Death and Honor полностью

Cranz had arrived in what arguably was his office at five minutes to nine. His good feeling lasted until he glanced at his watch and saw that it now was quarter past nine.

One would have thought that Frogger would have come in a bit early, not a bit late.

He said and did nothing even then, instead glancing through the Argentinisches Tageblatt, the German-language newspaper. Somebody—he couldn’t remember who—had told him that the Argentines, who regarded the Tageblatt as a “guest newspaper,” would not permit it to publish much of anything at all except announcements of church meetings, births, weddings, deaths, and the like unless the items first had been published in an Argentine newspaper—and then only if the translation was approved by the Argentine government and the paper ran both the German translation and the original story in Spanish, either side by side or one after the other.

Reading it now, Cranz thought that were it not for the notices of the deaths of Argo-Germans in Africa and Russia, and pleas to contribute to Winterhilfe— which asked Germans abroad to aid Germans impoverished by the war—one would never know a war was on.

He quickly tired of reading news of the Buenos Aires German community’s church suppers and such.

He looked at his watch again.

Nine twenty-five.

Where the hell is he?

He couldn’t remember the name of Frogger’s secretary, so he couldn’t call for her. Instead, he got up from Frogger’s desk and walked to the outer office.

“Señora,” he asked politely, “you don’t happen to know where El Señor Frogger is, do you?”

She smiled, then said she was sorry, she had no idea.

“What time does he usually come to work?”

“He’s usually here, señor, when I come in.”

“And when do you usually come in, señora?”

“El Señor Frogger likes to have me at my desk at eight, señor.”

“He didn’t send a message that he would be late?”

“No, señor.”

“Would you please try to get him, or La Señora Frogger, on the telephone for me, please?”

Three minutes later, she reported that there was no answer at El Señor Frogger’s home number or at the Café Flora, where he and La Señora Frogger sometimes went for breakfast.

Cranz smiled and thanked her, gave the situation a moment’s thought, then went looking for First Secretary Anton von Gradny-Sawz.

Cranz had already formed several opinions about Gradny-Sawz, none of them very flattering. He had decided Gradny-Sawz was shrewd but not very bright; that it had been a mistake by Bormann to name him to try to enlist Colonel Perón—that Cranz probably would have to take that task onto himself—and that while Gradny-Sawz probably was not the traitor, neither was he trustworthy.

But Gradny-Sawz was first secretary of the embassy, and thus Frogger’s immediate superior, and Cranz didn’t want to go to the ambassador about something petty like Frogger not showing up for work on time.

When Cranz got to Gradny-Sawz’s office, von Deitzberg was in there with Gradny-Sawz and looked at Cranz with annoyance.

“Will this wait, Cranz?” von Deitzberg snapped.

“Frogger hasn’t come in, and I was going to ask the first secretary if he perhaps knew anything about it.”

“Did you call him at home?” von Deitzberg asked.

“There’s no answer,” Cranz said.

“Let me check with Fräulein Hässell,” Gradny-Sawz said, and dialed a number.

Fräulein Hässell had no idea why Herr Frogger had not come to work.

Nor did Ambassador von Lutzenberger, who suggested it might be a good idea to send Untersturmführer Schneider around to their apartment to make sure that nothing was wrong.

“You go with him, Cranz,” von Deitzberg ordered, “and take Raschner with you.”

The Frogger apartment was on the fourth floor of a turn-of-the-century apartment building on Calle Talcahuano. A park separated it from the Colón Opera House.

When there was no answer to the in-house telephone, the concierge said the Froggers must have gone out before he came on duty at nine, then gave the men a good deal of trouble when they said they wanted to have a look in the apartment.

Cranz was perhaps disloyally amused at Raschner’s coldly angry reaction to that.

He’s going to have to remember that this is not Germany and that a Gestapo badge is absolutely meaningless here.

Cranz’s charm, diplomatic passport, and a small cash gift overcame the concierge’s reluctance to let them into the apartment. The concierge was visibly relieved when Schneider produced a key.

The Froggers were not in the apartment. The beds were made, and there was no sign that they had had their breakfast there. There was nothing suspicious about that. They were Germans. When Germans got out of bed, they made the bed. When they had breakfast, they cleaned the table and the plates and silver and the kitchen.