Clete thought he heard a chuckle.
“Eight o’clock,” he said, and hung up.
Cletus Marcus Howell nodded his approval.
“Jean-Jacques, would you please tell Samuel we will need the car at seven-forty? And then call Arnaud’s and tell them I will require a private dining room, for three, at about eight?”
“Yes, Sir,” Jean-Jacques said.
“And finally, Mr. Cletus has left his luggage in his car. Would you bring it in and unpack it for him, please? And, as soon as you can, see to having his dress uniform pressed, or cleaned, or whatever it takes?”
“Mr. Cletus’s car is in the carriage house, Mr. Howell,” Jean-Jacques said. “His luggage is in his room. Antoinette’s already taking care of his laundry, and she heard what you said about
painting Mr. Cletus’s picture, so she’s already working on the uniform.”
“Thank you.”
“Can you think of anything else, Cletus?”
“I think I would like another Sazerac, Jean-Jacques, if you could find the time.”
“If you fill yourself with Sazeracs, Cletus, you won’t be able to appreciate either the wine or the food at Arnaud’s.”
“Grandfather, I am prepared to pay that price.”
“You might as well fetch two, please, Jean-Jacques,” the old man said.
“Yes, Sir,” Jean-Jacques said. He turned and started out of the room. When his face was no longer visible to the old man, he smiled and winked at the young one.
[FOUR]
Schloss Wachtstein
Pomerania
1515 1 November 1942
Generalmajor Graf Karl-Friedrich von Wachtstein, wearing a leather overcoat over his shoulders, walked into the library and found his son slumped in an armchair facing the fireplace, a cognac snifter in his hand.
“It’s a little early for that, isn’t it, Peter?” he asked, tossing the overcoat and then his brimmed uniform cap onto a library table.
Hauptmann Hans-Peter von Wachtstein turned and looked at his father but didn’t reply or stand up. After a moment, he said, “I’ve just come from turning over my staffel.”
“You’re celebrating, then? Peter, I really wish you hadn’t started drinking,” the Graf said.
“I’m all right, Poppa. A little maudlin, perhaps, but sober. I was just telling myself I should be celebrating. But it doesn’t feel that way.”
“My father once told me that the best duty in the service is as a Hauptmann, in command of a company. In your case, a staffel. Giving up such a command is always difficult. Perhaps you should consider that it was inevitable…”
“Inevitable?”
“You would have had to turn it over when your majority comes through; and that should be, I would think, any day now. With a little luck, before you go to Argentina.”
“I had the most disturbing feeling, as a matter of fact,” Peter said, “particularly afterward, when we all had a cognac in the bar, that it was a funeral, or a wake, that we were all seeing each other for the last time.”
“I’ve had a bad day, a bad week, myself,” Graf von Wachtstein said.
“I brought Karl’s car out here,” Peter said, changing the subject. “I didn’t know what to do with it. I thought perhaps you might want to use it.”