Inge looked up at him. “Sorry, darling,” she said. “The last thing in the world I want to do is hurt him, at least before he’s done his duty.”
IX
[ONE]
Restaurant Bernardo
La Rambla
Montevideo, Uruguay
2210 2 May 1943
During the course of their long and exhausting—though pleasurable—afternoon together, Peter had many occasions to wonder, somewhat unkindly, if Inge was one of those ins
atiable females young men who don’t know any better dream of finding. After actually finding one himself in Spain—or rather, after she had found him—he came to realize the error behind that fantasy. Two weeks into the relationship he actually began to dread her apartment (after two nights he had unwisely moved in, or she had moved him)—knowing that before he could even take a drink, or a cup of coffee, he was expected to prove yet again the legendary virility of Luftwaffe fighter pilots.
Inge was not quite in that league, he had to admit. It was in fact likely that she was simply taking advantage of the opportunity his presence presented. Her husband was totally uninterested in the gentle sex, and Inge had normal female hungers. And it was also possible that her enthusiasm was at least partially feigned and intended to keep him in line. Inge knew all about using sex to get what she wanted from men.
Peter and Inge had first met in Berlin during a five-day leave after service in France and before assuming command of Jagdstaffel 232, which was stationed outside Berlin. Inge herself had been stationed in the lobby bar in the Hotel am Zoo, one of those women who seemed to regard taking to bed senior officers or dashing young Luftwaffe fighter pilots as their contribution to the war effort. They were not technically prostitutes, but if there were presents, or “loans,” so much the better.
When he saw Inge back then looking at him over the edge of her Champagne glass, he decided that the long-legged blond beauty was going to be God’s reward to a very tired fighter pilot who had done his duty for the Fatherland.
Two hours later, they were in a suite overlooking the lake in the Hotel am Wansee. And for two days they left the bed only to eat room-service meals, meet calls of nature, and shower.
Sometime during their licentious bacchanalia, she offered her hard-luck story—her family home destroyed in an air raid, the determination of the authorities to employ her in a war industry—a ghastly plan, yet one she might be forced into, unless she could find an apartment in Berlin, which was a difficult proposition—by which she meant expensive—because she didn’t have permission to reside in Berlin, and would have to find a place on the black market.
At the time, Peter was reasonably convinced that he was running out of his allotted time in this world. The day before arriving in Berlin, he’d encountered a P-51 Mustang over the English Channel whose pilot was just as good as he was. At the time, he was too busy to be afraid, and fortunately, the dogfight ended in a draw: When Peter came out of the cloud where he’d sought a few seconds’ refuge, the Mustang was nowhere in sight.
But afterward, in the air, and that night, and on the train to Berlin, he had been forced to conclude that a number of Allied pilots were just as good as he was, and flying aircraft just as good as his Messerschmitt or the Focke-Wulf he would be flying in his new squadron. It was only a matter of time before he ran into a better pilot, or made a mistake, or was just unlucky, and it would be Sorry, your number came up. You lasted longer than most, but sooner or later, everybody’s number comes up. Auf Wiedersehen, Hans-Peter von Wachtstein!
Inge’s hard-luck story was in fact better than most—there was neither a sick mother nor a crippled little sister involved—and she had certainly been splendid in bed, so he wrote her a check. “A little loan,” he said.
“I will repay you as soon as I can,” she said.
And when their four days was over, he promptly forgot Inge, the loan, and even her name, although her incredible legs and the smell of her fresh from a shower remained for some time in his mind.
The next time he saw her was in Uruguay.
Peter had flown SS-Standartenführer Josef Luther Goltz there in the Storch to see his man von Tresmarck in Montevideo on behalf of his secret mission to provide an “insurance” refuge for high-ranking Nazis; and Inge, now Frau Sturmbannführer von Tresmarck, had been at the airport to meet them.
She was predictably glad to see him, and proved it that same night by coming to his room in the Casino Hotel in Carrasco. There she told him the story of her recent life since their four days together:
She had married a Waffen-SS Obersturmbannführer named Erich Kolbermann, and was widowed when he was killed at Stalingrad. She had then married von Tresmarck, of the Sicherheitsdienst.
“He needed a wife, and I would have married a gorilla to get out of Berlin,” Inge reported matter-of-factly.
“He needed a wife?”
“Didn’t Goltz tell you? You mean you couldn’t tell the way he looked at you? It was either marry me or pink triangles and Sachsenhausen. That’s how Goltz knows he can trust him.”
“I knew there was someone like that here,” Peter lied quickly. “But I didn’t think he’d be married to you.”
Five minutes later, Inge blurted out Goltz’s other and far more secret mission in Argentina and Uruguay (under the presumption that Peter was as concerned with self-preservation as she herself was, that he had cleverly managed to get himself out of Germany, and that because he was now traveling around with Goltz, he was part of it). For a price, she explained, a stiff price, paid to von Tresmarck in Montevideo, a group of SS officers led by Goltz would arrange the release of Jews from certain concentration camps, and their safe passage though Spain to Argentina and Uruguay.
Peter reacted to Inge’s revelation with shocked disbelief, for it was the first he’d heard about the ransom operation. And this terrified her. At which point she explained—and he believed—that if this came to the attention of the wrong people in Germany, Goltz, her husband, and everyone else in the know (e.g. Inge herself) would almost surely be shot or sent to a concentration camp.
Under these circumstances, Goltz and von Tresmarck were perfectly willing to kill anyone suspected of threatening the operation, or even of knowing too much about it. That, she pointed out, included him.