taking a swim in the Rhine, which would, of course, leave Ingebord a widow.”
“Your mother would hear that you were complicit if something like that happened to me.”
“To which I would reply that I had no influence with the French, in how they deal with traitors.”
Stauffer glared at Cronley but said nothing.
“And I would tell her that I had no influence with Colonel Stroessner should you and Ingebord be shot in Paraguay for not behaving.
“Think it over, Herr Sturmführer. Von Dietelburg’s not even going to try to rescue you from Sainte Marguerite. It would be too risky for him, for Odessa. Talk it over with Ingebord. I understand Colonel Fortin has denied her permission to visit. So I will ask him to allow her a visit. One visit. You have twenty-four hours from right now—it’s now two-thirty-five—to make up your mind.”
He met Stauffer’s eyes and said, “In case we don’t meet again, auf Wiedersehen, Herr Sturmführer.”
“Get him out of here, out of my sight,” Fortin ordered.
When the guards had led Stauffer, shuffling, out of the room, Fortin said, “Don’t let this go to your head, James, but you did that rather well.”
“When you bring his wife here, let her sit here for at least an hour and worry about what’s going on before you let her see him.”
